Penny Jordan Collection(86)

                Having convinced his besotted owner that a collar worn anything less than loose enough for him to slip his head through and free himself from at will was an instrument of torture highly likely to cause him death by strangulation, as soon as he spotted Georgia he slipped his head from his collar with practised ease and tore across the yard towards her, scattering pets and owners as he did so, launching himself at Georgia and almost knocking her to the ground with the force of his enthusiastic greeting.

                ‘Ben...down,’ Georgia instructed firmly.

                Tongue lolling, Ben obligingly wagged his tail.

                ‘Ben,’ Georgia repeated, ‘down.’

                Ben nuzzled her neck lovingly.

                ‘Dr Dolittle, I presume,’ Piers drawled sarcastically as he reached his escapee charge and unceremoniously yanked him off Georgia by the scruff of his neck, instructing him in an ominously quiet voice, ‘Sit.’

                Ben knew when a little diplomacy was called for. Obligingly he sat very heavily on Piers’s feet, leaning lovingly against him and looking up into his eyes.

                Ignoring this touching appeal, Piers sternly refastened Ben’s collar—several notches tighter.

                Georgia knew that it was up to her to take charge, but for some reason her thought processes seemed to have turned to gooey marshmallow. All she could focus on was how wonderfully broad Piers’s chest was, how flat his belly, how corded with male muscles his arms were, as Ben twisted and turned in his hold, giving sharp, short barks of feigned distress.

                ‘I don’t know who was responsible for foisting this delinquent hound on my godmother,’ Piers was saying through gritted teeth, ‘but if I ever find out...’

                So he was Mrs Latham’s godson. Sternly reminding herself that she was a trained professional, and that right now her attention ought to be focused on her canine pupils and not on the six-foot hunk of hormone-level-raising male gorgeousness standing in front of her, Georgia dipped her hand into the box of rewards she had put down at her feet, proffering one to Ben.

                ‘Good boy, Ben. Sit...’ she cajoled him.

                ‘Don’t—’ Piers began sharply, and then stopped as Ben suddenly turned into the most demure dog imaginable, giving Georgia a liquid-eyed look of love before taking the titbit she was offering him.

                ‘Come on, everyone,’ Georgia instructed her small group. ‘Let’s go inside and get started.’

                * * *

                Once inside the large, empty room it quickly became obvious to Piers that, whilst the majority of the other dogs there were responding to Georgia’s careful instructions to their owners, when it came to doggy obedience Ben was in a class of his own.

                When he had disrupted the class for the fifth time, by grinning wickedly at the slightly nervous collie bitch to one side of him and standing, Piers was quite sure deliberately, on the tail of the dog on the other side, Piers decided he had had enough.

                There was no doubt about it: Ben was a master manipulator and most definitely not the dog for a woman as hopelessly incapable of disciplining him as his godmother.

                Several yards away Georgia tried to keep her mind on what she was doing. Ben’s waywardness was communicating itself to the rest of the class, and Georgia could see the sardonic look in Piers’s eyes as the dogs grew restless, their concentration broken by Ben’s sabotage.

                Ben’s trouble wasn’t that he wasn’t intelligent enough, Georgia reflected; it was more that he was too intelligent. Too intelligent and far too energetic for his current sedate lifestyle. Setters were gun dogs; they needed exercise and lots of it, and equally large amounts of firm handling.