Out of Bounds (17 page)

Busted.

“I got a call right when I pulled up.” He had no idea how to start this conversation. He didn’t even know what conversation he wanted to have. “I like your house.” The flower beds beside her front door were in need of attention, but everything else about the white, standard-issue split-level ranch house was neat, suburban. There was even a wreath on the front door.

“It’s my mom’s.” She folded her arms across her middle. She was wearing those navy track pants again and had her hair pulled back in a thick ponytail. That hair had been spread on his pillows less than eight hours ago.

“Right. I forgot.” Now that she’d mentioned her mom, he was even less sure what to say. There was a small pile of what looked like dog biscuits on the walkway and a trail of biscuits leading up the steps to the front door. “Is Snoopy coming over for a picnic?”

“I’m trying to trap a dog.”

“This is a dog trap?”

“For a wild schnoodle.”

She pointed across the street and he saw something white crouched in the dark cave created by two big bushes near the corner of a blue ranch house.

“A schnoodle?”

“Poodle-schnauzer mix,” she explained. “My mother’s dog has answered the call of the wild. Next thing I know, she’ll be bringing coyote pals over to play Xbox or inviting a pack of wolves home for Sunday dinner.”

The schnoodle emerged fully from the bushes just as he turned to get a better look at her.

Small. White. Fluffy.

What the hell?

He stared at the dog until she flicked her tail and took off running around the side of the house.

“Angel!” Posy shouted. “Come!”

Angel?

“That’s your dog?” he asked.

“My mother’s dog. I don’t live here, remember?”

Right. She didn’t live here. And that was definitely not the same dog he’d seen on the street in Madrid.

He touched the scar behind his ear.

The dog he’d see in Madrid had been a Spanish dog. A real, living breathing dog that just happened to be the doppelgänger of Posy’s wild poodle. Schnoodle.

Angel.

“How long has she had that dog?” he asked.

She’d been staring across the street in the direction her mom’s dog took, but now her attention snapped back to him. Her eyebrows were so expressive. He could almost read her thoughts. Right now she was trying to figure out what the hell he was up to.

“A few years, why?”

“No reason,” he answered. He was not going to tell her about the doppelgänger. “I’m thinking about getting a dog.”

“I’ll give you one,” Posy said. “You just need a net. Or a bear trap.”

“Won’t she come home when she’s hungry?”

“She does come home. She comes home, eats the food in her bowl and waits for any chance to escape again. I had her corralled in the house, but these guys came over to pack up some of my mom’s stuff and one of them held the door open and she was gone again.” Posy sighed. “I should stop feeding her. I just—”

“Don’t want her to go hungry?”

“If you tell her, I’ll kill you.” Posy looked at him. “Wes, what are you doing here?”

“I talked to Deacon. He’s getting in touch with a lawyer. He doesn’t want to press charges. He’s going to do what he can to make sure your mom doesn’t get in trouble.”

Posy took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“Thank
you,
” Wes said. “You’re the one who paid the money back. Julia asked me where you got it and I realized I didn’t even ask you.”

“That would be impolite.”

“I was too busy yelling at you.” Wes put his hands in the pockets of his jeans at the memory of how mad he’d been. How he hadn’t done anything to pull back his anger. He’d wanted her to know he was furious. “I’m sorry about that. You didn’t deserve it. You were just cleaning up after your mom.”

She squinted across the street, one hand shading her eyes.

“Where did you get the money?”

“Wes, this is a very uncomfortable subject for me.”

“I know you said you’re selling your mom’s house and closing the store, but you didn’t get the money from those yet and you wrote an awfully big check yesterday.” Her hand
had
been shaking when she gave it to him. “Let me help, Posy. I can pay the money back.”

“No!” Her eyes flashed to his face. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Posy, come on. It’s no problem.” He wouldn’t even miss the money. “Let me.”

“No,” she said again, forcefully. “Wes, when I was covering up what my mom did, I felt awful. I wanted to tell you. Then we slept together and I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. Now the secret is out and your brother has the money and none of that is between us anymore.”

He took a step toward her, keeping his hands in his pockets. “What is between us now?”

“I don’t know,” Posy said.

“What do you want?”

“Wes, maybe it’s better if we—”

“No,” he said quickly. He didn’t want her to finish her thought. She was so strong, if she decided something, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to change her mind. “It’s not better.”

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds.

“Maybe it’s better if we start over.” He looked around the yard, taking in the house, the wreath, the trail of dog biscuits. “I’m Wes,” he said. “I just moved to town and I’m thinking about getting a dog. I always wanted one.”

She shook her head, the end of her ponytail sliding across her shoulders. “Wes, this is dumb. We can’t just ignore everything else.”

“Tell me what it’s like to have a dog.”

She hesitated. He was afraid she was going to walk away. Instead, she cleared her throat and said, “I don’t know what it’s like to have a dog. Angel is more a spawn of the devil. You didn’t have a dog when you were a kid?”

“No. I always wanted one, though.”

“What kind of dog are you going to get?” She held up a hand. “Wait, let me guess. Stand still.”

Was this really going to work? Could they get past last night and see what came next?

“You can’t guess something like that just by looking at a person.”

“This is what I do for a living,” she said. “Let me get a good look.”

“You do not assess human–dog compatibility for a living.”

* * *

P
OSY
HAD
NO
IDEA
how he’d convinced her to stay here, to keep talking. It was rare for her to feel comfortable with herself when she was in Kirkland, but yesterday she’d been that comfortable with Wes. So when he was there, outside her mom’s house, offering to talk to her even though he had every right to hate her and her mom, she couldn’t turn him away.

“One of my roles is location scout for Hotel Marie. I visit neighborhoods and cities and determine if they are suitable for the clientele we want to attract. You can tell a lot about a place based on the kind of dogs people have there.”

“I’m not that easy to read,” he said.

“Then why won’t you stand still and let me have a look.”

Her control slipped and some of the need she’d been feeling ever since he got out of his truck slipped through in her voice.

He faced her. He took his hands out of his pockets and held his arms slightly away from his body.

She didn’t move toward him, but when he opened himself up to her, leaving himself vulnerable in front of her, she felt the distance between them close just the same. It wasn’t scientifically possible that the day got twenty degrees warmer, but there was heat between them just the same.

He shifted his feet. “You don’t look like a schnoodle type of person,” he said.

“My mom looks exactly like a schnoodle person.”

She took her time looking him over, from his buzzed hair, to the dark shadow of beard on his face, to the black V-neck T-shirt that clung to his chest, and then straight down his long, strong legs in slim-cut Levi’s to his beat-up black boots.

She’d been with him last night, her hands on his skin, his hands on her. They’d moved together and she’d felt every line and angle of his body. There was nothing under his clothes she hadn’t seen and touched. He was strong and competitive and wanted just as hard as she did.

He needed a dog who could keep up with him, some breed that was big enough to wrestle with him and had a personality he couldn’t dominate. He’d been hurt when he was a kid. Loyalty mattered to him. Trust.

She knew which dog she was going to recommend, but he was right there in front of her and God help her, she was shallow. Later maybe she’d call Maddy and confess to objectifying the perfectly nice guy in front of her, but for now she gave him another once-over, this time starting with his boots and then riding his lean strength right back up to his eyes.

He bent one elbow and flexed. “Seen enough?” Pivoting, he switched arms.

“More than enough. Put your arm down.”

If he hadn’t been laughing, she’d have wanted to kick him for being obnoxious, but even though Wes knew how good-looking he was, he didn’t use his gifts as a weapon. She might have atoned for her lying when she washed the chapel floor, but she was in trouble all over again, this time for lust.

“Well? What’s the perfect dog for me? I can’t wait to hear this.”

He was still smirking because he honestly believed she couldn’t see him for who he was. Straight up, straightforward. Steady and true.

“German shepherd.”

He did a double take and she knew she’d pegged him right.

“Lucky guess.”

She nodded. Except it hadn’t been a guess. He had Rin Tin Tin written all over him. He’d fit right in here in Kirkland.

A low engine rumble distracted her as a van from the Kirkland Animal Patrol pulled into the driveway. The guy who was driving introduced himself as Travis.

“You the pet owners?” he asked.

“What pet?” Posy asked, although she had a bad feeling she knew exactly why Travis was there.

“Someone called in a report that there’s a dog running loose in the neighborhood. Causing property damage. Gave us this address for the owners.” He pulled a tablet computer out of his pocket and turned the screen to face her. “See there? They sent this picture.”

In the photo, Angel was shown from the side, running away from the scene of a crime, a magazine flapping open in her jaws.

“The caller said that was the magazine out of her Sunday
New York Times.
”

Posy didn’t actually need that piece of information. She’d cleaned the shredded magazine pages off the back deck that morning. The crossword puzzle had been mostly intact and she’d noticed that whoever filled it out had gotten twenty-three down incorrect.

“So,” Travis said, “you the owners of that dog?”

“She is,” Wes said.

At the same time Posy said, “My mother is.... Angel belongs to my mother,” Posy added firmly. “My mother is away and I’m dog-sitting.”

“I don’t suppose the dog is properly contained inside the house at this moment?”

“No.”

“Maybe she’s being walked on her leash?”

Posy knew the guy was just doing his job, but she was completely fed up with being judged. “The last time I saw her, she was under the bushes across the road.”

Travis scrutinized the yard, but Angel was long gone.

“Guess I’m going to take a look around, then.” Travis had a round stomach and short legs, but he seemed keen on exercise. He pulled a long-handled net from the back of his van. Before he closed the door, he pointed into the van and said, “You sit tight.”

Turning back to them, he explained, “Picked up a dog before I came your way. That’s why I was late.” He held the net over his shoulder. “You want to come along? Maybe she’ll turn up if you call her.”

“Fat chance,” Posy muttered, but she followed him down the driveway. She wasn’t surprised when Wes ambled along with them—he hadn’t shown any interest in leaving, and why shouldn’t he be witness to this additional dissolution of her life.

“You said she got out of the house, but then what?” Travis asked. “She get spooked by something?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why won’t she come back? Most times, if you’re not mistreating a dog and they don’t get scared or hurt, they come on home when they’re tired or hungry.”

He used the end of the pole to lift the bottom branches of a cedar tree. He and Wes both bent to look underneath.

“She does come back,” Posy said. Travis’s insinuation that Angel was staying away on purpose bothered her. “She eats her food and then she leaves again.”

One time she brought me a purse stuffed with twenties.

“You said she’s your dog?” Travis didn’t sound as if he believed her.

“No,” Posy said, more slowly this time. “She’s my mother’s dog. I’m house-sitting.”

“Maybe she’s looking for your mom,” Wes suggested.

Good luck with that.

They had made a complete circuit of the neighborhood and didn’t once see Angel. As they walked up the driveway to Travis’s van, she said, “I think she’s acting out some fantasy where she’s a wild animal.”

Travis snorted. “Poodles don’t tend to like the wild. They’re house dogs.”

“She’s a schnoodle, though,” Wes said. “Maybe the nonpoodle part is the wild part.”

Posy was starting to think that mixed in with the poodle and schnauzer DNA Angel had at least a touch of wolf. Or maybe tiger.

“Besides,” Wes said, “she obviously does like the wild. Some people are like that—you think they’re going to be just ordinary and then they turn out to be...”

He shifted so he wasn’t looking at Travis anymore, but instead met her eyes. She stopped breathing.

“...extraordinary.”

The lie, her mom’s theft, it was all in their way and there was no way around that, but last night meant something to him. She didn’t know why he was still there, but somehow, it was okay.

“I’ve got a humane trap you can try. It won’t hurt her, just hold her.”

Travis pulled a steel box with a mesh opening on each end out of the back of his van and handed it to her. The steel was warm from sitting in the truck in the sunny driveway, but it made her feel cold.

She gave the trap right back to Travis. “I don’t think she’d fall for a trap.”

Travis looked around the yard again. “Could be right. Poodles are smart. Schnauzers, too. You ever read up on dog training? Lots of times bad behavior comes from being bored.” He took a business card out of his wallet and wrote the name of a website on the back. “Training a dog takes time, but it will keep her and your neighbors’ property safe.”