Home Is Where the Bark Is

by Kandy Shepherd

  “Of course,” Nick said. “And Serena will want to meet with you.” Serena and Claire seemed to speak the same language. He had a feeling they would get on very well.

  “I’ve got another question,” said Adam. “The spy cam receiver. Do you still have it?”

  “Yes. I’ve got it in my purse. I haven’t gotten around to taking it to the electronic recycling place.”

  “Can I have it?” asked Adam.

  “Sure. I’ll go get it.” She turned and headed back into the restaurant.

  “She’s nice,” said Adam in a low voice once Claire was out of earshot.

  “She sure is,” said Nick.

  “And a babe,” added Adam.

  “Is she? Of course she is,” said Nick. Truth was, he had registered that Claire was cute. But that was as far as it went. Only Serena held any interest for him in a man-woman way. And he suspected he would feel that way for the rest of his life.

  “But not as hot as Kylie,” added Adam, much to Nick’s surprise.

  “What do you mean by that?” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking with your johnson about a possible suspect.” He could not resist quoting Adam’s words right back at him.

  “Hey, man, don’t get me wrong. I just said Kylie was hot.” Nick thought there was more to it than that, but Adam was saved from further interrogation by Claire’s return with the broken receiver. Nick and Claire exchanged contact details and then he and Adam were on their way.

  Once out of the laneway, Nick stepped up his pace with a sudden urgency. He had felt utterly gutted at the thought of losing Mack, even though he had only been his dog for a few days.

  It was unbearable to think what he’d feel if he lost Serena.

  He had to get back to San Francisco as soon as he could and tell her how he felt about her.

  He cracked his knuckles.

  Would that be before or after he had to tell her S&W Investigations was no closer to cracking the case than it had been the day he had followed the paw-print trail to Paws-A-While?

  He’d have to do some fast talking with Adam, too, to convince him to keep pouring their time and resources into sniffing out the doggy day-care connection. All his strong leads had fizzled to nothing. Yet deep in his gut he remained convinced that the scam somehow originated from Paws-A-While.

  He knew the drive back would seem interminable.

  Twenty

  Why did she have so many darn clocks around Paws-A-While? Serena thought as she caught herself yet again checking the beagle clock in the reception area.

  Where was Nick? She’d heard nothing but a brief phone call to report on his meeting with Claire Kessler. All she knew was that Mrs. Kessler was off the suspect list and that Mack now officially belonged to Nick. She ached to hear more details. And she ached to see Nick. She wondered if her sleepless night last night was as much to do with missing Nick as Mack’s disruptive behavior.

  I will not look up at that clock again; I will not look up at that clock again.

  She looked down at her watch instead.

  Would he ever get here?

  The staff were asking her that question, too. They were short staffed without Kylie—Kylie, who did the work of two people and who Serena missed desperately. She felt ill every time she thought of the scene in her office, of Kylie’s shock and hurt and anger. Even though Kylie had done the wrong thing by withholding those details from her past, Serena was haunted by a sense that she had betrayed a friend who had been nothing but good to her. She’d left message after message for Kylie but with no reply.

  Willing herself to keep her eyes away from her watch, she rearranged the display of doggy beauty goodies to disguise the gaps where products had been bought but not reordered. Until her credit was re-established, she did not dare commit to even a cent that wasn’t essential.

  She was fussing with the bottles of Sexy Beast fragrance when “Who Let the Dogs Out?” chimed and suddenly Nick was there.

  Her heart didn’t just do the skip-a-beat thing. It actually seemed to stall as she drank in the tall, powerful handsomeness of him. It only started to beat again when she realized the look in his eyes told her he was as glad to see her as she was to see him.

  Her first impulse was to run to him and fling herself into his arms. But the fact he wore his Paws-A-While shirt restrained her. In front of the team, she had to keep up the pretense that Nick was just another employee. Though from the sly glances she had intercepted from the staff from the day Nick came on board, she was beginning to wonder if they were fooling anyone.

  But if the speculation about her relationship with Nick kept the Paws-A-While team from wondering why clients were leaving and products not being reordered, and from discovering the fact they were all under investigation, she guessed that had to be okay.

  Even though there was no one in the reception area with her, she thought she had better keep up the role-play just in case someone came in.

  “Nick, glad to see you back. We’re short staffed with Kylie not in again today so—”

  She didn’t get the chance to finish. Nick took two great strides toward her and swept her into a big, exuberant hug. “I’ve missed you, too, boss lady.”

  He squeezed her so tight she found it hard to breathe. Or was that shortness of breath because of her proximity to his big, hard body, the Nick-scent filling her senses and—oh yes!—the pressure of his mouth on hers, hard and possessive.

  She melted against him, twined her arms around his neck, kissed him back. “I missed you every minute you were away,” she murmured against his mouth.

  Then jumped quickly back when she heard the door to the playroom open. Adele popped her head around the door, looked, and took in the situation with a knowing smirk. “Great. Nick’s here,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for him.”

  Serena felt herself color as she fought for composure. “Is it urgent, Adele?” she asked.

  “We could do with some help with the puppy potty. Heather thinks it could be a blocked pipe.”

  “Great,” Nick groaned.

  Serena took a deep breath to steady herself. “Nick will be with you in a moment,” she said in her best boss-lady voice.

  “Sure, I guess you two have got business going on here,” said Adele, not even attempting to suppress a cheeky grin as she turned to go.

  Serena waited until the door closed behind her youngest employee before turning back to Nick. “Do you think she saw us?”

  “Who gives a damn if she did?” said Nick, pulling her to him again.

  She looked up at him. “Aren’t we meant to be undercover?”

  “With the investigation, yes. But us? I want things out in the open. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “Except I’m meant to be your boss.”

  “So you set the rules. Do you have a rule that says you can’t date the staff?”

  “No.”

  “Especially when we both know I’m not really your employee, that my role here is just for the purpose of the investigation.”

  He was right. Of course he was right. There was nothing to stop her going public about her relationship with Nick.

  Except her own fears.

  Fear of looking foolish if things backfired as badly as they had with Dave.

  Fear that once the investigation was over and they weren’t forced together the fire between them would fizzle out.

  Fear that she would lose control of the safe life she had established around her business and her dog.

  But most of all, fear that she was incapable of making a commitment. She didn’t seem to have what it took to have a successful relationship with a man.

  She nodded. But Nick quickly picked up on how tentative she seemed. “Don’t bowl me over with enthusiasm,” he said with a wry twist to his mouth.

  “It’s not that. It’s . . . I guess I’m a private kind of person. I lost all claim to that privacy when I did the chocolate campaign, and I’ve had to claw it back. I suppose right now I’d like things .
. . things between us to develop without everyone knowing about it.”

  “That’s a point,” he said. “Though I’d be proud to have people know about us.”

  “Please.” She reached out to lay her hand on his arm. “It’s not that. I’m very proud to be seen with you. But I told you the first day I knew you that . . . that I wasn’t very good at commitment. That I didn’t stick at things. I was lucky to graduate high school. I dropped out of college and then flitted from one job to another, never sticking at anything. I’m . . . I’m not great at relationships.”

  Nick shook his head. “The Serena I see and the Serena you see yourself as are two different people.”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “You say you don’t commit to anything. What about all this?” He swept his arm around to encompass the room. “What’s this but commitment? You’re obviously a businesswoman with vision and the acumen to see it through. You’ve certainly won the respect of the other businesspeople in this area. I discovered that in my initial investigations.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts. I haven’t finished. So you dropped out of college? So what? Don’t I see a veterinary technician certificate framed on your office wall?”

  “It took me years to study for that.”

  “But you stuck at it and finished it, right?”

  “Eventually.” It hadn’t been easy fitting the necessary study and work experience around her modeling and waitressing commitments.

  “You’ve got good friends, too—Maddy, Jenna. That says something about commitment.”

  Why was it that she’d carried around these negative thoughts about herself for so long? For years she’d blamed her parents’ undisciplined lifestyle and relaxed style of parenting for her lack of direction. But she was twenty-eight years old now; she couldn’t blame her parents forever. And when she looked back on it, her parents had always loved and cared for her in their own way.

  “As for your relationships,” he said. “Hell, you met the wrong guys. Until now. I’m the guy for you, Serena. You were just waiting for me.”

  He grinned as he spoke, but his eyes told her his words were not a joke.

  She smiled. “Maybe.”

  “No maybe about it.”

  She tried to be serious, but her mouth kept quirking upward into a smile. “You’re very sure about that.”

  “I’m sure all right.”

  “It’s early days yet.”

  “I’ve had enough time to make up my mind.”

  “Does this mean we’re officially dating?”

  “Damn right it does,” he said as he planted a possessive, determined kiss on her mouth.

  Serena laughed, as sudden joy bubbled through her at the idea of Nick becoming a more permanent part of her life.

  Adele chose that moment to pop her head around the door again. “Nick, we’re starting to have overflow problems.”

  “Right on it,” said Nick. “Just another minute.”

  Adele left and Nick turned to Serena. “Before I’m back on potty duty, I have to bring you up to speed on exactly what happened in Carmel.”

  Quickly he filled in the gaps of what he’d told her in their brief phone call after he’d left his meeting with Claire Kessler.

  “You’ll like her, Serena,” he concluded.

  “You obviously do,” Serena said.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “What . . . what does she look like?” Serena asked.

  Nick gestured at about his chest height. “Medium height. Slim. Brown hair. Nice smile.”

  “Pretty?”

  “In a wholesome kind of way.”

  “Oh,” she said, unable to keep the edge from her voice.

  Jealousy.

  It was a character trait she was not proud of. Didn’t admire it in others. But it seared right through her nonetheless.

  Nick paused. There it was again. Oh. That one word that women seemed to invest with such a range of meaning. But this time he was left in no doubt as to what Serena meant by it and he puzzled why.

  She looked up at him, those beautiful honey-colored eyes wide with uncertainty.

  Then it hit him. Gorgeous, sexy Serena St. James had posed half naked in a bathtub of chocolate, to the ongoing delight of the red-blooded male population of the U.S. That woman on the billboards gleamed with the confidence of her own seductive powers.

  But underneath that perfect body, that lush mouth, those eyes full of promise, beat the far more uncertain heart of Serena Oakley, who, for some reason unfathomable to him, doubted her own attractiveness.

  He would do everything in his power to make sure she always knew how beautiful she was. Beautiful in every way.

  “You’re jealous,” he said.

  Her denial was too quick. “Jealous?” she echoed. “Of course I’m not. Don’t be ridiculous.” Her gaze dropped to the level of the stenciled paw prints on the floor.

  He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up so she was forced to meet his eyes. “Listen,” he said. “And listen good. Claire Kessler is a nice woman. But I am not in any way attracted to her.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” Serena pressed her lips right together. Her shadowed eyes denied her words.

  Nick continued. “There is not a woman on this planet who could hold a candle to you. Not in my eyes anyway.”

  She was silent for a moment, then smiled a tremulous smile. “I guess yours are the only eyes that count.”

  “You’d better believe it,” he said. “And I’m not just talking looks, either. You’re gorgeous. That’s undisputed. But it’s all those other things about you that have got me hanging around.”

  “You’ll have to tell me all about them sometime,” she said.

  “Tonight,” he said. “You. Me. The dogs. At my house.”

  “Oh,” she said. This time the way she said the word had such a sensuous edge to it that the blood rushed southward from Nick’s head. “What shall—?”

  There was a loud knocking on the playroom door. This time Adele looked agitated when she appeared. “Nick. Now. Please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with a mock salute and a regretful glance to Serena. He would like to get her back to his house right this second.

  But puppy potty duty called. He was hoping to be around Serena and Paws-A-While for a long time. He’d better get familiar with the plumbing.

  Two hours later, Serena stood opposite Nick in the playroom. Her veterinarian friend Lydia Stevens stood between them. On the floor nearby, Mack lay on the doggy day bed. Half the dogs were out on their afternoon walks so the room was relatively quiet. As the humans spoke, Mack’s head turned from her to Nick and back again. His forehead was creased, his “up” ear on alert. She swore he understood every word that was being said.

  Serena’s heart warmed as she looked down at the big dog. Thank heaven he did not have to go back to his former owner. Not when she and Nick had invested so much in him. Not just in financial terms but in care and affection. He wouldn’t be confined to the bed for long. Already he could hobble around the room, putting weight on the leg in the purple cast, seemingly without any pain.

  “A remarkable recovery,” said Lydia. “But there are other problems, you say?”

  Lydia was a tiny, fine-boned blond with a pixie-pointed face and a swing of fine pale hair cut in a sleek bob. Even when she wore a white lab coat she was always quite the fashion plate.

  No one ever guessed she was a vet. In fact, she was phasing out of her general practice as a physician to concentrate on pets with behavioral problems. She had a popular “Pets on the Couch” segment on the radio that was gaining her more and more publicity and a growing number of patients whose problems were not always physical. Maddy had made friends with her when she’d gone to her for help with Brutus. After his old master, Walter Stoddard, had died, it had appeared the little dog might die of a broken heart.

  Lydia had diagnosed Brutus as in need of a new alpha male in his
life, a role Tom O’Brien had stepped into, though unwillingly at first. She and Maddy and Serena had then become friends as well as clients.

  The pet shrink got straight down to business. “When did the whimpering and crying start?” she asked Nick.

  “When I took him home after his surgery,” he said. “I thought he must have been in pain.”

  Lydia shook her head. “Not pain of the physical kind. More pain of his psyche.”

  Serena stifled a laugh at the what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here look on Nick’s face.

  “His psyche?” he repeated.

  Lydia nodded again. “Mental anguish manifesting itself in his behavior.”

  “I thought it might have been an aftereffect of the anesthetic,” said Serena, thinking to her vet tech studies.

  Lydia shook her head. “That would have long worn off. Remember, he had his surgery early morning. No. I think the behavior is more linked with the change of residence than the surgery. Dogs still have deep links to their wolf heritage, you know. Separation anxiety and behavioral disorders can often be traced back to primal pack behavior.”

  That made sense. But it wasn’t an explanation. Serena stifled a yawn. She noticed the shadows beneath Nick’s eyes. She wanted a diagnosis and a treatment program. Pronto. She couldn’t go through another sleep-deprived night like she had last night. And she suspected Nick felt the same.

  I could think of better ways to deprive Nick of sleep.

  Now Lydia addressed her. “So what happened the next night?”

  “Nick was out of town so he left Mack with me in my apartment.” Serena leaned toward Lydia to emphasize her point. “Where he had slept without any problem or disruption for the previous five weeks.”

  “The same symptoms? The moaning, the whimpering?”

  “The second I was out of his sight. Then the other dogs got agitated. Even the cat was affected.”

  “And the next night?”

  “That would be tonight,” said Nick.

  “At which residence will Mack sleep tonight?” asked Lydia.