by Elaine Fox
He thought of her lying down. Then shook his head.
“You,” he said, sounding accusatory even to his own ears, “wouldn’t believe the shambles I found when I returned home this evening. This dog is a menace. Beyond a menace, this dog is—is—the dog is a threat to itself.” Yes! Brilliant. “With all the toilet paper this mongrel consumed, much of which it just vomited up on my back seat on the way over here, it’s a wonder the thing hasn’t already expired. I tell you it does not belong with me. It doubtless does not belong with anyone who values the state of their home. Nor should it be anywhere it is likely to injure itself by consuming things it oughtn’t. Like heirloom furniture, for example.”
Megan Rose listened in silence, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression benign, if not sympathetic. She didn’t attempt to interrupt, nor did she laugh at him or roll her eyes or otherwise editorialize while he spoke. No, she just let him waffle on until he had no choice but to stop and await her response.
Effective technique, he thought. She’d be good in the corporate world.
“You know, dogs can be trained,” she offered finally.
He shook his head. “I haven’t the time, nor the inclination. Neither do I wish to invite yet another person into my home to do it. I prefer to be alone and I require quiet, Dr. Rose. Absolute, uninterrupted silence.”
After a moment she sighed. “I’m wondering,” she said slowly, “what it’s like to live your life.”
He raised his brows. “I beg your pardon?”
She uncrossed her arms and regarded him thoughtfully. “I’m serious. I’m really curious. You come home to an empty, silent house each evening and you seem to want it that way. You could have anything, and you choose nothing.”
Sutter hesitated. Was that what she saw? Is that how he appeared to others? Did he choose nothing? Why was he so upset about that chair? It wasn’t, as he’d characterized it, an heirloom. If it were it would have been a piece of MFI junk purchased third-hand at a car boot sale. His parents had been far from wealthy.
Perhaps it was because Briana had called his room “charming” that he’d been so upset at its disruption.
That was ridiculous. He didn’t care a whit what anyone thought of his decorating style, including Briana. He was simply angry that a nice belonging had been arbitrarily ruined, as anyone would be. His peaceful place had been thrown into chaos and that’s what had rattled him. What he had was quiet, not nothing.
“Sometimes,” he said, “nothing is everything.”
She smiled. “Yeah, right. And solitude is not loneliness, but nature abhors a vacuum. Your isolation was bound to be interrupted one way or another, someday.”
“I have the right to make my own decisions about how I live my life. And besides, Berkley is frequently there when I arrive home. As is Martina. So you see…” What was he doing, justifying this to her?
“And they are…family members?” she asked.
His cook and his housekeeper, actually, but that would just feed her argument. Regardless, he nodded his head slowly, “In some ways.”
“Don’t tell me they’re your gardeners,” she laughed. Her eyes glittered, her face so purely amused that her prettiness turned to beauty.
Of course, she was essentially right, which was annoying.
He said stiffly, “I’m under no obligation to keep this dog simply because you don’t understand my choices.”
She quieted and he knew he’d got her. Why he didn’t turn around that instant and leave was less clear.
She tilted her head. “You were married once, right?”
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
She lifted her hand to guide a lock of hair behind one ear. “Don’t you miss the companionship? The everyday routines, the interaction? I mean, even if it wasn’t very good most of the time, you still had somebody, you know, kind of in your same orbit.”
“Are you suggesting I should orbit this dog?”
She laughed. “No, I actually had the dog cast in the role of satellite, but I suppose that’s up to you.”
“Ah. So something is up to me,” he said. “Thank you.”
She inclined her head graciously.
Something niggled at the back of his mind and he asked, “Were you married?”
It seemed an impertinent question, and maybe that’s why he asked it—she was so frequently impertinent herself—but he was also curious. She seemed too young to have gone through both marriage and divorce. But then, perhaps she was not divorced.
“You ask that like I might have hit the nail on the head,” she said evasively.
“No, I ask that like you just revealed something about yourself. Clearly you desire something instead of nothing. If indeed one’s own company can be considered nothing.”
“One always has one’s own company,” she said. “That’s not a positive or a negative.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “You didn’t answer the question.”
She flushed. He thought, Lovely rose rising to Dr. Rose’s cheeks.
“Okay, yes,” she said, “I was married. And it didn’t work, in the long run. But parts of it did. Parts of it worked.”
There was something in her eyes, he thought, something wounded. He decided, though he could have pegged her further, to let it lie. “Why are you so dead set on my keeping this dog?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. You just…seem like you need it. And I know it needs you.”
He felt himself weakening and did his damnedest to fight it. “Got your ear to the universe again?”
“Look,” she said, “I’ll make it easy for you. Come on.” She turned and headed toward the back where the light was on.
Reluctantly, Sutter followed. What would make this easy for him would be to leave, and never see either her or the dog again. But something about her was compelling and he could think of no good reason not to pursue the reason why.
In the back room, which sported a number of metal cages, most of them empty, the puppy was tormenting a cat in an upper cage. The dog would leap up to look at the cat, causing it to arch its back and hiss, then she would sit down wagging her tail until the cat lay back down before jumping up again. Sutter watched this maneuver several times before Megan came back from a darkened storage area carrying a large plastic box with holes on the sides and a door on it.
“This is a crate. Every time you leave the house, or if you’re home and can’t keep your eye on Baywatch, you put her in this and close the door. She won’t be able to chew anything and she’ll learn to hold her bladder and bowels until you let her outside. Dogs are naturally averse to soiling their beds.”
“You want me to put the dog in a cage?”
The vet pursed her lips, obviously displeased. “You have no trouble with the idea of taking this dog to the pound where it could well end up euthanized, and yet you can’t stand the thought of putting it in a cage?”
“If you will notice,” he said tightly, “I brought the dog back to you, not the pound.”
She humphed, unimpressed. “In any case, it’s not a cage, it’s a crate. It’s a very humane way to housetrain a dog. Think of it as a crib. Eventually she’ll come to regard it as her den. And you won’t lose any more heirlooms.”
He shook his head, frustrated. “Surely you know someone with a farm, someplace where the dog can run around. Someplace more suitable than my house.”
“You mean set it loose so that no one has to think about it again?”
“Something like that, yes.”
He realized he’d said something wrong by her swiftly darkening expression. She had lightning-quick expressions, exactly mirroring, it seemed, whatever it was she was thinking. So unlike Briana with her Mona Lisa smile and unreadable porcelain perfection. If Briana was a question mark, then this girl was an exclamation point. Mystery and transparency, ever at odds.
“If I let you take this dog—”
“Let me?”
“—I can be sure, can�
��t I, that you won’t just open the door and let it go?”
She studied him a moment as he began chuckling. He was not so easily led down the path of reverse psychology.
“You’ll never know, will you?” he said.
Her lips curved and her dark eyes narrowed. “I’ll risk it. Now, you’ll need to bring her back for her shots. Since we don’t know what she’s had already, if anything, we’ll have to start from scratch…”
She went on in this vein, detailing all kinds of medical attention the dog would require over the next several weeks and for some reason the prospect had him feeling more generously toward the animal. It wouldn’t be that difficult, he reasoned, to keep the thing in this box and let it out every now and again. If it was under control, then it would barely be noticeable and he wouldn’t have to do battle with this willful woman on the issue anymore. Maybe it would be nice to come home to something, though this tornado certainly didn’t seem like something he’d want to see every day.
Still, if he kept the dog, at least for a while, he could see Megan Rose again. She was, he could admit to himself, entertaining, if only because she didn’t tiptoe around him as so many other people did. Virtually everyone, in fact, except for the people he’d known before SFSolutions had taken off, flattered him and served him and generally acted as if he might order them beheaded. There was something about wealth—extreme wealth, wealth beyond one’s wildest dreams—that intimidated people. While he found it frequently convenient, it was also disturbing.
His ex-wife, Bitsy, was about the only other person he trusted to be completely honest with him. Probably because she had known him in the darkest depths of poverty. She’d married him when he’d had no money and divorced him just when he was becoming rich. It was the fame she couldn’t stand. But she hadn’t cared about his money—of course it helped that her family had plenty—and that more than anything else had endeared her to him forever.
His assistant VP, Montgomery, was pretty blunt around him but usually only on safe subjects.
Clayton Van Werner, his senior VP, could be terrifically acerbic, but only on subjects other than Sutter himself.
And Briana…well, Briana was something else entirely. Removed from everyday life and concerns, she was like dessert. Delicious when he was in the mood, but not necessary for survival. Not, in fact, necessary for anything but pleasure. And he could afford the most expensive pleasures now…
Before he knew it, Megan Rose had produced a bag of dog food and a box of dog bones to go with the cage—er, crate—and was hustling him out to the car with all of it.
“Don’t forget,” she said, as she propped the bag of dog food up against the crate in the boot of his Jaguar, “that she still needs a rabies shot so you’ll have to bring her back. Or,” she added with a sly look, “you can send one of your servants or lackeys or whatever you have.”
“I haven’t got any lackeys. As you recall, I have chosen to have nothing.”
She smiled. “Then you’ll have to come.”
He looked at her, his eyes trailing from her dancing brown eyes to her curved lips. “I can’t believe I’m letting you do this to me.”
She paused, her lips parting. After a second of silence, he brought his gaze back to her eyes. “I’m not doing anything to you,” she said, her eyes steady.
“Aren’t you?” He lifted one brow, was tempted, without reason, to touch her cheek, to see if it was as soft as it looked. He imagined running a couple of fingers along that downy surface to just beneath her chin. He imagined tipping it up and stepping in close, touching her lips with his.
What would she do?
What would she taste like?
Almost without thinking, he took a step toward her and she looked swiftly up at him.
If he kissed her, she would want to know why. And he didn’t know why. He only knew he wanted to.
“Aren’t we forgetting something?” he said finally.
Her eyes were still on his face. “What?” She sounded breathless.
He gave a slight smile. “The dog. I seem to have all the accessories and no pet.”
She laughed then. Relieved? And with a promise to be right back, ran back inside the building.
Megan stopped as soon as she was out of view of the front door, and leaned against the back wall. Baywatch was jumping up in front of Mrs. House-man’s overweight cat, giving it a better workout than anything Megan could prescribe, while Megan held one hand to her heart to still its frantic pace.
He’d been about to kiss her, hadn’t he? His eyes were on her lips and the expression in them had been positively smoldering.
Unless she was losing her mind. It was possible. She’d gone so long without a man that she could be reading something into nothing, but she’d felt it as surely as if he’d reached out and touched her. He had thought about kissing her.
The question was, what should she do about it? Why had he stopped? Thought better of it, most likely. Or maybe he thought she wouldn’t like it. It was a tough call, but this could be her last opportunity to find out. Only at the risk of looking like an utter fool, however.
But maybe she didn’t care about that.
Maybe it was worth it.
She pushed herself off the wall and grabbed one of the hospital’s thin slip leashes. Catching Baywatch as the dog descended from her last jump, she slipped the leash over her head and turned to the door.
“Come on, Baywatch,” she said. “We don’t want him cooling off too much.”
She stepped back out the door into the warm summer evening. The sun had already dipped below the horizon and a slight breeze caused a rustling in the nearby trees. The light was just the way she liked it. Soft and low, the dimming of the day.
Sutter was leaning in the back seat of the Jaguar, a nice-looking car if ever she’d seen one. The black surface was shiny as onyx, and the whole car looked like a jewel. When she emerged from the building he pushed out of the back seat, the sound of crumpling newspaper reaching her.
She liked the way he moved. He was tall but not gangly in any way. He had a kind of grace, an efficiency of movement to go with that tight British reserve. She tried to imagine him tripping or slipping or doing something uncoordinated and couldn’t do it. He was too contained. He would never allow it.
“Here you go,” she said, extending the leash. Baywatch tugged at her arm, pulling her toward him.
He, in turn, extended the crumpled newspaper toward her. “Have you got a trash can? That’s the best I could do cleaning up the seat. Martina will have to go at it with some kind of cleanser in the morning.”
He took the leash from her by grabbing it in the middle and held the wad of newspaper out toward her. She reached for it.
“Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to touch…that…” He manipulated the wad so she could catch hold of the clean edges.
She got it and turned toward a trash can near the front door. So much for renewing the potentially romantic moment, she thought. Maybe she was crazy. What had she planned to do, anyway? Throw herself into his arms and kiss him? Women must throw themselves at him all the time, she thought. Why should she be just like all the rest?
Besides, that would probably be the end of Baywatch’s chances.
She hurled the newspaper into the trash with a little more force than necessary and brushed her hands together as she turned back to him. “Well, that’s it, then. You’re all set.”
He had wrestled the dog into the back seat and closed the door as she returned. “Listen, I’ll do this for a while if you agree to look for a more permanent situation for the animal.”
She shouldn’t feel disappointed, she knew she shouldn’t. Taking the puppy had seemed an indication of…something. But it wasn’t true, and it didn’t matter. She was dwelling completely in her imagination now, it seemed.
“All right. Agreed. You’ll foster her. But in the meantime…”
“Yes, yes, in the meantime I won’t set it free in a field somewhere or let
it get hit by a car.” He grinned, obviously proud of himself for reading her thoughts, and she was caught by how boyish he looked. Without the austere veneer he was even more handsome, which irked her. Nobody should be so favored by the fates.
“You laugh but it happens all the time.” She frowned, hunching her shoulders and pushing her hands into her pockets.
He opened the driver’s door but didn’t get in, merely leaned an elbow on top of the window frame and looked at her, his lips quirked. “Now what have I done?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a moment ago you were happy I was taking the dog. One joke later you’ve lost that triumphant glow.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And it was very becoming.”
She smiled reluctantly. “Gloating becomes me?”
“Indeed it does.”
She chuckled. Handsome, rich, and funny and perceptive. The man was like a cosmic joke to single women everywhere. She wondered about the blue-blooded beauty he was dating.
“I’m just…” She contemplated telling him the truth. While she had no pretension to feminine wiles, she didn’t think he deserved her every thought. “You’re just a lucky man, is all.”
At that his eyes seemed to shutter and he lost his glow. “So they say.” He got in the vehicle and closed the door, starting the engine, then rolling down the window. “Thank you, Dr. Rose. Ought I to make an appointment for the next shot or is it the kind of thing I can simply show up for?”
She moved closer to the car door. “Make an appointment,” she said, deciding she’d need some warning when this guy was coming back. Unexpected beauty in the workplace could really throw one off one’s stride.
“Have you got a card or something with your number on it?”
She patted her front and back pockets, told him to wait a minute and ran inside for a card. Back outside, she handed it to him and their fingers brushed, causing her to wonder what it would be like for this man to touch her in a nonbusinesslike way. How would it feel for those hands to grip her with desire, to touch her face with tenderness?
If he’d still been standing outside the car she would have kissed him. She would have, she insisted to herself. Just to see what he would do.
