Ultimate Courage

by Piper J. Drake

  She hesitated a moment longer, then stepped inside. “Let’s give the day a try.”

  Chapter Three

  Hope’s Crossing Kennels was in need of a serious administrative overhaul.

  Elisa shook her head as she assessed the piles of forms from previous lessons. Oh, the piles were neat enough. Brandon Forte and Alex Rojas, and the currently absent David Cruz, kept the front desk clear of clutter. But the truth was hiding in the deep drawer where they kept release forms from previous classes. All the forms had been dumped in there and forgotten.

  Technically, if an incident ever occurred during a class, they did have access to the emergency contacts and liability releases because they weren’t scattered or trashed. It’d just take forever to find a specific form if a person had to sift through all of these. Plus, from what some of the friendlier dog owners had told her, they’d had to fill out the same form every time they came to a class. Weekly, in many cases. And who knew where forms went after they didn’t fit in the drawer anymore?

  “Inefficient,” Elisa muttered.

  Then she glanced around the empty waiting area to be sure there were no witnesses because she’d probably twitched.

  They had a good laptop set up at the front with basic software for the usual business office needs. More than sufficient to set up a client database, scan the forms, and have them on file and searchable with the appropriate metadata. The correct information at a moment’s notice meant loyal clients wouldn’t have to keep filling out the forms every time they came.

  She didn’t want to snoop around on a computer when her duties so far had been limited to greeting and asking people to fill out a form. A paper form. With random pens.

  Damn it, the pens didn’t even match. They’d been grabbed from anywhere, apparently. Others had been chewed a bit on the ends, and she was pretty sure the chewing hadn’t been done by any dog. And some of them disappeared as people absentmindedly took them with them.

  Shuddering, she’d tossed the chewed pens in the garbage. No way should any clients have to use those.

  The first class would last about an hour, according to Alex. He’d also said there was an hour break between classes, too. So she had a whole bunch of time to sit and wipe imaginary dust off a clean desk area.

  She studied the laptop again. It didn’t even have a screen saver set to turn on after a specified amount of time. No password protection. If she hadn’t been sitting there, anyone who walked in could sit down at the laptop and have access to…

  Nothing.

  Elisa blinked. She hadn’t even realized she’d started to poke around on the desktop of the computer. It had access to Wi-Fi for Internet browsing plus connection to a printer and a scanner, but that was it. She couldn’t see any other computers on the network but there had to be. Both Brandon and Alex had mentioned offices farther down the hallway. At least the network security had this laptop separated from the rest of its computers.

  To her, what she’d found indicated someone here was IT savvy. But if one of them was, why hadn’t anyone made a client database and reduced the need for all this paper?

  Gah. Forget waiting for Alex or Brandon to come back. How mad could they really get at her, anyway? The worst they could do was fire her, and this was just a trial run. If they did offer her a steady job and she did decide to take it, she’d want to get a better system in place. And if this job opportunity didn’t work out, she’d be saving somebody else in the future.

  Good enough reasoning for her.

  Opening up one of the applications on the desktop, she set up and formatted a simple spreadsheet. It could easily be imported into a more sophisticated database later, but this would be sufficient to at least start organizing the data on their clients. Turning to the pile of papers from today’s class, she dove in. Once she entered those, she’d go for the deep drawer.

  It was nice to exercise her organizational skills. The few jobs she’d been able to pick up over the last six months had been under-the-table jobs at mom-and-pop shops, running a cash register or serving ice cream. Here and there, even last night, she’d considered a retail job or something with a chance at benefits, but once she’d woke up in the morning with a clear head, she’d decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Anything that required filling out a W-4 might be a bad idea, at least for the time being.

  After a while, Elisa straightened in her chair and sighed. She rolled her shoulders to ease some of the tension caused by working at a laptop and stretched her arms over her head. Taking in a deep breath, she let it out slowly, then grimaced as her left wrist throbbed. She’d taken off the brace in the midst of her data entry because it hampered her typing speed. Probably should put it back on.

  An ice pack landed on the desk next to her.

  She jumped, reaching for her neat piles of paperwork, but the ice pack was well away from them. Then she looked up at the man on the other side of the desk.

  The expression on Alex’s face might’ve been irritation. Difficult to tell because his mouth was perpetually set in a hard line, and it was hard to read expression in a person’s eyes when all you ever looked at was any place on the face but the eyes. Because direct eye contact was asking for trouble.

  She shuddered.

  Not with everyone. Maybe. But better safe than sorry. Better not to if she didn’t plan to get to know someone in any case. She’d rather have a polite, nice impression of everyone she came into contact with, and not see the potential monster lurking behind the public face.

  “Hey.” Alex’s gruff word brought her out of her musings.

  “I’m sorry.” The apology came immediately, followed by the guilt. She was always sorry, even if she didn’t know what she’d done yet.

  The corners of his mouth turned downward into a frown. “You haven’t done anything wrong as far as I know.”

  She swallowed. Oh, good. “I wasn’t sure if I could work on the laptop, but if I could show you—”

  He held up a finger, and she shut up. Right away. Her chest constricted. He was going to be mad. She should have known better than to mess with their laptop. She’d overstepped her bounds. Miserable, she started to put her careful piles back in the drawer as quickly as she could.

  “Hold up for a second.” There was exasperation in his voice, and she froze.

  She should’ve waited to hear the rest of what he said. Damn, she should’ve…

  “First, put the ice pack on your wrist.” His tone wasn’t angry, and there was no edge of censure to his words. “Second, when was the last time you had something to eat?”

  “Huh?” Surprised, she looked up into his face and was caught by his dark gaze. Now that she was giving him direct eye contact, it was hard to look away. There was a magnetism about him, and a calm that drew her in, like she was being pulled into the eye of a storm.

  It was…enticing.

  He held her in his stare for a long moment and she didn’t want to look away, but then he seemed to shake himself free, too.

  “We’re ordering hot subs for lunch. I wanted to be sure to include something for you in the order. Do you like Italian?” Gruff, but kind. Maybe awkward. He kept his sentences short, imparting the information he wanted to communicate with minimum verbiage.

  She reached out for the ice pack without breaking their eye contact. Suddenly, she didn’t want to. Self-preservation or no. She couldn’t read him very well, but she did notice that he seemed to like it better if she did meet his gaze. The cool pack was an instant relief on her wrist, and she berated herself silently for having ignored it. It needed to heal.

  “Italian is fine; great even.” She ventured hesitantly. “If you’re ordering hot subs, I could go for an eggplant parm or meatball parm if they have one or the other.”

  He nodded.

  “How much?” She started to go for her wallet in her back pocket.

  He shook his head in a sharp negative. “Lunch is on us.”

  The statement brooked no argument.

  She subsid
ed. Unsure. “Thank you.”

  “Serena was hungry anyway.” He glanced out the window toward a house beyond the main yard.

  Elisa drew her brows together. “Serena?”

  “Boom.” He turned his attention back to her and the full impact hit her, making her breath catch in her throat. “Everyone at Revolution MMA and her school calls her Boom, but her real name is Serena. It’s just me and her. Her mother passed away a few years ago before we moved here. I guess because it’s mostly me and Forte and Cruz, her nickname became more of a habit than we intended. But Serena likes being called Boom. Says it makes her sound awesome.”

  Of course. Boom was fun, but it was obviously a nickname. Warm pleasure spread through Elisa at being included in the circle of people who knew the engaging young girl’s real name. It’d been a while since she’d been included in such a way. A small thing. Probably not significant to Alex or the people at Hope’s Crossing or maybe even Serena herself, but it meant something to Elisa.

  “Next question.” He reached over the desk and tapped the top of the laptop. “What’s with the spreadsheet?”

  “Oh.” She swallowed. Well, best to give him her logic and see whether he liked what she’d done. So she turned the laptop screen toward him. “I thought it might be helpful to organize your client information, all the stuff you gather on the forms. There’s an identification number for every client so we can scan in the filled-out forms and associate them with each record.”

  He grunted. “Nice. We’ve been meaning to do something like this. No one’s had the time yet.”

  “Oh.” She was saying that a lot. But she wasn’t sure if he liked what she’d done or not. “I kept it in a spreadsheet so it could be imported into any database you’d want.”

  “Makes sense.” He tapped the completed forms. “There’s a scanner in one of the back offices. I’ll show you where that is tomorrow so you can scan and set up the digital files on this laptop.”

  “It should be backed up to a network-shared drive.” The recommendation popped out before she could hold back. She winced. She shouldn’t be correcting him.

  He huffed out a brief laugh. “We’ll talk to Cruz about it when he gets back. We wanted this laptop separate, but if we do start keeping client information on it, it should be backed up somehow. Could be we’ll get secure cloud space.”

  “Cloud.” She repeated the term. Music to her ears. Not every office or even corporate organization was familiar with the concept of storing their data in the cloud yet. “That’d be good, too.”

  One corner of his mouth ticked upward in a hint of a smile. “We’ll take a few minutes to show Forte your format and see if he wants to store any additional info. But so far, this looks way better than all that paper.”

  She smiled, relieved he approved of what she’d done. “Yes. Definitely.”

  He cleared his throat. “Next class should start arriving shortly. After that, lunch.”

  “Okay.” Once he left, she sagged into the computer chair and chewed on her lip.

  Alone again, she was a weird combination of relieved and disappointed he was gone. He had a knack for sneaking up on her. Not exactly the best thing for her heart rate. But once she’d realized he was there, his presence had filled the whole room with its intensity. Her entire focus had been on him. But not in a fearful way. Not really. She’d freaked out a little but she only had herself to blame. Her brain had been running in circles instead of listening to what he’d actually intended to communicate.

  She needed to work through her issues. Preferably sooner rather than later.

  But he hadn’t seemed bothered by her odd behavior. Thankfully. He was patient in his own way. And she appreciated it. Definitely a good trait in an employer.

  It didn’t hurt that he was incredibly gorgeous, either. But she wasn’t noticing his charms at all. Nope. Job first. Rebuild her life second. Men, later.

  Much later.

  * * *

  “How many dogs do you have on property?”

  Rojas did his best not to grimace. Elisa’s hesitant tone wasn’t necessarily an indicator of how she would be with the dogs. From long years of experience, he’d learned people could be completely different in their interactions with other humans versus with animals. But if Miss Hall was going to work for them, they all needed to know she could face the kind of dogs they worked with on her own without fear.

  She didn’t have to be able to control the dogs, though that would’ve been a bonus, but for her safety and the dogs’ well-being, she needed to be able to interact with them without triggering their aggression. Some things could be learned, but it’d be best to see how she did right off the bat with minimal coaching.

  “We’ve got one dog here permanently at this time. Another four or five could be with us a few months at a time, some as long as a year, as we work on their training before they’re placed. I had two breeding dogs here, but it was time for them both to retire so we found them permanent homes with families. We’re not sure if we’re going to continue a breeding program on site. Forte’s always experimenting with the business plan.” He led her out the back of the main house and across the covered walkway that connected to the kennels. “We’ve never had more than a dozen staying with us long term at any given time, but we have the kennel space if we need it.”

  “That’s a lot of dogs.” Her voice was quiet, but more reserved than anything else.

  Surprisingly, she wasn’t fidgeting or shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to another. None of the anxious or nervous body language that came from someone about to meet big dogs for the first time. Even if a person was looking forward to it, they tended to project their nervous excitement. But Elisa Hall had learned somewhere to stuff all of her nervous tells away and project a non-threatening, almost docile presence instead.

  The possible reasons for it made his blood boil. The way she dropped her eyes, jumped when someone caught her by surprise, flinched when someone—mostly him—made sudden moves. It all pointed to a very shitty history, and it made him see red just thinking about the possibilities.

  “Ever been around more than one or two dogs at a time?” They didn’t usually have many of their dogs out at the same time without a handler for each dog, but the civilian classes could get unruly. Dogs got loose occasionally. He needed to know if she might panic.

  “Yes.” Her answer was soft. There might’ve been a hint of darkness there. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a good memory. “The place wasn’t like this. The people weren’t as nice.”

  He tipped his head to one side. “You think we are?”

  She nodded. “You are.”

  The conviction in her tone caught him by surprise. She wasn’t leaving any room for doubt, not even for herself.

  “You seem sure.” He kept his own tone deliberately light. “You could be wrong about us.”

  “I could.” She pressed her lips together, watching the dogs. “I have been in the past, but I decided I wouldn’t let that stop me from meeting new people and giving myself the chance to be right again.”

  And that was something he needed to store away to consider at another time because anger was definitely not something he wanted to broadcast to the dogs the first time he introduced her to any of them.

  He took a deep breath. Time to get a better read on her and see if she could maybe have a place here.

  Alex stopped at the first kennel and gestured down the line with one hand. “Why don’t you take a walk down the line and choose one of the dogs to meet? Don’t actually try to touch any of them yet. We’ll do introductions as the next step.”

  “Okay. I can do that.” She said it out loud, but he got the impression she was talking to herself.

  She walked slowly down the line of kennels, pausing to look at each dog. Every dog had a different personality, and it showed in the way each reacted to her. One or two came right up to the chain link of the kennel trying to get a good look at her or catch a better whiff of her scent. There
were a couple of reserved tail wags for her, too. Others stayed lying or sitting where they were, the only sign of their interest in the way their ears came up to listen in her direction.

  “These aren’t all the same breed, are they?” she asked as she continued to walk from kennel to kennel, almost at the end.

  Good eye.

  “Three of these are Belgian Malinois, and the rest are German Shepherd Dogs. Easiest way to tell the difference right now is by coat color.” He paused. “All of our current GSDs are black and tans with black saddles across their backs. The Belgian Malinois are…mostly tan,” he finished lamely.

  He needed practice explaining the differences to a non-dog person, obviously.

  “The German Shepherds are bigger, too, longer fur.” She made the statement slowly, and he wondered if it was because she wasn’t sure she was right or wasn’t sure how he’d react to her making a statement rather than asking a question.

  “German Shepherd Dogs,” he corrected. She hunched her shoulders, and he cursed himself inwardly. It’d come out matter of fact to him, but she was pretty sensitive to correction. “We try to make sure to refer to the dogs by their correct breed name or a standard like ‘GSD.’ It avoids confusion when we’re working with some of our clients.”

  Still standing about midway down the corridor, she looked back at him and nodded. “I’ll try to remember.”

  Good recovery. None of the men of Hope’s Crossing Kennels, least of all him, was great at saying the right thing at the right time. He didn’t want to tiptoe around on eggshells every single moment with someone he’d be working with on a daily basis. But if she could take constructive feedback, that was a start.

  “But, yeah, the GSDs tend to be bigger. It’s a good observation.” She straightened under the kudos, so he figured he was coming out about even with her. Maybe with the right environment, she’d develop a thicker skin and more solid confidence. “They can outweigh a Belgian Malinois by ten or more pounds, and they’ve got some other physical differences you start to notice once you’re around them more.”