Military Romance Collection: Contemporary Soldier Alpha Male Romance (148 page)

He could still remember her expression of love and wonder when he'd entered her tight, virgin passage, the way they'd soared together, come together, their bodies and their hearts beating the same rhythm. He'd never felt that way again.

Not even with his wife.

              He stared down at his ticket book. Carrie didn't want anything to do with him; she'd made that clear eighteen years ago. He knew he should just write her up—for what, he wasn't sure—and send her on her way. But he couldn't. He had to try. Just one more time. Maybe now she'd talk to him, let him explain what had happened.

              You wouldn't take my calls. Or Michelle's. We couldn't explain, not even by going over and knocking on your door… Your bulldog of a grandmother wouldn't let us in to see you. And then you left for college.

              He'd never seen her again, though he had asked her grandmother about her whenever he ran into the elderly woman. There wasn't much use in trying to get in touch, though. Not after he and Michelle got married. Or Samantha had been born. Or even after Michelle had died.

              He dropped the book onto the passenger seat and reached for his hat. Not much point to that, he realized, lifting the soggy, battered and crunched thing that he'd once worn on his head. Shit. He put it down again, then tugged one of his business cards out of the holder on the console. It gave his number at the animal shelter, and listed his web address for the K-9 training academy. At the very least, she might ask him to help her tame the beast.

Or maybe, just maybe, Carrie had matured as much as he had, and would call him so he could finally explain what had happened.

He got out of the car and walked to the driver's side window. She didn't look at him. He wished she would; he wanted to see if her smile made him as randy as it had when he was eighteen, and if her silvery eyes gave him that same electrifying thrill. But she didn't even turn her head, never mind smile.

“Carrie…”

She held out her hand without looking at him. Without much hope, he put his card onto her palm.

“Don't let the dog eat it,” he said.

“Go to hell,” she said, and drove away.

Or maybe, he thought, she hadn't changed at all.

Chapter Two

              When Jack had handed her the tickets, his fingers had skimmed her palm. It still tingled, two miles later.

              Her whole body tingled.

              “I need to throw up,” she said.

              As if in response, the massive dog in the back of the van moved forward, coming to stand between the two front seats. Carrie looked down to see the eye clasp of the leash dangling from the collar's hook. The damn beast had simply torn the leash apart as if she'd not been wearing it at all. “Great. What the hell was Nana thinking, getting a dog like you?”

              Ellie sighed and lay down. Even so, she was tall enough to rest her heavy head on Carrie's thigh. She sighed and blinked up at her with brown doggie eyes, her wiry gray brows moving quizzically. As if she were saying, “What's wrong with me? And what's wrong with you?”

              “It's a long story, Ellie. A very long story,” Carrie said.

              Ellie sighed and wiggled her eyebrows. “I'm listening,” she seemed to say.

              “Okay. But I'm only going to tell you this once, so listen up.” Carrie couldn't believe she was talking to a dog. Yet Ellie seemed to be almost human. More so than any other dog she'd ever known. Something in her expression reminded her of Nana. Maybe it was the gray hair—fur, she amended.

              “Waaow,” Ellie said, reminding her she'd promised to tell a story.

              “Okay. Jack. Tenth grade, chemistry. He was my lab partner. He'd do all the calculations. I mixed the chemicals.

              “He was good with math. He was good with…everything.” She sighed, remembering. “He was a jock—a hockey player. I mean, you think he was tall just now? You should've seen him on skates. He must have been about nine feet tall.”

              “Waow,” Ellie said. She yawned.
              “Okay. You're right. I'm exaggerating. But he was huge. And good. Fast on those skates, and what a puck handler. I used to love to watch him. I'd sit there for hours on those bleachers, until my ass fell asleep. Watching the practices. And every game. And I wasn't even his girlfriend.”

              She slowed at a yellow light, then stopped. “Jack was dating Tiffany Anderson when I met him. She had these boobs—” Carrie held her hands about twelve inches in front of her own, boobily-challenged chest. “They weren't just enormous, they were like a separate entity. I mean, if she was lactating, she could have fed a third-world nation.”

              “Aroaw.”

              “This time, I'm not exaggerating.” Carrie nodded, remembering. The light turned green and she moved on. “Bodacious hooters, these were. Anyhow, she was Jack's girl. I was his friend. Not that I minded. I was just thrilled to have him talk to me. I mean—Jack Gavigan. He was like a god. Gorgeous, talented, popular…everything. And better than that, he was just…friggin'…nice.” Like the time he'd given her and Michelle a ride home from school because they'd missed the bus. Or the time he'd actually rescued her from The Date from Hell. “Which is why it made his and Michelle's…thing, or whatever it was, so horrible. I mean, I just didn't expect it.” Up until that moment, she'd thought she and Jack were going to be together forever. He'd told her he loved her, and she'd believed him. Like a fool.

              She'd never made that mistake with any man again. She'd had relationships, even intimate ones, but she never again allowed a man to touch her heart the way Jack had. Probably because he'd ripped it out of her chest that night, and she'd never been able to find it again.

              Ellie nudged Carrie with her nose, and she realized she'd stopped talking. She continued, “I was on a date with Mike O'Hare. He was on the hockey team, too. We went to the movies, and he got this idea in his head that he could stick his hand in my shirt. Even when I said 'no' and pushed his hand away, he kept trying. I guess he thought it was a game or something.”

              Ellie growled, a deep, rumbling noise that nearly shook the seat off its tracks. Grrrr.

              “That's what I thought, too.” Carrie patted the dog's head and nodded. “So after about the fifth time I said 'no'—loud enough for everyone in the entire theater to hear—along comes Jack. He actually left Tiffany to come sit next to me. And when Mike tried again, he leaned across me and said, 'No means no, you friggin' asswipe. So leave her alone.' And Mike told him to get the hell out of his business and says, 'Just because you're captain on the ice doesn't mean I gotta listen to you off the ice, too.' “

              “Raow.”

              “Right.” By this time, Carrie didn't even care if she was talking to a dog. She needed to talk out the past. Just seeing Jack up close had brought it all up, like an e. coli-contaminated meal. “Eventually, Mike climbed over the two of us and left. And get this—I found out later that he went back to where Tiffany was, and felt her up, instead. So…basically, Tiffany and Jack broke up, because he decided to rescue me.”

              “Wuff.”

              “I know. What a shallow bi-otch she was. I mean, if my boyfriend decided to go stop a guy from harassing a girl—a girl who was a friend of his, mind you—I'd be more head over heels in love with him than ever. I wouldn't decide to entertain the harasser with my hooters as retaliation for leaving me to sit by myself.

              “Come to think of it…why didn't she just come down the aisle and sit with us?”

              “Raow?”
              Carrie looked down at the dog. For a moment, she'd thought she'd heard an echo of Nana's voice in Ellie's doggie responses. Which was crazy. She shook her head. Just like she was crazy, talking to a dog.

              Sometimes, though, you just needed to talk out loud. And it wasn't like she had anyone around here besides Phelps to talk to, anyway. Not anymore.

              Carrie pulled into the driveway, parked the van behind her own car and shut it off. It sat ticking while the motor cooled. Ellie stood up, peered over the dashboard and wagged her tail.

              “Look at you. You don't even have to stand on tiptoe to look outside.” Carrie pushed the dog out of the way and went to the back to untie the remains of the leash from the leg of the rear seat. Ellie had pulled three of the four screws loose. So even if she hadn't snapped the leash, she would have snapped the seat's leg from the floor of the van.

              “You, dog, are a piece of work.” Forty-five minutes in a vehicle, and she'd already trashed it. Carrie wondered why she didn't see any evidence of destruction in Nana's little house. Or any evidence of a dog, either. Not a dish, a bed, a bag of kibble. Nothing that indicated a dog had ever lived there.

              Weird.

              And then, there was the fact that Phelps hadn't filled her in during the reading of the will.

              Maybe the desperate Dog Lady had lied about her ownership of The Beast, foisting it off on anyone possible. Maybe…maybe she'd read the obits, found Nana's name, and looked her up.

              But then, how would she have known to ask for Carrie and not someone else? How had she known she'd be at the house? Even though her name had been in the obit, too, as family of the deceased, there was nothing that said she'd be there. In fact, it had specifically said that she lived in the West, which wasn't really specific. Or even correct. There was nothing that said she lived in Texas.

              So…how had the Heavenly Doggie Kennel's owner tracked down her cell number?

              She needed to call Phelps and find out. After she got Ellie inside the house. She bent and tied the frayed end of the pink leash around the dog's collar, hoping it was tight enough. If it had taken her twenty minutes to get the dog into the van, even with help, how long would it take her to get it into the house?

              She took a deep breath and opened the side door. “Come on, Ellie,” she said, and stepped down into the driveway.

              “Arf!” said Ellie, and lunged.

              Carrie sailed through the air, slamming on the sidewalk hard enough to see stars. Ellie took off at a run. Carrie's arm strained, almost pulled from its socket as the dog dragged her down the sidewalk. Skin scraped off her legs, her arms, and finally, as her shirt rode up, her stomach.

              But she didn't feel the pain. When the dog finally pulled the leash from her hand, Carrie jumped up to run after her. Ellie moved with amazing speed, zigzagging across lawns and through sprinklers, plowing through flower beds, and even—in one horrifying moment—straight through a carefully tended row of boxwood hedges, leaving a jagged hole in what was once a property line of solid green leaves.

              “No! Ellie! Ellllliiiiiieee!” Carrie shrieked as the monster dog galloped through a backyard birthday party, scattering children and popping balloons. She leaped onto the long row of tables, racing through the gifts. Boxes flew, paper tore, ribbons unfurled. Carrie heard frantic electronic-toy noises coming from the broken boxes, but it didn't stop Ellie. She plowed through the tiered birthday cake, leaving white and purple frosting footprints on the rest of the table as she jumped down. The table fell at one end; bowls of popcorn, potato chips and cheese curls slid down the table to scatter onto the ground. Pizza soared through the air. Carrie winced as the bowl of purple punch made a splash landing, splattering liquid like raindrops over all the panicked party guests, and leaving her drenched. Through the sticky rivulets, Carrie watched Ellie pause only long enough to almost casually tear down a dinosaur-shaped piñata and rip out its throat. She wolfed down a dinosaur-sized amount of candy and wrappers in one gulp, then continued on her way, climbing over the stockade fence to disappear.

              Carrie stood, staring at the spot where the dog had leaped from the top of the fence. She'd never seen a dog climb a stockade fence like a squirrel before. Especially one six feet tall.              “Damn,” she said, then turned to face the ruined party site.

Pizza- and punch-covered children sobbed and clung to their mommies, who scowled at her. And one red-faced woman marched up to shake her fist in Carrie's face. “You—that—dog—this—ruined!”

              “I'm so sorry,” she said.

              “Sorry? Did you—look at—this party cost me seven hundred dollars! And now it's ruined!” The woman gestured at the carnage. “Plus—did you see—the gifts! The cake!”

              “I—seven hundred dollars? Are you…sure?”

              “My party!” One little child's wail rose above the rest. “My special birfday!”

              Oh. Crap. Carrie felt her stomach sink and her heart clench. “I'll go home and get my wallet. Will you…take a check?”

***

              Carrie limped home on numb legs. Numb where they weren't throbbing from bruises or stinging from scrapes, that is. She didn't even want to think about what she looked like, though one quick glance in a glass-paned storm door while trying to soothe a flustered homeowner with an Ellie-broken mailbox showed her a woman with sticks in her hair, blood running down her legs and torn clothes.

              Her wallet didn't look much better. Three thousand, five hundred and seventy-five dollars, and one promise to replant an entire bed of impatiens later, she still didn't have her dog. No, not her dog. Nana's dog. Nana's evil, wretched, destructive, horrible…dog. “I hate it,” she muttered. She wondered if she'd ever find Ellie, and a part of her hoped she didn't. She never wanted to see the beast again.

              She dragged her sorry carcass up the driveway to the van. The side door was still open and as she leaned to push the door shut, she noticed the card on the front seat. She owed not only big bucks she barely had, plus manual labor to replant flowers, but also the cost of one police uniform hat and shirt. Jack's hat and shirt.

              Of all the cops in Narragansett, why did he have to be the one who pulled her over?

              One short week ago, she'd been home in Texas, making a meager but satisfying living writing freelance articles for the local papers, national periodicals and websites. Then Nana had died out of the blue, and her whole life had turned upside down. Even though Nana had been many states away, she'd been there, a constant, someone who loved her and whom she loved. And now…she was alone.

              She didn’t want to think about it, because it was too terrifying to consider right now.              Instead, Carrie re-opened the door and picked up Jack's business card with stiff fingers. She didn't want to look at it, but she couldn't not look at it. He was her last link with the life she'd known.

Captain Jack Gavigan, Narragansett Police Department, Animal Control Coordinator. And then, in smaller letters in the center of the card: Community dog training classes.

Jack was the dog officer?

              Carrie lifted her face toward the sky. “Nana? Did you have something to do with this?” There was no answer, of course. Nana was gone, and Carrie was here. Alone. Except for the Hound of Hell.

Well, maybe. The dog was gone now, too.

A knot grew in her stomach, and she realized that was because her heart had dropped out of her chest to go there. Apparently, there was no way she’d get out of Narragansett without having to speak with Jack again.