Harlequin Special Edition November 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Weaver Christmas Gift\The Soldier's Holiday Homecoming\Santa's Playbook (17 page)

The silence in the kitchen after she left was thick.

“It wasn't intentional,” Casey finally added. “Well, it was, but not because I wanted to break it.”

Squire sipped the rest of the coffee out of the saucer. He'd drunk it that way ever since Casey could remember, claiming it cooled faster than in a mug; as anxious as he was to get caffeine into his blood, he wasn't anxious to burn the hell outta the inside of his mouth. When the saucer was empty, his grandfather set it down and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “You're gonna give me a crick in my neck if I gotta keep looking up at you, boy.”

Casey still had no desire to sit, but he did. “It happened a few months ago. I should have told you before.”

Squire pursed his lips but said nothing, which had the back of Casey's neck prickling. Because his grandfather had never been one to mince words.

“I'm sorry,” Casey added doggedly. “Disown me. Curse me. Do whatever, because I know I deserve it.”

“Clays don't disown,” Squire said. “It was the other side, Sarah's family, who liked to do that sort of thing. Her mama was disowned for having Sarah out of wedlock and they never wanted to make up for it even when they had the chance.” He curled his fingers and knocked his knuckles softly against the table. “You had that instrument since you were a pup. You think I didn't know it might get banged up a time or two?”

“It's worse than banged up. You're supposed to be tearing me into strips by now.”

“Thirty, forty years ago, I would've. Sentimental value or not, it's just a
thing
, Casey. Sarah certainly understood that when she was alive. And now that I'm old as Methuselah, I understand it, too. If it can be fixed, fix it. Pass it on to the next generation someday. If it can't, then it can't.”

“When did you start getting mellow, old man?” Casey's uncle Matthew had come in through the mudroom and had obviously overheard. He was holding a squirming Labrador pup in his arms.

“I've always been mellow,” Squire countered.

Matthew made a face. “My foot,” he muttered, and finally let the pup down to the floor.

The ball of yellow fur immediately scrambled under the table, brushing past Casey's legs. He reached down to pet the animal, but the puppy yelped and ran the other direction, toenails slipping and sliding on the wood-planked floor as he careened into the base of a cabinet before tearing off on yet another path.

“One of the ones Angel brought up,” Matthew said with a shake of his head. “Dog'll never be a cattle dog. Can tell that already. He's afraid of his own shadow.”

“He's a pup.” Casey rose and managed to corral the little furball into a corner, where he hunched down on his butt and whined. Casey slid his hand beneath the puppy's round belly and picked him up.

“And a pretty one,” his uncle agreed, looking amused. “But I need a dog who'll help work cattle, not another pet. Fortunately, the female your sister brought me reacted better in the barn. You like that little guy, you take him.”

Casey immediately shook his head and started to hold out the dog. “I don't need a dog.” The damned thing started licking Casey's hand. And peed on the floor.

“Think of someone who does,” Matt suggested, tossing him a roll of paper towels. “Brody's already laid down the law to your sister that they're not taking any puppies back home with them. They've still got four more to give away.”

Squire suddenly got up to pour more coffee into his saucer. “Take the dog, boy,” he advised. “Consider it penance if you have to.”

“A puppy for a broken violin?”

“Sarah liked a good Labrador,” Squire said mildly. “And after all that bull-hockey you were yammering about this afternoon over at J.D.'s, seems to me having a dog might be a reason for you to give up your whole running-away notion.”

Casey finished wiping up the small puddle and threw away the towels. The dog had moved on from licking Casey's hand to his arm, right through his long-sleeved T-shirt. “I'm not running away.”

His uncle's eyebrows rose a little but he remained tellingly silent.

Squire, on the other hand, snorted loudly. “The only reason Sarah ever gave me the time of day in the first place was because she liked the dog I had back then.” With his saucer balanced on his fingertips, he returned to his seat at the table without so much as a drip. He looked Casey square in the eyes. “Take the dog,” he ordered flatly.

Casey took the dog.

He drove home and cleaned up another puddle of pee from his truck's leather seat and, once it was clean, covered it with an oversize folded towel to keep from having to do it again.

All the while, the dog followed on Casey's heels, though he didn't much seem to like the feel of the snow beneath his paws. “You're gonna have to get used to that, buddy,” Casey told him, and lifted him up onto the towel-protected seat. “Around here, that stuff is usually on the ground for half the year.”

The puppy propped his front paws on the console between the seats and stared expectantly at Casey with bright button-black eyes.

“You're crazy,” Casey told the puppy. “She's not going to forgive me. There are too many things to forgive.”

The puppy whined. Scratched his paw over the console.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He really did need therapy if he was taking his cues from a
dog
.

But he found himself rounding the truck. Getting behind the wheel. “Don't you pee again,” he warned, nudging the puppy back onto the towel. “Stay.”

His little tail, small and stubby in comparison to his round body, wagged furiously and he let out a shrill, excited yip that had his entire body bouncing.

Casey made it to Colbys in a matter of minutes. The tent in the parking lot was gone and the Christmas trees had been pushed out to the sidewalk, lining the entire front of her building. He parked in the lot next to Jane's truck and zipped the puppy inside his jacket before going in through the grill door. Fortunately, all of the tables were filled with customers and he didn't get a second look as he strode through to the bar. Only Merilee was behind the taps, though, and when she spotted him, she jerked her head toward the storeroom door. “Back there.”

One small mercy, he figured. At least he wouldn't have an audience.

He went through the door and not for the first time wished the thing had a lock on the inside. He passed the cooler full of kegs and stopped in the opened doorway of Jane's office.

She was sitting at the desk glaring at the computer and without wasting a beat, quickly transferred that glare to him. “You changed my password,” she accused. “Yesterday while you were messing around with
my
computer, you changed
my
password.”

He felt as if a year had passed since the previous morning. He picked up the picture frame holding the photograph of her sister's family and showed her the narrow piece of masking tape he'd stuck there on which he'd written down the password. “You should memorize it.”

She peeled off the tape. “CclovesJC695,” she read off slowly. She was silent for a long, long moment that had Casey's nerves burning. “You put this here yesterday morning,” she finally said.

“Yeah.”

Her throat worked. She didn't look at him. “What's 695?” Her voice sounded strangled.

“Best passwords have random numbers and characters. I figured you could remember six ninety-five, though. That's what you charge for a beer.”

“You let me walk away last night without a word,” she finally said. She pressed the tape flat on the desk in front of her. “You'd already left this for me, but last night?” She pushed to her feet and stared at him with wounded eyes. “Not. One. Word.”

Inside his coat, the puppy squirmed silently, and he hoped to hell the dog wasn't peeing there, too. “Last night you weren't only talking about love. You were talking about honesty. And I haven't been.”

She angled her chin upward, looking haughty even though he knew it was an act.

He managed to wedge himself inside her office and close the door behind him, putting another layer of privacy between them and her patrons. She raised an eyebrow but bumped into her chair noisily when she backed up, obviously anxious to put space between them.

The puppy whined a little and Jane's eyes narrowed. “What was that?”

He tried pretending ignorance. “What was what?”

She crossed her arms, her expression turning sharp. “Casey—”

He exhaled and unzipped his jacket, pulling out the puppy, who was all too happy to escape, wriggling right out of his hands and onto the desktop, where he promptly knocked Jane's photograph off onto the floor. When he started to squat next to the keyboard, Casey hastily picked him up and moved him to the floor. It, at least, was tiled and could be cleaned easily.

Jane had plopped down onto her chair and was staring at both the puppy and Casey as if they'd turned pink and sprouted tutus. “That is a dog.” She pointed out the obvious. “You brought a dog into my place of business.”

“I wasn't gonna leave him in the truck. It's too cold outside.”

She eyed him. “Casey—”

Even though there was barely room with the door closed the way it was, he crouched down in front of her chair and closed his hands over the arms so she couldn't swivel away from him. “My work at Cee-Vid is just a cover for what I really do,” he said quietly. “For what several of us really do.” The puppy was sniffing his way around the tight perimeter of the office, worming his way beneath the bottom of the metal desk drawers and popping out on the other side.

“A cover,” she repeated, looking from the dog back to his face. “For what?” Her voice was tart. “Puppy breeding?”

“Spying.”

Her lips twitched as if he'd just told a bad joke. “Yeah, right.”

“Jane.”

Her gaze flickered. She moistened her lips. “You're serious.”

“Those two guys who died, remember?” He didn't need her nod to know that she did. “They were field agents working under my watch. It was my job to keep them safe and I didn't.”

“Spies,” she repeated faintly. “Like...spies. James Bond spies.”

“A whole lot less glamorous,” he corrected her, not entirely sure why he found that amusing but realizing that he did. “Hollins-Winword is a private agency that sometimes works with the government and sometimes doesn't. Sometimes it's as simple as keeping some rich guy's kids safe and sometimes it's an op that's years in the planning.”

“Legally, though,” she prompted, looking a little dazed. “Right?”

He hesitated. “Do you want me to whitewash it, Janie? Mostly, yes. But not always. Not entirely. And that's not going to change. Hollins-Winword is about doing what's right. And that sometimes gets into a gray area.”

Her jaw loosened. “And this is happening in
Weaver
. Right under our noses. Why hasn't anyone ever found out?”

“Because we're very good at keeping secrets. And you'll have to keep it secret now, too.”

“Then why tell me at all? Maybe I'll go blabbing it all over town!”

“Because you think I don't trust you, and I want you to understand just how much I do.”

Her mouth slowly closed. She suddenly blinked and looked away, scooping up the dog to hold him in her lap. The puppy immediately pawed her breasts and tried to lick her chin. “What's his name?”

Baring Hollins-Winword's secrets was easier than baring his soul. “I was thinking we could pick out a name together,” he said gruffly.

Her eyes lifted to meet his. “Why?”

“He sort of got pawned off on me,” he admitted. Because it was a certainty that sooner or later she'd find out how he'd come to have the dog. “But he needs a family.” His chest went tight. “And seems like you and I could start off with him.”

She pressed her cheek to the dog's head but never took her eyes from Casey's. They'd turned wet and shiny.

“While we figure out everything else,” he finished huskily. “If you're...willing.”

She was silent for a moment. “He's quite the Christmas gift,” she said slowly. “I don't have room for a dog in my condo. Look at the size of his paws already. He's going to be big as a moose.”

“I have room for Moose, even if he is one. I have room for you. And he's not a gift. He's a promise.” His jaw felt tight. “But I don't want to be someone you're settling for, Janie. You deserve everything you want. So when you change your mind down the line—”

She pressed her fingers over his mouth. “I'm not going to change my mind. We can have this discussion in a year. In five years. In fifty. I am not changing my mind. So we'll just become Weaver's newer version of Dori and Howard, two old geezers living together.”

He pulled her hand away, holding it firmly in his. He knew where she was heading, and all his reasons for resisting kept slipping out of his grasp. “I'm not suggesting you live with me,” he corrected her.

Her eyes were still wet, but a faint smile suddenly flirted with her lips. “So now you don't have room for me?”

“You said you wanted a husband.” He leaned over the dog until his lips hovered next to hers. “Turns out I want a wife.”

Her hands slowly rose and came around his shoulders. “I don't know, Casey.” Her words whispered against his lips. “We've only been out on
one
date.”

“Is this what life is going to be like with you, sport?”

She nodded and her lips slid, light as breath, against his. “Probably. Why do you call me sport?”

He closed his hand behind her head, tilting it slightly. “Because you're my favorite thing to play with.”

She sank her hand in his hair and pulled hard. “I'm not a toy.”