Piers closed his eyes. It was getting worse and worse. No wonder the dog thought he was the boss.
‘It’s no good. I’ll have to ring Mary and tell her I can’t go,’ Emily said dispiritedly.
Piers frowned and came to a quick decision. He had planned to spend only a few days with his godmother, looking at local properties, but, in reality, there was nothing to stop him from staying longer, nor from working from her house whilst he did so, and besides... He looked at the dog lying sprawled out on the rug in front of the fireplace, a whole array of semi-chewed toys spread around him.
With his godmother safely out of the way he could look around for another home for Ben.
‘Yes, you can,’ he told his godmother firmly. ‘I’ll stay here with Ben.’
‘For three weeks? Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ Emily Latham demurred, but Piers could see the gleam of hope in her eyes.
‘You aren’t asking me,’ he told her prosaically, ‘I’m volunteering. And besides, it will give me more time to look around for somewhere to live and work.’
‘Well, if you’re sure...’
‘I’m sure,’ Piers confirmed. ‘You go and ring Mary.’
As his godmother headed for the door she paused and stopped, saying, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. How did the training class go?’
Piers grimaced. ‘It didn’t. In fact the whole thing was shambolic. The young woman who took it was very easy on the eye and equally easy on the dogs. I always thought red hair was supposed to signify temper in a woman, but she—’
‘Red hair... Oh, it must have been Georgia who took the class. She’s lovely, isn’t she? She’s only been with the practice a few months. In fact it’s really thanks to her that I got Ben...’
Piers tensed. ‘Thanks to her? You mean she was responsible for that...that...?’
He stopped as the telephone started to ring and his godmother went to answer it. He might have known, he fumed. No wonder the wretched woman had been so keen to protect Ben, if she was the one who was responsible for his godmother having the dog in the first place. Of all the irresponsible...
Wrathfully he remembered the chaos of what had purported to be this morning’s dog-training class. Philip must have used his eyes rather than his brain the day he had decided to employ her. She certainly was very eye-catching, with that mass of thick, dark red hair and that delicate face, those lusciously dark-lashed eyes and that body that was so curvy that it was just made for a man’s hands to caress...
Abruptly Piers frowned; this was no way for him to be thinking. His godmother had more than likely committed the same folly of being instantly attracted to her crafty canine, for no one could deny that Ben was an extremely good-looking dog.
He, Piers, attracted to Georgia? Impossible... He liked cool, intellectual brunettes, tall and slim, fully up-to-speed independent women who would have shuddered in distaste at the mere thought of an animal’s hair anywhere near their immaculately presented persons.
A short, curvy redhead with tousled curls who thought nothing of cuddling one of her furry friends was quite definitely not his cup of tea... No way...no way at all...
‘That was Mary on the phone,’ his godmother announced happily as she came back into the room. ‘I’ve told her that I’m going to be able to join her after all.’ Her face clouded slightly. ‘Are you sure you really want to do this, Piers? I know that Ben can be rather a naughty boy at times, but his heart’s in the right place...’ She beamed adoringly at the dog, who had followed her into the room and was looking approvingly up at her.