Safe Heart (Dreamspun Desires Book 102)

by Amy Lane

  Glen rolled his eyes. “Well, if you put it like that, sure. Fine. Make me be a grown-up.”

  Cash laughed and threw his arms around Glen’s waist, leaning his head on Glen’s chest. “Thank you thank you, thank you!”

  “Will Brielle be joining us?” Glen asked. They’d stopped on their way from Baja, as promised, to see her at the rehab center. She looked serious and, to Glen, anyway, serene. She’d thanked them both for all their trouble, but she hadn’t been up to a long visit. She texted Cash every other day, but Glen wasn’t sure how much they’d actually seen of each other now that Cash was back.

  “No.” Cash shook his head, biting his lip at the same time. “She… she can’t be around all of this. Clive will get us a corner booth at a steakhouse or something, and the guys and I, we can turn our back on any attention, but Brielle—she’d want to be in the middle of it, and there’s a lot of drugs in the middle of it, and she knows she can’t say no. Not yet. Not now.”

  “Gotcha,” Glen said gently. Brielle had been the friendship that had sustained Cash for his young adult life. “You okay with that?”

  Cash shrugged, his expression bittersweet. “It needs to be what she’s okay with, or I’m not a very good friend. I miss her, but….” He looked over his shoulder as the other four guys from the band spilled into the room.

  “Cash! Are you going to introduce us!”

  “Oh my God, you’re right, he’s hot. Too bad I’m straight!”

  “I’m not—are you going to introduce us?”

  “Introduce us at the restaurant. I’m starving!”

  Glen laughed. “Just a second, guys,” he said, giving a little salute. He lowered his head and spoke only for Cash. “They’re your friends, and I’d love to meet them,” he said. “Because being a part of your life is important to me.”

  Cash’s smile bloomed across his entire body. “Thanks, Gecko. I promise when we get back to the hotel room, it’ll be nothing but you and me.”

  Glen nodded and gave him a brief kiss on the lips before pulling back and putting some space between them. “You and me can deal with anything we got, kid. As long as we both shall live.”

  Cash grinned at him and tugged him to the band, and Glen made himself at home. He hadn’t asked Cash to get married yet—but it was coming. Preston and Damien would be doing the deed as soon as Cash got off tour, and Glen wouldn’t mind joining them. He wouldn’t mind doing it in a private ceremony, either, with only Damien, Preston, Elsie, and, goddammit, Spencer—Glen and Damien kind of loved the guy—in attendance.

  But the marriage wasn’t the important part, not now.

  It was the promise of forever that was important.

  And as Glen got to know the other part of Cash’s life that wasn’t dedicated to Glen and his family, he thought these were pretty nice people. He wouldn’t mind them being part of his forever—as long as that forever was with Cash Harper.

  That was the only forever he was interested in, and as Cash twined their fingers together, he knew for a fact that Cash felt exactly the same.

  Spencer and the Colonel

  A Silent Heart ficlet

  By Amy Lane

  So we get to see a little bit of the relationship between Spencer and Preston’s dog, Colonel, in Safe Heart. I loved Spencer so much—and the idea that he and Colonel were friends who couldn’t always be together—that I wrote this brief little ficlet to explain their relationship. Of course, we also get to see why Preston is so damned irritated with the two of them, and that’s always fun too.

  PRESTON trotted out the suitcases one at a time and set them on the ground, thinking, Today—today is the day that damned dog gets it.

  “Let him go, Damien!”

  Damien released the giant German shepherd mix, who ran across the spring-sprouting grass, making excited ruff sounds and tossing his narrow head in enthusiasm. His tail—which fanned impressively—swept back and forth so vigorously it could have been used as a weapon.

  Preston could see the source of his joy—he loved to be worked with, and it was a stunning spring day, the kind meant for cargo shorts and hooded sweatshirts and sunglasses, and joy, oh joy, oh joy! Colonel was going to get to do what he did best!

  Smell!

  And as Colonel went to the suitcase with the special smell decoy wrapped in coffee inside, dropped to his chest and gave one single, sharp bark, Preston could feel his shoulders relax. Yes! This was it! Colonel was going to earn his stripes—again. He’d already been placed with the police department, but he had some glitches that Preston was trying to iron out. He really wanted to help this dog live his best life!

  Colonel was whining slightly, wiggling his ass and tail, and looking at Preston hopefully before Preston held out his treat.

  “Good dog,” Preston praised. “Such a good dog! Keep doing that. Yes. Good dog!” He looked up at Damien and added, “Okay—I’m going to take him around the house and you need to hide the decoy by the stream!” He paused. “But not in the stream!” The decoy was a soft bag that had trace amounts of drugs in the stuffing—he had to get special authorization from the police department to use it, and the department used the exact same kind of bag when working with the dogs on their force.

  “Definitely not in the stream,” Damien agreed and then paused and looked up into the sky. “Spencer’s here.”

  “Hide the decoy,” Preston said practically. “Then greet Spencer.”

  Damien’s eyes went wide, and Preston wondered if that was wrong to dictate things so thoroughly—but he didn’t want Damien to accidentally touch Spencer while he smelled like a decoy, because that would make Colonel nuts the entire time Spencer was there. Damien was wearing gloves so Colonel wouldn’t confuse his smells.

  But then the sense of what Preston was asking settled in, and Damien nodded. “Good thinking. Besides, that’ll give Spence time to land.”

  The sound of the chopper was getting closer, and Preston called to Colonel briskly, taking him on a trot around the houses and kennel enclosures while the bird landed and Damien ran off toward the shady riparian woodland by the creek that crossed his property.

  When he got completely around—it was about a half-mile run—the chopper’s blades were spinning lazily, and Spencer was standing with his hands in his pockets, about six feet away from Damien, which meant Damien had briefed him on the exercise.

  Still, that didn’t stop his usually grumpy expression from lightening as Colonel came into view, and Colonel, bless his dense doggy heart, gave a happy bark and ran to greet him.

  “No!” Preston snapped. “Colonel, sit!”

  Colonel did not sit. Instead, he ran excitedly to Spencer, tail wagging, tongue lolling, his body stretched out in a most undignified lope. He got about four feet away from Spencer and suddenly stopped and barked once, then lay down, his chin on his paws.

  Like Spencer was the decoy.

  Damien looked at Spencer and Preston looked at Spencer and Spencer stared at the dog.

  He knew exactly what that meant.

  “No!” he burst out, rolling his eyes. “No, I do not smell like drugs. I haven’t had so much as an aspirin in weeks. Jesus, people, I fly for a living—do you think I’m stupid enough to get in a bird when I’m high?”

  Damien shook himself, and Preston thought hard. “No,” Damien said into the silence. “We just… I don’t know what he’s reacting to. That’s really weird. Did you have a passenger who might have… you know—”

  “Been doing a little bit of cocaine while I was battling the air currents over the bay?” Spencer snapped, still obviously put out. “No. In fact, Glen and Elsie are out flying—I’m supposed to bring you back so you can man a cargo plane to somewhere I don’t care about to do a thing that’s not my business because I have two days off.”

  Damien grimaced. “Shit. I thought I had two days off.”

  “Well, yeah. I took an extra shift from Glen because….” Spencer shrugged uncomfortably, and Preston didn’t know what that meant
.

  “Gotcha,” Damien muttered. He looked apologetically at Preston. “I’m sorry—Glen probably needed the day off. His back has been giving him hell. I know he’s sort of an asshole about it, but I think Spencer’s not saying that he did a nice thing.”

  Preston’s eyes widened. His brother, Glen, had been buried under a wall for over twenty-four hours. He’d had surgeries on his shoulder and had only recently been recertified to fly. The cargo and passenger business was Glen and Damien’s baby—and Spencer and his friend Elsie were their first two outside employees. If Spencer was here to get Damien to go help, that meant Damien had to leave.

  Dammit.

  “You have to go,” he muttered. Then, “But first we need to let Colonel find the bag. And we need to figure out what Spencer smells like, or we don’t know what Colonel thinks he’s smelling.”

  “Gotcha. Let’s finish the exercise. Then I can take off the gloves and we can sort this out.”

  Colonel was whining at Preston, looking for treats, and Preston was irritated because he wasn’t sure whether to give him one or not. For heaven’s sake—what did Spencer smell like?

  “Good dog,” Preston said, hating the ambiguity. “Come get the treat. Come on. Good dog. No, you can’t get pets from Spencer. No. No. Come on. Oh my God, you’re dense. Come on, Colonel, mark!”

  It was that final command that did it, and Preston managed to get Colonel down to the creekside, where he quickly identified the decoy under a pile of leaves. Preston gave him lots of treats for that, but as he scooped the decoy up in gloved hands and locked it in his case, he wondered what the smell trigger had been for Spencer. Some dogs were trained to spot smoke—and their sense of smell was so acute that if a kid had been sitting next to a chain-smoking stranger, they’d pull that kid’s backpack out of a lineup during a high school drug search—which was incredibly awkward. Preston was glad he hadn’t been there for that—but he’d been very proud of that dog because it meant he’d trained it well.

  Preston and Damien’s home was actually a “lesser” house or cottage that sat behind the main farmhouse on the property. Preston had the thing repainted and refurbished after he and Damien had gotten together, as sort of an enticement to get Damien to move in with him. He’d even added a guest room and bath suite for his miserable brother or any other friend Damien might want over. When that hadn’t worked, Preston had built the chopper pad, and their arrangement seemed to work unless well-meaning colleagues dropped in out of the blue, interrupting what Preston had hoped to be a whole two days of Damien to himself.

  When Preston got inside, Damien was packing his duffel bag in their bedroom, hair wet from a quick shower, wearing a fresh set of clothes. Preston could hear the other shower going, and he looked at Damien in confusion.

  “Neither of you were particularly dirty,” Preston said shortly.

  “Yeah, but I want you to take Colonel to the laundry room. There’s two garbage bags in there—see if he hits on one, then tell me which one.”

  Oh. Preston knew where this was going. “Is Spencer washing with vinegar?”

  “Reluctantly, but yes. Go! We need to figure this thing out.”

  Preston took Colonel with him and was about to tell the dog to mark when Colonel did it without command. Nosing the grocery bag in front of the washer—and ignoring the one in front of the dryer—he gave a sharp bark and set his chin on his paws.

  This time Preston had no qualms about his treat. He was obviously marking something, right?

  When he got to the guest room, Spencer was washed and wearing Damien’s clothes, and Preston told the dog to “mark” one more time.

  Colonel sniffed around the room—twice—and when he came back to Spencer, he whined at his hands, like he was looking for treats. Spencer gave Preston a baleful look and petted the dog, even though Colonel was working and shouldn’t be petted right now. But Preston let it slide.

  “He’s not marking me,” Spencer said. “It must have been on my clothes.”

  Suddenly Colonel did a remarkable thing. He gave a faint woof and stood on his hind legs—which he was not supposed to do—and nuzzled Spencer’s smooth-shaven cheek, sniffing like mad, then moving to his neck.

  And sank down to his crouch and barked once and looked at Preston for a treat.

  Spencer frowned and touched his cheek and neck, and then looked at Colonel in surprise.

  “My aftershave?” he asked, surprised. “You liked my aftershave?”

  Colonel woofed one more time, and Preston gave him his treat and then told him to go play. As Preston turned around to walk out of the room, Spencer gave a joyful hello and all but hugged the dog as he pet him.

  “Hey, Preston!” Spencer called before Preston cleared the room. “Why are you so upset?”

  Preston closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. “Your perfume has ruined my dog,” he said—perhaps unfairly, but there you go. Months of training, and now they had to see if the dog had enough sense to leave the aftershave alone.

  Spencer snorted. “I just think your dog has the good sense to know a good-smelling man, don’t you, boy?”

  Preston turned around before he could see Colonel licking Spencer’s face, which was a no-no, a sign of a badly trained dog, and something Colonel hadn’t been able to quit doing, especially when Spencer visited.

  “What’s wrong?” Damien said as Preston stomped into their bedroom.

  “You’re leaving, and Spencer broke my dog.”

  Damien grimaced. “I’m sorry about leaving,” he said, reaching out to pull Preston into a hug. “But maybe that dog wasn’t supposed to be a working dog, have you ever thought of that?”

  “What use is he?” Preston wailed. Months. He’d spent months trying to train that dog to return to the police department.

  “Sh… listen.”

  Spencer was singing Colonel’s praises, telling him what a good dog he was, promising him treats and runs on the beach and long days sleeping in the sun.

  “But Spencer can’t have a dog in Glen’s apartment,” Preston told him.

  “No,” Damien said, his almond-shaped eyes creasing kindly at the corners. “But we can keep Spencer’s dog here.”

  Preston drew up short. “That… why would we do that?”

  “Because Spencer just flew out to get me so I could help keep our company afloat, and because he took over Glen’s time slot because Glen’s back hurt. Because he’s a good guy, and he deserves a dog, and until he finds a place to keep that one, I think we’re stuck with him.”

  Preston sighed and rested his forehead against Damien’s shoulder.

  “I hate that you have to go,” he said, feeling sad and irritated.

  “I know. But I’ll be back. Take care of my favorite dog handler, okay?”

  Preston held him tight. “Sure. And I’ll take care of Spencer’s damned dog too.”

  “It’s what dog handlers do best,” Damien soothed. They stayed there, in that hug, for a few heartbeats more. Preston thought he could probably wear Damien’s smell on his skin like Spencer wore aftershave.

  He was glad that Colonel wouldn’t scent that and mark it. That could be very inconvenient after Damien got back.

  Now Available

  Warm Heart

  By Amy Lane

  Search and Rescue: Book One

  Survive the adventure. Live to love.

  Following a family emergency, snowboarder Tevyn Moore and financier Mallory Armstrong leave Donner Pass in a blizzard… and barely survive the helicopter crash that follows. Stranded with few supplies and no shelter, Tevyn and Mallory—and their injured pilot—are forced to rely on each other.

  The mountain leaves no room for evasion, and Tevyn and Mal must confront the feelings that have been brewing between them for the past five years. Mallory has seen Tevyn through injury and victory. Can Tevyn see that Mallory’s love is real?

  Mallory’s job is risk assessment. Tevyn’s job is full-on risk. But to stay alive, Mallory needs to take s
ome gambles and Tevyn needs to have faith in someone besides himself. Can the bond they discover on the mountain see them to rescue and beyond?

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Now Available

  Silent Heart

  By Amy Lane

  Search and Rescue: Book Two

  Dog wrangler Preston Echo has been in love with his brother’s best friend, copilot, and business partner since high school—and Damien Ward knew it. As Preston grew into a stunning, hard-willed man, Damien began to dream of Preston too.

  Then Damien almost died in a helicopter crash. While his physical wounds are slowly healing, the blows to his self-confidence and goodwill are almost worse. His body is broken and he’s afraid to fly—how can Preston love him now?

  When Preston’s brother goes on a search-and-rescue mission and disappears in an earthquake zone in Mexico, Preston and Damien are thrown together in an effort to find him and bring him back. Preston’s merciless honesty—and relentless passion—may leverage Damien into his bed, but can Damien overcome his fears to allow himself to stay there?

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Award winning author AMY LANE lives in a crumbling crapmansion with a couple of teenagers, a passel of furbabies, and a bemused spouse. She has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action-adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, romantic suspense, and romance, teaches the occasional writing class, and likes to pretend her very simple life is as exciting as the lives of the people who live in her head. She’ll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.

  Website: www.greenshill.com

  Blog: www.writerslane.blogspot.com

  Email: amylane@greenshill.com

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  Twitter: @amymaclane