Penny Jordan Collection: Just One Night

by Penny Jordan

  Piers had arrived at his godmother’s last night intending only to pay her a fleeting visit on his way back from his parents’, but on finding that she had sprained her ankle whilst falling over her wretched dog, and that her main concern about her incapacity was the fact that she would be unable to take him to his weekly training class, he had felt obliged to offer to perform this chore for her.

  ‘Oh, Piers, would you?’ she had breathed with such evident relief. ‘Do you hear that, Ben?’ she had cooed at the miscreant.

  ‘Uncle Piers is going to take you to your training class.’

  Uncle Piers! Piers had gritted his teeth and manfully resisted the temptation to say what he was thinking.

  Five months earlier, when his godmother had first got Ben, his parents had told him how concerned they were about the wisdom of her acquiring such a large, unruly dog.

  ‘Why on earth has she got him?’ Piers had asked them frowningly.

  ‘Well, she was a bit vague on the subject,’ his father had told him. ‘However, it seems that he came to her via the veterinary practice where she takes that dreadful cat she’s adopted.’

  Piers’s parents were both slightly younger than Emily Latham, who had befriended them as a young couple when they had first married.

  Ten years ago, just after Piers had returned from a stint of working abroad, her husband had died and, remembering all the small kindnesses she had done for him as a boy and her generosity as a godmother, both with her time and her love as well, Piers had made sure that he continued to visit her just as often as he could.

  She and her late husband had had no children, and Piers suspected it was because of this that she was inclined to have such a rose-coloured and sentimental view of children and animals.

  Listening to his parents, Piers had well been able to imagine how easily she had been prevailed upon to take in someone else’s abandoned dog, and he had further gathered from a chance remark of his godmother’s that some young woman at the practice had been responsible for ‘introducing’ her to Ben. To encourage an elderly widow to take on a dog that was plainly quite unsuitable for her was, in his opinion, a highly irresponsible thing for anyone to do, much less someone who was supposed to be professionally involved with animals. But despite all his carefully logical arguments his godmother had remained obdurate: Ben was one of life’s victims, a poor, misunderstood canine who, far from needing the strong hand of a firm disciplinarian, rather needed to have his psychoses treated with tenderness, love and indulgence.

  Surveying the carnage Ben had wrought in his godmother’s once immaculate garden, Piers had been unconvinced. However, his visit to Emily Latham had a dual purpose. Thanks to the increasing demand for the complex software programs produced by the business Piers ran, he was having to look for larger premises, and that had prompted him to consider moving away from the city, where he currently lived and worked, back to the town where he had grown up and where he knew that property was much less expensive.

  He was, he reflected now, at the dangerous age of thirty-seven, not so very far off the landmark birthday of forty, and ready to eschew the fast-paced city life he had lived for the last decade for something a little gentler. He was also ready to trade the single life he had enjoyed, for something more companionable and cosy. A wife? Children? He wasn’t against marriage as such, but perhaps he was too choosy because, as yet, he had not met ‘the right woman’, nor even come close to doing so.

  Now, thanks to Ben and his godmother’s painful ankle, he had had to put back the appointments he had made to view several properties in the area in order instead to take Ben to his training class.

  ‘How many has he been to?’ he had asked his godmother as she had tussled with Ben and the dog’s reluctance to wear his collar, tenderly loosening it a notch.

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure. I think this is his third. Of course, we did miss some of the classes in the first set I took him to. He got dreadfully upset because there was a dog there he didn’t like, and the teacher suggested that it might be as well if he didn’t attend for a few weeks. He was so disappointed, poor dog, and I really felt for him when all the other dogs graduated with good marks. He looked so downcast.’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ Piers had agreed dryly, surveying the troublemaker with dispassionate eyes.

  ‘He’s a very sensitive animal,’ his godmother had persisted gently. ‘And so clever. He always knows when the telephone’s going to ring and he comes to find me to tell me.’

  Piers, who had heard the sorry tale of how the dog had chewed through the handset cord, had forborne to comment on this remarkable display of canine intelligence. His godmother always had been a soft touch.

  Now, as he crisply commanded Ben to sit, he turned to investigate the mess of chewed paper on the rear seat and floor of the car, cursing under his breath as he realised the dog had munched on a magazine he had been keeping because of an article that contained some information he had wanted to reread.

  Judging from the diverse array of cars in the practice’s car park, its dog owners must span the full spectrum of human personalities, Piers acknowledged as his glance moved from a gleaming brand-new top-of-the-range Mercedes to a battered Land Rover and on to a pretty red and cream Citroën.

  His own Jaguar was, he had to admit, a small piece of pure self-indulgence, a sleek dark maroon sports model which he had bought in a moment of uncharacteristic impulsiveness.

  ‘What happened to the eco-friendly estate car you said you were intending to buy?’ Jason Sawyer, his partner, had asked him wryly when he had seen it. Jason, with a wife and four children, often bemoaned the fact that the only really suitable car for his lifestyle was the large people-carrier which his wife drove, leaving him to use the family’s second car.

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ Piers had admitted.

  ‘Enjoy it whilst you can,’ Jason had told him. ‘Belinda is making noises about us buying a camper van. She says it will be ideal for touring holidays with the kids!’

  As Piers approached the entrance to the practice he saw a large notice pinned to the door with an arrow on it, stating ‘Training Classes—this way.’

  Following the direction of the arrow round the side of the building, he could see a long, low range of outhouses in front of him which had obviously been converted for a variety of uses. It was plain which one was his destination from the small crowd of owners and dogs milling around outside it, all of them surrounding a small red-headed girl dressed in a white tee shirt that lovingly moulded itself to her softly rounded breasts and a pair of jeans which moulded themselves equally tenderly to a femininely curved bottom.

  Very sexy, was Piers’s first thought—his second was that it was no wonder the majority of dog owners surrounding her were male.

  It was obvious that she was the class’s teacher, but Piers deliberately held off from approaching her. It was his habit to assess everything carefully and detachedly before allowing himself to become involved with anyone. A little caution, in his view, was no bad thing, but Ben, it seemed, had other ideas. A momentary lapse of attention, a small slackening of Piers’s firm hand on the dog’s lead, and Ben seized his chance.

  Georgia had seen Ben and his unfamiliar human attachment arrive out of the corner of her eye, but she had been too busy welcoming her class with small treats and warm words of welcome to pay too much attention—at least not openly. Inwardly, though, there was nothing wrong with the speed of her reactions, nor the lightning way that her senses registered the awesomely male aspects of Ben’s handler. Tall, broad-shouldered, well muscled, if the way his tee shirt was being flattened against his torso by the breeze was anything to go by. Very thick short dark hair, a rather grim expression in those bitter-chocolate-brown eyes, it was true, and a certain very determined compression about the folded line of his mouth, but otherwise quite staggeringly good-looking, and more sexy in his jeans and tee shirt than any man except an actor as seen in a chocolate-bar advert had any right to be.

  Ben, me
anwhile, for reasons which only a similarly attuned canine mind could appreciate, had spotted the human who, so far as he was concerned, was responsible for his present blissful lifestyle in doggie heaven with Mrs Latham. He’d made a connection in his brain between Georgia’s brief appearance in the waiting room at the vet’s and his re-homing with Mrs Latham and, being the affectionate animal that he was, he quite naturally wanted to show his appreciation.

  Having convinced his besotted owner that a collar worn anything less than loose enough for him to slip his head through and free himself from at will was an instrument of torture highly likely to cause him death by strangulation, as soon as he spotted Georgia he slipped his head from his collar with practised ease and tore across the yard towards her, scattering pets and owners as he did so, launching himself at Georgia and almost knocking her to the ground with the force of his enthusiastic greeting.

  ‘Ben...down,’ Georgia instructed firmly.

  Tongue lolling, Ben obligingly wagged his tail.

  ‘Ben,’ Georgia repeated, ‘down.’

  Ben nuzzled her neck lovingly.

  ‘Dr Dolittle, I presume,’ Piers drawled sarcastically as he reached his escapee charge and unceremoniously yanked him off Georgia by the scruff of his neck, instructing him in an ominously quiet voice, ‘Sit.’

  Ben knew when a little diplomacy was called for. Obligingly he sat very heavily on Piers’s feet, leaning lovingly against him and looking up into his eyes.

  Ignoring this touching appeal, Piers sternly refastened Ben’s collar—several notches tighter.

  Georgia knew that it was up to her to take charge, but for some reason her thought processes seemed to have turned to gooey marshmallow. All she could focus on was how wonderfully broad Piers’s chest was, how flat his belly, how corded with male muscles his arms were, as Ben twisted and turned in his hold, giving sharp, short barks of feigned distress.

  ‘I don’t know who was responsible for foisting this delinquent hound on my godmother,’ Piers was saying through gritted teeth, ‘but if I ever find out...’

  So he was Mrs Latham’s godson. Sternly reminding herself that she was a trained professional, and that right now her attention ought to be focused on her canine pupils and not on the six-foot hunk of hormone-level-raising male gorgeousness standing in front of her, Georgia dipped her hand into the box of rewards she had put down at her feet, proffering one to Ben.

  ‘Good boy, Ben. Sit...’ she cajoled him.

  ‘Don’t—’ Piers began sharply, and then stopped as Ben suddenly turned into the most demure dog imaginable, giving Georgia a liquid-eyed look of love before taking the titbit she was offering him.

  ‘Come on, everyone,’ Georgia instructed her small group. ‘Let’s go inside and get started.’

  * * *

  Once inside the large, empty room it quickly became obvious to Piers that, whilst the majority of the other dogs there were responding to Georgia’s careful instructions to their owners, when it came to doggy obedience Ben was in a class of his own.

  When he had disrupted the class for the fifth time, by grinning wickedly at the slightly nervous collie bitch to one side of him and standing, Piers was quite sure deliberately, on the tail of the dog on the other side, Piers decided he had had enough.

  There was no doubt about it: Ben was a master manipulator and most definitely not the dog for a woman as hopelessly incapable of disciplining him as his godmother.

  Several yards away Georgia tried to keep her mind on what she was doing. Ben’s waywardness was communicating itself to the rest of the class, and Georgia could see the sardonic look in Piers’s eyes as the dogs grew restless, their concentration broken by Ben’s sabotage.

  Ben’s trouble wasn’t that he wasn’t intelligent enough, Georgia reflected; it was more that he was too intelligent. Too intelligent and far too energetic for his current sedate lifestyle. Setters were gun dogs; they needed exercise and lots of it, and equally large amounts of firm handling.

  The class came to an end and, as was her custom, Georgia made a point of going up to each dog to pet it before it and its owner left.

  Ben she left till the last. Not, she assured herself, for any reason other than that she was curious to know why Mrs Latham had not brought him to the class.

  ‘My godmother has hurt her ankle,’ Piers informed Georgia curtly after she had introduced herself and asked him where Mrs Latham was.

  Close up, Piers was even more excitingly masculine than she had imagined. Stern, cold-eyed men were not normally her style, Georgia admitted; she preferred good humour to good looks any day of the week. But something was quite definitely causing that little quiver of female appreciation she could feel disturbing her normal level-headed calmness.

  However, it was plain that Piers was nowhere near as impressed by her as she was by him, Georgia conceded ruefully as she heard him telling her curtly, ‘If today’s evidence of the success of your dog-training classes is anything to go by, I’m not surprised that Ben is proving so obdurate. Have you any professional qualifications for this?’

  Immediately Georgia’s hackles rose.

  ‘I’m a fully trained vet,’ she informed him shortly, ‘and, yes, I have been trained to—’

  ‘You may be trained, but Ben most certainly isn’t,’ Piers cut across her coldly. ‘He’s too much of a handful for my godmother, and...’

  As she listened to him Georgia’s heart began to sink. What he was saying was quite true, of course, but in his short life Ben had already had two homes and, despite his wilful determination to resist instruction, there was no doubt that in his own way he was devoted to Mrs Latham. Heavens knew what would happen to Ben if her godson were to persuade her to part with him.

  Crossing her fingers mentally, Georgia told Piers semi-truthfully, ‘Setters can initially be a bit wild, but once they get over that they calm down tremendously.’

  ‘I’m sure they do,’ Piers agreed, giving Georgia a narrow-eyed look, ‘provided they are living in the right environment, and the right environment for Ben is not, in my opinion, the home of a sedentary woman who’ll not see sixty again.’

  ‘Ben has already been re-homed once,’ Georgia told Piers protectively. ‘It’s a traumatic experience for a dog to be parted from an owner it’s become attached to.’

  ‘Indeed. However, I’m sure you’ll agree that it would be an equally traumatic experience for my godmother if, as fortunately did not happen on this occasion, Ben were to pull away from her again and, instead of merely causing her to stumble and hurt her foot, dash out into the road with possible fatal consequences for himself.’

  Georgia bit her lip. He did have a point, but she still felt she had to defend Ben.

  ‘Once Ben can walk properly on the lead that kind of thing won’t happen,’ she informed Piers.

  ‘Once! Don’t you mean if, or more probably never?’ Piers asked.

  He looked down at the dog sternly. Ben smiled back at him, and then tensed as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a cat strolling round the corner of the building. Springing to his feet, he tugged hard on his lead, forgetting that Piers had tightened his collar.

  Piers gave an exclamation of irritation as Ben’s leap for freedom caught him off guard and slightly off balance, and, instinctively knowing the dog’s strength, Georgia reached out to grab hold of Piers’s arm to help steady him.

  Afterwards, Piers told himself that it was the feel of Georgia’s soft breast pressing against him, the scent of her clean perfume in his nostrils and the softness of her hair brushing against his bare arm that had caused him momentarily to slacken his grip on Ben’s lead. After all, Georgia was a stunningly attractive woman, and the sight of those soft, oh so well rounded breasts jiggling around inside her tee shirt whilst she had been running up and down the room with the dogs had left a lasting impression on his brain—and his body!

  As Ben tore after the cat both Georgia and Piers shouted commands to him to stop, but it was Philip who was actually respo
nsible for him coming to an abrupt halt as Ben turned the corner and ran full tilt into him.

  Rushing across to take hold of Ben’s lead, Georgia apologised to her boss.

  ‘How is the mare?’ she asked him anxiously.

  ‘Fine. Both she and the foal are doing very well, although it was touch-and-go for a while.’ Philip frowned as he turned from Georgia to Piers and asked, ‘Isn’t it Piers Hathersage?’ He explained, when Piers acknowledged his recognition of him, ‘I thought I remembered you from school. What are you doing these days?’

  Discreetly Georgia left them to renew old acquaintanceships, at the same time making a mental note to ask Philip to have a word with Piers and hopefully persuade him to see Ben in a much better light than he currently did.

  ‘He’s not a bad dog,’ she told Helen later, when she was relating to her what had happened.

  ‘Not bad, no,’ Helen replied, ‘but you’ve got to admit that he is too much for Mrs Latham.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Georgia agreed. ‘It’s such a shame, though, because she’s devoted to him and Ben thinks the world of her.’

  ‘Oh, he’s told you that, has he?’ Helen teased her, adding, ‘I think you’re quite smitten with him yourself. Or is it someone else who has aroused your interest?’

  Refusing to rise to Helen’s bait, Georgia shook her head and exclaimed, ‘Is that the time? I must go otherwise I shall be late for this afternoon’s clinic.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  BY THE time he had driven Ben back to his godmother’s, Piers had made up his mind. The dog had to go. However, when he let himself into the house he found Emily Latham in a state of some agitation. Her sister, it transpired, had telephoned her in Piers’s absence asking her if she would like to take the place of her friend who had had to drop out of a three-week cruise of the Mediterranean at the last minute.

  ‘Everything’s paid for,’ she told Piers. ‘All I would have to do is pack and take the train to Mary’s...’

  ‘So what’s stopping you?’ Piers asked her with a smile.