Animal Attraction. Maisey Yates

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СКАЧАТЬ why are you picking up Rookie?”

      “Amber said she’d be home tonight.” Shohn leaned on the counter and watched as Nadine hopped up onto a stool, the phone to her ear. She’d left her flip-flops on the floor and hooked her heels over the bottom rung of the stool. Cute toes. Really sexy legs, different from the model-thin girls he was used to seeing in bikinis at the lake.

      Wondering how Nadine would look in an itty-bitty bikini, he studied her thighs and murmured, “I guess she misses the big lug.”

      After the call went to voice mail, Nadine said, “Amber, this is Nadine Moest from Animal House. Call me, please. Your cousin Shohn is here to pick up Rookie, but I need your verbal permission before I can turn over the dog.” She hung up and looked at Shohn.

      Shohn managed to drag his attention from her legs to her face. “Well?”

      “Well, what? You heard what I said. I can’t give him to you until I hear from her.”

      They’d known each other since grade school. She was well acquainted with his lovely family. She had no reason to distrust him. But she looked as if she meant business. “You’re serious?”

      “About my responsibility to these dogs? You betcha.”

      Though ceiling fans whirled overhead, it was still too warm inside. The muggy heat nudged Shohn’s temper, but he sought to keep it under wraps. He supposed with that many dogs coming in and out, it’d be tough to adequately air-condition the place.

      Pushing back from the counter, he paced three steps away before facing her again. “Be reasonable, Nadine. You know me. You know Amber. We’re close.”

      “I know you misbehave and for some insane reason, Amber finds it endearing.”

      He drew himself up. “Misbehave? What am I? Five years old?”

      “Twenty-five—two years older than me.”

      Exactly. “I don’t misbehave.”

      “Oh, please.” She laughed 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, СКАЧАТЬ