“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.” She tossed her head, let out a huff of aggravated air, and then walked away.
Cody trailed behind her, giving up on keeping his gaze off her ass. Tonight he would see her bare naked, and that particular part of her anatomy was high on his list to touch. At his door, he expected her to turn, to say something, maybe try one last time for a kiss. She didn’t. Just kept right on going. The woman was still pissed. He chuckled, and apparently she heard him because she lifted her middle finger without looking back.
That made him laugh. He’d been fascinated by her from the first time she’d done that, and red flags waved a warning as he stepped onto the porch to survey the street. No car turned the corner, aiming to run over her. That she was under his protection as any neighbor who was in danger would be wasn’t the reason for the flags demanding his attention. That he’d never met anyone like her, never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Riley, had agreed to date her when his head wasn’t even sure it wanted to face another day . . . All of that was almost too much to take in.
“I am so screwed,” he said to Sally and Pretty Girl, both of them sitting at his feet, watching their new friend walk away. At hearing him, they lifted brown doggy eyes, looking up at him as if they totally agreed with his assessment.
He eyed the dogs. “You two could argue the point.” After Riley drove away, he went back inside to make a list. Wash the sheets, buy beer and limes. Figure out what to feed his . . . what exactly was she to him?
Riley pretended not to notice Cody watching her as she left. He made her feel safe. She would have welcomed a man like him when she was in foster care, fighting off advances from those whose supposed job it was to protect her. With Cody guarding her, she dared whoever was trying to hurt her and the animals under her care to bring it on.
She’d almost walked out when he’d given her his conditions. Like she’d told him, she didn’t do well with rules. There had been too many times when the “house rules” laid down by her foster parents had no other purpose than to put her at their mercy. If it wasn’t the mother seeing Riley as no more than a slave—someone to clean the house, wash the clothes, do the dishes—it was the father or an older son eyeing her in a way that creeped her out, even when her young self hadn’t quite understood why.
It wasn’t until living with Pat and John Haywood that she’d felt safe and wanted. If only she’d found them before she’d had to watch Reed die in her arms. He had been her first love, and she’d failed him.
Going there only led to depression and guilt, so she pulled her mind from that dark part of her past, and thought about Cody. It was clear that he was haunted by something, but she’d managed to get past his first wall of defense. How many walls he’d erected that she’d have to blast her way past, she didn’t know, but in her heart, she believed he was worth the trouble. And the man was trouble. There was no doubt about that.
She turned into the parking lot of her clinic, and when she saw Jeff and Marla pacing at her front door with their cat, Rascal—with only his head showing from the top of a towel they had wrapped around him—she wanted to scream. Not again.
It was going to be a bitch of a day.
“Stud Two’s here,” Brooke said from the doorway. “If you’re going to keep Stud One, can I have Stud Two?”
Riley rolled her eyes. “You really need to stop calling them that.”
“Well, it’s true. Anyway, can I?”
“I think that’s between you and Mike. Have him wait in my office. I’ll be there in a sec.”
She washed her hands, slipped off her lab coat, and headed down the hall. At the doorway, she stopped. Brooke stood close to Mike, both of them laughing. They made a cute couple, and Riley checked her jealously meter, happy to see that it registered zero. It would be a complication if she were attracted to both Mike and Cody.
“Hi, Mike. Thanks for stopping by,” she said, entering her office. He and Brooke jumped apart, and then Brooke mumbled a good-bye as she left.
He turned from watching her pretty assistant leave. “Brooke said you had another animal come in sick today.”
“Poisoned.” She walked around her desk and picked up the lab report she’d gotten back that morning. “This is on Max, a cat I couldn’t save. He belonged to a little girl who cherished him. Who would do something like that?”
Mike took the paper she held out. “I don’t know, Riley. I see some crap in my job that makes me question humanity, but then I meet someone like you who cares. That tells me the world isn’t such a bad place after all.”