by Tawny Weber
“You do dogs’ hair?” He gave her a frown, his eyes traveling over her body in a way that made her tingle with desire. His blue eyes warmed and that wicked smile played at the corner of his lips as if he knew exactly how hot he made her with just one look. “Aren’t you a woman of many talents.”
Wasn’t she just. There was one particular talent she had that involved an ice cube, a feather and two scarves.
No. Even with those talents, she still couldn’t handle a womanizer like Percy Graham. All it’d taken were a couple of dates for her to realize that she was way out of her league with a guy like him. But she’d figured, hey, why not enjoy tiptoeing through the stars while she had a chance? Then she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. She’d slept with him.
She’d always figured sex was supposed to make her feel good.
But sex with a guy like Percy? A man with the face of an angel and the body of a Greek god? Sex with him had made her feel amazing.
And it’d scared the living bejeezus out of her.
Because there was no way an average girl like her could keep a guy like Percy. She’d woken up, naked in his arms as the sun was rising, and had freaked. There she was, carting around an extra fifteen pounds, too self-conscious to do the deed with the lights on—let alone do anything clever or kinky—and beset by so many issues she might as well be chained to a giant boulder.
She’d done what any smart, independent woman would do. She’d sneaked out of his bed and run as fast as she could.
And now, lookie lookie, here he was. Just what she needed.
But, wait… He was just what she needed. Percy was a P.I. One with tracking devices and cool equipment and possibly satellite-spy stuff. Her breath caught in her chest.
“Someone kidnapped one of my dogs,” she finally said, terror for the poor thing surfacing again, overriding both her shock at seeing Percy and the intense spike in sexual awareness that was making her thighs melt. “I have to get her back. I have to rescue her. You’re here. You can help me. I can pay you.”
His eyes sharpened. He looked pissed for a second, as if the idea of her offering him money was an insult. Then he shrugged it off.
“Sorry. I’m in a hurry,” he dismissed as he poked into the dog crate on the table before bending down to look beneath it. “I’ll untie you, finish my business and then I’ve got a plane to catch. You tell me who did this and I’ll kick their ass on my way to the airport.”
She got all giddy for a second at the idea of him avenging her honor. Then she realized it was just a knee-jerk reaction for a guy like Percy. Three good deeds required before dinner, or no dessert.
“I’ve got an emergency here,” she snapped. “Someone stole a dog. They tied me to this chair. And all you’re worried about is catching a plane?”
“Relax. Nobody’s gonna hurt some cute little dog.”
How could he be so dismissive? Andrea glared. She’d hardly call Mr. Testosterone naive, but she knew perfectly well that there were plenty of people who didn’t think twice about hurting animals—cute and little or not. Eliza, Medusa’s owner, had regaled Andrea with stories about how horrible her soon-to-be ex-husband was to poor little Snookie Bumpkins, as she insisted on calling the dog.
Because while Medusa was definitely little at eight pounds, she was anything but cute. Or sweet. Actually, she was one of the snottiest dogs Andrea had ever worked with. Something the dognapper had been bitching about when he’d shoved the tiny Chinese Crested into a carrier.
Which only added to poor Medusa’s danger.
“I have to get Medusa back,” Andrea said, almost in tears as she tugged at the ropes binding her. “Untie me, please. I’ve got to go.”
Percy barely moved, but she swore he came to full attention. His gaze skewered her, a frown creasing his brow as he walked back over to her.
“You said the dog’s name is Medusa?” He waited for her nod before he knelt down to untie her foot from the chair leg. Andrea forced herself not to lean forward—just three inches—and bury her face in his hair, seeking comfort. “Owner’s Gregory Day?”
“No. That bully has no claim on the dog,” she said absently as she stretched her now-free left leg out and rotated her ankle. “The owner is Eliza Conner-Day.”
“Same diff,” he retorted as he went to work freeing her other leg. It was all she could do to keep her fingers from burying themselves in his thick golden-brown hair. “That’s the dog I was hired to pick up. Give me the deets and I’ll track it down.”
Fear and defiance duked it out in Andrea’s stomach. Fear for that poor little dog pushed her to agree. The sooner someone who knew what they were doing found her, the better.
But Medusa was still technically in her care. And she’d already lost one dog this year—a sneaky little bulldog had tunneled out while Andrea had been busy breaking up a potentially horrific date between a shepherd and a dachshund. She’d found the dog that same evening, eating carrots out of the neighboring community garden. But still, if word got out that she’d lost another dog, her business could be ruined.
And that meant she couldn’t let Percy—or anyone who’d report this back to Eliza, like the police—take over. No. She had to get the dog back herself. Or, she narrowed her eyes at Percy, with a little help.
“I’m going with you,” she decided, getting to her feet and shaking the stiffness out of her limbs. “I’ll pay you for your time and we’ll rescue the dog together.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No me, no deets,” she said with a stubborn tilt of her chin.
She was getting that dog back. Even if she had to spend time with the sexiest man in the world to do it.
She could almost hear her battered ego whimpering out a warning. But not even Percy Graham could break her heart and destroy her self-worth on a dog-rescue mission.
Could he?
CHAPTER 3
PERCY KNEW HE SHOULD WALK AWAY. A quick glance at his watch said there were only six hours left before his flight. Leaving was smart. He could call from the car, forward the case to Matthews and call it a partnership test. If he left now, he’d have plenty of time to finish packing and get to the airport early enough to avoid the worst of the TSA gropes.
And more important, he’d avoid any further exposure to the woman who’d rejected him. If he stuck around, who knew what could happen? Hell, he might start spouting poetry or making crazy promises.
Yep. Time to go.
Halfway to the door, his gaze landed on Andrea. She was flitting to and fro, gathering things for her canine rescue mission. She looked so earnest. And, dammit, so worried.
Why was she so damn gorgeous? Even sweaty, out of breath and muttering to herself, she made his mouth water. Long strands of brown hair curled around a face that made him think crazy thoughts. Made him want to beg her to give them a chance. But he’d never begged in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. A man had his pride, after all. A woman slept with a guy, then refused to take his calls or see him again? That didn’t make for a promising fresh start. He wasn’t sure his fragile ego could take another direct hit.
Like a magnet to steel, his gaze followed her as she bent over a low cabinet, the purple cotton of her dress molding across the sweet curve of her butt as she leaned down. His mouth watered. His body hardened. He’d spent the last three months distracted by her memory. Dreaming of reveling in the heaven of her body, only to be denied ever visiting again when she’d didn’t return his calls.
He was sure that distraction was part of his failure problem. If he could get over it, he’d regain his savvy, brilliant investigative talents, his mental balance and his damn sense of humor.
Maybe what he needed more than a vacation was a chance to get over Andrea.
And she needed him.
That just might give him the edge.
What he was going to do with that edge, he wasn’t sure. His ego said payback. His body said pleasure. His eyes landed on the ropes curled, snakelike, around the chair legs. His instincts screamed at him to protect her and solve this case.
And the wise part of his brain warned that sticking around, spending time with Andrea, meant risk. To his pride, at the least. His heart, at the most.
The problem with wisdom was it was so easy to ignore.
“So,” he started to say. He stopped to clear the husky desire from his throat, then tried again. “So, can you tell me what happened here today?”
“What happened was a big stinky jerk broke in, stole a dog that I was entrusted to care for and tied me up. Thankfully, though, you showed up. You can help me get her back.”
“I was hired to pick the dog up here, not to go chasing after it,” Percy countered. Not that there was any question that he’d be giving chase. But he planned to do it alone.
“Fine. Then I’ll hire you to help me get the dog back so you can do your other job.” Her smile was pure sass. Damned if he didn’t find that totally sexy.
Before he could tell her no, or better yet, hell, no, she ran from the room. Knowing he had no choice, Percy followed her into the room filled with luxuriously kenneled sleeping dogs.
She rushed from cage to cage, checking the dogs. She lifted eyelids. She checked pulses. In the case of a big, fat-headed Rottweiler, she opened the cage and pressed kisses on its brow. The dog gave a huge snorting sort of snore in response.
Then Andrea burst into tears. Horrified, Percy almost turned tail and scurried from the room. Women in tears scared him more than staring down a loaded gun barrel.
“Are you okay?” he forced himself to ask, cringing.
“He promised he wouldn’t hurt them. He said he put a small dose of something in their food to make them sleep so they’d stay quiet. But I wasn’t sure. I was so afraid…”
He couldn’t help it. Even as his emotional survival instincts screamed warning, Percy stepped forward to take her into his arms. His heart sighed, even as he steeled himself against letting her get to him.
She obviously wasn’t worried about his reaction. She sobbed, soaking his shirt. She gulped, making him worry she might hyperventilate. And she did absolutely nothing provocative or sensual to turn him on.
But the spiced floral fragrance of her hair filled his senses. The way her fingers gripped his shirt, kneading and working the fabric against the hard flesh of his chest, went straight to his head, filling it with images of her gripping his back in the same way while he’d plunged into the welcoming depths of her body.
Percy’s head swam and his breath caught in his throat as she shifted, burrowing deeper in his arms. Trying to focus on offering comfort instead of offering his body, he rubbed his hands over the soft flesh of her shoulders. It was like sliding his fingers over silk. God, she felt good. As she sobbed, she curved her lush figure tighter against his rapidly hardening erection.
She was pure temptation. He’d already been tempted once, though. And he’d come away with his first-ever broken heart. A smart man would have turned and run at the first sniffle. Yet here he was, hanging on to Andrea as if she was the answer to his every prayer and reveling in the fact that she’d turned to him for comfort.
Yeah, he told himself, wincing and shifting his hips away from temptation. Crying women were scary as hell.
“C’mon,” he said, trying to sound stern. He stopped caressing and gripped her shoulders, shifting her to a semisafe distance away from his body. “Crying isn’t going to help anything.”
“I was so worried, though,” she said with a sniff as she scrubbed her hands over her cheeks. “I love these dogs as if they were my own. That rottie there, Tinkerbell? She is my own. And he drugged them. That nasty man tied me up and drugged my dogs. I could just kill him,” she added with emphasis.
“He left you here, tied up like that, unable to take care of the dogs, all weekend?” Why that made him even angrier, Percy didn’t know.
“It wouldn’t have been weekend. I mean, Dina, my assistant, she’s due in ten minutes. But he didn’t know that,” she said after glancing at the wall clock. “I need to call the vet and have him meet her here. The dogs all need to be checked.”
“Good. You do that. I’ll go get that other dog back and deal with the creep.”
She blinked a couple of times and took a deep breath. The glistening tears in her eyes were replaced by a wary distrust.
What the hell?
What had he done to earn that reaction?
Before he could ask, she spun out of his arms and hurried out of the room. Unable to help himself, he followed in time to see her grab a huge bag covered in glitter, with the name Medusa inscribed in rhinestones.
“Do you have any idea who this guy was?” Percy asked. “Why’d he take the dog? Do you think he was hired muscle, or was he acting alone?”
Andrea frowned, a fluffy blanket in one hand and what looked like a bunch of tiny diapers in the other. “What difference does it make if he was being paid or not?”
“Motivation will help us find the dog,” Percy said.
A tiny furrow wrinkling her brow, Andrea paused in the act of adding to the bag what looked like an oversize knitted sock with the toes cut out and a feathered fringe. “But I know where the dog is. So motivation doesn’t matter. We just have to get her.”
“Motivation always matters.” Then he sighed. “But I can deal with that later. Tell me where she is.”
“I’ll tell you how to get there when we’re on our way.”
“What do you mean, on our way?” Horror overshadowed desire. “You’re not going with me.”
No way. He had a job to do. A dognapper’s ass to kick for tying up Andrea and making her cry. And he had a plane to catch for a vacation that he needed even more desperately now than he had this morning.
“Tell me what you know,” he cajoled with a smile that had never failed to charm. “I’ll get the dog, punch that guy out for you, and when I turn the dog over to Day, I’ll make sure he knows what you went through.”
There. All the bases covered. He waited for her agreement, and hopefully one of those incredible smiles. And since he was a man who believed in tempting fate, maybe even a sweetly grateful kiss of thanks before he left.
* * *
AS PERCY SMILED THAT WARM, heart-melting smile of his, Andrea almost nodded. Then she stopped and frowned. Did anyone ever say no to him?
It wasn’t just the fact that he was gorgeous that made him dangerous, although he was. It was that he was sweet, charming, smart and so damn good at everything. Everything. He had women throwing themselves at his feet, all desperate to be the one who didn’t say no.
A part of her—a teensy, ignorable part—wondered if that’s why she’d run from Percy without explanation. Because she’d been desperate to stand out from his crowd of adoring admirers. Beautiful, sexy, skinny admirers.
Maybe it was so easy to ignore that teensy part because she knew perfectly well she already stood out from all those women. She wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t sexy. And no amount of dieting seemed to make a dent in the extra fifteen pounds padding her curves, so her mother’s assurance that she had such a pretty face wasn’t much consolation.
Despite Percy’s gorgeous smile and sweetly worded request, she was going to have to say no to him one more time.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t agree to that,” she told him. “If I tell you how to find Medusa, you’ll leave me behind. She’s not the most trusting dog under the best of circumstances and she’s particularly fragile right now. She knows me. She trusts me. So I’m going.”
“You don’t think I can handle a little dog?” His laugh was pure masculine confidence. Andrea wondered what it was like to be that self-assured.
/>
“Nobody can handle Medusa,” Andrea told him, laughing at the idea as she finished gathering the dog’s necessities. Sable brush. Organic doggie treats. La Mer moisturizing cream. “She is a very rare, extremely expensive dog. She’s used to being treated a certain way and has a distinctive personality.”
“In other words, she’s a spoiled brat of a dog?”
Andrea wrinkled her nose, but didn’t disagree. “As for the rest, it doesn’t matter how you spin it. If you rescue Medusa without me and return her to my client’s soon-to-be ex-husband, my business will be ruined. Diamonds and Doggies will make sure of it.”
She’d have insisted on going out of worry for Medusa. But just thinking about her rival groomer only amped up her resolve.
“What is Diamonds and Doggies?”
“It’s a high-end dog-grooming boutique. The owner, Raye Jensen, claims there’s room for only one groomer to the elite in the Bay Area. When I opened my salon, she warned me to stay out of her way. If she gets word that a dog in my care was stolen, and then handed over to that miserable excuse for an ex-owner, Day, she’ll have all the ammunition she’s been looking for to steal every one of my clients.”
Andrea had finished packing while she was talking. Digging into her purse, she found her keys and used one to open the glass-fronted cabinet. Her fingers closed on the small metal wand at the same time she heard the bells over the front door jangle. She grabbed the device and tossed it into her purse, then pulled the dog’s tote bag over her shoulder and turned to Percy.
“All set,” she told him. “Just give me a second to fill Dina in and call the vet.”
He was busy making notes.
“What’re you doing?”
“Adding your rival groomer to my list of people with motivation to steal a dog.” He pocketed the notepad and gave her a long look before shaking his head. “I’d really rather you stay here. If this dog is as expensive as you say, they might call with a ransom demand or something.”
“I’m going,” she insisted. “You can’t find her without me, so there’s no point in arguing.”