Cupid to the Rescue: A Tail-Wagging Valentine's Day Anthology

by Lisa Mondello

  “I grew up here, then left for college, then spent time in Boston. I moved back here when my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” How could she complain about her parents? They were pains in the ass, but they were alive and they loved her.

  “I guess, like you, I decided I really wanted to stay, even after my dad died. But I don’t know, if the other option was San Diego…” He grinned, lifting the sorrow that had descended on them. “San Diego is gorgeous. And I’m not crazy about winter weather.”

  “You take it for granted,” she said. “I still remember making my first snow angel on the town green. It was so cool!”

  “Cold, not cool,” he joked. “You love dogs and snow. We’re a match made in hell.”

  She laughed, and then stopped laughing, uneasy that Hank was discussing them as if they were not two people taking care of business but a match.

  That word felt more accurate than it should. Even if they were a match made in hell, she wanted them to be a match. She wanted to argue with him about the charms of snow, and convince him of the joy that a dog could bring into a human’s life. She wanted him.

  She hastily backed away from that thought. He couldn’t have meant his comment in a romantic way. He’d just been commenting about how different they were. “Maybe if I grew up with snow, I wouldn’t think it was so wonderful.”

  “Or if you had to shovel the driveway.” He ate a bit, then eyed the print-out she’d given him. “I mentioned to one of the partners today that I thought we should fund you. We’ve never funded a dog obedience school before.”

  Evidently, he wanted to back away from the whole match thing, too. Wise idea. “What did your partner say?”

  Hank launched into a discussion about New Horizons, the company he worked for, and mentioned some of the start-ups the company supported. He described the analysts on the staff, some of whom understood the technology and others the business potential of the start-ups they considered for funding. Could a company be marketed well? Was it offering a unique product? A useful one? Would seed money from New Horizons get the company off the ground? Were the entrepreneurs asking for too little, or too much?

  “Your work sounds fascinating,” she said.

  “You seem surprised.”

  “I am. I’m not a business whiz. My brother has an MBA and my sister’s a lawyer. I’m the family flake.” She told Hank about her brother’s work for an entertainment conglomerate in Los Angeles and her sister’s job in the county D.A.’s office. Abbie would rather try to understand the motivation of a criminal than prosecute that criminal in court, or to fathom why this TV show appealed to a wide audience and that one didn’t rather than design a marketing campaign to make an unappealing show seem more appealing. Behavior interested her more than developing strategies that tried to steer behavior in a particular direction.

  “What I’ve learned is that the behavior of dogs often makes more sense than the behavior of human beings,” she said. “You could get an MBA and create a marketing strategy for a dog treat, but if the dog doesn’t like the way the treat tastes, he won’t eat it, no matter how elaborately you market it.”

  The waiter asked if they would like to order dessert, and Hank sent Abbie a questioning look. “No, thanks,” she said. “I should get back to your mother’s house to let Priscilla out for her last pit-stop of the day.”

  “And to see if she’s destroyed the place in our absence.” Hank smiled up at the waiter. “Just the check, please.”

  He insisted on paying when Abbie offered to split the tab with him. She supposed he was used to wining and dining potential clients, although their dinner had included no wine, and she wasn’t certain who was the client at their table. He had hired her, after all. Didn’t that make him her client?

  No matter. If he was a partner in a venture capital firm, he had more money than she did.

  They emerged from the restaurant into the chilly night. The winter sky was strewn with stars. Hank opened the car door for her, and she was once again reminded of what a gentleman he was. That he’d moved back to Brogan’s Point to help his parents when his father took ill struck her as remarkably kind. Eric would never have done anything like that.

  They drove back to his mother’s house in silence. Hank had left the porch light on, and it shed a welcoming light onto the front walk. When they reached the porch, Hank fell back, allowing Abbie to unlock the door with the key he’d given her. Was that his way of signaling that she was on the meter, doing her job?

  Why was she overanalyzing this? He’d paid for dinner. She could open the damned door.

  As soon as they stepped inside, Priscilla barreled down the hall from the kitchen, barking madly. At least she hadn’t been lurking in the living room, threatening all that fancy furniture with her abundant energy. She sprang at Abbie, planting her front paws on Abbie’s shin. “No,” Abbie scolded, pulling her leg away. “Down.”

  Priscilla looked crestfallen, but she stopped jumping on Abbie, who bent over and gave her a good scratching as a reward.

  “You’re the love of her life,” Hank observed. “She completely ignores me.”

  Abbie grinned. Was he jealous that Priscilla hadn’t greeted him? “It’s because I pet her,” she said.

  “And you give her those treats you’ve got stashed in your pocket.”

  “Of course.” Abbie straightened up. “It’s natural to fall in love with someone who feeds you well.”

  His gaze locked with hers. He’d just fed her well at the restaurant. Did he think that meant she was falling in love with him?

  Unnerved by the possibility, she hurried down the hall to the kitchen. “Come on, Priscilla. Let’s get you outside before you pee on the floor.”

  Priscilla scampered along with Abbie, bumping into her ankles and nearly causing her to stumble. If Abbie hadn’t been so eager to put some distance between herself and Hank, she might have halted and ordered Priscilla to slow down. But contemplating Hank in the context of falling in love rattled her. They were a match made in hell, after all.

  She reached the mudroom without looking back to see if Hank had followed her. Swinging the back door open, she stepped aside, allowing Priscilla to bound down the steps and into the yard. Much of the snow had melted, but a thin layer still covered the lawn. Priscilla crunched through it, refusing to let it slow her down.

  The night air was chilly, but Abbie felt warm. Too warm.

  Turning, she discovered Hank standing close behind her. He gazed past her at Priscilla, who was yipping and yapping and having a grand time racing around the yard. “Abbie,” he said.

  No, she wanted to warn him. Don’t say anything. She shouldn’t have told him about Eric, her family, her struggle to be taken seriously. She should have kept everything proper and impersonal and business-like. She was here for Priscilla, period. Priscilla and maybe some funding from his venture capital firm, and—

  “Abbie,” he repeated, his voice a velvety murmur. She meeting his gaze. Big mistake.

  He leaned down and touched his lips to hers.

  Taking Care of Business: Chapter 7

  This was wrong. Way out of line. Ridiculously unprofessional. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Hank had gently rejected an overture from an investor because mixing business and romance was bad policy. And he was the sort of person who prided himself on behaving ethically.

  Yet he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  Abbie was the one who’d mentioned falling in love. Not that he was falling in love with her, but…. She was smart and sexy, and all through dinner, as he’d read her business plan and talked to her and enjoyed his meal, one significant chunk of his mind had been hijacked by his libido.

  Hell, he’d lost that mental chunk the moment he’d seen her dancing at the Faulk Street Tavern. Or more precisely, after she’d stopped dancing, and the song about taking care of business had emerged from the jukebox. Nick had told him Abbie was the answer to his prayers, and maybe she w
as. Yet what Hank had thought, when he’d stared at her and that song had ricocheted through the air between them, was that he wanted her to be his business. He wanted to get down to business with her.

  Right now, as they stood in the spill of light from the patio lamps, this kiss was the only business he could imagine. Her soft lips turned him on in an amazing way. So did her shimmering eyes, her graceful body, the whisper of her breath. And her long, lush hair. He twined his fingers into the dark, silky locks as his mouth moved on hers, and when his thumb and forefinger reached the nape of her neck, he traced light circles against her skin with his fingertips. A faint moan escaped her, and she lifted her hands to his shoulders and pulled him closer.

  That nape-of-the-neck thing really worked.

  His mouth opened. So did hers. His tongue met hers, and hers welcomed him in. He tasted their dinner’s exotic spices in this kiss. He tasted heat. He tasted yearning.

  Lust zapped through his body, fierce and hot. So what if she was a dog person and he wasn’t? This didn’t have to be about love or forever. It was about kissing, and touching, and rubbing those magical places behind her ears, and having her melt in his arms. It was about the business of craving each other. The way Abbie was kissing him told him they were perfectly matched when it came to that particular business.

  Before he could do anything about satisfying their mutual craving, he felt a sharp pinch against his ankle. He yelped and leaped back to find Priscilla, the tiny hell-hound, growling at him, her jaws wide as she sprang at his ankle again.

  It took all his willpower not to kick her across the patio and into the snow. If he did that, Abbie would never forgive him. But damn it, the dog was trying to bite him. He was allowed to defend himself, wasn’t he?

  Abbie glanced down and laughed. Great. She thought Priscilla’s interference was cute. Hank thought it merited life imprisonment—or at the very least, finding a new home for the beast. A home at least a thousand miles from Brogan’s Point.

  How could anything that had interrupted what would rank as the finest first kiss in the history of the universe be considered amusing?

  “No,” Abbie scolded Priscilla, who peered up at the two humans on the porch, glowering at Hank and gazing hopefully at Abbie, as if awaiting an order to attack him. “No nipping.”

  “She wasn’t nipping,” he argued. “She was doing her impersonation of the shark in Jaws.”

  “She’s just jealous,” Abbie explained, pointing down the porch steps to the yard. “No, Priscilla.”

  Priscilla gaped at Abbie. Her little chest heaved.

  “What you did was bad. Go.” Abbie pointed again, and Priscilla finally obeyed. At the edge of the patio, she halted and glared at Abbie. She didn’t bother to look at Hank at all.

  “Why would she be jealous of me?” he muttered. Abbie might have kissed him, but she adored Priscilla. Hank doubted he was worthy of adoration in her mind.

  “Go poop,” Abbie ordered Priscilla, effectively spoiling whatever romantic mood might have enveloped them just moments ago. “Do your business.”

  Priscilla hesitated—no doubt trying to decide whether to attack Hank’s ankle again. After weighing her options, she turned, shuffled off the patio, and did her business.

  Abbie stepped inside the mudroom to grab a plastic bag, then bounced down to the yard to clean up Priscilla’s mess, as if no task could have pleased her more. Definitely, the mood was shattered.

  Back in the kitchen, Abbie continued to earn her fee, drying off Priscilla’s damp paws, topping off her water dish, carrying the plastic bag to the trash can in the garage. Hank felt he ought to help. Standing idly by while someone else did all the work made him uncomfortable. But this was Abbie’s job. He was paying her.

  Right. He was paying her. To kiss her the way he had, to want her the way he did… Christ. Coming on sexually to someone who worked for you broke a whole bunch of laws, didn’t it? Even if she hadn’t objected, even if she’d participated with an enthusiasm that had matched his… He’d behaved like a dick.

  Once Priscilla had lapped up some water, nibbled a little of the gourmet dog food in her bowl, and wandered into the den with one of her chew toys, Abbie turned off most of the kitchen lights, leaving on the spotlight above the sink, and turned a three-way lamp in the den to its low setting. Then she smiled at Hank, said, “All done ’til tomorrow,” and moved down the hall to the front door.

  Once they were outside again, this time on the front porch, Hank resisted the urge to gather her back into his arms, to kiss her again, to find out if any other locations on her body might respond to his touch as intensely as the skin behind her ears did. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry about what happened in the back yard.”

  “I am, too. Priscilla shouldn’t have attacked you.”

  “Not that.”

  Abbie smiled tenuously. “Are you really sorry about kissing me?”

  No. Not the least bit sorry. If I had fewer scruples, I’d do much more than kiss you. “Given that you’re working for me,” he said, “and given that I’ll be presenting your business plan to my partners at New Horizons… It wasn’t right.”

  Her smile widened. “That’s okay. I won’t charge you with harassment.”

  “I appreciate that. But…” He sighed. “I know a thing or two about business ethics. What I did wasn’t ethical.”

  “Hank, you are arguably the most ethical guy I’ve ever met. It’s okay.” She held his gaze for a long moment, then stepped off the porch and strode down the front walk to her van, parked by the curb.

  He watched her, admiring the elegance of her long legs, the sexy sway of her hips, the way her hair fluttered against her back. Touching her hair had been practically an X-rated experience for him. Kissing her…triple-X.

  Damn his scruples. Damn business ethics. The only thing he was sorry about was that, as long as he held onto those scruples and honored those ethics, he wouldn’t get to kiss her again.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Long after she’d parked in the alley behind the pizza place and climbed the stairs to her apartment, long after she’d donned her pajama pants and a fleecy top, curled up in bed with her tablet, and pretended to watch a streaming comedy while paying absolutely no attention to the mugging actors and the goofy jokes, Abbie continued to review every minute of her evening with Hank. The dinner. The conversation. The heat that welled up inside her every time he gazed at her—and often when he wasn’t gazing at her at all. The kiss. His insistence on being a gentleman.

  He sure as hell didn’t kiss like a gentleman.

  What might have happened if Priscilla hadn’t intervened? Had the dog been as offended by his breach of business protocol as he’d seemed to be?

  Forget it, she cautioned herself. Forget him. Whatever was simmering between them wasn’t going to heat to a boil because he wasn’t going to let it. She should appreciate that he was such an honorable guy. He’d sell his partners on her business plan, and she’d get funding and open her canine obedience school, and she’d be grateful for that.

  Even if, after one kiss, she was tempted to tell him to tear up her business plan and take care of Priscilla himself, just so they could get down to some real business.

  Taking Care of Business: Chapter 8

  Avoiding Abbie was easy enough. Avoiding thinking about her was next to impossible, but Hank could keep his physical distance. If he saw her, he’d want her. He’d forget everything he knew about proper behavior and professional integrity, and he’d drag her off to bed—or skip bed altogether and just drag her off. He’d make love to her until she screamed with pleasure.

  He wondered if she was a screamer.

  Thoughts like that haunted him all day, which was why he steered clear of her. She didn’t need him to hang around while she walked Priscilla and fed her and taught her to heel. He didn’t have to be there for the dog’s first pee of the day, her midday stroll, her post-dinner perambulation, her pre-bedtime poop. He was paying Abbie to
take care of all that.

  If he sensed her presence while pitching her business to his partners at their morning meeting, so be it. Holding the business plan she’d printed, while distributing copies of it to his colleagues, was as close as he’d let himself get to holding her. He laughed along with them when they joked about how different a dog school was from the sorts of businesses they usually funded. Once the laughter died down, he pressed his case for working with her. The investment her business needed to get started was mere pocket change for New Horizons. It could be fun. It could humanize Hank and his partners. They could post a photo of a bunch of happy dogs on the firm’s website.

  Jeff Maklis, who chaired the partner meetings, said he thought Hank had made a decent argument for an unusual potential client, and the firm should give Abbie’s proposal the consideration it deserved. Gazing around the table at his fellow partners, Hank worried about that statement. Some of them undoubtedly thought it deserved little consideration, and that was what they would give it. But no one had vetoed it out of hand.

  Of course, they hadn’t immediately green-lighted it, either. As tempted as he was to phone Abbie and let her know how the meeting went, he refrained. The truth was, he wanted to phone her just to hear her voice. He had no real news for her.

  His mother had news for him, though. Near the end of the day, as he was packing up to leave the office, he checked his email. There was a note from her: Having a blast. Beautiful beaches in Aruba. I’ve fallen in love with piña coladas. Making new friends. Give Priscilla a belly rub for me—she likes that.

  Did she like belly rubs more than she liked getting massaged behind the ears? Hank wouldn’t exert himself to find out. He didn’t want to rub Priscilla’s belly. The mutt had tried to bite him yesterday.

  It occurred to him that he might want to thank Priscilla rather than resent her. By nipping at his ankle, she’d saved him from a dangerous impulse. Possibly she’d attacked him because she’d recognized that he was crossing a line he shouldn’t cross. Perhaps jealousy had nothing to do with it. She was just trying to keep him from mixing business with pleasure.