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Lissa Wilde snorted again. “Do you have a job to do, sweetie?” she crooned.
Brutus moaned with pleasure. The Wilde babe clasped the dog’s ears and planted a kiss on his muzzle. The dog buried his face in the curve of her shoulder and moaned again.
Nick was painfully close to making that same sound.
“Brutus,” he said sharply, “dammit, dog, get off!”
“Brutus,” the woman crooned, “you’re a beautiful boy and it’s been lovely meeting you, but now you have to be a good dog and let me get up.”
“He won’t obey anyone but me,” Nick said.
This was far safer ground because, unfortunately, it was true.
Brutus had not had an easy life. Among other things, the nutcase who’d originally owned him had exercised his power by forcing the dog to respond only to him and, in some cases, only to code words.
Nick had worked diligently to break the habit, though not always with success.
“He won’t obey anyone but you?” Lissa Wilde said with indignation. “But that’s an awful thing to do to a dog. What if you weren’t here? Would he eat if you didn’t tell him he could?”
Until recently, no. He wouldn’t. They’d finally reached the point at which Nick didn’t have to use a code word to get the dog to eat, but Brutus would still only accept food from him.
And she was right. It was not a good thing. In fact, it had been one hell of a problem the weeks he’d been hospitalized, when the only way to get Brutus to do something as simple as eating had been to record the coded command so that the guy he’d hired to take care of the dog here at the Triple G could get him to eat.
He thought of telling her that, but why would he?
The dog was none of her business. She was a temporary blip on the horizon. And the dog was a fool for thinking otherwise.
Enough, Nick decided.
“Brutus,” he said sharply. “Up!”
The Newf shot him an Are you nuts? look and went back to total adoration of Lissa Wilde.
“Dammit, dog—”
“Brutus,” Lissa Wilde said softly, “you wonderful boy, up!”
The dog shuffled to his feet.
“That’s my good boy. Now go to that despicable man who thinks he owns you.” The dog hesitated. “Go on,” the woman said, and the dog heaved a sigh and went to Nick’s side.
The cook-who-almost-surely-was-not-a-cook-but-might-be-a-dog-trainer rose to her feet and slapped her jeans free of dust bunnies.
“That,” she told Nick coldly, “is how it’s done. You want the dog to love you, not fear you.”
Nick looked from the woman to the dog and then to the woman again.
“How did you do that?”
“I established a bond with him.”
“Yeah, but how did you…” Nick stopped in mid-sentence. His eyes narrowed. “The dog doesn’t fear me.”
“Uh huh.”
“He doesn’t, goddammit!”
“Right.”
