by Anna Sugden
Her references had been mostly glowing. Cara was good at customer service. She was organized and dependable as long as she wasn’t tasked with too stressful of a project.
Those were the things he needed, and he didn’t have stressful projects because he refused to let stress into his business. The fact she interacted so well with his dogs helped. That, and you’d like to see her naked.
He snorted at his own inner monologue. Not gonna happen, buddy.
So, two weeks and a few phone calls after she’d offered herself up for the job, here she was. His assistant.
Without a response from him, Cara appeared in his office with Sweetness on a leash. A sparkly purple leash. Definitely not the one he’d packed in the loaner kit.
Then he saw the scarf.
“What the hell is that?” he demanded, pointing at the offensive swath of fabric.
Cara blinked and looked down at Sweetness. The scarf bandana thing around Sweetness’s neck was also purple, with pink-and-green flowers on it.
“Isn’t it cute?”
“No. It’s ridiculous. She’s a dog.”
“She loves it. Don’t you, girl?” Cara crouched, scratching Sweetness behind the ears. And, yeah, Sweetness seemed to like that, but he wasn’t sold on the scarf thing.
She popped back up to her feet. She was wearing skintight jeans and some oversize purple sweater thing that had big holes in it, but she seemed to be wearing a black tank top under it, so the holes didn’t show off anything important.
Seriously, there had been moments in time when he thought this would be a good idea?
“Thanks for letting me keep her the extra week.”
“Look, you can keep her. Period.”
Cara wrinkled her nose. “You can’t just give me your dog.”
“You bought her sparkly shit, and she clearly likes you better than me. Besides, you can bring her with you on workdays. It’s not like I don’t have enough dogs to keep me company, and she’s only mine because someone knew I didn’t turn away strays.”
“Wes.”
He already didn’t like the way she said his name. It gave him feelings he’d rather not diagnose at the moment. It was one of the great things about the army. Everyone said Stone or his rank in the same harsh bark. No emotion to discern in that environment. Just do your job right and no one gave you a hard time for being poor or shy or anxious or helpful or nice, either.
They needed to get on that professional, detached playing field. He gave orders. She followed them. The end. “Are you ready to work?”
“Oh! I almost forgot.” She shoved some papers out of the way and put her bag down on the spot she’d cleared. Carefully, she pulled out a big plastic container.
“I made you a pie.” She unclipped the clasps on the lid. “It’s kind of my version of a personality test.”
“Pie as personality test?”
She nodded, her lips a brightly painted pink smile. She lifted the lid with a flourish. “I give you octo-pie.”
Wes stared at the bizarre-looking pie. It was indeed an octo-pie in that the top of the piecrust had been fashioned to look like an octopus. A big lump of pie dough made up the body, while strips made up the eight legs. It even had eyes and a mouth cut into the crust. The pie filling looked like cherry and made his mouth water.
It was ridiculous and hilarious. He actually found himself laughing. Which somehow only made Cara grin wider.
“You pass,” she said happily. “You do have a personality under all that gruff I’m-so-tough beardy flannel.”
Any humor faded. He didn’t particularly want her to see him having a personality. This would be so much easier if he could be the silent soldier and she could...go about her business organizing him. His papers. Not him. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would.” Sweetness hopped up on the desk chair and began sniffing around the pie, so Cara put the lid back on. “Are you sure about me keeping her?”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“You have no idea how much I like that about you.” She said it kind of under her breath, but he caught it and was all too pleased by it.
“So, where do we start?” she asked, all sunny good cheer while Sweetness panted happily up at her despite her taking away the pie.
Yeah, the damn dog definitely belonged with Cara.
“Wherever you want. I have work to do in the kitchen. Find a way to organize all this in a way that works for you and that you can explain to a mess like me, answer the phones, and we’re set.”
Cara looked wide-eyed around the room. “That’s it?”
“You have carte blanche. And I have carte blanche to tell you it sucks.”
Instead of frowning or arguing like he would have expected, she grinned. “This might be the best job I ever had.”
“I wouldn’t say that yet,” he grumbled. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you have any questions.” And he would stay in the kitchen, because being around her was bad news. Being pleased by anything she said was a terrible recipe for a replay of his teenage life, and nope, he wasn’t going to do that again.
He left her in his office, Sweetness not even looking his way. Which was fine. At least Phantom...
He glanced back to where the dog hovered in between the doorway of the office and the hallway to the kitchen. “Another traitor,” Wes muttered, trying not to feel too bent out of shape about it.
If he were a dog, he’d be panting in Cara’s lap, too.
Irritated with himself for, well, everything, he took a deep breath and went about setting up for work. He had things to do. Things that did not involve his new assistant.
Besides, there was always the chance she’d make a mistake and he could fire her. Because, of course, you have the balls for that.
He had been isolated for too long. Talking to the dogs was one thing. Talking to himself this much? He still remembered his fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Purdue, telling him that talking to himself was a sign of insanity.
She might not be that far off.
He gathered his ingredients, flipping on the radio to drown out some of his inner monologue. All he wanted to think about was the correct ratio of sweet potatoes to whole wheat flour.
He lost himself in the routine, even managing to forget Cara was in the next room most of the time. He had the batter made and the molds filled before she interrupted the peace he’d found by entering the kitchen.
“Hey, um...” Her nervous energy filled the room. Obviously she’d run across something she had a question about, something that made her uncomfortable. His shoulders that had finally relaxed tensed.
“Um, someone from Dr. Pedelmann’s office called to see if they could reschedule your appointment tomorrow.”
Well. Yeah, he could see why that’d make her uncomfortable. And damn him for not having a personal phone line so he could handle these things without the chance of her...getting wind of it. Too late now. “Super.”
“They asked if the sixth at two-thirty would work.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t move. He didn’t bother to look at her, but he could still hear her breathing, didn’t hear any footsteps retreating.
“You’re not, like, dying, are you?”
The question shocked an almost laugh out of him. “No, not dying.” Any lingering desire to laugh died. “Just malfunctioning.”
She stood there, hovering. Not asking any more questions but not leaving, either.
“Look.” He glared at the molds filled with batter. As much as he loved what he did, it so often struck him as ridiculous. Making dog treats so idiot people like Pipsqueak’s owner could pretend their dogs were children. All because he was too damaged to do what he really wanted to do.
But there were good customers, too. Non-ridiculous people who wanted to feed their dogs decent food. Which was the whole reason he’d even thought of this business when all other options had been destroyed.
Cara was still watching him. He could feel her gaze. L
ike a weight. Like a noose. “I have nerve damage in my arm. A pin in my hip. The nerve damage isn’t progressing the way it should, hence the doctor’s appointment. I’m not dying, and I’m not certifiable.” Not totally, anyway.
“Okay. Can I help somehow?”
“No. Just reschedule the appointment for whenever.”
“Okay.” Another pause. “Okay,” she said once more, and then, finally, her footsteps retreated.
He took a deep breath, looked out the window at the trees that surrounded his cabin. Help. A foreign concept. One he didn’t know what to do with except push away.
But the offer lingered there, accompanied by a sharp pang of something he’d tried to eradicate from his life. Longing. Loneliness. He wasn’t such an idiot that he thought he’d ever be right in the head enough to have a romantic relationship, but maybe they could have a friendly working one.
That wasn’t...totally out of the realm of possibility, was it? He’d been friends, so to speak, with some of the guys in his regiment. The guys in the dog squad especially.
Cara might be a woman, but she was an off-limits woman, which meant he didn’t have to get all nervous and uncomfortable at the prospect of anything more. There wasn’t the chance for anything more. She was like a fellow soldier, working toward the same goal.
And if she had breasts, a brain-cell-killing smile and always smelled like flowers of some kind, well, he’d find a way to ignore that.
* * *
CARA LOOKED DOWN at the desk and sighed. The enormity of stuff Wes surrounded himself with, half of it junk mail and old receipts that couldn’t possibly be needed, made it feel as if she’d gotten nowhere despite working for almost three hours straight. Well, aside from the little break to tell Wes about his doctor’s appointment and shove her foot in her mouth.
There was progress to be found on the desk; she just couldn’t see it. And that made her feel stupid. Which wasn’t exactly new these days. She needed something to gel.
Asking Wes if he was dying wasn’t gelling. Nor was getting one hundred percent turned down on her offer to help. But, hey, at least she got to keep Sweetness.
Cara’s stomach rumbled, and she chewed her lip. She’d been hungry for an hour. Couldn’t stop thinking about the pie she’d placed back in her bag. She’d need a knife, fork and plate to indulge, and she had brought it for Wes, so she probably shouldn’t eat it.
Though him eating the whole pie didn’t seem totally necessary.
When Wes stepped back into the office, he gave her a quizzical look. Probably because she was standing there staring at nothing. Doing nothing.
“I—I was trying to, um, I was going to take my lunch break. If that’s okay. I—”
He grunted, cutting her off. I suck, suck, suck.
“You have three choices,” he said. “You can eat whatever in here and take off at four. You can go get lunch somewhere in town, which seems like a total waste of time, and you’d have to work till five. Or you can come with me.”
“What happens if I come with you?” Why, oh, why had her brain suddenly made everything dirty? So not okay to think about that right now.
“We take the dogs for a walk. We eat sandwiches out by the creek. We don’t chitchat. And you can take off at four thirty, because it usually only takes me about a half hour.”
“What exactly is your definition of chitchat?” A girl with any ounce of self-preservation would take the first option. She was not that girl.
“Pick a door, Cara.”
He so rarely said her name or addressed her in any way. It was strangely nice when he did. “Door three, please.”
Again, he grunted, offering nothing else as he walked back to the kitchen. For the first time she noticed it. Not quite a limp, but a stiffness. That right leg didn’t move quite as easily as the rest of him.
Or had she noticed because she now knew he had a pin in his hip? Ouch, that sounded bad. Plus nerve damage that wasn’t getting better. Poor guy.
When she stepped into the kitchen, he was standing in front of the small slice of counter that seemed reserved for people food. “Peanut butter or turkey?”
“Um.” It took her brain a few seconds to work out he was asking about sandwiches. “I brought my own lunch.” A sad little packet of tuna and some crackers. “But if you’re offering, I’ll take a turkey sandwich instead.”
Another grunted nonanswer, and she didn’t know what to do with herself. She didn’t think offering to make her own sandwich would go over well.
“I’ve got Coke in the fridge if you want to grab two.”
She did as he asked, then stood by the door feeling like an idiot with two Coke cans freezing her hands.
Each sandwich went into a baggie. Grabbing a coat off a hook by the door, he shrugged it on, then took the cans from her. He slid one into each pocket, along with a baggie of dog treats. “You wanna carry the sandwiches?”
“Sure. Um, if you bring forks, we can eat pie, too.”
He nodded, pulling open a drawer and taking out two forks. She grabbed her bag, dropped the sandwiches in, then followed him outside.
She’d expected some first day awkwardness—and gotten it with the doctor thing—but walking around and eating with your boss, who happened to be kind of hot and intriguing, felt really weird.
He walked around the cabin to what appeared to be a small barn in the back. Probably a quarter of the size of the ones on her dad’s property, but the color and shape was all barn.
“I make sure all the animals have water and food. Make the petting rounds.”
Cara looked behind them, where Sweetness, Phantom and the other two dogs pranced. “You have more animals?”
“A few cats. Two more dogs. A sheep.”
“A sheep?”
He shrugged, tramping over to the barn and pulling the door open. “He needed a good home. I had a barn.”
“No partridge in a pear tree?”
“I like animals.”
“Because they aren’t annoying like people?”
“I’ve always liked animals. I never had any growing up.”
“Never?”
“I tried a few times, but we always lived in no-animals-allowed places, so I always got in trouble. One time I got us kicked out, so I gave that up. I was going to...”
“You were going to what?”
He was frowning now, and not just his normal scowly resting face. This was full-on pissed off.
“Doesn’t matter.” He stomped into the barn. A few yips rang out, and a cat made figure eights between his legs.
“Why do you keep these guys in here?”
“The cats chose it. The dogs aren’t trained enough yet. They run off if I give them free rein outside, but this gives them some space and we work on boundaries in the evening. Shrimp doesn’t get around too good these days, so it’s safest for him to stay in a pen, although he occasionally escapes.”
“Shrimp?”
“Sheep with a limp. Sheep plus limp. Shrimp.”
“Wes!”
“What? It’s descriptive.” His mouth quirked up. Not quite a smile, but because it was Wes she would count it as a smile.
“Come on.” He went about filling dishes with fresh water and adding food to different bowls. It was obviously his routine, and it seemed to relax him. Except for the few times he’d look up, seem to remember she was there and get all tense and frowny again.
Cara had to wonder why he’d invited her at all if she made him so uncomfortable. But she didn’t question it out loud, because she didn’t want to eat lunch alone. Strange company was better than no company.
She followed him around, and eventually they left the barn. He brought one of the barn dogs with them, so the number of animals trailing after them was now five. He didn’t look at her once as they hiked through the woods, eventually reaching a creek.
It was beautiful and reminded her so much of home, she wanted to splash in the water like she had when she’d been eight. Only it was barely fifty
degrees, and walking through the sliver of leaf-filled water between two muddy banks would be ill advised in her flimsy canvas shoes.
“Buttercups! Oh, my favorite.” Shiny yellow petals sprouted next to a big, flat rock Wes stopped at. Spring had always been her favorite season. Spring had meant freedom as a kid. Everyone busy with the farm and the weather finally okay enough she could go out without Mom blowing a worry gasket.
Fresh air and freedom. It made her believe in new beginnings, far more than any January resolution did. So, maybe she needed to seek a little rebirth and new growth of her own.
Grow up. Leave Cara the screwup behind.
Not possible.
She ignored the jerk of a voice in her head and plucked the delicate flowers out of the ground, arranging a few in her hair. A little visual reminder that flowers could grow from nothing but dirt and water and a little sunlight. “How do I look?”
He’d situated himself on the rock, and Cara had a little inward sigh over his pretty eyes before he looked down. Blushing. Definitely blushing. He might have acted as if he didn’t care for her occasional flirting, but obviously he didn’t think she was repulsive.
Maybe he was shy about stuff like that. For some reason, the thought of gruff and grumpy Wes being shy made her feel all warm and squishy.
Which was not okay. At all. He was her boss, and aside from this and a few emergency shifts at the salon, she had no income. Because she hadn’t sucked up the courage to approach Sam again about the pies.
Well, buttercups as her witness, she would.
She settled herself next to Wes. And, yeah, maybe she didn’t have to sit so close, but she was feeling bold now. She handed him his sandwich; he handed her a Coke.
“This place is perfect.”
He cracked open his soda. “Yeah, I like it.”
“You do this every day?” With Phantom, Sweetness and the three other dogs sitting or lying around the base of the rock, it obviously wasn’t something new.
He made one of his grunt-yes noises as he bit into his sandwich.
“So, why organic dog treats?”
He lifted those broad, yummy shoulders—bad, Cara—but she pointed at him before he finished the motion. “No shrugging. You have to answer.”