Her Valentine Sheriff Read online

  His attitude confused her. She knew Eli to be friendly and kind, and right now he wasn’t either. She took a deep breath and fervently prayed for guidance. And patience. It was apparent she was going to need healthy doses of both to get through the rest of this day. She stepped sideways, holding the screen door for Eli so he could maneuver around her and into the house.

  He dragged his fingers through his thick black hair and eyed the doorway but didn’t move to enter.

  “Let’s try this again, shall we?” she prompted. “Please, come in.”

  Eli stepped gingerly into the house and halted suddenly, raising his arms to shoulder level as a tan-colored whirlwind jumped out from behind the door, yipping up a storm, turning in tight circles and sniffing at Eli’s ankles. The little apple-headed Chihuahua couldn’t have been more than seven or eight pounds, but he was full of spit and vinegar, and she supposed he could appear a little startling to guests.

  Once again Mary chided herself for not locking up the dogs before Eli arrived. His disdain for, or at the very least discomfort with, this whole situation was evident in every step he took and his closed expression. She watched helplessly as Eli braced himself, his shoulders squaring as he pressed his lips into a straight, firm line.

  Mary reacted instinctively against the wave of anxiety and embarrassment that washed over her, hastily scooping the dog into her arm. She was angry at Natalie all over again for putting her in this position. Here within her own home, Mary stood, awkward and uncomfortable, when she should be completely in her element. Here with the dogs she fostered and trained, and her newly created Rapport Kennel. Here with Eli, a man she’d known since her youth and greatly admired.

  No, it was not fair, and it was not right.

  But thanks to Natalie, the situation was at best uncomfortable and at worst impossible. Not knowing what else to do, she held up the Chihuahua for Eli’s inspection. “Behave yourself, young man.”

  Eli lifted a questioning brow.

  Mary offered a confused smile and then burst into gentle laughter. “I was speaking to the Chihuahua,” she clarified. “This little guy is Goliath. His bark is worse than his bite. It might sound like he’s growling, but in truth he’s just talking to you.”

  “Good to know. Snarls aren’t a warning—they’re a welcome.” He tentatively reached a hand forward so Goliath could sniff his fingers. “On someone’s planet, anyway,” he rumbled under his breath. Mary thought he was speaking more to himself than to her, but she answered him anyway, choosing to make light of the comment, and not take it as an insult to her and her profession.

  “Yep, that’s my planet, all right.” Mary was aiming toward cheerful, although she was fairly certain she’d missed the mark by a wide distance. “My world, filled with dogs of every size, shape and form.”

  The left side of Eli’s jaw twitched. “Sounds like paradise.”

  Sarcastic much? He was about as enthusiastic about this new program as a chicken with his head on the chopping block, which left Mary to wonder, not for the first time, why he’d been chosen for the K-9 unit. Everyone in town, including Captain James, knew Eli had been jilted by Natalie. Surely it had occurred to him that the situation might lead to difficulties with the training. It had certainly occurred to her; though at the moment, she didn’t have a clue what to do to make this an easier transition for Eli. Surely he had to realize that she couldn’t help what her sister had done.

  Maybe there wasn’t anything she could do, except plow forward, right through the middle of Eli’s morose attitude. She lifted Goliath to eye level and turned the dog so she was addressing his snout. “He’s only six months old, so he’s still learning his manners. Goliath, that is not how we treat guests in our home.”

  The Chihuahua yipped once and licked Mary’s thumb.

  Eli cleared his throat and rocked back on his heels, jamming one hand into the pocket of his blue uniform slacks.

  “Captain James spoke to you?” he prodded, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand, his dark hair curling around his fingers.

  “About the new K-9 unit?” Mary nodded. “Oh, yes. I have to say, Ian is quite enthusiastic about the idea.”

  “Isn’t he, though,” Eli mumbled in agreement. He didn’t sound happy about the prospect.

  She decided not to acknowledge his lack of enthusiasm. Surely things would get better once he got to know his new partner.

  “It’s a great opportunity for you and for me, as well. I don’t know how much you’re aware of the work that I do here. I’m just now getting my training kennel off the ground. Your department is my first official K-9 program. My proving ground, so to speak.”

  “Meaning I’d better be on my best behavior.”

  His eyes lightened to sky-blue, and the strain around his mouth eased, lessening the gravity of his expression. When he looked like that, it was harder to ignore the fact that this was the man she’d had a secret, desperate crush on for so many years....

  But that was in the past. She was years past being a silly teenager crushing on the hotshot high school football star. He was a client now—the most important client she’d ever had. She couldn’t let herself lose sight of that just because he had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

  “You’d better believe it. Are you ready to meet your new partner?” A lot of thought had gone into the pairing of dog to man and man to dog, and she was proud of what she’d accomplished. She couldn’t wait for Eli to meet his new partner, and her eagerness bubbled over in her voice. She recognized that this was one of those defining life moments she’d look back on, either with delight or utter mortification. It was all on Eli to make that call. If he lightened up, this could be good—maybe even fun. Working with a K-9 was every bit as much about enthusiasm and reward as it was about effort and exertion. Perhaps more so.

  “Sure. Whatever.” He shrugged offhandedly, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other whether or not he met his partner.

  Mary sighed in exasperation. Even if he wasn’t thrilled about working with her, she thought he’d display a bit more interest in his new dog. His cavalier attitude was going to have to change, or they would never be able to work together. Where was the man with the happy-go-lucky smile for the world? Who had replaced him with Mr. Chip-on-His-Shoulder? Was it just because of Natalie, or was something else entirely wrong here?

  Mary hadn’t a clue. And it wasn’t as if she could ask. How did one even broach a subject like this?

  She paused and tilted her face up to his, her gaze lingering on him, questioning him without words. Rather than meeting her eyes, his gaze wandered to somewhere in the vicinity of her chin.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” It was an adamant denial, even though she hadn’t accused him of anything. He gestured toward the den. “I’m trying to follow orders here. Please. Lead the way.” There was an element of pleading in his tone that hadn’t been there before.

  He was giving off mixed signals all over the place—which he clearly wasn’t going to acknowledge. And if he wouldn’t, she couldn’t.

  “So we’re good, then?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” His voice was low and gruff, and his gaze turned so dark that his stormy blue eyes took on an almost black hue to them.

  She wasn’t going to solve any of their problems this way. Maybe the best thing to do was to bring out the big guns—

  —or more specifically, the Bullet.

  Chapter Two

  Eli’s chest tightened almost painfully as he followed Mary through the front room and into the den. In his opinion, it was more of a kennel than a living space. There were several crates, the smaller stacked on the larger, but they were all empty. The dogs who’d greeted him at the door were lounging on fluffy pillows of various shapes, colors and sizes, all of which l
ooked as if they had been haphazardly tossed around the room. Chew toys, ropes, tennis balls and rawhide bones littered the floor.

  The whole place was messy. Lived-in. And distinctly feminine. Everything from Mary’s choice of floral wallpaper to the soft pastel curtains screamed woman, unlike his own apartment, which was meticulously clean and simply furnished with only the bare necessities in mahogany and stainless steel. Not much in the way of decor, other than a couple of family pictures on the wall. Eli didn’t require too many things to live comfortably.

  Besides, he liked clean. Uncluttered. Mary apparently felt differently.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected the inside of Mary’s house to look like, since he knew she shared her space with all her dogs. He supposed he hadn’t really considered it at all.

  In any respect, this wasn’t it. These pups looked as if they were living the lives of royalty, not as if they were working animals. He surveyed the dogs. The Chihuahua wasn’t a K-9, formidable attitude notwithstanding, but he supposed some of the other dogs could be.

  In addition to those he’d seen in the front room, there were three other large canines—one a creamy yellow color but otherwise identical to Sebastian, a gray dog with whiskers and a lot of fluff on its legs and another that looked a little like Lassie from the old television show.

  He wondered which of them would be his. To his relief, they were not overly intimidating. None of them seemed as if they could be a police-trained K-9, either, not that he really knew how to assess one.

  “If you’ll follow me to the back patio, I’ll introduce you to your new partner. He’s in the yard getting some exercise with some of the other pups.”

  “There are more?” The question was half tongue-in-cheek jesting and half utter bemusement. “How many dogs did you say you have again?”

  Mary glanced back and smiled. “Too many. I’ve lost count.”

  Eli shook his head and chuckled. “I’m not surprised.”

  She stopped at the sliding glass doorway and turned to face him, gesturing back toward the den. “You’ve met Goliath,” she said, pointing to the Chihuahua. “The gray one is a standard schnauzer—Periwinkle. I call her Perry.” Upon hearing her name, the schnauzer pricked her ears. “And of course I have my SAR dog, Sebastian. He’s a Labrador retriever, and he pretty much never leaves my side.” She took a breath and smiled, making a sweeping gesture that encompassed both the den and the yard. “The rest of this sorry lot I’m either fostering or training.”

  “SAR?”

  “Search and rescue,” she elaborated.

  “I see. And my dog?”

  “Bullet. He’s a Dutch shepherd. That’s him right there,” she said, aiming her finger to the far corner of the yard.

  Eli’s gaze shifted to where she’d pointed, his shoulders tensing as he silently observed Bullet, a mostly black-furred dog with a bit of tan on his face and legs. He was trotting around the perimeter of the wooden security fence as if he were staking his claim on it. The dog circled a few of the obstacles in the yard—a balance beam, a chute and a couple of jumps—punctuating his sniffing with an occasional ominous bark.

  Bullet was definitely more what Eli had imagined in a K-9, both in aggression and demeanor. Eli was pretty sure bad guys wouldn’t want to run into the sharp-toothed end of this dog. He wouldn’t.

  He steadied his breath, trying not to think of another dog, another time, a terrifying episode that had resulted in permanent bite marks and gashes on his right forearm and shoulder. He had many scars on his body, everything from the sharp edges of an angry bull’s horn across his ribs to the ragged pucker of a knife wound on his chin. Yet comparatively, those had been easier to heal, emotionally speaking. He didn’t dwell on them.

  Not like his inexplicable, irrational fear of dogs. Experts even had a scientific name for it—cynophobia—which didn’t help him a bit. He couldn’t get over it, no matter how hard he tried.

  He swallowed hard, his muscles rigid as Mary called for the K-9 to come forward.

  “Bullet, volg.”

  Bullet obeyed the command immediately, coming to heel next to Mary’s left side and sitting on his haunches, looking up at her expectantly for his next instruction. She reached down and scratched him under the chin. “Who’s my good boy?”

  That was apparently code for at ease, for the dog bounded forward, barking playfully. After a moment, he approached Eli, circling his legs and sniffing him. Eli stood perfectly still, staring down at the dog and waiting for him to—

  What? Chomp his leg off? Go for his throat?

  His imagination was getting the best of him, and it certainly wasn’t helping him with this situation. He had to get over his nerves.

  Like yesterday.

  “Can I touch him?” Eli asked tentatively.

  “Absolutely. He’s yours, you know.”

  Eli reached forward, allowing Bullet to sniff at his fingers before he scratched the dog behind the ears.

  “Good boy,” he said to the dog, and then paused abruptly as Mary’s words penetrated his muddled brain. “Wait. What do you mean, he’s mine?” He straightened, mental alarms pealing in his ears. “He belongs to the police department, right?”

  Mary’s gaze widened, and her lips pursed, accentuating her cheekbones. She must have realized he was staring at her, because she immediately dropped her gaze. Her heart-shaped face turned a pretty shade of rose.

  “The department paid for him, yes,” she answered after a tentative pause.

  “Good, then.” Relief washed through him. For a moment he’d had the unnerving picture of having to take the dog home to live with him. Thankfully that wasn’t the case. “So now what?”

  “Now we train.” Mary straightened, resuming the professional demeanor with which she’d met him at the door. “Since it’s Friday afternoon, I suggest we break for the weekend and pick this up first thing Monday morning.”

  “Train? I was given the impression that the dog already was trained,” he said, cautiously running a palm down Bullet’s neck. Eli jerked his hand back when Bullet raised his head. “Isn’t he a certified K-9?”

  “Oh, Bullet’s trained,” Mary replied, her chuckle softened by the kindness mingling with the amusement in her gaze. “I was talking about you.”

  * * *

  Mary paced the front room, glancing out the window every few minutes, waiting for Eli to arrive for his first official training session with Bullet. It seemed as if the weekend had dragged on for a lifetime, but Monday morning had finally come, and Eli was due soon. They’d agreed on eight o’clock to start, and it was only half past seven, so it wasn’t as if he was late. She was just anxious to see him again—to get started on the real training process. It was an exciting moment for her and for her newly established Rapport Kennel.

  If nerves over her business weren’t enough to make her antsy, she couldn’t seem to be able to get Eli out of her mind. It bothered her more than she cared to admit—because if she were being honest, this wasn’t all about work. It was about the man she was working with.

  Eli. The man who for years had filled her dreams, as hopeless as they were. Mooning over a man who hardly knew she even walked the planet. But that was long ago, when she was an awkward teen. She’d been over him for years.

  He was her past. Except now, he wasn’t.

  He was very, very present.

  If she could have framed the expression on his face when she’d teased him about training him and not the dog, she would have hung it over her fireplace, where she could appreciate his handsome mug every time she walked by. Of course that might be a little problematic to explain to visitors, since it was none other than her very own sister who had jilted him for another man only a week before their wedding.

  Not exactly the kind of picture a woman ought to place on the mantel, even in her
mind and even in jest.

  She was still angry at Natalie. At the moment, they weren’t on speaking terms. It grated on her, knowing that in Natalie’s tinted reality, Eli had been nothing more than the last in a long string of broken hearts. Her sister had always been a bit of a narcissist, but her selfishness had hit an all-time high with this one. Without a word of explanation to anyone, she’d left the state with a wealthy fellow the family had never even met. It was cruel, even for her.

  How could Natalie have done such a thing? And to Eli, of all men? He deserved so much better than that.

  He was a decent guy through and through. He didn’t purposefully snub anyone, not even in high school, when he was the handsome and sought-after star running back on the football team. He went out of his way to make folks feel welcome—even going so far as to take pity on an awkward ninth-grade girl standing alone in a shadowed corner of her first Sweetheart Social.

  He wouldn’t remember that particular incident, of course.

  But she did.

  She’d never forgotten any of the kind things he’d done for her over the years. To be honest, if only with herself, she’d have to admit that her feelings for Eli had shaded every romantic relationship she’d had over the years. No other man could compare to him, or at least to the man she’d built Eli up to be in her mind. It wasn’t fair to the men she’d dated, and it definitely wasn’t going to make working with the man Eli was now any easier.

  He could hardly live up to perfection, and that was pretty much what she’d made him out to be.

  Past tense. That part of her life was over long ago. She was over this. She was over him. She had to be. Now more than ever. How else would she be able to endure working with him every day?

  And she was going to work with him. It might have come as a complete shock to her when Captain James had arranged for the two of them to work together in the new K-9 unit, but she wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity she’d been praying for. If she presented a competent K-9 unit to the Serendipity Police Department, she’d be able to use that reference to get other clients in surrounding small-town areas, places that might otherwise not be able to afford to train such units. It was her dream to run a full-time training kennel, and she found she couldn’t give it up, not even to spare Eli the discomfort of having to work with his ex-fiancée’s sister.