Flirting with Love(14)

“Thanks for coming with me tonight.” He took her hand and helped her from the truck. “I hope you didn’t find us too obnoxious.”

“I had a great time. Thanks for taking me.” She stood inside the open truck door, her back to the cab and Ross a whisper away. Their hands were still intertwined. Just kiss him. Lean forward. Kiss. Enjoy.

God, now she sounded like her mother.

But she didn’t feel like her mother. The more she got to know Ross, the more clearly she saw him. He was compassionate, generous, and family was obviously important to him. He sure didn’t seem like the type of guy who was just out for hot sex, or he would have made a move already, wouldn’t he? When she looked at Ross, she felt something tingly and warm in her chest. She wasn’t on the hunt for a man, and she wasn’t on a scavenger hunt for true love, either. When true love finally found her, she’d know.

One kiss will tell me if this is real or not. I know it will.

She couldn’t bring herself to lean a little closer and press her lips to his. Making that move still seemed a little too close to her mother’s behavior. She could wait, even if her body was revved up like an electric beater on high speed. Couldn’t she?

She moved to get her mind off of his lips. He kept hold of her hand as he closed the door. The silence was deafening. Maybe she should lean closer to him, give him a hint she was interested. Hadn’t they both been hinting all night? Oh God. This was torture. She needed to get her mind off of kissing him.

“Do you think I could borrow your dogs tomorrow when I go to the dog park?” Leaves rustled in the trees, and she tried to concentrate on that instead of on how much she liked holding his hand.

“Borrow my dogs? They’re not cups of sugar.”

She smiled at his answer. “I know. I just figured that they would enjoy playing with other dogs while I was there, and it would give me pups to play with while I was meeting people.”

“Ah, like candy for children?” He walked beside her up the porch steps.

“No. Maybe sort of, but I love playing with dogs.”

“Which begs the question, why don’t you have one?”

She tried to formulate a coherent answer, but her words came out stilted and breathless. “Time. I only have so much. One day...” I’m making no sense.

He was silent as he walked her to the door, and his eyes filled with serious contemplation, making her even more nervous. She fumbled with the keys. Ross leaned a hip against the house and watched her with an easy gaze.

“You’re nervous.” His eyes never left her.

“A little,” she admitted.

“No need. No expectations, remember? I’m just being a good neighbor.” He pushed from the wall, and a rush of heat filled the space between them.

A good neighbor? A good neighbor lets you borrow sugar. They don’t turn your insides all fluttery and stand there looking badass and sensitive at the same time, which, by the way, is totally unfair.

He took the keys from her and unlocked the door, then pushed it open.

“You can take the boys to the park if you want to, but they’re a handful, so don’t feel like you have to take all three.”

“I have big hands.”

His eyes went nearly black, and his mouth lifted into a grin, tipping off Elisabeth to what she’d implied. Oh Lord. He stood in the doorway with her keys in one hand and his sultry eyes locked on her. When he leaned in close, she was ready for a kiss. So damn ready she couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes and he pressed his lips to her cheek; then she felt the keys in her palm and his hand curling her fingers around them. She opened her eyes and he was looking at her with a wanton look in his eyes.

What. The. Hell?

“G’night, Lissa.”

Lissa. It was the nickname her aunt Cora had given her. No one else had ever used it, and she loved hearing it come from Ross’s lips almost as much as she liked the feel of his lips against her cheek.

And now he was leaving. As her brain screamed, Don’t let him go! Run to the truck, grab him by the collar, and kiss the hell out of him, she envisioned her mother lusting after some wealthy man. She forced away the thought, but the desire lingered.

And sizzled all the way to her toes.





Chapter Seven


WHEN THE PROGRAM director had first approached Ross about joining the service-dog training program six years earlier, he’d been skeptical about handing eight-week-old puppies to convicts. At the time, he hadn’t had any experience working with convicted felons, and his love of animals outweighed any love he’d known other than the love he had for his family. But he’d heard about other prison systems with similar programs, and the dogs and inmates seemed to establish bonds just as well as people outside of the gated walls did. The program itself was providing a valuable service, and the dogs were well cared for. He’d given it a shot. It was Tuesday, and as he parked at Denton Prison, he thought about the program. In the years since he began working with it, he’d seen the hardest of men soften and love the dogs so deeply it made his throat swell to think he’d almost nixed the idea completely. Ross wasn’t a risk taker in general, but he’d taken a chance by getting involved in the Pup Partners program, and it was one of the most rewarding programs he’d ever taken part in. He’d been taking risks in his personal life lately, too.

Ross had spent his life avoiding gossip like the plague, but he couldn’t put distance between himself and Elisabeth. He’d tried to remain purely platonic at dinner at his mother’s house, but he was drawn to Elisabeth like cats to catnip—and boy, did he want to devour her. He nearly did when they’d said good night, but he’d somehow managed to fight the urge. He sensed that once he gave in, that was going to be it. Every time he saw her, his stomach did weird things, and she aroused the hell out of him with the slightest of touches. What would it be like when their lips actually met? When his hands explored the curvy plains of her body?

Fuck.

He was hard again.

He knew it was a bad idea to date a woman who was already the focus of so much gossip, but it was getting more and more difficult to keep his desires to himself. He didn’t need to get tangled up in the shitty Trusty grapevine. Even knowing this didn’t dissuade his body from craving her and his mind from returning to her.

He flicked on rock music, which he hated, and drew upon the women who were sure to erase any sexual thoughts from his mind. Rosie O’Donnell. Barbara Walters. Hillary Clinton. The training session would be a good distraction from his thoughts of Elisabeth. A few deep breaths later he was ready to handle the dog training without an embarrassing hard-on.

The waiting list for the program was more than five hundred prisoners long, and there were strict guidelines they had to meet in order to be accepted into the program, the most important of which were no history of a sex-related crime and no history of abuse or cruelty to animals. There were other guidelines, of course, such as maturity and education level, term of incarceration, and prisoners must not have had an infraction within ninety days of being accepted into the program, and of course, during the program. Ross was comfortable with the guidelines as a means for weeding out the candidates who would not put the dog’s needs ahead of their own, and the fact that prisoners were selected by a committee usually helped ease his mind, but every now and then a prisoner—in the program, they were referred to as handlers because they handled and trained the dogs—would come through that worried Ross. Trout Granger was one of those handlers, and Storm was the dog he trained. Because of that, Ross had chosen Storm as his weekend charge. This allowed him to monitor Storm’s progress and watch for signs of trouble. So far, he had no reason to be concerned.

Trout hulked over the six-month-old black Lab. At six five and three hundred pounds, Trout looked like the killer he was—or had been. Ross wasn’t sure how to define the inmates after they’d been in the system as long as Trout. Timothy Michael Granger, aka Trout, had been just eighteen years old when he was arrested for cutting his mother’s ex-boyfriend’s throat—ten years after the man had killed his mother. He’d called the police from the man’s apartment and waited for the police to arrive ten minutes after committing the crime. He’d served fifteen years of a life sentence. Trout had graduated as his high school’s valedictorian even after being in the foster system for ten years. At the time of the murder, he’d had a scholarship for a full ride to college, and the day after he turned eighteen, he threw it all away. Trout wasn’t from Trusty, but his academic background was similar to Ross’s until the day he killed a man. Ross’s love and loyalty to his family was all-consuming, but he knew he didn’t have it in him to kill another human being, and he wondered what had made Trout cross that line and why he’d waited ten years to do it.

At six three, two hundred ten pounds, with a body sculpted by good genetics and exercise, Ross had a strong presence, but he had no doubt the man standing before him could snap his neck in a hot second—and maybe never think about him again.

Storm sat at Trout’s feet, wearing his red SERVICE DOG IN TRAINING, DO NOT PET vest. Ross was always impressed when the handlers began their training in the correct position with their dog. Storm was doing well. Last week he’d been antsy and had a hard time settling down. Progress.