“Thanks for doing this, Jess,” he said.
“It wasn’t for you,” she returned, then took a breath. High emotion would do the dog no good at all.
“Still. Thanks.”
“Yep.” She focused back on Thor, watching him, looking at his body language, his face. “It’s all right, boy,” Jessie said. “Take your time.” She stayed where she was, body relaxed. “Tell me about him, Marcus. His handler was killed?”
“Yes.” The word was gruff. “Sniper got him in the attack. I always promised Sean that I’d look after Thor if anything happened to him. Not doing the best job so far.”
Jessie eased a little closer, and Thor lifted his head slightly, nostrils quivering. She paused, turned her hand over. “Thor was also injured?”
“Both of us where. Thor took a bullet to the shoulder. We almost lost him, but I got him out in time.”
“I see.” That would account for the limp. Dog and man.
Thor abruptly settled on the ground, his body relaxing. She reached in and offered the treat. He took it gingerly. “Good boy,” she said. He sniffed her hand and wrist, and Jessie sat down next to him, keeping her body slightly angled away. “Is he afraid of everything, or certain things in particular?”
Marcus started to kneel, but a stiff leg stopped him and he straightened again. With a slight burst of shame, Jessie said, “I’m sorry we can go inside soon, but I want to make him comfortable first.”
“That’s all right.” He rubbed his thigh, an absent gesture. “I keep forgetting. Just doesn’t bend the way it did.”
Jessie offered Thor another cube of chicken. He accepted it delicately, then moved his nose along her wrist and up her arm, snuffling, gathering information, eyes trained on her face. She saw vast intelligence there, and exhaustion. Her heart surged toward him, the same hunger she always felt toward wounded dogs—to heal them, love them, protect them. “I can help you,” she promised quietly, offering another treat. “If you let me.”
He gazed at her steadily. Warily, but with curiosity, too. Dogs usually could sense that she had their well-being in mind.
Marcus said, “He’s afraid of going inside buildings for the most part. I can get him into a house, but not a building like this. He’s afraid of crowds. And lightning. And the smell of gasoline.”
“Poor guy.” She grazed the side of his shoulder with the back of her wrist. He looked at her with all the sorrow in the world. “Let’s see if you’ll go inside, shall we?”
She stood, putting herself on a level with Marcus. His eyes were more guarded than Thor’s, but still troubled. “How is your relationship with him?”
He shrugged, looking away. His jaw and cheekbone were hard chipped, the angles sharp. Jessie wanted to ease the tension across his mouth, and suddenly remembered all too clearly how it felt to kiss those lips. “He wishes it was me who died, instead of Sean.”
“And you? How do you feel toward him?” She inclined her head. “Truth. I can’t help if I don’t know the real story.”
“Maybe I wish it had been Thor instead of Sean.”
“I guess you’re starting even, then,” she said.
His jaw tightened. “I guess we are.”
Jessie crossed her arms. “Can you love him? Can you be good to him even if you don’t?”
“Yes. I made a promise,” he said. “I will give him the home he deserves.”
“Do you blame him for Sean’s death?”
“No,” he said, and faced her clearly. “Thor’s a good soldier. An honorable soldier. He did his best.”
“And you?”
A beat. A flash of something across his brow. “I could have done better.”
She doubted that most earnestly—in football, in love, in raising horses on his father’s ranch, he always gave one hundred percent. She softened toward him ever-so-slightly. “Well, let’s get started.” She gave Marcus a few treats. With anyone else, she would have explained how to reward the dog for each step, but Marcus already knew. They had been drawn together over their love of animals. All animals. “Let’s see if we can get him to come inside.”
Marcus eyed the building. “This is a bad structure, for the dog. “
“Why?”
“It’s all cinderblock. It’s like a building he would have entered on patrol.”
“We won’t push it, then, but I would like to see how he reacts.” Jessie also wanted to observe the relationship between man and dog. “Offer him a treat and let’s move toward the door.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Marcus tugged on the leash. “Come on, buddy,” he said, offering the treat. “Let’s take a walk.”
Thor looked at his handler apprehensively, but stood up, taking the treat. They walked a few feet, and Thor stopped, panting. He sat down.
“That’s a warning,” Marcus said. “There’s danger ahead.”
“What’s the command to release him?”
“All clear.”
Thor disagreed. He looked up at Marcus, then at the cinderblock building, and shifted slightly but kept his dark nose pointed at Trouble Ahead. His ears were up, alert. “Such a beautiful dog,” she murmured. “Needs grooming.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. He’s bitten everybody who tried.”
“Ah.” For a moment, she imagined the scenes the dog had experienced, protecting his master and the team. She knelt and touched his back. “You are a brave dog, a loyal dog,” she said, smoothing his fur. He accepted chicken from her palm. “You don’t have to do anything anymore. I promise there’s nothing in there. Would you come with me?”
He met her eyes, searching. “That’s it, baby.” Jessie stood, walking backward, a treat extended. “Come on, Thor. It’s safe.” When he moved a few feet forward, she let him have a treat. He took a few more steps, had another.
Suddenly, from the alley came a trio of skateboarders, rocking down the concrete slope, whooping, coming straight toward them. Thor leapt to snarling attack mode, barking, lunging, nearly snapping the ankle of one of the boys before Marcus subdued him with an arm around his chest. “No, Thor. All clear! All clear!”
“Dude!” one of the boys cried, “get control of your dog, why don’tcha?”
“Boys,” Jessie called, in a voice as non-threatening as she could muster, “you know it’s illegal for you to skateboard here. If you don’t want a ticket, you’d best get out of here.”
Without remorse, they skated away, jostling and shouting. Just being kids.
She turned to the dog and man, huddled on the ground. Thor shivered violently and was panting as if he’d run a hundred miles. Marcus had a bite mark on his hand that leaked blood in a steady stream. “How bad is the bite?”
“It’s fine,” he said gruffly. “I’ve had worse.”
Jessie eyed the scars on his arm. Dog bites. Savage, deep bites. She only nodded. “That was a disaster. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“We’ll stop for now, but I’d like to end on a high note, if you don’t mind.”
“You’re the boss.”
“I’m going to have you bring him to my house tomorrow. We’ll work in my backyard. It’s protected and maybe it won’t feel so threatening to him.”
“Sounds good.” Marcus rubbed Thor’s chest with a the uninjured hand. “You all right, bud?”
Thor licked his chin, apologetically.
“I know.” He gave the dog’s ears a rough scrub. “It’s all right.”
Enough love there, Jessie thought. Plenty.
As Marcus stood, she saw that his legs were shaking. Alarmed, she asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be all right in a minute,” he said roughly.
The dog was not the only one with PTSD, Jessie thought, and unbidden, tears welled up in her throat. To hide them, she scuffed a foot on the ground. “We need to bandage that hand.”
“No, it’s nothing serious. I’ll take care of it when I get home.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wrapped it up. The tr
emors in his hands were violent, and it took two tries to get the handkerchief around his wound.
Jessie reached out and took the leash. She would need more information, but for now, man and dog both needed normal. “Let’s walk,” she said. “There’s a pond over there. Almost no one ever goes there.”
Marcus was ashamed. His hand shook, his heart pounded. Sweat poured down his back. Next to him, Thor crept close to the ground, one shaky step after the next. Jessie simply walked next to them, offering a treat to Thor every few steps, murmuring encouragement.
She had always been a dog charmer.
The roar of adrenaline slowed, then stopped. He could hear some little birds hidden in a tree. A breeze swept over the water, making it ripple. He took a breath. Thor eased, too, beginning to walk naturally even if he was still hypervigilant, waiting for the snipers to come again, from somewhere.
Anywhere.
At any moment.
“Give him a treat,” Jessie said. She was wiry and small, like a gymnast or a triathlete, with a cloud of brown hair. No beauty but her wide, clear eyes. And yet, he had never loved another woman in his life. Just looking at her now made him ache in a hundred places—aches of memory, aches of hunger, aches of regret and love. A wisp of hair blew over her neck and Marcus acutely wanted to kiss the smooth skin there.
He’d lost that right, by making the only choice possible for himself. And he’d paid the price. Big time.
“Tell him how proud of him you are,” Jessie added.
“Good boy, Thor,” Marcus said. The dog’s slick tongue slipped the treat from between his fingers.
“This is good,” she said. “Let’s just make a couple of turns around the pond.”
He nodded. “Have you worked with other dogs with PTSD?”
“A few. It’s a military town.”
“Is Thor pretty bad?”
She raised those big direct eyes and met his gaze. Blue, like the lake, like the mountains rising behind her. “I think you know the answer to that question.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Can you help him?”
When she smiled, it was the first time he’d seen Jessie, his Jessie, since they’d arrived. It smashed into his solar plexus like a metal beam and nearly buckled his knees.
“You know the answer to that question, too,” she said, that impish dimple arriving and disappearing.
Maybe this had been a big mistake, he thought. But he really thought he might be over her, five years later. Five hard years. Five satisfying years. She had never understood why he wanted to serve. She didn’t believe in war, said it was a stupid way to solve problems, flinging men at each other until they died. It was the only thing they’d ever fought about—that all he’d ever wanted, ever expected to do, was be a soldier. His pride in making the SEAL team had been the most powerful emotion of his life.
Jessie had given him an ultimatum—SEALs or her. He had not so much chosen as been called, which he’d never been able to make her understand. She gave him back the ring he had saved to buy, a diamond still carefully tucked into the back of a drawer.
“So, what does an ex-SEAL do for work?” she asked.
“I bought a ranch,” he said gruffly. “Appaloosas.”
“You’ll be good at that.”
“I was a good SEAL, too.”
She looked up sharply. “I’m sure you were. I never doubted that.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s not go over old ground, okay?” Jessie said. “I—I made mistakes. So did you. Let’s leave it at that.”
Gruffly he said, “Fair enough.”
Thor suddenly moved forward, snuffling hard into a clump of long grass. He lifted his head, sneezed, wagged his tail ever so faintly. Stuck his nose into the grass again, and scrapped the earth with his paws.
Jessie put her hand on Marcus’s arm. “Let’s let him be a dog.”
Her fingertips touched his skin, right over the scars Thor had left. Electricity moved through his skin, through his belly. Idiotic, and yet, there it was. As if she felt it too, she looked up, and for a long moment, it honestly seemed as if she might not mind if he bent down and kissed her.
Abruptly, she pulled her hand away.
Marcus focused on Thor, who sniffed along the grass, followed the scent to the edge of the pond, and then scraped his paws on the earth, flinging dirt far and wide, his chest puffed out. “That’s as relaxed as I’ve seen him,” Marcus said, and unaccountably, his throat was tight. What? Would he freaking cry now? For God’s sake.
Thor wandered over and Marcus gave him a treat. “Good job.”
Jessie stuck her hands in her back pockets. The move pulled her shirt tight over her breasts and he suddenly, shockingly, remembered how plump and pretty they were.
No, not going there. He rubbed his eyes. “Are we done for today?”
“Yes. You can take him back to the truck and I’ll write down my address. Can you come tomorrow?”
Jessie told herself that she was not dressing up for Marcus, just that she needed to look her best in order to be able to work with him. Mascara gave a woman confidence—everyone knew that.
She had already taken her two dogs, Alex and Wendell, to the training studio for the morning. Jessie’s assistant, Michelle, would look after the border collies, using them as helpers and examples, and Thor could come into the environment that smelled of other dogs, but not have to deal with them. She also walked the perimeter of the backyard, looking for problems, trouble, anything that might spook the nervous canine. Nothing. A Ponderosa pine in one corner, shrubs and a wide border planted with flowers along the fences. There were no dogs in the other yards to bark and make Thor feel the need to defend his area.
Overnight, she’d done a lot of reading, to increase her confidence in dealing with PTSD specific to combat dogs. Since Thor had so many issues, they would have to handle them one at a time. The first thing was to restore his sense of safety and trust. Thor had to learn to trust Marcus.
And Marcus had to learn to believe in himself.
Even with all the preparation, when the doorbell rang, she nearly jumped right out of her skin. Her heart skittered into overdrive, banging so hard in her rib cage that she had to put a hand to her side. She flew to the door, then halted when she spied him through the window, his face in profile as he looked toward the street. It was still his face. Marcus’s face. The face she had spied the first time at lunch in the seventh grade; the face that she had cheered for through dozens of seasons of sports—football and track and soccer; the face she had hardened her heart toward when he insisted on joining the Navy after college graduation.
Signing up to get yourself killed, she cried.
Signing up to help people who don’t have anyone else, he countered.
Signing up to be an absent husband!
Signing up to serve the country I love!
Now here he stood, older and weary, still serving the same way he always had. The least she could do was to help him heal the broken heart of a dog who needed a second chance. Putting on a professional demeanor, she opened the door. And laughed.
Staff Sergeant Thor stood perfectly still on the square concrete porch, gazing up at her like a calendar dog, a single rose encased in a rolled up newspaper in his mouth.
“Give it to her, Thor,” Marcus said.
Thor stood, walked over to Jessie, and put the flower against her hand. When she took it, Thor made a very pretty bow.
Delighted, Jessie laughed, then squatted to dog-eye level and said, “You are one amazing creature, aren’t you?”
Thor gave Marcus a sidelong look, practically a wink, and Marcus laughed. The sound boomed out of him, that deep rich enjoyment that infected everybody around him, and Jessie felt it course through her entire body—elbows, palms, lips.
Oh, to just kiss him one more time!
She looked up at him at the same moment he looked down. She saw him look at her mouth, and his hand lifted, as if to touch her arm.
&nb
sp; Thor nudged her leg, and Jessie was shaken from her swoon. “Sorry, sweetheart! You are the greatest dog in the world. So smart! So wise!” He lifted his chin and she scratched his chest. He made a low groan, lifted a paw to her arm, and shot a glance toward Marcus.
Jessie said, “He is really, really smart.”
“He is that.”
Remembering what they were here to do, she stepped back and opened the door. “Do you want to come in, baby?”
He leaned to see around her legs, then settled back into a sit.
“Not sure?” She shifted the rose to her other hand and reached into the treat bag attached to her belt. “How about this?” She gave it to him and he accepted it politely.
She opened the door wider, and had Marcus hold it open. She walked backward into the house, offering a treat, talking quietly.
No go.
“Does he go inside at your house?”
Marcus nodded. “I had to blindfold him the first time.”
“Was the attack in a building?”
His face went blank. “Yeah.”
Jessie put her hands on her hips. “What’s your goal, Marcus? What do you want to accomplish with him?”
He looked at Thor, sitting politely on the step. “I want him to feel okay again, like the world isn’t dangerous at every turn.”
“He’s going to have to trust you. What might be standing in the way?”
Marcus turned down the corners of his mouth. He was silent for a long moment, and Jessie watched as he rubbed a palm over the deep, ropy pink scars on his forearm. Finally, he looked up at her. “Me, I guess.”
She nodded. “Trade places with me.”
He offered her the leash, and stepped into her living room.
“Now back up a few steps and call him. Offer a treat.”
Thor moved ever so slightly, a foot at a time. After awhile, he followed Marcus all the way into the kitchen, and at that point, Jessie gave the dog a rest. “Good dog, Thor,” she said quietly, and offered a bowl of water. To Marcus she said, “You did a great job. He is going to transfer his loyalty to you. It’s just going to take some time.”
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