“Working.” Doggedly, Rosemary tried to do just that. What had gotten into Teri today, anyway? She was always pushy, but this was a new high even for her.
Teri opened her mouth with a retort, then shut it again. There was no arguing with Rosemary when she had that look on her face. Back to Plan A.
With the tip of her finger, Teri pushed toward her the last letter Rosemary had selected before she had run off to retrieve the dog. “I reread this one while you were ignoring opportunities, and it is definitely a winner.”
Rosemary nodded. Danny let himself back into the kitchen. The dog was trotting behind him, looking as docile as if she was a pull toy.
Yeah, right, Rosemary thought. And how long would that last?
She looked toward Teri. “Well, we’re agreed so far.” Rosemary indicated the smaller pile of contest letters. “Only four more to find.”
Deciding to tackle that next, she reached for another letter. Teri beat her to it, snatching it almost out of her grasp. Rosemary looked at her quizzically.
Teri pulled the other letters toward her. “Why don’t I go through the rest of these and you start sending out the forms on the ones you’ve chosen so far?”
This was a switch. Teri never took the initiative. Maybe the vicarious impression of a naked, dripping Chris Maverick had had a positive effect. “You certainly seem eager to get this contest moving.”
The smile on Teri’s lips was just a bit too wide, even for Teri. It made Rosemary wonder what was up. “Call it the romantic in me.”
Rosemary laughed. “I’m not quite sure I’d call it that-”
The simultaneous yelp and ringing doorbell abruptly cut Rosemary’s statement short. She rose and crossed to the front door, hoping that the yelp didn’t translate into another large stain on the carpet somewhere in the house. Even though the carpet cleaner was doing a great job in erasing the telltale marks, Rosemary felt as if it was just a matter of time before the entire carpet became saturated.
She unlocked the door. Now what?
A drier, clothed Chris Maverick was standing in her doorway. He was wearing a white V-neck sweater with the sleeves pushed up along his forearms and a pair of jeans that looked as if they had been spray painted onto his very muscular thighs. If she tried hard, she could swear she could hear Teri salivating from here.
There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment about him. Maybe the man ran naked through his living room all the time. Well, Rosemary thought, she was embarrassed enough for both of them. She knew it was horribly unsophisticated of her, but the mere thought of Chris, detoweled, had a blush threatening to take over again. She could almost feel it forging a trail up her neck into her cheeks.
She was blushing, Chris realized, stunned and somehow touched at the same time. He didn’t think women did that anymore. He’d certainly never seen it happen firsthand.
Chris studied her face and thought the added color was charming. Rosemary Gallagher herself was rather charming, in a soft, understated way. He’d seen her the first day he had moved in, over three months ago, and had immediately been attracted to her. The attraction had taken root when he had discovered through her son that she wasn’t married.
But the lady had given off signals that she was not interested in anything other than being neighborly. She’d offered him cake, a cold drink and the use of her phone until his was hooked up. There were no other offers, implied or stated.
If he thought about it, Chris found that rather refreshing. In his line of work there were a great many groupies around, all of whom wanted to boast that they had spent the night with a radio personality. In their eagerness to catch a bit of stardust, they had elevated him to the level of a minor celebrity.
It was enough to turn a guy’s head if he wasn’t well grounded. It was also enough to sour a guy on the idea of ever finding a sweet, old-fashioned girl. One who liked him because he was a slightly imperfect, lefthanded guy with a nice smile and a passion for old movies and old songs. Women like that just didn’t exist.
Or did they? he wondered, looking at her. “Hi.”
It was perfectly stupid to feel embarrassed like this, Rosemary told herself. After all, it wasn’t her fault that the dog had grabbed his towel. She certainly hadn’t trained Rocky to do that. And he was the one who hadn’t retreated when she’d suggested that he get dressed. God knows, he didn’t look as if he was embarrassed by the incident.
Reasoning notwithstanding, Rosemary still couldn’t keep the red stain from inching up along her neck. What was he doing here, anyway?
“Hi,” she murmured in response.
Another yip, this time much more plaintive, floated through the air. Chris read the question in her eyes and nodded in the general direction of the obviously distressed puppy. “You seem to be having some trouble with your new friend.”
Rosemary half turned her head, hoping that whatever it was could be cleaned up or straightened out. “Trouble doesn’t begin to cover it.”
She wasn’t going to let him in, he thought, and wondered why. Most women would have had him in a compromising situation by now, especially after the towel incident. “I’m a fair hand at training dogs, if you’d like any help.”
Rosemary was aware of Teri hovering beside her elbow like a heat-seeking missile trying to reach its target. Rosemary kept her hand firmly on the doorknob. “I’ll keep that in mind, but I really don’t want to impose.”
There was another yelp and the crash of something heavy and probably expensive. Rosemary closed her eyes for a moment, gathering strength. When she opened them again, it was to look into Chris’s very amused green eyes.
“Maybe I’d better impose.”
“It’s no imposition at all. I’m volunteering.”
Rosemary moved aside as she opened the door for him. She managed to successfully block the image of his bare body from her mind. After all, if he could live with her having seen him, she could live with having seen him.
Ah, but the trick was to do it without feeling her pulse rush, she thought.
She gestured toward the family room, where the noises were coming from. “Anything you can do with her will be greatly appreciated.”
Chris’s soft, liquid green eyes washed over her and he smiled. Very slowly. The smile bloomed like a flower unfurling its petals up to the early morning sun.
Rosemary felt something within her responding. Brightening. But since it had absolutely nowhere to go from there, she banked it.
Chris looked around. The house was a mirror image of his own. And yet there were soft, feminine touches everywhere, clearly giving it an individual look. The similarities yet differences made him smile even more. He arched a brow.
“Where?”
She gestured toward the rear of the house, where the family room was located. “Just follow the yipping—” Rosemary glanced at Teri. “Ignoring my cousin as you go, of course.”
Feeling she had been far too patient as it was, Teri moved forward, her hand extended toward Chris. “Hi, I’m Teri Lawson. I help Rosemary out with Soulmates, Inc. And I think you should sue the bus line.”
He’d heard a great many opening lines, but that one was a first for him. Suppressing a laugh, Chris shook his head as if to clear it. “Excuse me?”
“The picture that they have of you,” Teri explained. As usual, her brain was way ahead of her tongue. “It doesn’t begin to do you justice.”
Chris laughed. “Thanks.” He went to find Danny and the dog.
“‘Sue the bus line,’” Rosemary repeated incredulously as she walked back to the kitchen. “Why didn’t you just lick his shoes?”
The criticism left Teri completely unfazed. The man was better-looking in person than he was on the Number 65 crosstown. God, if only she were single again…
“I figure the dog’ll take care of that part of him.” Teri craned her neck, watching Chris disappear into the family room. “You’re living next door to that?”
“We’ve already established that fact.” R
osemary tried to keep her voice nonchalant. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed how handsome Chris was—she had. Very definitely. But she had also been serious when she’d told Teri how she felt about dating. That was for other people and she certainly encouraged it, but when it came to doing it herself, she would rather just daydream.
In daydreams she always said the right things, had the right comebacks, made her date laugh instead of feel painfully embarrassed for her. When she had gone out on those dates she’d mentioned, she had felt like an accident waiting to happen. A deadly dull accident.
Teri sat down opposite her, but if her mind hadn’t been on her work before, it definitely wasn’t on it now. “Talk about wasting your opportunities. Rosie, if it were me—”
Rosemary was tired of going around this. She had her stand and she was sticking with it. “Well, it’s not you, it’s me, and you know I hate being called Rosie.”
They had called her Rosie as a child not because it was short for Rosemary but because she always had such an optimistic view of the future. Right now, it annoyed her a great deal.
Teri leaned back on her chair and rocked slightly, her eyes on her cousin. “As I recall, you hate being called stupid, too.”
“Teri, if I have to explain things to you one more time, I’m having the whole thing recorded.”
Teri raised her hands in temporary surrender. Rosemary’s time would come, and a lot sooner than her cousin anticipated if she had anything to say about it.
“’I know, I know, the shoemaker’s kids go barefoot and the matchmaker goes celibate.” Teri picked up a letter then tossed it down again, frowning. “It’s just that I hate to see such a waste.” She glanced toward the family room. “At least look in on the guy and see how it’s going.”
That was something she was not about to do. “People don’t like being watched,” Rosemary insisted.
She wasn’t going to push, Teri reminded herself, she had promised herself that she wasn’t going to push. After all, things were going to work themselves out.
She couldn’t help herself. “He’s a radio personality, Rosemary. Being watched goes with the territory.”
“Radio,” Rosemary repeated without bothering to look up. “Not television.”
Teri tried again. “What’s the harm? Besides, you must know him in some capacity if you asked him to advertise the contest.”
That had taken a great deal of courage. Considered friendly, outgoing and gregarious, Rosemary still really hated to impose. “That was business,” she explained.
“So?” Teri raised her shoulders until they almost touched her earlobes. “Mean business.”
Rosemary smiled and shook her head as she looked up at her cousin. Teri worried about her, she knew that. And in her own dogged way, Teri meant well. Even if she had trouble taking no for an answer. “Teri, I’ve had my romance, I’ve had my marriage.”
Teri leaned forward, whispering into Rosemary’s ear. “It’s like kidneys. You’re allowed to have two.”
“Yes,” Rosemary agreed whimsically. “But you can make do on one.”
Teri knew defeat when it stared her in the face. “Are you sure we’re related?”
Rosemary laughed. Maybe now they could get some work accomplished. She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “So Mother says.”
She had managed to read down to the second paragraph of a letter when Chris interrupted. Knocking on the doorjamb, he stuck his head in the doorway. “Excuse me, do you have any treats?”
Rosemary felt as if her pulse had jumped a full inch in her wrist. “Well, there’s chocolate cake in the refriger-”
He laughed, shaking his head. Rosemary felt disarmed and addled at the same time. “No, I meant for the dog. It makes training easier.”
He was actually serious about this. She had half expected him to leave in exasperation after five minutes with the dog. Any sane person would have. Rocky had a tendency to bounce off all four walls, leaving little calling cards as she went.
“Oh.” Rosemary rose to her feet, smoothing down the edge of her blouse. “Dog treats. I knew that. Sure.” She beckoned him to follow her to the pantry. “Right in here.” There was a box of treats right next to the oatmeal. She offered the whole thing to him but he took out only three. “Bribing her?”
He slipped the three treats, shaped like little colored dog bones, into the pocket of his jeans. She wondered if they were going to be smashed there into a million pieces. How did he managed to get his hand into his pocket in the first place? There didn’t seem to be space enough for a prayer, much less a hand.
“Sure. Everyone works a lot better if there’s a reward waiting at the end.” He noticed that Rosemary wasn’t following him to the family room. He raised a brow. “Would you like to watch?”
She was tempted, but she wasn’t the type to play hooky and there was all this work to do. “I—”
Teri was behind her, all but shoving her toward the family room, or, more accurately, into Chris’s arms. “She’d like to watch,” she assured Chris. “Watch,” she ordered Rosemary. “I haven’t been in for two days. I can certainly pick up a little of the slack. You deserve to take it easy for a while.”
This was going too far, even for Teri, Rosemary thought. She’d all but tagged her ear and handed her to Chris.
“She works too hard,” Teri told Chris solemnly as she shooed Rosemary away.
Rosemary didn’t care to be discussed as if she was in another room. “In this business, you have to,” Rosemary said defensively. “You never know when a dry period is going to hit.”
If the work was there, she intended to take advantage of it, not wander off to watch a dog being trained. Even if the trainer was someone who could melt kneecaps at thirty paces.
Chris nodded knowingly. “Tell me about it. It’s the same with being a radio announcer. One day you’re working, opening fan mail, the next day, there’s a pink slip in your paycheck.”
He was pulling their leg, Teri thought. Who in their right minds would fire a disc jockey whose voice could melt frozen butter?
“That hasn’t happened to you,” Teri scoffed in disbelief.
He smiled at the compliment. “More than once.”
“No.” Teri’s mouth formed a perfect circle.
Rosemary could feel her agitation, as well as her mortification, growing at a breathtaking rate. Any second now Teri was going to offer her to Chris on a silver platter. She could just see her doing it, gushing something like, “You two have so much in common.” It was time to get Chris away from here.
“You’re right,” she said quickly. “I should watch you train Rocky. That way I can help Danny. And if you could possibly recommend a way I could get her to stop that awful whining and sleep through the night, I’d be permanently in your debt.”
“All puppies whine,” Chris told her. He stopped just short of the family room and looked at Rosemary in mild surprise. “You haven’t been going to her when she whines, have you?”
His tone indicated that she had done something dumb. She was tempted to deny it, but she had to be honest. Rosemary nodded.
Rather than a lecture or a high-handed smirk, he smiled at her. “You really are softhearted, aren’t you?”
Rosemary shrugged. “I thought that she had to go…” Her voice trailed off. “You know.”
Yes, he knew, and he thought it rather cute that she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Some of the women he’d met turned the air blue within five minutes.
“They learn to hold it,” he assured her. “You don’t want her getting the upper hand, do you?”
The way Rosemary saw it, Rocky already had. “Not particularly.” She looked into the family room and saw Danny on the floor, with the puppy nipping at his shoes, his shirt and all parts in-between. He was giggling. Rosemary’s heart warmed. “But I thought it was kind of cruel to leave her locked up all night.”
Chris shook his head. “She’ll never learn to sleep straight through if you go to her every tim
e she cries.” He saw the way Rosemary was looking at her son. “Did you do that with Danny when he was a baby?”
Each and every time. She’d stumbled into his room, instinct rather than vision guiding her steps. “Guilty as charged.”
She really was rather unique, he thought. Chris shook his head with a laugh. “Well, he seems to have turned out just fine, but I don’t recommend doing that with your dog.”
Placing his hand at the small of her back, Chris guided Rosemary into the family room. Rosemary glanced over her shoulder and saw that Teri was still watching them. There was a very pleased look on her face. Rosemary mouthed, “Shut up.”
Teri had the good grace to stop smiling and lower her eyes back to her work. But Rosemary could have sworn that even at this distance she detected traces of the smirk on Teri’s lips.
Unlike her, Teri saw a match everywhere. Teri just didn’t understand that some people preferred not to be attached. Or rather, preferred not to go through the agony of finding their way through the brambles to become attached.
Chris took his position in front of the dog. Rocky waved her tail madly. He probably saw a great deal of that, Rosemary thought.
“Now, you’ve got to show the puppy’s who’s boss. Dogs are pack animals, and you and Danny have to be the lead dogs.”
Rosemary frowned. Now she had to become a dog? The whole idea was to have the dog become more civilized, not them more animal-like.
“The only dogs I ever came in contact with were Lassie and Rin Tin Tin in the movies. They were toilet trained, didn’t smell and knew not to chew the fringes off my shawl.” She thought of the unraveled heap she had discovered in her bedroom this morning and jerked a thumb at Rocky. “This one obviously hasn’t read her Lassie manual.”
Chris laughed. “No, maybe not, but she can be trained.”
Danny looked up at him, confused. “To read the manual?”
Chris shook his head. “No, to rescue Timmy from the well.”
Rosemary didn’t want a rescue dog or one that did long division. She just wanted a house dog that didn’t bring down the house five minutes after entry. “I’d settle for not making small rivers in my living room.”
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