Home Is Where the Bark Is (29 page)

Kylie was inquisitive. Over-inquisitive sometimes. But there was genuine concern in her eyes.

“Yes, I do like him,” Serena said. “A lot.”

Kylie’s eyebrows lifted questioningly. “So?”

“It’s early days. Who knows?”

Kylie’s smile was wide and heartfelt. “Fingers crossed. You deserve a good guy after what you’ve been through. Nick . . . he seems all right.”

“He’s more than all right; he’s . . . Kylie, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to the others. It’s all been a bit sudden and I . . . I don’t trust sudden.”

During the girl-in-the-bath-of-chocolate campaign she’d been burned by people who thought they knew her because she’d been in the public eye.

Kylie put a finger to her mouth. “Lips are sealed. I won’t say a word. Though don’t be surprised if other people notice there’s something going on between you two. The chemistry is kind of obvious.”

“Is it? Really?” She was twenty-eight, but she was right back there in her gawky, uncertain teens.
Does he like me? Do you really think he likes me? What makes you think he likes me?

“Sizzling,” said Kylie, with relish.

If the desk hadn’t been between them, Serena would have given Kylie a hug. “Thanks,” she said. There was something very trustworthy about Kylie. For all her matchmaking and gossip, Serena knew she would honor a confidence if asked.

“Talking of said handsome newbie, Nick wants to come see you. Shall I tell him you’re busy?” Kylie teased.

“I think I could spare him a few minutes,” said Serena, grin back in full force. “He probably wants to fill me in on Mack’s progress.”

“Sure he does,” said Kylie, laughing, as she left the office.

Serena was still smiling when Nick rapped briefly on the door. She prepared to race around her desk and into his arms. The grim expression on his face extinguished her smile and held her in place.

“Morning, boss lady,” he said in a voice that, while not a monotone, was not sparking with happy-to-see-you vibes, either.

He closed the door behind him.

“Nick,” she said, unable to keep the tremor from her voice, “is everything okay?” It was a redundant question because it so obviously wasn’t. She felt at a disadvantage behind her desk and took the few steps around it so she faced him.

“Serena, I have to tell you something.” Serena felt again that sensation of being in an out-of-control elevator plunging twenty floors.

She swallowed hard. Here it came. Yesterday was a mistake. He’d had time to think. He couldn’t handle being with a woman who other men fantasized over. They should cool it . . .

“It’s okay, Nick,” she forced herself to say. “If you’ve changed your mind about us, I—” It stuck in her throat to say she “understood” because she darn well didn’t.

“Changed my mind? Hell no,” he said, reaching for her, pulling her into his arms for a Nick-sized hug. Serena sighed with such heartfelt relief she felt her whole body relax as she leaned gratefully close to him. “Don’t even think about changing your mind because I won’t let you,” he added.

“I’m not changing anything,” she said, her voice muffled from where her head was buried in his shoulder against the crisp cotton of his Paws-A-While shirt. She breathed in the delicious Nick smell of him.

“Good,” he said.

He pulled away but captured both hands in his so she had to look up into his face, then planted a swift kiss on her mouth that went a long way to reassuring her of his interest.

“First thing I have to tell you is that Adam has got an address for Eric Kessler. The guy has gone to ground in San Diego.”

“San Diego? So the jerk never had any intention of coming back for Mack.”

“Guess not. He’s tried to cover his tracks.”

“But not too deep for you and Adam to unearth, I hope.”

“We’ll find him and get an answer about Mack’s collar. Be sure of that. We’re booked on a flight to San Diego at lunchtime. We’ll stay overnight.”

“That’s great,” she said, not understanding why he had looked so grim when he came into the office. The sooner they could confront Mack’s former owner, the sooner they could question him about that hidden camera. She realized how much she was counting on Eric Kessler being the culprit. It would be very hard to take if someone she knew had been robbing her and her clients of so much. “But I don’t like that you’re away overnight when we’re only just—”

“I know,” he said. “But the sooner we get past all this, the sooner we spend more time together. I don’t like leaving Mack, either.”

“Mack.” She felt plunged into guilt that she’d been so glad to see Nick she hadn’t thought to ask about Mack. “How is he?”

“He’s great. Ask me about how I am instead. I hardly slept last night because of that big mutt.” He was grumbling, but she was relieved to hear genuine affection in his voice. She so wanted this adoption to work.

“What was the problem?” she said.

“Dunno. I kept up the meds to the schedule the vet prescribed. Mack seemed okay, but every time I left the room he kept giving these enormous sighs and whimpering and looking at me accusingly with those big, sad eyes.”

“He must be in pain. Ohmigod, poor Mack, we need to get him to the vet. I’ll call and make an appointment.” She twisted to move past Nick, but he held her still.

“I don’t think so. I felt around his leg and he didn’t even wince. He’s eating okay, too.”

“That’s good. Did you try him on that healthy kibble from . . . ?”

Nick released her hands. He shifted from one foot to another. He avoided her eyes. In fact the former federal agent looked guilty as hell. “It was late when I left Adam. I grabbed a burger on the way home and—”

“You got one for Mack.”

“Yeah. I know I said I was going to only give him healthy food, but I remember how much that knee surgery hurt.” He squared his shoulders and met her gaze. “I decided it was not a good time to force change on him.”

He was so serious it took a good deal of effort for Serena to stop her mouth from twitching into a smile. “He’s your dog.”

“I didn’t give him fries, and he had some of the kibble, too. I’m going to break him of that fast-food habit, believe me.”

She couldn’t stop the smile. “Just not right now.”

“Correct. And you can forget the fancy-schmanzy treats. This dog will get big, meaty bones and table scraps and the kind of kibble farm dogs eat—”

“I’ll watch your progress with interest,” she said.

“You don’t think I can do it.”

“Weell . . . it might have been an idea to start as you mean to continue. Already he sees you as a source of the good stuff . . . Uh, not that I think it’s the good stuff, it’s Mack who thinks that.”

Nick groaned. “Maybe you’re right.”

“So did the burger fix the whimpering?”

“No. The only way I got any sleep was when I shifted him and his dog bed into the bedroom with me. Only then would he settle.”

Not that she wanted to be curled up in a dog bed on Nick’s bedroom floor. No. Nick’s bed with Nick in it was her preferred place in his bedroom. She wondered if Nick wore pajamas to bed or slept naked. Naked. She’d bet naked.

She blinked to clear her focus; her eyes were in serious danger of glazing over. “So you both got some sleep.”

“Yeah, well, when Mack wasn’t snoring. You didn’t tell me he snored like a grizzly.”

“I shouldn’t laugh, should I?”

He pulled her to him, held her in the loose circle of his arms. “Don’t you dare.” His words sounded severe but his eyes were warm.

“No laughing, then,” she said, trying so hard not to laugh she started to choke. Silently, Nick patted her on the back with his big, capable, soothing hands until she breathed more easily.

“So how’s that big Mack now?” she asked when she could speak normally.

“Hannah offered to babysit him while she caught up on paperwork—”

“Don’t you mean dog-sit?”

“Yeah, well, whatever you call it. When I got up to go to work he started the noise again and wouldn’t stop until I sat with him. So I couldn’t leave him with her.”

“You brought him here? Is he in the playroom? I can’t wait to see him.” Serena went to move toward the door, but Nick held her arm to stop her. His voice went very serious, his face back into grim mode. “Worry about Mack later. First you have to hear the second thing I need to tell you.”

Serena’s heart started hammering. Whatever he had to say couldn’t be good. Not with that tone of voice.

“It’s about Kylie,” he said.

 

 

Nick
didn’t want to subject Serena to another emotional hammering. He hated having to give her more bad news after all she had already been through. In fact, he’d considered shielding her from this. But he didn’t want any kind of evasion between them. Serena had to hear what Adam had found out about her employee.

Serena’s brow furrowed. “Kylie? Please don’t tell me you’re not getting on with her. Because she just told me she liked you and enjoyed working with you. Don’t forget she’s my number one employee; you have to do as she says.”

Great. That made what he was about to say sound even worse. “It’s not that. I like Kylie, like working with her. But Adam—who also likes her, by the way—has discovered something about Kylie that you should know. That could be relevant to what’s happening to you and the other victims.”

“I can’t imagine what that could be, but go ahead and spill,” she said.

“Kylie has a criminal record.”

“What!”
The color drained from Serena’s face.

“She was also fired from a bank where she worked as a teller. I didn’t see anything about this in the résumé you have in her personal file.”

Serena put her hand to her forehead. “Whoa. Wait. Get back to the criminal record. Kylie? I don’t believe it.”

There was no sugarcoating the facts. “She was caught for shoplifting from a department store. Expensive makeup.”

“Ohmigod. Wait. How old was she?”

“Sixteen.”

“A teenager. That explains it. It was probably a dare.”

“The police took it seriously. She was fined, had to pay court costs, and do sixty days’ community service.”

Serena frowned. “That was harsh. Aren’t juvy records confidential?”

“They can be sealed when the juvenile reaches eighteen. But only if they petition the juvenile court. Kylie and her family might not have known that.”

Serena shook her head. “Poor Kylie. It was fourteen years ago. She was a kid. Plenty of kids shoplift. It’s . . . it’s like a rite of passage.”

“Some say that. But it doesn’t make it right,” said Nick. “Did you shoplift?”

“There was the odd candy bar, yes. Thank God I was never caught. You?”

“Never.” He was no Goody Two-shoes when he was a kid, but shoplift? He’d never even been tempted.

“And the bank?”

“That was three years ago.”

“You think this means Kylie could be the one behind all this?” She gestured with her hands to indicate her bewilderment. “I find that impossible to believe.”

“To tell you the truth, so do I. But you can’t let it go unchallenged, Serena. We have to confront her about it.”

“We?”

“Yes. I have to be there.”

“I’m sure Kylie has a reasonable explanation.”

“We need to hear it.”

Looking like she wanted to throw up, Serena walked around to her desk, picked up the phone, and called through to the playroom.

Just minutes later, Kylie came bustling through the door, Tinkerbelle snuggled in her arms. Tinkerbelle wore a tiny pink hoodie printed with the words “Glamour Grrr-l.”

Nick suddenly realized that if this dog’s father, Brutus, was a millionaire mutt, that made Tinkerbelle an heiress. If things got ugly, there was the possibility of Kylie holding Tinkerbelle hostage. He scoped the room, rapidly preparing an action plan and escape route in case of that eventuality. Then told himself to stop being so stupid and overreacting. No way—no matter whatever else she might have done—did he believe Kylie would harm a dog.

When Nick closed the door behind her, Kylie stilled. Her smile faded. “Is there a problem?”

Serena sat down at her desk. She indicated the chair opposite her. “Better sit down, Kylie.”

Kylie looked from Serena to Nick to Serena again. Nick clenched his fists by his sides. He genuinely liked Kylie and hated to see how she struggled to conceal her anxiety over this summons.

“Kylie, this is really hard for me,” said Serena. “But it’s come to my attention that you have not disclosed everything about your past employment record.”

Kylie’s lips thinned. “You mean the bank.” She cast a hostile look toward Nick. “Three guesses who brought that to your attention.”

Nick didn’t say anything. He was trained not to show reaction, more observer than participant in these proceedings. Watching Serena, he admired how composed she was; he could only guess at how this felt for her. Her relationship with Kylie went beyond employee status.

“Then I guess you know about the police record, too?” said Kylie.

Serena nodded.

“All for a couple of lipsticks,” said Kylie. “How dumb was I?” She gave a nervous laugh, completely lacking in mirth. “I’ve nearly told you about that incident so many times, Serena.”

Serena’s lovely mouth was downturned. He guessed her hands were tightly clenched together on her lap beneath her desk. “Why didn’t you? I couldn’t care less about it, Kylie—though I don’t condone stealing. As I said to Nick, so many teenagers shoplift. Most of them don’t get caught.”

“Yeah, I was the lucky one,” said Kylie with a snort of that mirthless laughter that was so at odds with her pretty, usually cheerful face.

“The bank is a different matter,” Nick interjected.

Kylie cast him a look of loathing. Nick was surprised at how it affected him. He genuinely liked her. But she’d become a suspect and this had to be done. No matter the outcome, it would always be seen to be his fault. There’d be no more shared confidences over setting up a dog party.