“Great work, Cuddles. Did you have fun in class today?”
The dog licked her, then wriggled until she let her back down to continue tormenting a happily bothered Atlas.
“We’re done already?” Zach sounded disappointed.
“Puppies tire easily.” When he pointedly looked down at Cuddles, who was now trying to dig a hole to China in the grass, she clarified, “What I mean is that they don’t have very long attention spans. Fifteen minutes is long enough for them to learn a little more each day without either of you getting frustrated. In any case, today was a great start. And hopefully, if she does manage to run off again, now you’ll be able to get her to come back on your own.”
“We’re both really glad you were there to find her in the bushes this morning.” He looked down at Heather’s legs and she almost shivered as she remembered the feel of his big, warm hands on her skin. “How are your knees?”
“They’re fine,” she said briskly, wanting to turn his attention back to his dog...not the fact that she was way too aware of how good he smelled, or that even as she worked to keep her gaze from straying to his big, strong hands, she was getting lost in his far-too-mesmerizing eyes. “Tonight is going to be really important. You should set up a small room or section of a room to be hers for the two weeks. Put paper on the floor and her food, water bowls, and bed in one corner. Put her toys throughout the area. And whatever you do, unless she’s sleeping, I don’t recommend leaving her alone outside of the gated area for more than fifteen minutes.”
He frowned. “What if I have plans?”
She could quite easily guess the kind of “plans” he had. “You’ll have to break them, unless you can bring her along and pay close attention to her the entire time.” She smiled at his disconcerted expression. “Would you like to schedule another fifteen-minute training session for tomorrow?”
“When are you free?”
She shook her head. “I only met with you today as a favor to Agnes. Now that I can see you’ll do fine with the proper instruction, you can work with any of my trainers.”
“I don’t want anyone else, Heather.” He made sure she was looking back at him as he said, “I only want you.”
He might as well have pulled her against him and kissed her for the effect his words had on her, and Heather quickly realized that within the few minutes she’d spent with Zach Sullivan, she was already too close to the edge of wanting something she could never make the mistake of letting herself have.
Until she was seventeen, she’d believed in love. She’d thought her parents had the most wonderful marriage, had prayed she’d find a man to love her the way her father so clearly loved her mother. And then she’d found out the truth...that her father had been cheating on her mother for practically their entire marriage. All that time, he’d been lying to her mother. And to her. Because every time he came home from one of his business trips saying how much he loved them, how much he missed them, how they meant everything to him—it had all been a lie.
Heather slipped a finger beneath the sleeve of her long-sleeved shirt and traced over the fine lines of her old scars from cuts she’d put there herself night after night, when she hadn’t known how to deal with her swirling, dark emotions. When all she’d wanted was to feel control over something. Over anything at all.
She hadn’t known at the time just how many teenage girls and boys cut themselves like that. It wasn’t until later, when she went away to college and the nurse at the student medical center had seen the cuts during a gyno exam when Heather was wearing a cloth gown, that she’d been given a pamphlet on cutting. She’d already begun to get past it by then, but knowing she wasn’t the only girl in the world doing it did help some. Still, even though she hadn’t cut herself in nearly ten years, the scars had never quite disappeared, both inside and out.
Fortunately, she wasn’t that lost girl anymore. She was a strong, capable woman who enjoyed channeling her energy into work, friends, and dogs. She was happy. She had everything she wanted.
A man like Zach was exactly what she didn’t need to get entangled with. Not when he was too charismatic for his own good...and hers, too.
Heeding the warning bells going off all throughout her brain and her body, she held her ground and told him, “You can’t have me.”
It wasn’t until she saw determination flare in his eyes that she realized she’d just issued a challenge—a really big one—to the wrong man.
“Another trainer will be waiting here for you at five p.m.” And she’d make certain it was a completely heterosexual male trainer that Zach couldn’t sweet talk into doing whatever he wanted. The most important thing was that she put an end to their connection. “It was nice meeting you.”
She doubted the wisdom of holding out her hand to shake his, but it was the only way to make sure he knew they were done, that whatever sparks had been jumping between them were officially going to be extinguished today at the close of business.
He moved nearer and wrapped his fingers around hers. “I owe you for saving Cuddles today.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, as his warmth enveloped her head to toe, “you don’t owe me anything.”
“We both know I do. And I always pay my debts.”
Oh God, why couldn’t she breathe?
She wasn’t a virgin, wasn’t some young girl easily dazzled by a man just because he looked in her direction. On the contrary, she was a pragmatic woman who knew only too well just how false a pretty facade could be.
“Take good care of Cuddles.” She slid her hand from his. “That’s all the thanks you owe me.”
Before she could walk away, however, her stomach growled and she snarkily muttered, “Agnes’s call came just as I was about to grab something to eat.”
Again, she didn’t realize her misplaying of the situation until he said, “Let me make it up to you by buying you dinner. Somewhere we can sit outside so the dogs can play.”
Did he think she’d just fallen off the turnip truck yesterday? She knew exactly how he expected a make it up to you dinner to play out. He’d ply her with a few glasses of wine and then the next thing she knew, she’d be flat on her back, begging for him to take her.
It wasn’t that she was a prude. On the contrary, just because Heather had always carefully guarded her heart with men, didn’t mean she’d foolishly given up the pleasure of being a woman. She’d just always made sure that her partners weren’t any more interested in her heart that she was in theirs, and that there was no chance of anything ever going deeper than the physical.