All in all, an IV drip of Red Bull would be welcome about now.
Kye glanced over at Lily, who occupied the kennel beside him on the seat of the rental car. He reached between the bars with his fingers and scratched her snout. “I know this isn’t our usual assignment. It’s more Lucy and Ricky Ricardo than search and rescue. Your job. Be charming. I’ll be comic relief. Oh, and don’t get eaten by the locals.” The kennel would be full of alpha K-9s happy to assert their authority. “Think you can do that?”
Lily gave a series of high-pitched yips between finger licks, her thick tail beating the bars because it wasn’t free to wag.
“That’s my girl.”
He could do this. Get in good with Yardley Summers. Absolutely.
He was known as something of a goofball among his friends. The big guy with a decent face, he’d often been the target for a certain kind of male who seeks to prove his manhood by taking on the biggest alpha in the room. He was good in fights though he didn’t like them, especially stupid pointless ones. In defense, he’d learned to use his sense of humor to defuse those moments.
If Yard didn’t know what to make of him, he might get in the door before she blew up.
As he turned onto the gravel drive that led to Harmonie Kennels, he noticed the entry gates to the property stood wide open. The most innocent explanation was that Yard was up and out. But after the global up-all-night-to-have-fun celebration of New Year’s Eve, who didn’t sleep through the first half of the first day of the new year? Or at least until bowl games began?
He drove on through, checking for signs of life. There were no vehicles parked by the barracks where handlers stayed when they came to train. The only two vehicles he saw were parked close in, near the two-story farmhouse with a wide porch front. One was a well-used Jeep Wrangler. The other a Mazda Miata. Maybe Yard owned both vehicles. Or had she been celebrating the new year with company, after all?
“Aw damn.” Maybe her missing doc had made a house call last night in his lame-ass Mazda.
Kye rolled his eyes. If he had flown all this way, in the wrong direction, only to barge in on a love nest, he was going to take it out of Law’s hide.
He came to a stop quietly, watching the front of the house for signs of life. No lights on the first floor. Windows were shuttered or draperies closed. The second floor was the same. What now? Knock on the door? Call Law?
The image of a woman and dog coming up the drive appeared in his rearview mirror. She wore a Gore-Tex jacket and leggings, black with flashes of deep pink along the seams, and a matching pink headband with a bow. Pink bow? Yardley?
He sat still, pretending he didn’t see her. No point in giving her the advantage of recognizing him from afar. He wanted her in close so he could judge her initial reaction to him. Shock and awe, baby.
He had forgotten how tall she was, five foot ten with long, lean legs that moved in an easy stride. A flash of memory of those legs wrapped around his waist surprised him. He shoved it aside.
Her hair was in a loose ponytail, unraveling in the wind behind her. He’d only seen it completely free once before. The memory sent the sensation of hair the color of Cherry Coke spilling over his bare shoulders. He shoved that one away, too.
Yardley had always been a stunner, though she’d seemed not to know that when they met. Dressed most often in jeans, a tailored shirt, and military boots, her tall, lean frame had curves in all the right places. Her elegant cheekbones and full mouth held a hint of sensuality she couldn’t quite hide behind her no-nonsense gaze. Eyes, blacker than his, revealed her Native American heritage. Her long dark-red hair flagged the Cajun ancestry of her father. He knew all that.
Yet something he wasn’t prepared for tumbled into place as he exited the vehicle and faced her. His last memory of her, sitting on the ridge of a nearby hill while the setting sun painted her profile gold as it sank into darkness.
And then she was staring at him.
That ramrod-straight posture of hers he’d always associated with pride now struck Kye as a defense. She looked braced against all the hurts and slights and pain of the world. Had life been that hard for her? Once, yes. He knew that. But nothing he’d heard about her these last years would make him think that her life was anything less than two thumbs up. Except for her stiff stride as she came toward him. It made him want to put his arms around her. Slide a cupped hand up her spine in a soothing gesture that was also protective. He wanted, for a moment, to shield her. From what? He didn’t have the slightest idea.
That protective feeling clenching his gut was as raw and immediate as it had been the day he left here, left her, a dozen years ago.
Well, hell.
Now he was the one who needed a moment.
*