Her Valentine Sheriff

by Deb Kastner

  “This first time, I’d really like it if you’d keep both arms around the dog.” Mary’s voice was firm, an order and not a suggestion.

  “Hasn’t Bullet done this before?”

  “Yes, but not with you. If he should fall off the beam under your guidance, it will be that much harder for you to convince him of your leadership abilities, much less get him back up there again.”

  “Like a kid learning how to ride a horse.”

  “Yes. That’s it, exactly. You’re Bullet’s partner. You want him to trust you implicitly, as much as you trust him to have your back in a dangerous situation.”

  Which would be exactly 0 percent. If only she had any inkling of how very skeptical he was of the canine species. He had to admit that Bullet seemed obedient enough, but he couldn’t help that niggling bit of doubt that it would take only one frightening split second for the dog to turn and bare those sharp teeth on him.

  With an entire lifetime of emotional resistance hindering him, it took every bit of strong will and self-control for him to wrap his arms around Bullet. Mary standing there tapping her pencil against her efficient little clipboard was the only thing that kept him in the game at all. He clenched his jaw and heaved air into his chest as he guided the dog across the beam, only releasing his breath when the dog trotted amiably down the back set of steps.

  “Good job,” Mary said, writing something on the graphed page on her clipboard. “You only forgot one thing.”

  “What now?” Eli shook his head, his frustration mounting. She had no idea that he’d just gone against every self-protective instinct in his body to complete the mission she’d given him. “He crossed the plank and I didn’t let him fall down.”

  “Praise, praise, praise,” she reminded him in the high voice she used with the dog. “Don’t ever forget to make this a happy time for the dog.”

  Eli wanted to roll his eyes. Happy time for the dog. Good grief.

  “You want me to do it again?”

  Mary glanced at her watch. “No, I think we’re almost done for the day.”

  Relief washed through him that they’d finished the torture course, until his mind zoned in on one word. “Almost?”

  “There is one last activity I’d like you and Bullet to complete together. Not paperwork, I promise.” She nodded toward the house. “After you.”

  He swept a hand toward the patio, wondering what kind of new torment he was in for now. “Ladies first.”

  Eli followed Mary inside, more conscious of the dog trailing at his heel than he cared to admit. Mary displayed such effortless, fearless grace around her animals. What would she think of him if she discovered it had taken every last ounce of his courage to get through today’s activities? He’d rather have been on the receiving end of gunfire. But at least he’d successfully worked through his first lesson, and that was saying something.

  It would get easier. Wouldn’t it?

  “You mentioned one last activity?” His nerves crackled down his spine, and his fingers twitched into balled fists. Bullet had noticed, if not Mary. The dog kept nosing at his left palm.

  “The same thing I imagine you do after exercising,” she offered over her shoulder. “He needs to get cleaned up.”

  Eli skidded to a halt. Bullet circled him once and then sat down in front of him, peering up expectantly, waiting for a command.

  Like what? Shower?

  No way was he giving a seventy-five-pound bundle of fur and razor-sharp teeth a bath. He suddenly wished he was in Houston or Dallas and not in the tiny town of Serendipity. There were no groomers in town that he knew of. Otherwise he’d drop the dog off with a professional and pick him up when he was clean.

  Of course he had the sneaking suspicion Mary wouldn’t let him off the hook that easily, even if the option were available. She turned to face him, her hands propped on her hips. She’d been doing that a lot today. It felt like a reprimand. Eli stiffened.

  “I’m going to ask you outright. How do you feel about the dog? Do you think you are well matched as partners?” Her green-eyed gaze met his and she tilted her chin with a stubbornness that surprised him. She was challenging him. Did she suspect the truth? “Don’t you agree that Bullet will be more than sufficient for your purposes?”

  “He’s okay, I guess.” Without lowering his gaze, Eli reached forward and scratched Bullet behind the ears. Never let the enemy see your fear.

  Not that Mary was an enemy, though at the moment she felt mighty close to one.

  “You guess? Bullet cost the department quite a tidy sum of money. He’s been specially bred, and I trained him myself. All he needs is a good handler. You’d better be certain you are going to be that man, or I may be forced to request someone else for the job.”

  If he was going to back out, this was the moment. She’d left that door wide open and was practically goading him through it. Had she seen through the thin veil of his facade?

  A part of him wanted to run for safety and not look back. But Eli wasn’t the kind of man to retreat from a challenge, even if this was the hardest trial he’d ever had to face. He’d experienced enough failure recently to last a lifetime. He couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes. He had something to prove to himself—and to the men he worked with.

  No excuses.

  Nope. Not gonna happen.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he countered firmly, pressing his lips to keep the quiver out of his voice. She wasn’t the only one who could be determined. “You have my word. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  And he would. He would never have chosen this job of his own accord, but it was a promotion, not to mention the opportunity he’d been waiting for to redeem his value to himself and the world, to prove he wasn’t a loser. He wasn’t about to allow Mary to hand it off to another man.

  She observed him silently for a moment before speaking. He felt like a fish in a bowl, and he struggled not to twitch.

  Finally, after what felt like ages, she adjusted the rim of her glasses and nodded. “Okay. Let’s go, then. I keep the tub in the mudroom.”

  Eli followed her, feeling like he should say something more to dig out of the hole he’d shoveled himself into, but what was there to say? He couldn’t tell her why he was so reluctant to work with Bullet. He had to prove he was as enthused about the program as she and Captain James believed he should be, and that he was the right man for the job.

  Tough and invulnerable. That’s what he wanted them to see. That’s what he wanted to be, although he expected that would be a long time in coming. As the saying went, just fake it till you make it, right?

  He followed Mary to her laundry room, which was little more than a partitioned area off the kitchen. Clothes littered a large table between the washer and dryer. Some of the garments were stacked into loose piles, but mostly it was a haphazard mix of blouses and jeans. To the right side was a freestanding rack which contained more than a dozen empty wire hangers and no clean clothes.

  “Sorry,” she apologized briskly. “You caught me on my laundry day. As you can see, I managed to get most everything washed this morning, but hanging and folding, not so much.” She smiled brightly, clearly not bothered by the clutter.

  Eli didn’t have a washer and dryer in his apartment, so he still brought his laundry home to his folks’ house to use their machines. When he returned his starched, ironed clothes to his house, they were carefully placed into perfectly organized piles in his drawers and into his closet between color-coded dividers. His sister, Vee, often teased him about being a neat freak, borderline OCD, which he supposed was true to some extent. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have noticed the disarray that was Mary’s laundry room.

  Not his business. He had enough to worry about with this whole washing the dog business.

  She gestured toward a large oblong steel tub in th
e back corner. A sprayer was affixed to the water pipes on one end. “Here we go, then. We’ll put him in here and get him washed behind the ears and scrubbed under the paws.”

  Eli glanced down at Bullet, wondering how she planned to get the big dog into the tub, much less keep him there. As for washing the dog behind the ears, or anywhere else for that matter...Eli couldn’t even begin to imagine, although the dark knot in the pit of his gut told him he was about to find out.

  “Do you want to give Bullet a hand into the tub?” she asked.

  Not especially.

  He hesitated a moment too long to respond. He didn’t know if Mary noticed his delay or if she was just in a hurry, but she didn’t wait for him to act.

  “Hop in, Bullet,” Mary encouraged, tapping her palm against the inside of the tub, creating a tinny reverberation in the room. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Eli breathed a sigh of relief when Bullet bounded into the makeshift bathtub of his own accord. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

  Mary kneeled beside the bath. “Come down here beside me, Eli, and I’ll show you how I usually soap him up. He’s obviously a big dog with a lot of fur, so it takes quite a bit of shampoo to give him a thorough washing.”

  He knelt beside Mary and leaned his forearms against the rim of the tub. Bullet nudged him and he scratched the dog on the ear. “Does he like water?”

  “He doesn’t hate it. He’s not as enthusiastic about getting wet as my Labs are, but I think he enjoys the end result. Wait until you see him preen when he’s clean. He knows what a beautiful dog he is.”

  Eli took a mental step backward and tried to assess Bullet through Mary’s shrewd eyes and open heart, but it was difficult, if not impossible, for him to perceive anything resembling beauty in a canine. Even his new partner couldn’t break the mold of terror that lined the thoughts in his mind. All he could see was fur and fangs.

  “Hand me the sprayer, please,” she said.

  He unhooked the apparatus and passed it over. “Should I turn on the water for you?” It was a not-so-innocent question purposefully asked with the slightest emphasis on the last two words.

  Either she didn’t notice or chose to ignore him. Instead, she demonstrated how the switch on the sprayer worked. “I have control of the stream from here. It’s actually made for toddlers, but I’ve found it works wonderfully for my dogs. On. Off. Hot. Cold. Light spray. Heavy-duty stream. Pretty much whatever you need to get the job done.”

  “And here I thought all dogs were washed with garden hoses,” he muttered under his breath. Not that he’d want to do that, either.

  She chuckled in response. “Well, sure, in the summertime, but you wouldn’t want a cold bath in the middle of winter, would you?”

  “I guess not.”

  She switched on the spray and tested the temperature on her wrist, then soaked Bullet from head to toe. He expected the dog to object, but Bullet bore the stream of water with patience, only shaking his head once when Mary sprayed around his ears.

  “Now we soap him up,” Mary instructed, pointing to a pump bottle next to Eli’s knee. “You want to do it?”

  “Sure,” he replied, refusing to give in to hesitation. It was time to step up, before Mary became suspicious and started questioning his motives and intentions again. He pumped a silver-dollar-size dollop of shampoo onto his hand and rubbed it into the fur on Bullet’s back. The dog leaned into his touch, as if he was enjoying it. To Bullet it must feel like a canine massage, Eli supposed. Not so bad.

  When he’d soaped the dog all over, Mary handed him the sprayer. He toggled the lever as he’d seen Mary do and then aimed the showerhead toward Bullet.

  Unlike when Mary had wet him down, the dog didn’t seem at all happy with Eli’s attempt. He wriggled this way and that, making it nearly impossible for Eli to do a thorough job removing the soap from Bullet’s fur.

  “What am I doing wrong?”

  Mary shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t think it’s you. He’s just getting antsy. Maybe if you—”

  The shrill chime of her cell phone interrupted the end of her sentence. She pulled the phone from the back pocket of her jeans and checked the number.

  “I’ve got to take this. It’s Samantha. I’ll only be a moment,” she said, holding up her index finger.

  She was leaving him alone to rinse off a soapy wet dog?

  “No, no, no, no, no,” he exclaimed, half to Mary and half to Bullet, who wound himself around to see where Mary had gone. It was probably Eli’s imagination, but he was almost certain Bullet looked at him with mischief in his eyes. Unorthodox panic leaped into his throat.

  A dog wouldn’t act up on purpose.

  Would he?

  The moment Mary stepped out of the room, Bullet whined, bunched himself up and shook for all he was worth. Eli crossed his forearms over his face and fell backward with a shout. That brief moment was all it took for the dog to take it into his mind to break free of his soapy bondage. Barking wildly, Bullet leaped from the tub and sprinted off toward the kitchen, his wet paws slip-sliding against the tile.

  Eli caught his breath and exclaimed in shock. It wasn’t only the dog’s reaction that had caught him by surprise. The water Bullet shook onto him was a great deal colder than he’d anticipated.

  Freezing, in point of fact.

  No wonder Bullet hadn’t been happy when Eli had tried to rinse him off. He hadn’t remembered to check the temperature of the water on his wrist as Mary had done. Even though he didn’t particularly like Bullet, he felt bad about the arctic dip. He most certainly wouldn’t have liked to have been doused with ice water.

  No, wait a minute. He had been. Bullet had gotten his revenge. Eli was soaked to the skin and shivering from the cold, with no conceivable way to regain his dignity.

  Could this day get any worse?

  * * *

  “How’s day one of training going for you? Is it everything you expected and then some?” Samantha Howell was one of Mary’s closest friends, which also made her one of the few people who understood how important this new undertaking was to her. Her enthusiasm for the project showed in her voice. Samantha had recently had to fight her own battle to make her business dream a reality, so Mary felt a special kinship with her as she moved forward with Rapport Kennel.

  Mary slipped out the back door and onto the porch where she wouldn’t accidently be overheard by Eli. “It’s been good.”

  “You cannot possibly believe that pat answer is going to work for me,” Samantha chided. “I want details!”

  Mary chuckled. No—her friend would not rest until she’d heard every last tidbit of information.

  “It’s been...challenging,” Mary amended.

  “Bullet giving you trouble?”

  Air hissed between Mary’s teeth as she held back a chuckle. “No. I wish it were that easy. I’d know what to do with Bullet if he were misbehaving.”

  “So it’s Eli who is the problem, then,” Samantha guessed. “What is that man doing? Is he giving you a hard time?”

  “Yes. No. Not exactly.”

  “You sound less than confident about that answer. It’s harder than you imagined it would be, isn’t it? Working with Eli?” Her friend’s voice, which had only moments ago been teasing, now lowered to a serious tone. What was she getting at?

  “It’s complicated. I don’t think Eli has really been around dogs much before. This is all new to him.”

  “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

  “It isn’t easy. Eli has the agility and ego of a pro athlete, and he’s easily frustrated if he doesn’t get something right the first time, or if Bullet doesn’t act exactly as he expects.”

  Samantha chuckled. “He does have that male ego going, doesn’t he? But I didn’t mean that, either.”


  “What, then?” Mary wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. She slid into a deck chair and stretched her legs out in front of her.

  “I was actually thinking about high school. You had a real thing for Eli back then. A pretty solid crush, as I remember.”

  Mary stiffened. She was glad her friend wasn’t here to see the expression that must have crossed her face. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I’m only pointing out that as cute as Eli was in high school, he is all that and so much more as a man. You have to admit he’s one fine-looking fellow,” Samantha teased. “With the way you were hung up on him in high school, I thought you might have a little trouble having a working relationship with the guy. He has got to be distracting, right? I mean, that thick dark hair alone is enough to send a woman’s heart into spasms—and don’t get me started on those baby blues.”

  “I don’t—” Mary coughed and hesitated while she struggled to form the words “—have a thing for Eli.”

  That was the truth, wasn’t it?

  “Did you just blink?”

  “What?” Mary sat bolt upright in her chair.

  “You know that thing that you do when you get all melty over a guy. Blink. Blink. Blink.”

  Mary opened her eyes as wide as possible, until there was no possibility of her blinking. “I don’t do that.”

  Samantha laughed. “Yes, you do. You’re doing it right now.”

  “Am not. And you couldn’t tell anyway. You can’t even see me.”

  “No, but I’m sure you’re trying not to blink at all right now.”

  Mary blinked. Twice. On purpose.

  “I’m not going to push you on this, if you don’t want to talk about it,” Samantha assured her.

  Mary snorted. “Well, then, that’s a relief.”

  “But if you need someone to talk to, you know you can count on me. I’m an expert in matters of the heart.”