by Cara Colter
A light seemed to be shining out of both of them, man and beast.
Krissy watched for a moment, utterly entranced.
She sighed. She would just have to put her own best interests on hold for the good of her dog, she told herself as she went and got the leash.
* * *
A rare thing had happened to Jonas when Krissy had opened her door.
He’d been caught off balance, and not entirely because of the dog trying to leap at him. He’d been expecting the woman from the other night, the one with the frumpy sweater and shoes and messy hair and makeup-free face. The one who had brought out a surprisingly protective side of him. And not just because of the dog, though it was more than evident she was in over her head with the mutt.
But his protective inclinations had surfaced more because of what she had said about family and fun being a novel concept. About her family being a war zone. He had thought about that over the last few days way more than he should have. Grief was hard enough to deal with. How did you deal with it alone?
It made him so aware of what a gift his family was. Theresa, Mike, the nephews, but also that brood of boisterous aunts and uncles and cousins who always had your back, who always made sure you knew you belonged to something larger than yourself.
It made Jonas, perhaps foolishly, commit to something: showing her how it could be. He wanted her to experience his family reunion, and somehow the motive of having her as his fiancée had become muddied.
But the woman who opened the door had replaced the librarian-in-need with a woman who didn’t look as if she needed his help at all.
Krissy, in the hot pink shoes and those crazy cutoff tights that made her legs looks endless, looked fun and sexy. She had on a touch of makeup: just enough to make her eyes look huge and gorgeous and to make her bottom lip look full and glossy and tempting. Her hair was pulled back in a stern ponytail, but it showed off the bone structure in her face.
And made him want to send it cascading around her shoulders the way it had the other night.
See? Complicated. He, a person who prided himself on his razor-sharp ability to focus, was off-balance.
A man, Jonas reminded himself, focusing on the only safe thing in the vicinity, the dog, should always go with his first instinct!
He took shelter from the bombarding of his senses by hiding behind what he knew about dogs, which was, thankfully, quite a bit.
As soon as she brought the leash out, the dynamic changed. Jonas became instructor, and Krissy became student.
“Let’s start by giving him a name.” He snapped the leash on the dog’s collar.
“Beauregard!”
“Something short would be better. Preferably one syllable. Beau?”
Krissy actually blushed, as if he had asked if he could be her beau!
“How about Chance?” she said. “I’m kind of taking a chance on him.”
“And giving him a second chance. From the look of his face, he’s had a hard life.”
“Perfect, then!” she said, beaming.
Happiness became her. As he watched the light come on in her face, he felt awareness whisper to life within him. Not just of her, but of what a beautiful day it was. Spring in the air, the leaves and grass nearly exploding with shades of green, the scent of blossoms in warm air, the sky bright blue and cloudless. The whole drive here, he had been so focused on his muddled thoughts, he had totally missed that.
Despite the opportunities for potholes and pitfalls, it seemed as if maybe coming to Sunshine Cove this morning wasn’t such a bad road to have chosen, after all. He felt something relax within him.
Jonas demonstrated how to walk the dog in front of her cottage, walking away from her.
“Super relaxed,” he said. “No tension on the leash. Expecting him to pace himself to you. You stop, he stops. You pick up the pace, he picks up the pace.”
When he turned back, there was something faintly guilty in her face, as if she hadn’t just been watching the dog! Unless he missed his guess, she’d been checking him out!
“He’s always nearly pulled my arm off,” Krissy said, just as if she had not been checking him out. “If he sees something, well, you saw it the other night. A squirrel, another dog, someone who looks friendly, he’s off. To be honest, it’s made me reluctant to walk him.” She seemed to realize she was chattering. She stopped abruptly. She looked anywhere but at Jonas.
It added the most interesting little sizzle to his heightened awareness of the day.
Stick to business, Jonas ordered himself. “This is a big dog. He needs to walk twice every single day. Once in the morning and once at night.”
“I know. You said I can’t even go inside the house after work until he’s had his walk. I can’t believe how wonderful he is for you!” she said. Her eyes skittered back to him. This time they didn’t skitter away.
There was something intoxicating about being admired by a pretty woman on a spring day. They walked through the sleepy, lovely streets of Sunshine Cove. An old man was getting his garden ready, stringing rows. Children shrieked on a trampoline. A small dog raced up to a picket fence and barked hysterically at them.
It felt as if they were a couple, and it felt shockingly good and not just because it suddenly seemed like he had a very real chance of convincing his sister and Mike this was the real deal and keeping his car.
“I can’t believe he didn’t acknowledge that dog,” Krissy said beside him after they had passed the yappy Pom-cross.
“He needs a leader. He wants one.” They arrived at the wide arch that led to the park and pathway that ran along the Hudson. Jonas passed the leash to Krissy. “Now you’re his leader.”
She took the leash gingerly. She stepped out hesitantly. The dog sensed her lack of confidence and pulled eagerly at the leash when a bike went by.
Jonas stepped in and covered her hand with his, and tugged at the leash. “See? Just a slight correction. Bring his attention back to you.”
He seemed to have succeeded at bringing her attention back to himself. And his to her. That scent filled his nose: the spring bouquet freshness of her. The softness of where her skin touched his intensified some feeling of being totally alive.
He could have let go and stepped away, but there were two little old ladies in the distance coming toward them. He didn’t want Chance jumping at them.
After they had passed, he moved away from Krissy, aware of his reluctance to break contact with her and annoyed with himself because of it.
The dog immediately sensed she was on her own. It yanked on her, and she lurched forward. Jonas fought the impulse to leap in and rescue her. He couldn’t be here all the time. He had to focus on his mission, which was to at least make it safe for her to have the dog, to handle it on her own. The way it was behaving now, she could end up with a broken bone.
“Gather yourself, make him sit, try again.”
But now she was rattled and trying too hard, and the dog was confused. Jonas stepped in, took the leash—careful not to touch her this time, Chance was obviously picking up on something agitated—and made the dog sit.
Jonas passed the leash back to her. “No, don’t go right away. Make him sit. You decide when to go, not him.”
“I’m terrible at this,” she decided dejectedly.
“Try this,” Jonas said. “Act the part. Shoulders back, long, confident stride. Exaggerate it at first. You’re a model on the runway.”
She cast him a doubtful look.
“No, really. Just give yourself to it. Lots of attitude!”
He could see the moment she decided she would try it. Her shoulders came back. Her chin went up. With the leash firmly in one hand, she set the other on her hip. She stepped out, long strides, placing her feet one in front of the other, as if she was walking a tightrope with deliberation. Her hips swung. She narrowed her eyes and
did a stern little purse with her lips.
Jonas had to bite back laughter. He was tempted to tell her the facial expressions were probably not necessary, at least for the dog’s sake, but he was enjoying them too much to stop her.
Chance, sensing the difference in Krissy instantly, came to attention and walked well at her side. Jonas watched from behind them, trying to be teacher-to-student analytical, but he was now aware he was definitely checking her out!
Krissy turned her head back to him. It’s working, she mouthed, as if it was a big secret they needed to keep from the dog. She seemed to realize he was checking her out. She lost her rhythm and Chance catapulted into her.
Jonas leaped forward and caught her before she fell. The moment intensified around him: her softness, her scent, a pink, plump petal falling from a flowering tree.
Her lips looked as plump and as pink as that petal. A command blasted through his brain. Kiss her.
He was so shocked by the impulse that he shoved her away.
“Okay, so modeling material I’m not,” Krissy said.
“Actually, I think you nearly had it. But you could try something else. Maybe an actress going up to get your Oscar?”
She made a face at him, gathered the leash and concentrated. He watched her face form into haughty lines. Confident and untouchable, she sashayed forward. Then, really getting into the spirit of the thing, she bobbed her head to the right and left, nodding at her imagined fans. It was hilarious. The dog was taking tentative steps with her, glancing at her face with utter confusion. After half a dozen steps, he sat down in protest.
“I’m not really feeling this,” she said. “It’s phony—it’s not me.”
In other words, absolutely the wrong choice for fake mate. She wasn’t good at pretending. The dog knew it, too.
“That explains the dog being confused,” Jonas said. “But sometimes you can at least fake the body language. Try the queen.”
Krissy shot him a look, but gamely recomposed herself. She cupped her hand and marched along with the dog, her face solemn, her hand turning languidly in her impression of the royal wave. The dog was now dragging behind her, shooting Jonas aggrieved looks at what he had created.
“Toodle-loo,” she told the dog, in a very bad impression of an English accent. “Come along, now.”
Jonas had been trying to hold back, but this cracked him up.
She stopped and looked at him. The dog, relieved, plopped down. Jonas stifled his laughter and moved to them. He tried to convince the dog to get back up. Chance pinned his butt to the ground as if it had been crazy glued.
His stifled laughter broke free. It rolled out of him.
Still with the accent, she said, “Are you laughing at your Royal Majesty the Queen?”
“No, Your Highness.” Snort, chuckle, snort.
“The Royal Dog?” she asked, aghast.
“I wasn’t laughing, Your Highness. Coughing. See?” He demonstrated a cough, but it didn’t work. It turned into a fit of laughter that he had no hope of stopping.
And then she was laughing, too, and the dog got all excited and raced around them, binding them up with the leash.
Somehow, they were pressed together again, and instead of feeling all wrong, a pretense that had gone too far, it felt all right.
She gazed up at him, and he looked down at her. The world—even the dog—faded away. So did the laughter.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE’S GOING TO kiss me, Krissy thought, dazed by Jonas’s closeness, his scent, the glory of his hard, muscular frame pressed against the softness of her curves.
She closed her eyes; she leaned into him. She might have even puckered her lips. Anticipation tingled along every nerve ending. Her heart was beating way too fast. And then...
Nothing happened.
It reminded her, exactly, of his hesitation to accept her offer to be his fake mate the other night in his car. It reminded her how quickly she could be hurt by Jonas when she expected one thing and then another happened. Or didn’t happen, as the case might be.
Krissy did what she should have done in the first place. She opened her eyes, sandwiched her hands up between them and pushed. It opened the smallest gap, enabling her to reach down to loosen the leash that was holding them together.
Unfortunately, that required much squirming. The dog, held tight by the wound up leash, cocked his head and looked at them with frank adoration but no cooperation. There was more shared laughter, though now it had the faintest edge to it.
Awareness.
By the time she’d extricated them, Krissy was flushing madly: over the shared merriment and thwarted kiss and the rather intimate contact.
She realized this was exactly what the dog sensed in her all along: a certain reluctance to take control, a certain timidity to take on life on life’s terms.
She was with an attractive man. He’d almost kissed her, but then pulled back. She was going to refuse to be a shrinking violet about it.
No! Instead, she would show Jonas what he had missed, what he had said no to. She would make him regret pulling away.
With new determination, Krissy sorted the dog. Once he was sitting at her side, she took a deep breath. She snapped the leash to get the dog’s attention, she set her feet.
Krissy didn’t want to be an actress or a model. She had never even wanted to be the queen!
This was an opportunity to find her authentic strength in role models she admired.
“I am,” she said firmly, “an Olympic medalist going to the podium!”
She strode forward, radiating confidence, strength, victory. She could feel the relief in Chance. He got it instantly, he stepped it up, he aligned perfectly with her.
“What sport?” Jonas asked.
Krissy had never played a sport in her life.
“A woman warrior,” she cried. And she reached up with her free hand and grabbed the elastic that held her hair back. She didn’t slide it off, she broke it. Her hair fell free, and she gave it a shake.
“That’s it!” Jonas said, his voice low and approving. “That’s it exactly!”
But she already knew she had found the sweet spot of confidence she had been searching—maybe all of her life—for. Krissy could feel it in the leash, in the dog’s attentiveness to her, in Jonas’s attentiveness. She could feel the shift in herself, and she reveled in it.
Thinking of the power and the confidence with which Jonas drove his car, she revved into the next gear. She was the shield maiden going into battle. She was Boudicca, she was Joan of Arc. She stepped out, not with fear. Not with anticipation. Not with awareness of all the bad things that waited to befall her.
With glory! With confidence. With excitement for all the victories that awaited her.
The dog got it. Completely And so did Jonas. Completely.
Krissy felt as if she had stepped out of a shadow she was not even aware she had been standing in. She was enjoying playing the part, and it was wonderful to feel a sense of coming into some part of herself.
That was powerful.
And confident.
And amazing.
And dangerous.
She laughed out loud as she immersed herself in the discovery of her own confidence. She was aware of Jonas looking at her, his smile faintly tinged with trepidation. She was not the same woman who had meekly backed away from his rejection of that kiss a few minutes ago.
They came to a section of the trail where dogs were allowed off leash. Which was ironic, because Krissy was wondering exactly what he had unleashed within her when he had guided her to finding her confidence.
“I don’t think he’s ready for that,” Jonas said.
But she suspected maybe Jonas wasn’t ready for things to be completely unleashed, either.
Was she?
“There is a dog park jus
t a little farther up the trail.”
“Perfect.” He was looking at her as if he wasn’t thinking about the dog park, at all.
And somehow that was exactly how it felt. As if this startling, beautiful, electrifying day of discovery was absolutely perfect.
They had the fenced dog park entirely to themselves. They played a game that Jonas said would help Chance learn to come when he was called.
Jonas held the leash, and Krissy went and hid in a small grove of trees. Then she called the dog, and Jonas unclipped the leash. Chance barreled toward her hiding place, ecstatic when he found her, wriggling and ducking and lolling his tongue. But he didn’t even attempt to jump on her. Then they reversed it, Jonas hiding and Krissy holding the leash. Chance’s joy in the game was utterly contagious. Or maybe it was just a joyous kind of day.
But an hour later, they all lay on the grass, panting, tired, happy. Krissy and Jonas lay shoulder to shoulder.
Like the oldest of friends. Or like lovers. Like any of the young couples out enjoying the park today.
“I think the last time I laughed this hard was at last year’s family reunion,” Jonas said. “There’s a big water fight every year. No restrictions on weapons, just as long as they get you wet. My sister, Theresa, had found this gun that shot water balloons. She was an absolute menace. Mike and I ganged up on her to take it away, and then Simon and Garfunkel—that’s what I call the monster nephews—plus their two dogs, were in there, and we were all on the ground, and the rest of the family ganged up on us, until we were wallowing in a mud bog. Those kids and dogs were so dirty, the whites of their eyes were shining.”
Krissy tilted her head to look at Jonas. He was smiling slightly at the memory, looking up at the sky, the utter blueness of it reflected in the deep blue of his eyes. Chance had his big head resting possessively on the flat plane of Jonas’s stomach, a pool of contented drool darkening a patch of the shirt to black. Jonas toyed with the remnants of that torn ear.
She both liked the way he talked about his family with such warmth and affection, and hated the niggling sense of longing it caused in her.