Protective Instinct

by Tricia Lynne

  Also available from Tricia Lynne

  and Carina Press

  Book two in The Unlovabulls series,

  coming soon!

  Also available from Tricia Lynne

  Moonlight & Whiskey

  Content Warning

  Protective Instinct deals with topics surrounding animals some readers may find difficult, including animal abuse. This book was written with careful consideration for those triggers and does not contain any on-page depictions of animal abuse, neglect or death.

  Protective Instinct

  Tricia Lynne

  To Dad, who taught me to never be afraid to lead instead of follow.

  Love, Buzz

  For Brennan, Orion, Sugar and Jock

  Hello Lovely Reader,

  For many, animal abuse and neglect are difficult topics to discuss—myself included. Protective Instinct was written with careful consideration for triggers and does not contain any graphic on-page depictions of animal abuse, neglect or death.

  The subject matter, however, requires I provide basic information about the nature of puppy mills and their treatment of breeding dogs. Please know I went to great lengths to keep any on-page dialogue/discussion about these issues as nontriggering as possible.

  If you’d like more information on puppy mills and how to spot a puppy mill breeder, please visit the following.

  www.humanesociety.org/all-our-fights/stopping-puppy-mills

  www.aspca.org/barred-from-love

  www.rover.com/blog/spot-puppy-mill-puppy-mill-ad

  As Lily says, it’s not an easy rabbit hole to go down, but it’s an important one. If you suspect animal abuse or neglect in your area, I hope you’ll be their voice and report it to your local animal welfare agency.

  All my best,

  Tricia

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Operation K-9 Brothers by Sandra Owens

  Chapter One

  Murphy’s Law: Shit can ALWAYS get worse.

  Lily

  “Oh, goddamn. I ain’t got time for this now.” I clenched my teeth as traffic slowed to a crawl. Heading south on the Dallas North Tollway—yes, I knew how ridiculous that sounded but it was accurate—I was late to a meeting with a new client. At four p.m. on a Friday, you could always expect traffic going north on the tollway, but going south? Frisco was far enough from the city that it shouldn’t have been a problem. Instead, there I was, doing five goddamned miles an hour.

  “Well, shit.” I pulled the rubber band from my hair and regathered it at my nape.

  I hated Dallas traffic on a good day. Today it was the cherry on top of my shit sundae.

  It had started first thing this morning. I’d been in Starbucks when an asshole in a dually parked so close to my driver’s side door that I didn’t have a prayer of squeezing my butt through the opening. Already running late to teach my morning puppy kindergarten class, I crawled across the passenger seat. As I was shimmying over the console, I kicked over my coffee. Then, the dually driver emerged, glanced through my window, shrugged, and left.

  Next, I got peed on.

  After puppy class ended, I was speaking with Pickles the Pupper’s mom when Cassie (or Casshole, as her mother referred to her, because of her need to destroy all puppies in her general vicinity) came through the door. Cassie was nearly thirteen. She had agility and nose work titles, and she’d earned the right to be a bitch if she damn well pleased.

  She was also the reason the Unruly Dog Training Center had a no-greeting-between-dogs policy.

  The next part happened in a matter of seconds. Pickles the Pupper’s tail started wiggling at helicopter speed as she pulled her leash tight toward a barking Cassie. Knowing the dachshund’s barking wasn’t a friendly hello, but an Ima tek yo face off, puppeh! I quickly scooped up Pickles as Casshole snapped out, nicking the puppy’s lip.

  That was when Pickles peed on me. Down the front of my last clean work shirt, over my khaki pants, and right on the inside of my sneaker.

  Now, I’d hit traffic when I was late to a client meeting. Can this day get any worse?

  The cosmos threw her head back with a witch cackle. Oh child, ask and you shall receive. Muahahahaha!

  Contemplating the merits of anger-management classes, I didn’t bother to check the caller ID when my phone rang. I hit the Bluetooth button on the steering wheel and immediately wanted to punch myself in the face.

  “Yeah?”

  “‘Yeah’? We don’t say ‘yeah’ when we answer the phone, Liliana.” My mother’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard sending hair on my nape up.

  “What do you need, Mom? I’m late for a training appointment.”

  She huffed. “That’s why I called. Your father—”

  “Stepfather. Dick is not my father.” My father was Billy Costello—one of the foremost linebackers in Dallas Bulldog history. Unfortunately, he’d died when I was younger. Not long after he passed, my mom turned to Dick as her meal ticket.

  A weary sigh filled my car speaker. “Please stop calling him Dick. Richard detests when you do that. Speaking of training appointments, don’t you think it’s time to let the dog thing go?”

  “Umm, no? Is that why you called? To harass me into working for Richard? Because you might as well stop there. I won’t work for the team.”

  “Liliana, the Dallas Bulldogs have been good to us. Your stepfather needs someone he can trust in the head trainer’s position, and...well, playing with dogs all day instead of using your expertise...it’s an affront to the family.”

  “Hmphf. To Richard, right? Don’t you mean it’s an insult to Dick?”

  Her voice got higher. I could hear the annoyance. “We’ve discussed this. You are the daughter—”

  “Stepdaughter.”

  “Step. Daughter.” I was sure that ugly vein in her overly Botoxed forehead was starting to bulge. “As the stepdaughter of the general manager of the Dallas Bulldogs football team, you knew Richard expected you to use the degree he paid for by working for the team.”

  Dick needs someone he can trust in the head trainer’s position. Uh-huh. Sure, he did. Dick could give a good goddamn that working with dogs was what made me happ
y. He saw me as a tool he could use to better the team—that was the reason he’d paid my tuition. Now, he was pissed he wasn’t getting any return on his investment.

  “I’m not having this argument again.” I seriously thought about beating my head on the steering wheel. Instead, I looked over my shoulder and turned on my signal, trying to nose my way into the exit lane. No one was budging.

  Yes, I had a master’s in kinesiology, but my undergrad had been in political science. I’d planned to go to law school, but a guy happened, and law school didn’t. Long story. Anyhow, when I was little, my real dad took me to the Bodies exhibit when it came through Dallas—you know, donated human bodies dissected, preserved, posed, and displayed? I’d been fascinated with human mechanics ever since. Instead of applying to law schools, I applied to the Master of Science in Kinesiology program at UNT.

  Dick had almost been as gleeful to have me slotted in the head trainer position for the Bulldogs as he was to have a lawyer he thought he could bring on staff. I never had any intention of working for my stepfather. As it turned out, I didn’t have the highest peopling threshold. Hence, me not using said degree. Besides, Dick had shady written on his forehead. He had to have an ulterior motive for wanting me working for the Bulldogs—Dick didn’t do anything that didn’t benefit him—I just didn’t know what the reason was. Best guess was because of who my father was, but I didn’t think that was entirely it, either.

  Why were most humans such asshats?

  Like the person driving the F-150 sitting in my blind spot. Ignoring. My. Turn. Signal! Dogs, however, were as close to the divine as people would ever get. If they only lived longer...

  “I’m not going to work for the team, Mom. I don’t want anything to do with the Bulldogs. Ever. I don’t give two shits who’s disappointed in my job choice.” Dammit, if this jerk would only speed up or slow down...

  “Language. I raised you better.” Screeeeech, went the nails on the chalkboard. “Besides, isn’t it about time you let all that ugliness go?”

  Raised me? Ha. I raised myself. And ugliness? She made it sound like a pimple on prom night. Not only did Dick have the word shady written on his forehead, the Dallas Bulldogs employed my cheating, creepy ex-fiancé. I’d rather dig out my eyeballs with a spork than work for the team that employed that prick. The little voice in the back of my brain told me this conversation would go a lot faster if I kept my mouth shut.

  “Liliana, Richard is serious. He made it clear that if you refuse to work for the team, we’ll be forced to cut you off financially.”

  Oh, whatever. “Okay, thanks for the info gottagobyeeeee.” I pushed the hang-up button, shooting metaphorical lasers with my eyes at the pickup truck driver through its tinted windows. Cut me off, financially? I didn’t know why they thought that would work.

  Why the hell was he so desperate to have me work for him, anyway? I wasn’t buying the whole you owe me for paying for college thing. As far as money went, besides tuition, I’d only asked my mother to help financially when my dog, Joker, had needed surgery, and when a couple of my foster dogs needed medical help I couldn’t afford. Even with the expensive surgery, I still lost my boy, Joker. But both of the rescues went on to forever homes. The couple of times my mother had helped me out, Dick admonished her for “setting a bad precedent and using his money to do it.”

  My mom was a lot of things. Vain. An unfit mother. A social climber. A former Dallas Bulldogs cheerleader who moonlighted as a jersey chaser.

  Audrey Costello-Head may have been a flake who needed a man to take care of her so she could go shopping at Neiman’s and get on the committee for the Cattleman’s Ball. Still...

  She wasn’t a Dick Head.

  Finally! Someone left me enough room to squeeze in behind the jerk in the pickup. “Yassss, biiitchesss!” DFW drivers believed our daily commute was a contact sport. As such, we took that shit as seriously as we took our Friday night football or the Red River Rivalry. Pushing my way into the exit lane felt like my very own touchdown dance. Slowing down, I moved over to the right, rounding the truck on its left side. The pickup driver turned on their signal to move into the lane in front of me. Refusing to let the truck over, I pulled even with the passenger side, rolled down my window, extended my left arm, flipping the driver off with enough force that surely the sonic boom reverberated through his cab.

  Asshole.

  Yet, somehow, he managed to slip in behind a Tesla two cars back. I didn’t think anything of it until I took the right toward the apartments where my appointment was, and the truck turned behind me.

  Oh, shit.

  There was a scene in Miss Congeniality where Sandra Bullock tackled a guy in the crowd during the talent competition. She told the pageant director that the dude had a gun. The pageant director replied that in Texas everyone has a gun.

  Yeah. That.

  I tried to hold it together, except when I turned in to the garage for the building, the truck followed. Convincing myself I was being paranoid, I found a guest spot and put the car in park. It was a nice building. The first floor had a gym, spa, coffee shop, restaurant, dry cleaner. Good. That meant people were close by. A thought that gave me little comfort when much to my horror, the truck whipped into a numbered spot catty-corner from me.

  Fuck. I double-checked to make sure my doors were locked then put the car in reverse. The truck bounced as the sound of the driver’s door shutting echoed off the concrete walls, and a large man in basketball shorts walked to the bed and grabbed an athletic bag.

  I knew that neck-length messy black hair. That scruff. Those wide shoulders. The breath rushed from my chest. I rested my forehead against the wheel hoping he wouldn’t notice me. Only, when I chanced a peek, his maple-syrup-colored eyes met mine, his pink lips turned up at the corners. Shit. I would have rather faced a gun.

  Shutting the car off, I grabbed my bag while he leaned against the bed of his truck. I made my way over knowing I wasn’t getting out of this without saying hello.

  “Well, well. Liliana Costello. Fancy meeting you here.” Brody Shaw’s voice was all dark, sweet hot fudge, and I was the ice cream melting under the sound.

  His lips curled in something like flirty amusement. “Especially after you flipped me off.”

  My heart sped up. “Hi, Brody. It’s been a while.” The term “sex on a stick” was invented for this man. At six foot three and 252 pounds, Brody used to run the forty in five seconds flat. The man was built like a brick shithouse. Though he’d had shoulder issues the past couple of seasons, Brody Shaw was the archetypal middle linebacker for the Dallas Bulldogs. Big and fast, he had a Mastiff-sized set of shoulders and his ass resembled two bowling balls trapped in a pair of football pants. The man’s arms were surely a gift from some long extinct Roman god, and those legs...oh my God, they were my crack. I had a thing for strong legs—the kind of thick, ripped thighs a guy only got from squatting four hundred pounds or digging into the turf to push other men around.

  I know. Very cavewoman of me.

  We’d chatted a few times before, when my mother forced me to attend team functions. I knew the dude was witty, quick with his devastating smile, and flirty as all get-out.

  The first time we talked, he’d approached me during a rooftop gala. I knew him, of course, but he didn’t realize who I was at the time. He’d spent a solid thirty minutes making me feel like the center of the universe. We’d discussed politics, books, a shared love of the TV show Supernatural, and the foundation we were there to support—an organization working to minimize the instances of concussions in high school sports. He’d even asked me for my number before one of his teammates interrupted and mentioned I was the GM’s stepdaughter.

  An hour after that convo, he left with a tall blonde he hadn’t arrived with. Not that I would have given him my number, anyway. I didn’t date my stepdad’s players—if being Billy Costello’s daughter had taught me anyt
hing, it was that football players were fickle, hedonistic, and volatile.

  It didn’t stop Brody and me from gravitating to each other at any and all subsequent events before he inevitably left with a different woman. Between that, and the very recent fantasy suite scandal, it was clear Brody Shaw was bad news with a capital Bad Boy.

  Fun to look at, even to flirt with on occasion, but that’s where it ended.

  I swept a stray hair behind my ear as I tried not to stare. It wasn’t easy. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’m running late for an appointment. In fact, I should get going. It was good to see you.” I started to sidestep him to head for the elevator. Brody slung his bag over his shoulder and matched my strides. The lines in his forehead deepened as he squinted an eye shut, catching his bottom lip between his front teeth.

  Jesus. Ten years into his career and he looked even better than he had in college. The laugh lines, the bronzed skin, and hard muscles underneath. I’d watched Brody play football at UNT when I was a student. That Brody was a boy. A boy who did things to my lady parts, granted, but still a boy. This version of Brody was a man. The sharp jaw, the crooked nose with the scar across the bridge, the dimples hidden by his dark scruff and eyes that warmed every part of me.

  My breath came out in a pant. Annnd that wasn’t embarrassing at all.

  “Lily, aren’t you a dog trainer?”

  I peeked sideways as I pushed the elevator call button. “Yes. And a certified canine behavior specialist.”

  A grin crept over Brody’s face.

  No! My mouth fell open. Not long ago, Brody had made the news when his dog bit a pet sitter. “Are you... Erica?”

  “Yep.” His smile was enormous. “Well, she’s one of my neighbors, but yeah. My publicist made the appointment for me. I had no idea it would be you. She always gives my neighbor’s name and address to make sure I don’t get psycho fans knocking on the door.”

  No. This cannot be happening. The elevator opened, and we stepped in. Not no, but hell no. I needed to get through his dog’s evaluation and recommend another trainer for Brody to work with. Given my body’s reaction, Brody’s reputation with women, and his affiliation with the Dallas Bulldogs, this was a really bad idea.