without an ounce of humor. “I’m not criticizing. You do it well and I suppose for most of the ladies in the county it just adds to your reputation.”
He folded his arms. “But you’re not of those ladies?”
Letting out a breath, Nadine hopped off the stool—and sent fun body parts bouncing.
With a lot of concentration, Shohn managed to keep his gaze on her face.
“I don’t mean to be insulting, Shohn.”
“Bull. You mean it.”
For only a second, she grinned, and she looked so damned adorable that his heart thumped. He realized something important—he rarely saw Nadine smile like that. It did amazing things to her eyes, her mouth...her sex appeal.
“Okay,” she teased, “maybe I mean it just a little. After all, you did ruin my last assistant.” Still barefoot, she came around the counter to him. “But that’s not what this is about. Yes, I know you and Amber are close. But the point is I have a legal obligation to only let the owners take their pets.”
Hungry, sweaty and growing irate, Shohn put his hands on his hips and started to complain.
“Once,” she said, cutting off his objection, “back when I first opened, a woman asked me to keep her dog for a week. A few days later, her husband came in to get the dog, saying they’d had a change of plans. He was nice enough, so I don’t know what it was that alerted me, but I felt like something wasn’t right. I told him I’d get the dog, but instead I went into a different room and called the woman.”
Shohn had a bad feeling about where this was going. She’d opened up the place during his last year of college. He’d been away then, but he had a feeling this was a story worth hearing.
“The woman panicked, saying the man had just attacked her and she’d barely escaped. She begged me to protect her dog.”
Jesus. “What’d you do?”
Nadine drew a deep breath. “I asked him to come into the waiting room and told him I’d have to fetch the dog from his walk. I offered him a drink and told him it would only take a few minutes.”
“And?”
“Instead of leading him into a waiting room, I took him into a storage closet that I always locked up at night. He caught on right before I slammed the door. I barely got it locked in time. He was...” She faded off, shaking her head and folding her arms around her middle. “Well, he was furious and wanted the whole world to know it.”
Standing there like that, Nadine looked vulnerable and shaken all over again. Shohn had the urge to pull her close, but he knew her well enough not to try it. “You could have been hurt.”
“Worse, one of the animals under my care could have been killed. But it all worked out. The sheriff got here in time and since the man’s wife was being treated at the hospital, it was an easy case to prosecute.”
She was brave and a quick thinker. “That sort of thing happen often?”
“Luckily, no, but now I never take anything for granted.” She stared up at him. “I need Amber’s permission.”
Shohn blew out a long breath. “You realize there’s little similarity between me and some bastard that would hurt a woman or a dog?”
She softened. “Of course I do. But it’s a good rule and I won’t break it.”
And here he’d thought his job came with risks. Being alone in the woods put him at a distinct disadvantage when it came to danger. More often than not, his radio was far more important than his weapon. He was hours away from backup if he ran into trouble or got injured.
But it sounded as if Nadine had danger knocking on her front door. “All right. I’ll text Amber and we’ll wait for her to reply.” He pulled out his cell and hit his contacts, then sent Amber a succinct message: Get in touch, brat, so I can get your dog.
“Thanks for understanding.”
“Like you said, it’s a good rule.” He stowed the phone back in his pocket, then rested his hand on his holster. “But I’ll be damned if I want to run all the way home just to come back out this way again.”
“I don’t mind if you wait, as long as you don’t go flirting with my assistant.” She thought a second then flapped her hand. “Unless it’s Fred. You can flirt with him all you want.”
“Funny, aren’t you?” The Animal House was located right outside town, close to the rangers’ station where he worked. It’d be a thirty-minute drive to get all the way home. No reason to backtrack if he could get what he needed here. “You got anything to eat? It’s been a long day and I’m starved.”
She gave him an owl-eyed stare. “You want me to feed you?”
Did she have to look so horrified by the idea? “I don’t need filet mignon, but a sandwich would be good. Just something to hold me over until Amber texts back.” He could always run to the nearest restaurant, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t in that big of a hurry to leave now. “That a problem?”
She studied him in silence before finally shrugging. “I guess I can rustle you up something.” She went behind the counter, stepped into her flip-flops and headed out a side door. “Make yourself at home.”
Instead, Shohn followed her. “Where are we going?”
Nadine froze then slowly looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m going to get you food. You’re going back to Animal House to wait.”
No, he wasn’t. He wanted to stick close to her, to figure out this sudden urge to...do things to her.
Sexual things.
Hot, nasty, possessive things.
Looking beyond her in the direction she’d headed, he realized that the small outbuilding could be her home. “You live here?”
A dozen different lies showed in her big brown eyes. “Um...”
Screw it, Shohn thought. If she already considered him an irredeemable reprobate, he may as well quit trying to be polite. “Forget I asked.” Pulling his khaki uniform shirt from his cargo military-style pants, he started toward the building without her.
Scandalized, she asked in a rush, “What are you doing?”
“I need to cool down.” He unbuttoned the shirt as he went. On the side of the small building was a garden hose left uncoiled in the grass. Between the temps and the direction of his thoughts, he needed a douse of cold water in a bad way.
“Wait a minute!” He heard her hustling along behind him. “You can’t do that!”
He didn’t slow. “Sure I can.” He shrugged the shirt off and hung it over the limb of a tree. “I’ll be careful not to soak my weapons.”
Nadine stopped dead in her tracks.
Sitting on the ground, aware of her consuming stare, Shohn pulled up a foot and removed his boot. As he peeled off a sock, he glanced up at Nadine.
She just stood there, one hand on her tummy, the other at her throat.
Liking how she stared so fixedly at his chest, he smiled to himself. “Don’t get too close. I have sweaty...everything. But especially my feet.” He tugged off the other boot. “Some kid got stuck out on a rock in a stream today. I had to wade out and get him. In this heat, my pants dried, but my socks? Not so much. My feet have been swimming for over an hour now.” He rolled up his pants legs.
Nadine hadn’t moved.
“Also had a lady slide down a ravine into a patch of poison ivy. And some bozo misplaced his car. Couldn’t remember which lot he parked in before taking the expert trail up into the woods.” Shohn shook his head. “I swear, sometimes it’s a wonder the human race survives.”
Because