by Jill Shalvis
Nick stared into the brown, bloodshot eyes and realized the dog was about as tall as he was. There was a huge tongue, lots of drool and really bad breath. That’s about all he caught before Danielle lugged the thing off him.
“Sadie,” she admonished. “You’ve got to stop greeting people like that.”
Nick straightened and ran a hand down his shirt, grimacing when he encountered great globs of…slobber. “Greeting?”
“Well, she’s a bit nearsighted. She likes to get close to see your face.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick glanced down at the biggest, beefiest dog he’d ever seen. “I thought she was interested in eating me.”
“Oh, no! Sadie is the sweetest thing, she’d never hurt anyone.” Proving so, she bent and cupped Sadie’s huge jowls in her palms, smiling a smile that seemed both indulgent and infinitely sad. “She’s had a rough time of late, that’s all.”
And so had Danielle, Nick guessed. He knew little about her other than she’d headlined his every wet dream for several happy years, but his instincts were never off. Something was wrong, he could see it in the exhaustion in her eyes, in the way she carried her lithe body. Hell, he could practically smell it on her.
And everything within him wanted to ask her about it. Could he help? He’d done so once, though he’d always wondered how things might have been different if she’d let him do more. It did startle him how easily and instantly he fell back into that pattern of wanting to save her.
But damn it, he was on vacation. No rescuing fair maidens in distress required. He was going to just hang out, take some pictures, get some recreational sex if he could, and do whatever came to him that didn’t demand much thought.
And yet it was utterly beyond him to ignore anyone’s problems. Just as he opened his mouth to ask her about it, she closed off her expression to his questing gaze. “So,” she said. “Who’s taking the pictures of Sadie?”
“You’re looking at him.”
“Oh. Can we get started? I’m a bit…strapped for time.”
2
NICK EYED SADIE with a wariness that might have amused Danielle under any other circumstances, but this wasn’t just a whim. And she really was strapped for time, even if she wanted to stop time and just stare.
Nick Cooper. God, she’d always wondered about him, wondered if… No. She couldn’t go back. What was done was done.
“I don’t suppose I can talk you into waiting,” he said. “As I mentioned on the phone, my sisters—”
“No.” As she half expected the cops to come haul her away, and as she hadn’t yet proved ownership of Sadie, she had to press on. “I can’t wait.”
His eyes had always been amazing, almost hypnotic in their fathomless green, and now they landed on her, slowly assessing. Certainly kind, certainly compassionate, but she didn’t need kind and compassionate, she needed those pictures.
“So why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?” he said after a long beat.
So he was still intuitive, still willing to put aside everything else and come to her aid. But she was no longer a lost, frightened, desperate seventeen-year-old. She didn’t need his help, she needed his camera. “Nothing’s wrong.” To go along with her denial, she forced a smile.
He looked her over for another long, unsettling moment. As before, taking his sweet time. And as before, leaving her squirming because she had no idea what he saw when he looked at her like that.
But he simply nodded. “Okay, then.”
Danielle followed him down the hall toward one of the studios, still oddly unnerved at the sight of him. Whatever he did with himself, it involved his tall, leanly muscular body, which looked like one fully honed muscle. He wore jeans, faded and soft-looking, though there didn’t appear to be one single soft thing about him. They clung snugly to his backside and thighs, the fabric of his shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes off him.
While she was staring stupidly, wondering how the boy she’d known had grown up into this picture-perfect man, he happened to glance back, and caught her.
He smiled, a friendly, no-secret-meaning-attached-to-it smile, and it was so simple, so contagious, she almost smiled back.
Ridiculous as it seemed, this man wasn’t just a blast from her past, but something else, something deeper, something she didn’t want to face after everything else. He was dangerous to her mental well-being, and she instinctively knew it.
“I’ve wondered about you,” he said. “About where you’d be, what you’d be doing.”
While that made her tingle in even more awareness, she shrugged it off. “Nothing special, really.”
“You had special written all over you,” he said. “Still do.”
She’d been on her own for…well, forever. She needed no one. Especially now, after Ted. So she couldn’t possibly be looking into his timber-green eyes, suddenly yearning to throw herself against him and beg for help.
Just because her life had gone to hell in a hand-basket was no reason to fall apart at a familiar face. No reason at all. “I haven’t thought about high school in a long time,” she said.
“I try not to think about it at all.”
She could believe it. By some grace of God, she’d been popular in those days. It had always baffled her. She’d been born on the wrong side of the tracks and had worked at a fast-food joint until all hours of the night helping her mother keep a roof over their heads. As a result, she hadn’t had the best of grades, and yet she’d hung with the “in” crowd—at least on the days she’d been coherent enough to socialize and not falling over in exhaustion.
They hadn’t always been the nicest of kids, her group, but for whatever reason they’d accepted her. But it still bothered her to think about how many others they’d taunted or been cruel to, for no good reason other than they could.
Nick had been one of those other kids.
She remembered him well. He’d been gorgeous even then, though back in those days he’d been tall, lanky to the point of skinny, and tough. Very tough. Way too much so for her crowd to try to break through his wall of resistance. They’d tormented him—not that he’d ever given an inch or even let them know he was bothered.
She herself had never done anything to him, but it shamed her that she’d stood in the presence of kids who had—boys who’d tried picking a fight, girls who’d snubbed him.
Nick hadn’t appeared to care, going on as if they hadn’t existed. Until that one night when she’d needed him, and without question or rebuke, he’d been there.
Just as he was there for her now.
No doubt, he was a world removed from the boy he’d been. No longer did his shoulders look too wide, his chest too broad for the rest of his body, which had gone from too skinny to oh-just-right.
He’d turned out…spectacular. No other word need apply.
Not that she was noticing. God, no. Her head had been turned by an interesting face before and look at where that had landed her. No more men in her life, thank you very much, especially men who could melt earwax at fifty paces. She had other, pressing concerns.
Such as being on the run from the law.
Details.
But she was so engrossed in those details, and the fact that Nick quite possibly had the best set of buns she’d ever seen, that she didn’t realize he’d stopped in front of an open studio until she plowed into him.
“Oops.” Her hands automatically lifted to brace herself, setting down on his back. Snatching back her hands, she thrust them behind her. He’d been warm and rock-hard. “Sorry.”
He didn’t seem bothered in the least, the opposite actually, as he turned and gave her another smile.
“So…” She nearly stuttered. “What’s first?”
“You bring in—” He gestured to the leash she held.
Sadie. Who stuck her head around Danielle’s legs, looking as if she’d rather face ten Teds than be here. “Woof,” the dog offered cautiously; a loud, low sound of nerves as she shi
fted back and forth on her massive paws.
Danielle coaxed her into the studio with a biscuit from her pocket while Nick moved in ahead of them to set up.
“Look,” she whispered, squatting before the uneasy dog. “Do this for me. Do this for our future.” She cupped Sadie’s huge jowls and looked deep into her worried eyes. “Please?”
Sadie leaned close and licked her chin, and Danielle hugged her tight. “I know. You love me. I love you, too,” she promised softly. “It’ll be okay.”
“What will?” asked Nick, who’d come up behind her.
3
“DANIELLE? What will be okay?”
Meeting Nick’s steely, curious gaze, Danielle unwrapped her arms from around Sadie and stood. “The pictures,” she said as smoothly as she could. “The pictures will be okay.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick studied her for another long moment, in that deeply personal, intense way he had, the one that told her he wasn’t missing a thing.
Neither was she. She might have known this man when he’d been a boy, but that had been a very long time ago. She knew nothing about him now, and had no reason to trust him, even if she wanted to.
His eyes stayed on hers. “You need a backdrop. Outdoorsy or traditional?” Pulling down several, he gestured to her choices. “Personally, the traditional makes any subject look wan, but the outdoorsy one is fairly cheesy, so…” He lifted a broad shoulder. “I’m not a professional. Just pick the one that appeals.”
He wasn’t a professional. So who are you? she wanted to ask, but that would be getting to know him, that would be opening herself up, and she wouldn’t do that. “You’re not thrilled about doing this.”
“I said I would.”
His tone suggested he would always do what he said. But she knew that wasn’t the case. People lied. People changed. People couldn’t be trusted. She drew a deep breath. “The cheesy outdoorsy backdrop, please.”
A small smile crossed his face as he pulled down the screen of a wooded clearing surrounded by pine trees, wild grass and a little creek. Definitely on the cheesy side.
But that smile…holy smokes, it should be registered as an illegal weapon. She watched his hands on the backdrop as he pulled it into place, mesmerized by the flex of the muscles in his forearms, by the easy, economical movement of his body as he straightened and looked at her.
“Warned you,” he said, mistaking her unblinking stare for shock over the backdrop. “How do you want the dog?”
“Uh…” Danielle shook her head to clear it and concentrated on Sadie, who was looking at her with suspicious concern. “Standing at an angle to the camera to show off her coloring.”
“Coloring?”
“Most of her breed is a solid shade of red or fawn. But Sadie’s dark stripes are what the original English breeders had in mind when they crossed a mastiff with a bulldog. I’d like to show that off.”
“Got it.” He put his eye to the lens, fiddled with the camera. “So…what do you do these days?”
“I handle dogs.”
He pulled back from the camera to look at her. “You mean for other people?”
“Yes.”
“Are they all like that?” He gestured to Sadie, who was currently eyeing her tail as if she wanted to chase it.
“Bullmastiffs? Mostly.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She looked at Sadie, wondering how anyone could not see her innate charm. “Well…They’re big. I love big dogs. And they’re short-coated, with unmussable fur. It makes it easy to get them ready for the ring. See her inherent facial makeup, with her black mask and kohl-like eye shadow?” She cupped Sadie’s big face and kissed her nose. “Adorable, guaranteed. But also, there’s no extra grooming required. She shows au naturel. The only tool I need is a towel for the drool.”
“You mean a bucket,” he noted, watching as two long lines of it came out of Sadie’s mouth, puddling on the carpet.
Getting down on all fours next to Sadie, Danielle wiped the drool away and physically maneuvered the dog’s paws where she needed them, getting the front two in place before crawling around the back, only to have Sadie sit. She then leaned into Danielle and licked her face.
Nick laughed.
Danielle ignored both the contagious sound of that good humor, how it made her tummy flutter, and tried again. Leaning forward, she shifted Sadie back into place. “There. Stay. Oh, perfect! Nick, quick.”
Nick ducked behind the camera. Danielle, still on her hands and knees, quickly backed out of the way.
And…Sadie lay down.
Straightening from behind the camera, Nick shot Danielle a raised eyebrow.
Which she ignored. “You’re not helping,” she whispered to Sadie, crawling forward so that she could look at Sadie nose-to-nose. “Now let’s try that again—”
Behind her came a funny sound.
Whirling, she found Nick standing next to the tripod. Staring at her. Staring specifically at the butt she’d obliviously thrust into the air.
Oh good God. Face hot, she lowered her bottom to her heels. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Best pose I’ve seen all day.”
Her gaze locked on to his and refused to be freed. More than her face felt warm now, her entire body ignited. Her skin seemed pulled too tight, and her nipples poked at her blouse. Feeling betrayed by her own body, she turned to Sadie, careful to be far more modest this time as she once again coaxed the dog into the right position.
Sadie held that position until exactly the second Nick reached for the flash, when she promptly walked right off the set and sat down at Danielle’s feet.
Nick cocked his hip and studied Sadie. “Is she really some sort of champion?”
“She is.” Danielle sighed when Sadie yawned again. “You’re boring her.”
“Maybe I should dance and sing.”
“Just keep trying.” Desperation was clawing at her. Could she get the shots developed right here and now? Or would he give her the film so she could try another lab?
It had to be one option or the other, as she had to go from here straight to Donald Wutherspoon, in the hopes he’d get work for Sadie.
And income for her.
If not, then she had to get another job, quick. She was qualified, and after ten years, quite reputable as a handler. People knew and trusted her with their animals and she’d made a decent living at showing champion dogs. But stealing a dog, even for a really good reason, would ruin her. Not to mention the fact that Ted would likely look for her at any local show, or even within all of Rhode Island, which just wasn’t big enough for her to disappear.
Danielle couldn’t let Sadie be taken back. If she could only earn enough cash to disappear, then she’d go far, far away and start over, doing whatever she had to in order to make a living to support the two of them.
“Hey.” Nick suddenly appeared in front of her, cupping her jaw in his hand, looking deep into her eyes, making her realize he’d called her name several times. “What’s really going on here?”
His fingers were on her skin, electrifying her. “What do you mean?”
“You’re jumpy and nervous.” His eyes were so deep, so tuned on her, she had to swallow, hard.
“Maybe I’m always nervous around strangers.”
“We’re not strangers.”
No. No, they weren’t. “Well, then maybe I’m nervous seeing you again.”
“When you rarely gave me the time of day?” He let out a rough laugh. “Doubtful.” His thumb stroked her jaw. “So tell me. What’s really up?”
With no idea what she was going to say, Danielle opened her mouth, but before she could respond, Sadie nosed her way in between the two of them and bared her teeth at Nick.
Nick lifted his hand off Danielle. “A watchdog, are you?”
Danielle stroked a hand down the ruffled hair at Sadie’s thick neck. “She won’t bite.”
Nick eyed the dog warily. “If you say so.” But he didn’t touch Danielle again.
&n
bsp; Shouldn’t have touched her in the first place because now he had the incredibly soft, satiny feel of her flesh implanted on his brain.
“If you’d pet her, maybe smile at her, she’d probably relax,” Danielle suggested.
“If I pet you, smile at you, will you relax?”
Her eyes widened for a moment on his before she looked away. “You’re playing with me.”
“I don’t play with people’s feelings.”
Her huge eyes met his. “Do you still hate me?”
“Hate you?”
“You know, from high school.”
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed, but she didn’t so much as smile, so his own slowly faded. “Danielle, back then, hating you was just about the furthest thing from my mind.”
“Even after…that night?”
“Especially after that night.”
When her misty eyes blinked in surprise, he nodded wryly. “Yeah. Big-time crush.”
“I had no idea.”
“No kidding.”
She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I hate to think about those days, about the kids I hung with, and how mean they were—”
“It was a long time ago.” He backed away from her, annoyed that he’d brought any of it up. Annoyed that he’d still occasionally wondered about her. “Like I said, I don’t think about those days anymore.”
She glanced down at Sadie, that vulnerability and infinite sadness back in her gaze. “Yeah.”
Just looking at her again made him feel like that stupid, gawky teenager he thought he’d left behind years ago. Had left behind years ago. He was a successful, respected journalist. He had a life, a great one.
He didn’t need this. He nodded toward Sadie, suddenly eager to see them leave, eager to get back to his carefully unplanned leisure time, where he didn’t have to think or feel. “Let’s just get your pictures, okay?”
