Tears unnerved him. He wanted to do something. Comfort her. But what could he do? He was Walter’s lawyer, and she was shedding tears for a man old enough to be her grandfather. Great-grandfather, for heaven’s sake.
She sat down and, with shaking hands, pulled some crumpled tissues from her purse. Tom sat, too. Brutus laid his head on Tom’s thigh and whimpered deep in his throat. Poor little devil. His over-jutting jaw gave him such a pathetic appearance.
For the first time Tom felt a pang of sympathy for the animal. He went to pet him. Maddy went to pet Brutus at the same time and Tom found his hand on top of hers. He left his hand there, hers warm and smooth beneath his palm. Her fingers curled into Brutus’s fur.
Tom turned to face her and found her looking mutely up at him, her eyes puffy with tears, her nose red. She seemed fragile and alone. Something seemed to turn deep inside him and he felt overwhelmed by the urge to hug her and comfort her. To stroke her hair and kiss away her tears.
He held her gaze for a moment longer than he knew he should. Then he stopped himself. He must not get involved in any way with this woman, not when he had such grave misgivings about her.
But he couldn’t resist gently squeezing her hand before he took his away. For a moment longer, she left her hand on Brutus’s neck where his head lay on Tom’s leg.
As she caressed the dog, her fingers trailed along Tom’s thigh. Tom felt himself respond—that surprising arousal he’d felt before at her touch. He felt a mixture of relief and disappointment when she took her hand away and folded both hands together on her lap.
He was angry with himself. How could he let himself get sexually aroused at a funeral? It wasn’t right. Awkwardly he propped the hymnbook over his lap to disguise the evidence.
He stared straight ahead at the altar. The service was ending and the pallbearers were lifting the coffin onto their shoulders. Suddenly Brutus was gone, scrambling off Tom’s lap and up the aisle. Maddy started forward but, on impulse, Tom stayed her. He wasn’t sure why.
The little brindle dog trotted purposefully toward the casket and then sat on his hindquarters at its head. Startled, the pallbearers stopped their procession. Brutus began to howl—a long, heartrending howl that made the hairs stand up on the back of Tom’s neck.
Maddy clutched Tom’s arm. There was a stunned silence in the church so that Brutus’s wailing reverberated around the walls. Then he gave a final whimper and was still, laying his head on his front paws. Shocked murmurs rose in a wave around him.
Tom got up and walked up the aisle. “Brutus,” he said in his best alpha-male voice. Brutus looked mournfully up at him. Then he trotted obediently to Tom and rested his head against his leg.
Tom picked the animal up and carried him back to his pew. He left him on his lap, unable to say anything for the emotions that were churning inside him.
Maddy was right. This ugly, greedy creature, which humped inappropriately, peed indiscriminately, and had who knew what other dreadful habits, had suffered a very real loss.
But while Maddy had been empathic enough to sense the innocent animal’s pain, Tom had ridiculed it. Tom, partner-to-be, always prided himself on developing a good understanding with the people he dealt with on a professional basis. So far, he’d bombed out badly with his new canine client.
Sniffing back her tears, Maddy ruffled and caressed the dark fur around Brutus’s neck in silence as the church emptied respectfully around them.
She didn’t speak until everyone else had gone.
“Poor little guy,” she whispered to Brutus, “but it’s all right, you’ve got me now.” She turned to Tom. “Thank heaven you were here,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”
Aware of being in church Maddy spoke in a hushed voice. She wouldn’t tease Tom about the leader-of-the-pack thing. They were past that now. She could see the hunky big lawyer was shaken by Brutus’s performance.
“You . . . you were right about the mourning,” he said.
She nodded in agreement. “Incredible wasn’t it? Pure instinct. Cathartic.” Her voice caught.“I . . . I think we all feel like doing that when we lose someone we love. But people are too inhibited to let go.”
Her mother had died when she was sixteen, and Maddy’d never forget how she’d wanted to howl her pain to the heavens. She twisted her amethyst ring around her finger. The ring had been her mother’s and Maddy rarely took it off.
“Do you think he’ll be all right now?”
Tom’s face tightened and she wondered if he had lost someone he loved. He was silent for a moment. Then, with a nod, he indicated Brutus. “Yes,” he said, “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
She sniffed back the last of her tears. “Remember the vet said once he met a new alpha—?”
He cut her off. “I remember.”
She took a deep, steadying breath. “It went well. The funeral service I mean. But don’t you think it’s weird that out of all those people, no one knew Walter was a millionaire?”
Tom nodded. “It’s not uncommon for eccentric people to hide their wealth. But usually they’re more reclusive than Walter appeared to be.Yeah. As his lawyer I shouldn’t really say it, but I think it’s weird.”
“I wonder what they’ll think when they find out.” Surely they would react with the same disbelief she had.
“Well, the will is not public knowledge yet. And it still has to go through probate. Other than you and Father Andrew, no one outside my office knows who Walter’s beneficiaries are.”
Uh. And Jerome. He was Walter’s family. She’d answered his questions about the inheritance quite happily.
“It was a good send-off. For Walter.” She looked around the now-empty church and focused on a stained-glass image of a dove of peace in the large window above the altar. She found it comforting. “Eighty-two was a good age.”
“It was.”
She patted Brutus again and stood up. It was time to be joining the cortege to the cemetery. Tom stood up, too, holding Brutus in his arms. He seemed a bit stunned by what had happened.
“Well,” she said slowly, “Walter’s gone, but we’re still here and I’ve got Brutus. I guess . . . I guess it’s all part of the great circle of life.”
“As Mufasa said to Simba.”
Shocked, Maddy looked up at Tom. “Like . . .like in The Lion King, you mean?”
He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as if regretting what he’d said. “Yeah.”
She looked at him, frowning. “You like animated movies?”
He shrugged. Brutus licked his chin.Tom wiped it on his suit collar. “I . . . uh . . . watch them with my young nieces sometimes.”
“Really?” Maddy said, unable to mask her surprise.
“The Lion King is one of their favorites.”
“Mine, too,” she said. “Shrek?”
He shrugged again. “The kids like him.”
“What about Aladdin? I love Aladdin.”
“Only the ones when Robin Williams voices the genie.” He paused. “I, uh, mean the kids prefer those.”
“Me, too.”
She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. Not with stuffy Tom O’Brien. She found herself unable to resist teasing him.
“What about The Little Mermaid?”
His laugh echoed around the empty church. “That’s pushing it. Even for the fondest of uncles.”
Maddy couldn’t help smiling a secret smile. So. She’d suspected there was a sense of humor lurking somewhere under all that stuffiness. But she couldn’t believe Tom O’Brien admitted he watched animated movies. Even if it was just to keep his nieces company. Her passion for the genre certainly wasn’t something she as a twenty-six-year-old admitted to everyone.
She found herself looking at him with new eyes. She noticed his silk tie. Like the first time she’d seen him, it was impeccably tied, though it was now sprinkled with dark hairs from Brutus’s shedding winter coat.
She wondered if To
m ironed his underpants.
The final straw with her former fiancé, Russell, had been when he’d demanded she iron his boxers. With a crease down the center just so. She had decided then and there that she hadn’t been put in this world to iron a man’s underpants.
But Maddy didn’t want to think about Tom O’Brien’s underpants. Because that might lead her to thinking about what might be inside his underpants. And how she . . .
She didn’t want to go there. Really she didn’t.
She looked away, terrified he might somehow be able to read what was going on in her mind. “C’mon,” she said. “I’m not sure how to get to the cemetery and I’ll need to follow the cortege.”
She was so anxious to get away from her wayward thoughts about Tom’s underpants that she pushed past him and Brutus in the pew to get out. Her breasts skimmed his arm and she felt her nipples harden in response.
What the heck was going on here? Just because he said he liked Shrek didn’t give her body permission to get turned on by Walter’s lawyer. She rushed ahead of him and outside the church.
She blinked in the sunlight. There seemed to be a lot more people in the churchyard. A gathering of men and women at the gates. Had they mistaken the time of the service? Jerome seemed to be talking to them, explaining their error, she supposed.
She sensed Tom come out of the church behind her. He stopped beside her and put Brutus down on the step. “Give me his leash,” he said, “and I’ll—”
He followed her gaze. “Who the heck are they—?” he started to ask. Then he groaned as the group of people rushed toward them. Maddy blinked against a sudden flash.
“There it is,” a woman shouted, “it’s the millionaire dog.”
“And his mistress,” a man sneered.
Mistress? Whose mistress? Brutus’s?
Beside her Tom groaned again. He swore. “Hell, it’s the press,” he said.
Six
The reporters surged toward Maddy where she stood with Tom on the church steps. There were only about six or seven of them but it seemed like a mob as they simultaneously hurled questions at her. And though they were asking about the millionaire dog, they seemed more interested in her than in Brutus.
She felt unnerved by the unexpected attention, intimidated by the microphones thrust in her face. There was even a television camera, for heaven’s sake. She longed to appear on TV but not like this.
Instinctively she moved closer to Tom and the haven of his broad chest. She snuck a glance up at his face. Her heart thudded into overdrive. Yep, that strong profile was a ten out of ten. Maybe even a twenty out of ten. But gone was the charming smile and the dimple. Back in full grim mode, he was standing rigidly to attention and glaring at the gathered media over the top of Brutus’s scruffy little head.
“Don’t say a thing,” he hissed, without looking down at her.
“I don’t know wh—” she started to reply before being bombarded with questions.
“Hey, Maddy, what was your relationship to the late Walter Stoddard?” called a reporter.
“And how does it feel to be a millionaire?” asked another.
How did they know her name? That fact registered among the barrage of questions. And hadn’t Tom said the will wasn’t public knowledge? She blinked at a camera’s sudden flash.
“I . . . uh . . . I’m not a millionaire. It’s . . . it’s Brutus who—” she stuttered but Tom cut her off.
“Ms. Cartwright has no comment,” he said, bundling Brutus into her arms and holding out both his hands to ward off the photographers.
“Could I have your name please, sir?” asked a reporter from a daily newspaper. “And what is your relationship to Miss Cartwright?”
Tom snorted in disgust but did not reply. Brutus struggled to get down, scrabbling with his claws. He started to bark, urgent, yapping barks. Maddy held his squirming little body tightly but she couldn’t manage to quiet him.
“Hey, the dog’s talking instead,” said a smart-aleck reporter from a radio station, thrusting a microphone toward the little dog. “Anyone here understand dog speak?”
Brutus bared his teeth and snarled, an effect more comical than threatening. The reporter chuckled, “Guess I don’t need a translation for that.”The other reporters laughed.
Maddy found herself wanting to laugh, too. Especially at the way Tom was glowering. Did he have to take everything so seriously?
She still felt bewildered by the presence of the press. And she had no intention of discussing anything about Walter’s will with them. But personally she didn’t have anything against the media.
Heck, she had a degree in journalism and was part of the media herself—though working as a food editor on a glossy women’s magazine hardly qualified as hard-core news reporting. Someone had tipped these people off and they were following up the lead. Her journalist colleagues would do the same.
She petted Brutus in an attempt to soothe him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jerome making his elegant way toward a sleek Jaguar parked nearby.
She felt a little miffed that he hadn’t made any attempt to talk to her again after being so attentive before the church service. But he didn’t turn back, didn’t seem curious at the unexpected media intrusion.
Suspicion shot through her. She remembered his call on his cell phone. Could he be responsible for this melee?
The reporters started throwing questions again. “About the will, Ms. Cartwright? Does it—?”
Tom cut them off. “Ms. Cartwright has no comment,” he repeated. Maddy felt a surge of irritation at the way he seemed to be taking over.
“I can speak for myself,” she hissed to him in an undertone. Then—taking a deep, steadying breath—she spoke to the reporters. “Guys, I know you’re trying to do your job, but this is a funeral. Please, show some respect.”
Grasping Brutus tightly she walked down the final steps from the church and went to walk around them. “I have nothing to say to you. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get to the cemetery.”
There was a rumbling of dissent. “I have no comment,” she said, walking away.
“So why did you have to be so nice to them?” Tom muttered as he strode along beside her, so close his shoulders brushed hers. Too aware of his maleness, she neatly sidestepped away.
“Because I’m not in the habit of being rude to people,” she said between clenched teeth.
“They’ll hound you now.Won’t let you alone.”
“And I’ll keep telling them I have nothing to say.”
“They’ll dig for dirt.”
Maddy felt sick at the implication of his words. She stopped and looked up at him, over Brutus’s head. “There is no dirt to find,” she said, unable to keep her voice steady.
His words were an unpleasant revelation. She’d begun to warm to Tom O’Brien. When it came to rating men, a sense of humor ranked as high as a good butt. Higher even. How could someone who appreciated the humorous satire of Shrek judge her so harshly for something she hadn’t done?
She turned on her heel and walked on, stomach churning with disappointment and anger. She reached her too-old, in-need-of-a-service Honda hatchback.
“Why don’t we go in my car?” he said, gesturing to a recent-model BMW parked a few spaces over.
“We?”
“You. Me. Brutus.”
“Brutus and I are fine, thank you. We don’t need a ride.” She made her voice as chilly as a freshly churned sorbet.
“You do if you want help getting away from that lot,” he said, gesturing at the reporters following them.
“I can manage on my own, thank you. Now if you don’t mind, I don’t want to be late to the cemetery.”
Tom’s voice rose with frustration. “For crying out loud, Maddy, I’m just trying to help here. Protect you. I hadn’t even intended to go to the cemetery. I’ve been away from the office long enough as it is.”
At his tone of voice Brutus whined sympathetically and leaned over to lick Tom’s han
d. Maddy expected Tom to snatch his hand away, but with a pained look on his face, he left it there for Brutus’s slobbery ministrations.
“Uh, anyway, isn’t it obvious Brutus wants to be with me?” he said.
“Because you’re his alpha—”
“I didn’t say that,” Tom said. “And for heaven’s sake, keep quiet about that dumb theory in front of these reporters.” He wiped his hand down the side of his trousers. “Now come on, are you getting in the car or not?”
Brutus looked appealingly up at her with his black button eyes and then back to Tom. She didn’t need a degree in dog speak to know what he wanted.
Maddy thought for a minute. She could evade the reporters just fine by herself. But it would do Brutus good to bond further with Tom. He still wasn’t eating very well. Was only just out of mourning.What harm could it do to accept a ride with Tom? Give Brutus what he wanted.
It wasn’t what she wanted. Of course it wasn’t. She wouldn’t even think about how comforting it had been to have Tom by her side during the church service, how appealing the thought of having him with her at the cemetery.
“Okay,” she conceded, “for Brutus’s sake.”
She climbed into the BMW, appreciating its leather luxury. She noted its showroom condition, quite different from her own car, which hadn’t been cleaned for months and was full of cooking equipment and props for food photography. She prayed Brutus wouldn’t do anything untoward to damage Tom’s car. Like lift his leg against the expensive sound system and short-circuit the electronics.
“Nice car,” she said.
“Yes,” Tom said with the doting look men reserved for their boy toys. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d lovingly stroked the dashboard. “I’ve only had it a few weeks.”
Brutus went to scramble onto Tom’s lap, but she dragged him back to her side of the car, studiously avoiding coming into contact with Tom’s legs as she did so. She fastened her seat belt and settled Brutus on her lap as Tom gunned the car away from the church.
Love Is a Four-Legged Word Page 5
