Flirting with Love(15)

“Any problems to report?” Ross asked.

Trout’s jaw swished from side to side. His deadpan stare didn’t change, and he didn’t make a sound. Ross knew from their previous interactions that Trout was a man of very few words, and those words were only the necessary words for training Storm: heel, settle, leave it, good boy, free dog. That’s as far as they’d gotten. Ross watched for the shake or nod of Trout’s Frankenstein-sized bald head, upon which the words Honor Thy Mother were tattooed in black. They went nicely with his colorful tattoo sleeves. Like a hat might top off an outfit.

Trout shook his head.

“Good. He’s eating okay? Sleeping in his crate?” Ross eyed Storm, who was looking up at Trout with the trust and adoration of a child to a father. Ross said a silent prayer that Trout would never lose his temper with Storm, though he hadn’t seen even a flash of emotion one way or another from him. In fact, the guards said he rarely spoke to anyone.

One curt nod; then he eyed the dog, and that shift in his gaze gave Ross pause.

“Sleeping trouble?”

He looked down at Storm. “Stay.” Trout’s commands were delivered in a low voice, barely audible from across the room. That same voice used in combination with the deadpan stare would surely send any man running for the hills. But Trout had found his pitch with Storm, who obediently followed every command.

He stepped closer to Ross—a wall of muscle and silence.

“What is it, Trout?” Trout wore the standard gray uniform—a pullover shirt and matching pants—and smelled of industrial soap and sweat, not exactly a pleasant combination.

Trout leaned down closer to Ross and spoke softly, as if he didn’t want Storm to hear him. “Storm had trouble sleeping last night.”

He had a gravelly, deep voice, thick with concern at the moment. His grave concern meant that Trout had connected with Storm on an emotional level, which was one of the goals of the program. Ross was surprised to hear something from Trout other than the few words they used in training, and the worry in his normally ice-cold eyes softened Ross’s view of him.

“That happens. Was he sick? How’s he been acting today?” He moved to the side and eyed Storm, whose eyes were bright. Storm cocked his head and panted.

“Fine today. Fine yesterday. He whined and cried, and I tried covering the crate and talking to him.”

“And?”

“And.” He looked around at the empty room, then turned back to Ross. “The other inmates were bitching, so I crawled into the crate and put an arm over him.”

“You crawled into the crate? You fit in the crate?”

Trout cracked a crooked smile, and dimples appeared in his cheeks, taking his hulking-monster image down a notch, to that of a gentle giant. A murdering giant. This was the first real emotion he’d seen from Trout. It struck Ross that the man he’d been most concerned about might turn out to be the most compassionate.

“Shoulders, chest. What should I have done, Doc? I couldn’t just let him cry with all the other guys hollering like they were.” Trout stayed in a special wing of the prison, where only prisoners with dogs were allowed.

“That’s a good question. We’ve had handlers who have done what you did, but it’s rare, and we don’t encourage it, because the dogs have to learn to self-soothe. You tried covering the crate, and that didn’t work?”

Trout shook his head real slow. “He was sad, I think.”

“Sad?”

Trout nodded. “Sad.”

He wasn’t about to argue with the three-hundred-pound man. “I’d like to check him out and make sure he’s okay; then why don’t you see how he does tonight? Expect him to do well. Do whatever you normally do. If you’re still having trouble, we can figure it out. But it might have just been a onetime thing.”

“I don’t mind lyin’ with him. Is that allowed?”

After the first few weeks, dogs didn’t typically have issues at night. Technically, the inmates were allowed to lie with the dogs in the program, but Ross didn’t want to promote anything that would hinder the love for Storm’s crate that Storm needed to adhere to in order to pass the program. Then again, Trout was talking, and that was a different type of progress.

“I’m worried about the size of the crate, Trout. You could crush him if you roll over onto him.”

Trout narrowed his eyes and nodded. “I won’t.”

“Let’s play it by ear. If it happens tonight, try talking to him. And if you have to, put just your hand in the crate. Okay?”

“Sure, Doc. That’s a good idea.”

They completed the training for the day, and Ross met with Walt Norton, the prison program director for Pup Partners, before he left. He let him know what was going on with Trout and Storm and asked him to keep an eye on them. Walt was in his midsixties with hollow cheeks and deep-set dark eyes, giving him a serious look, even when he smiled.

“I’ll keep an eye on them. The program is making a difference for Trout. He’s no longer sitting by himself in the cafeteria. He’s sitting with other inmates, and he’s answering questions instead of grunting. An inmate asked him why he was sitting with them, and the guard heard him tell the guy that it was good for the dog.”

A vital part of the dogs’ training was that they remained with their handler around the clock. They learned how to sit without begging when their handlers ate and how to react to other people and dogs, just as they would be expected to behave outside of the prison.

Walt shook his head. “Good for the dog. He’s a stone-cold killer. Hasn’t done more than grunt or nod since he arrived fifteen years ago, and a dog pulls him out of his shell. Go figure.”

On the way back to Trusty, Ross thought about Trout. Not for the first time, he wondered if Trout had adapted to prison by remaining silent as purely a survival technique, or if he was a relatively silent man before his incarceration. He’d tried talking to Trout when he’d first entered the program, but it was apparent after the first three questions that he wasn’t going to get far. Ross knew the power of a pet’s love could change a person, and he was glad to see that Trout wasn’t too far gone to feel an inkling of compassion.

Fitting in anywhere was tricky business. The thought brought his mind back to Elisabeth—Lissa—where it had been all morning. When the nickname first slipped from his lips, he hadn’t expected it. But he’d felt so close to her that the intimacy of it felt right, which was just another thing that confused the hell out of him. How could he feel intimate with a woman he’d never even kissed? All morning he’d relived every look, the feel of her hand, the want in her eyes when he’d left her at her door. He’d reminded himself all day that she was living in Trusty and just how bad of an idea it would be to get involved. He knew the risks of dating her if they dated a few times and then realized what he felt wasn’t really as substantive and consuming as it felt. He knew he could end up making her reputation worse and make himself the object of town gossip, not to mention that it could ruin their relationship as neighbors, but that didn’t stop his body from reacting to the very thought of her—or the rebellious side of him he never realized he had to rear its powerful head.

Fuck the gossip.





BACK HOME, ROSS parked behind his younger brother Wes’s truck and glanced at the husbandry book he’d brought home from work for Elisabeth. He left it in the cab of the truck and followed a trail of blood to the grass, where he found Wes standing with his bloodhound Sweets in his arms. Wes owned a dude ranch just outside of town, and he had a penchant for dangerous activities such as mountain climbing and skydiving, and he was always getting injured. God only knew what he’d done now.

“Ross, I need ya, man.” Wes had a deep gash across his forehead.

“What happened?” Ross did a quick visual assessment of Sweets, who looked to be bleeding from her paws. Sweets was the only bloodhound Ross had ever met with no sense of smell, and she was perfectly named, as she was the sweetest dog on earth.

As if to prove Ross’s thoughts, Sweets licked Wes’s cheek.

“Fell while climbing a rock face,” Wes explained, which made no sense given that Wes would never have Sweets do such a thing, but the amount of blood dripping from the gash on Wes’s head told Ross that he was referring to himself.

Ross nodded toward the clinic entrance and they went inside. He flicked on the lights as he led Wes into an exam room.

“I came by last night to have a beer with you, but you were on your date with Elisabeth Nash.” With Sweets securely pressed against his chest, Wes sat on the exam table with a smart-ass smirk on his face.

Goddamn Braden grapevine, a direct descendant of the Trusty grapevine. Ross slanted his eyes at Wes. “Mom or Emily?”

“Em, of course. Dating a Trusty girl? That’s new.”

“It wasn’t a date.” But it had taken a minute-by-minute effort to keep himself from asking her on one.

“That’s not what Em thinks. She said—”

Ross stopped him with a heated stare, then began checking Sweets’s paws. “I don’t see a cut or contusion on her paws. What happened?”