He needed to get the dog away from his niece, and fast. Hoping he wasn’t making a hideous mistake, he held up the first steak. “Here you go, girl!”
It was as though someone had thrown a light switch. The hair along the dog’s back slicked down and her ears perked up. A huge flirtatious grin spread across her giant square mug. After treating Isabella to a maternal lick of farewell from a tongue big enough to clean his niece’s face with one swipe, she galloped toward Jack at top speed. Unfortunately, Isabella released a squeal of annoyance at having their play interrupted and gave chase. The instant the dog reached him, Jack tossed the first of the steaks. It disappeared in one less-than-feminine gulp.
“Sit,” he ordered.
To his amazement, the dog sat. She checked him out—particularly the second steak he still held—while he did the same to her, a cautious how-beasty-are-you and who’s-the-top-dog exchange of looks. She didn’t appear to be in too bad a shape, though her ribs protruded more than he liked. After she’d given him the once-over, she regarded him with a look of unadulterated hope and sweetness. To his relief, he saw that she wore a collar. He didn’t see a name tag, but at least there was a shiny new rabies tag dangling from it.
His plan was to toss the second steak as far as he could, snatch up his niece and hightail it into the house. Before he could, Isabella skidded to a halt alongside the dog. He nearly lost it when she wound her twig-thin arms around the animal’s massive neck and pressed her face into the short, brindled coat. One miscalculation and the dog would go from chewing on steak to chewing on his niece.
He forced himself to take a calming breath before speaking. “Isabella, go into the house and find Annalise. After you wash your hands, you can show her your new friend. You’ll have to do it through the window until I’ve finished feeding her.”
She hesitated, obviously torn between staying with the dog and the pleasure of showing her off to Annalise. He used a tone that didn’t brook any argument, one he had never been able to bring himself to use with her. Until today. “Now, miss.”
To his intense relief, she obeyed and climbed the steps onto the porch. The door flew open behind him and Annalise snatched her inside. With a whimper of protest, the dog charged forward and mowed all two hundred plus pounds right over top of him, snagging the steak out of his hands as she steamrolled past. Before Annalise could get the door closed, the dog slammed through it and erupted into the house.
Jack lay spread-eagled on his back, struggling just to draw air into his lungs. Getting hit by a Mack truck couldn’t have been any more painful. He looked down at himself, half-expecting to discover paw craters denting his body. To his immense relief, he didn’t find any. As far as he could tell, all his most vital parts appeared intact and in place.
He rolled over onto his hands and knees. It took three attempts to stand. He staggered through the door to find the dog squatting at Isabella’s heels. Even sitting, the animal dwarfed the petite five-year-old, though there was no mistaking the adoration in the dog’s brown eyes as she peered down at his niece. Isabella had her arms thrown around the animal’s massive neck again. She beamed up at Jack with such undisguised joy it nearly broke his heart.
He closed his eyes with a groan. He knew that look. “We’re not keeping her,” he stated categorically. “She belongs to somebody and that somebody isn’t us.”
To his surprise, Isabella didn’t throw the expected temper tantrum. She just continued to stare at him with those dewy green eyes and that wide, brilliant grin. Her dimple gave a saucy wink.
“We don’t know who owns her, Isabella,” Annalise added. “The poor thing is probably lost.”
“The ‘poor thing’ probably got dumped when she grew to the size of a baby elephant and started eating the owners out of house and home,” Jack muttered.
It was precisely the wrong thing to say. Annalise turned on him with a horrified expression. “Dumped? You think she’s been abandoned? Someone left her deliberately?”
Isabella tightened her arms around the dog who responded with a pathetic little whine that rattled every window in the bungalow. God help them if the beast ever cut loose with an actual bark. They’d end up with the roof caving in around their ears.
He spared his niece an uneasy look. “Then again, maybe someone is desperately trying to find her. I’ll call Mrs. Westcott and find out if she knows anything about who the owners might be.”
“Mrs. Westcott?” Annalise asked.
“Taye’s housekeeper.” Time to take control of the situation before this went any further. Jack fixed his niece with a steely gaze. “Give it up, sweetheart. We’re not keeping the dog. She’s wearing a rabies tag, which means she belongs to someone. I’m sure the owners are desperate to get her back.”
Annalise intervened by resting a restraining hand on his arm. “She’s a gorgeous animal,” she commented in a blatant non sequitur. No doubt, it was her way of diffusing the standoff between uncle and niece. “I like all the stripes. She sort of reminds me of a faded tiger.”
“It’s called a brindle coat,” he grudgingly explained.
Annalise continued to eye the dog, no longer betraying any sign of fear. Not good. “I wonder what her name is.” She squatted next to Isabella. “Maybe if she doesn’t have any owners we can name her.”
Isabella nodded eagerly and the dog put her sly seal of approval on it by licking first his niece and then his nanny/soon-to-be-strangled-wife-to-be.
“No naming the dog!” he protested.
He might as well have saved his breath. Everyone ignored him. Instead, the three females began a timeless bonding ritual that involved the dog positioned on the floor like a sphinx, while Isabella and Annalise petted her from tongue-lolling head to thumping tail. She whimpered in pathetic gratitude at all the attention while rolling her eyes in his direction. He could have sworn he saw smug laughter lurking there. Oh, yeah. Definitely a sly one. Knew just how to tug at the heartstrings.
“You’d think the guy paying the bills would be the one deserving a petting,” he muttered. “But hell, no. I get to play bad cop. I know how this story ends—with me in the doghouse, while the dog gets all the attention and affection. Well, not this time, bubba. No way, no how.”
“What kind of dog is she?” Annalise asked. “Other than big?”
No one was listening to him, or, at least, they’d developed selective hearing. Caving to the inevitable, he examined the animal with a critical eye. “Definitely Great Dane. And judging by the breadth and shape of her, not to mention the droopy ears, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had some mastiff mixed in there somewhere.”
“Well, whatever she is, she’s a beauty,” Annalise replied, rocking back onto her heels.
He bent down and retrieved his cell phone from Annalise and punched in the number to the main house. Mrs. Westcott answered on the first ring. “We have a visitor,” he explained after they’d exchanged pleasantries. “She’s four-legged, about the size of a Humvee. And half-starved.”
“You’ve seen her? Well, thank goodness for that. Animal Control has been trying to catch her for the past week. She’s a clever minx, that one is.”
He eyed the ecstatic dog who’d rolled onto her back, enjoying a tummy rub, dinner-plate-sized paws pinwheeling in the air. “Well, your clever minx is currently splayed out in the middle of Taye’s bungalow living room floor.”
“Oh, Mr. Mason. Aren’t you sweet to take her in.”
“No! No, I’m not—”
“I’ve been so worried about her. I was just coming to work when I saw her get dumped. A bunch of college kids tossed her out of the car like so much garbage, poor critter. Thank goodness she’ll have a good home.”
He gritted his teeth. “Only if someone is insane enough to adopt her. Can you call Animal Control for us?” At the question, three pairs of outraged eyes pinned him to the wall. Mrs. Westcott weighed in with a disapproving tsking sound. “What?” he asked, a shade defensively.
In response, Isabella threw herself on top of the dog as though to prevent anyone from dragging the animal away. He didn’t bother to explain that it would take a crane and bulldozer to move the beast if she turned uncooperative.
Annalise moistened her lips, lips he’d taken great delight in kissing only the night before. If she hadn’t chosen such an underhanded distraction, his brain cells would have stayed where they belonged instead of draining out of his ears and puddling on the floor.
“Maybe we should discuss this first, before you make any rash decisions.” She didn’t phrase it like a suggestion. In fact, it sounded suspiciously like a demand. “I don’t see why we can’t keep her until you track down the owners.”
“Is that your new nanny?” Mrs. Westcott asked. “She sounds like a sensible woman.”
With the female-to-male ratio running three-to-one against him—he eyed the dog—no, make that four-to-one—the odds were definitely not in his favor. “I never make rash decisions,” he announced in a no-nonsense tone of voice. “And considering I’m the one in charge around here, I believe that makes me best qualified to decide whether or not it’s appropriate to call Animal Control.”