Then, from inside the depths of the house came a happy, high-pitched bark. And then another, which seemed to say, “Hurry up, lady. I have to pee!”
Ah, hell. In for a penny…Grace opened the front door and peered inside.
The living room was as stunning as the outside of the house. Wide-open spaces, done in dark masculine wood and neutral colors. The furniture was oversized and sparse on the beautiful, scarred hardwood floors. An entire wall of windows faced the late summer sky and Pacific Ocean.
As Grace stepped inside, the barking increased in volume, intermingled now with hopeful whining. She followed the sounds to a huge, state-of-the-art kitchen that made her wish she knew how to cook beyond the basics of soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches. Just past the kitchen was a laundry room, the doorway blocked by a toddler gate.
On the other side of the gate was a baby pig.
A baby pig that barked.
Okay, not a pig at all, but one of those dogs whose faces looked smashed in. The tiny body was mostly tan, the face black with crazy bugged-out eyes and a tongue that lolled out the side of its mouth. It looked like an animated cartoon as it twirled in excited circles, dancing for her, trying to impress and charm its way out of lockup.
“Hi,” she said to him. Her? Hard to tell since its parts were so low as to scrape the ground along with its belly.
The thing snorted and huffed in joyous delirium, rolling over and over like a hotdog, then jumping up and down like a Mexican jelly bean.
“Oh, there’s no need for all that,” Grace said, and opened the gate.
Mistake number one.
The dog/pig/alien streaked past her with astounding speed and promptly raced out of the kitchen and out of sight.
“Hey,” she called. “Slow down.”
But it didn’t, and wow, those stumpy legs could really move. It snorted with sheer delight as it made its mad getaway, and Grace was forced to rethink the pig theory. Also, the sex mystery was solved. From behind, she’d caught a glimpse of dangly bits.
It—he—ran circles around the couch, barking with merry enthusiasm. She gave chase, wondering how it was that she had multiple advanced degrees, and yet she hadn’t thought to ask the name of the damn dog. “Hey,” she said. “Hey you. We’re going outside to walk.”
The puppy dashed past her like lightning.
Dammit. Breathless, she changed direction and followed him back into the kitchen where he was chasing some imaginary threat around the gorgeous dark wood kitchen table that indeed had two twenty-dollar bills lying on the smooth surface.
She was beginning to see why the job paid so much.
She retraced her steps to the laundry room and found a leash and collar hanging on the doorknob above the gate. Perfect. The collar was a manly blue and the tag said TANK.
Grace laughed out loud, then searched for Tank. Turned out, Tank had worn off the excess energy and was up against the front door, panting.
“Good boy,” Grace cooed, and came at him with his collar. “What a good boy.”
He smiled at her.
Aw. See? she told herself. Compared to account analysis and posing nude, this job is going to be a piece of cake. She was still mentally patting herself on the back for accepting this job when right there on the foyer floor, Tank squatted, hunched, and—
“No!” she cried. “Oh no, not inside!” She fumbled with the front door, which scared Tank into stopping mid-poo. He ran a few feet away from the front door and hunched again. He was quicker this time. Grace was still standing there, mouth open in shock and horror as little Tank took a dainty step away from his second masterpiece, pawed his short back legs on the wood like a matador, and then, with his oversized head held up high, trotted right out the front door like royalty.
Grace staggered after him, eyes watering from the unholy smell. “Tank! Tank, wait!”
Tank didn’t wait. Apparently feeling ten pounds lighter, he raced across the front yard and the street. He hit the beach, his little legs pumping with the speed of a gazelle as he practically flew across the sand, heading straight for the water.
“Oh, God,” she cried. “No, Tank, no!”
But Tank dived into the first wave and vanished.
Grace dropped the purse off her shoulder and let it fall to the sand. “Tank!”
She dashed closer to the water. A wave hit her at hip level, knocking her back a step as she frantically searched for a bobbing head.
Nothing. The little guy had completely vanished, having committed suicide right before her eyes.
The next wave hit her at chest height. Again she staggered back, gasping at the shock of the water as she searched frantically for a little black head.
Wave number three washed right over the top of her. She came up sputtering, shook her head to clear it, then dived beneath the surface, desperate to find the puppy.
Nothing.
Finally, she was forced to crawl out of the water and admit defeat. She pulled her phone from her purse and swore because it’d turned itself off. Probably because she kept dropping it.
Or tossing it to the rocky beach to look for drowning puppies.
She powered the phone on, gnawed on her lower lip, then called the man who’d trusted her to “be on time, be responsible, and not be a flake.” Heart pounding, throat tight, she waited until he picked up.
“Dr. Scott,” came the low, deep male voice.
Dr. Scott. Dr. Scott?
“Hello?” he said. “Anyone there?”
Oh, God. This was bad. Very bad. Because she knew him.
Well, okay, not really. She’d seen him around because he was good friends with Mallory’s and Amy’s boyfriends. Dr. Joshua Scott was thirty-four—which she knew because Mallory had given him thirty-four chocolate cupcakes on his birthday last month, a joke because he was a health nut. He was a big guy, built for football more than the ER, but he’d chosen the latter. Even in his wrinkled scrubs after a long day at work, his dark hair tousled and his darker eyes lined with exhaustion, he was drop-dead sexy. The few times that their gazes had locked, the air had snapped, crackled, and popped with a tension she hadn’t felt with a man in far too long.
And she’d just killed his puppy.
“Um, hi,” she said. “This is Grace Brooks. Your…dog walker.” She choked down a horrified sob and forced herself to continue, to give him the rest. “I might have just lost your puppy.”
There was a single beat of stunned silence.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
More silence.
She dropped to her wobbly knees in the sand and shoved her wet hair out of her face with shaking fingers. “Dr. Scott? Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
She waited for the rest of his response, desperately gripping the phone.
“You might have lost Tank,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said softly, hating herself.
“You’re sure.”
Grace looked around the beach. The empty beach. “Yes.”
“Well, then, I owe you a big, fat kiss.”
Grace pulled her phone from her ear and stared at it, then brought it back. “No,” she said, shaking her head as if he could see her. “I don’t think you understand. I lost Tank. In the water.”
He muttered something that she’d have sworn sounded like “I should be so lucky.”
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m two minutes away. I got a break in the ER and was coming home to make sure you showed.”
“Well, of course I showed—”
But he’d disconnected.
“Why wouldn’t I show?” she asked no one. She dropped her phone back into her purse and got up. Two minutes. She had two minutes to find Tank.
Chapter 2
Okay, so maybe chocolate doesn’t make the world go around, but it sure makes the trip worthwhile.
Josh’s day had started at five that morning in the gym. Matt and Ty, his workout partners, spent the hour sparring in the ring, beating the shit out of each other while Josh lifted weights. The three of them worked hard while retaining enough breath to sling ongoing insults and taunts. It was what friends were for.
By six-thirty, he was in the ER, patching up a guy who’d gotten in a bar fight in Seattle hours before but had been too drunk to realize he was bleeding profusely as he drove down the highway. From there, Josh had moved on to a heart attack victim and then to a two-year-old who’d swallowed a few pennies and was having understandable trouble passing them.
By noon, Josh wasn’t even halfway through his day, and he’d already been overloaded and overworked and was quite possibly teetering on the edge of burnout. He could feel it creeping in on him in unguarded moments, like now when he was parking his car between his house and the beach to deal with Grace Brooks.
He knew who she was. He’d seen her around. Blue eyes, a quick smile, long, shiny blond hair, and a willowy yet curvy body that could drive a man right out of his mind if he gave it too much thought.
As he walked across the sand toward the water, doing his best not to give it any thought, he caught sight of her in the water. She was facing the waves, her hands on her head in a distraught pose. With a frown, he picked up the pace, just as something dashed toward him in his peripheral vision.
Something small.
Something evil.
Something named Tank. Josh scooped up the sand-covered puppy and held him away from him. The pug wriggled intently, running in the air, trying to get closer to Josh. Finally giving up, Tank refocused his attention on the woman in the ocean.
“Oh, I see her,” Josh said. “And what the hell have you done now?”
Grace was panicked. It was one thing to lose a job. It was another thing entirely to lose the job. Damn. Her parents had always told her “keep your head down and work hard” and she’d done her best. She really had.
But she’d still screwed up. And it wasn’t like she could call them for advice on this. Neither of them could possibly understand the thought process that had led her to a dog walking job, much less why she’d placed fun as her newest, highest priority. “Tank!” she yelled at the waves. “Tank?” Wading back in up to her waist, she turned in a full circle to rescan the beach, then went utterly still.
Standing on the sand was a man. His tall, broad stature implied strength and control, and he was rocking a pair of navy blue scrubs and dark wraparound Ray-Bans.
Holding her archnemesis.
Tank.
The puppy was panting happily away, and Grace could have sworn he was smiling. Forget the pig or alien theory—Tank was a rat. Relief at seeing the thing alive nearly brought her to her knees, but she’d have drowned, so she locked them—just as the next wave hit her from behind.
She was very busy fighting a full-facial, saltwater cavity wash when two big hands gripped her arms and hauled her upright.
Dr. Scott, of course.
She coughed and choked some more—very attractive, she was quite certain. Then she realized that she was up against her rescuer, held there firmly as the water swirled around their calves. “I’m okay,” she gasped.
“Sure?”
“Yes,” she said, but he didn’t let her go. “Really,” she promised. “I’m good.”
He nodded and continued to hold her against him.
Except…he wasn’t holding her at all. She was clinging to him, soaking up the warmth and strength of him radiating through his now-wet scrubs. Well, crap. Forcing herself to loosen her grip on him, she stepped back, working on searching for a different grip entirely—the one on her fast-failing dignity. Hiking her dress up to her thighs, she frog-marched out of the water as fast as she could so as to avoid being flattened by the next wave. By the time she hit dry sand, she was feeling a little bit like a drowned kitten. One glance down assured her that she didn’t look like a drowned kitten. She looked like she was trying out for a wet T-shirt contest.
Yikes.
She decided not to look at herself again and made the mistake of looking instead at her rescuer. He was close, close enough to force her to tilt her head up to see his face, close enough to ascertain that he clearly hadn’t shaved that morning.
The dark stubble on his jaw was incredibly disconcerting. And sexy.
“Arf!” Tank said from his perch, which was her purse, still lying on the sand. The little shit was standing on it like he owned it, wet, sandy paws and all. “Arf, arf!”
Nice. Grace gave herself a big mental thumbs-up for the “fun” that this job had been so far.
Josh nudged Tank off Grace’s purse, then attempted to brush the wet sand from the leather. Tank gave a pretend ferocious growl and began a tug-of-war with the strap.
Heathen.
Josh gave him another nudge and rescued the purse. He was doing his damnedest to concentrate on the situation at hand, but that was proving difficult given the sight of Grace, her clothes plastered to her like a second skin. Half of her hair was in a topsy-turvy knot on top of her head, with the rest plastered to her face. The tip of her nose had gotten sunburned, and her mascara was smudged around her drown-in-me blue eyes.
And then there was her mouth.
She had a full lower lip, one that warmed him up considerably and made him think about sex. Actually, everything about her—the oh-shit expression on her face, the way she waved her hands like she was trying to explain herself without words, the delicate clinking of the myriad of thin silver bracelets she wore on her wrist—brought to mind sex.
Sex and chaos.
Pure, unadulterated, trouble-filled chaos. The thing was, he’d been there before, in another time and place, and was no longer interested in such things. No matter how hot the packaging was.
And the packaging was very hot. Grace was wearing one of those flimsy little summer dresses that had a way of messing with a guy’s brain. The tiny straps had been designed with the sole purpose of making him want to tug them down—with his teeth.