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Except for one.
Because whether she was going to admit it or not, clearly she liked Val.
“That’s actually impressive,” she decided after watching me walk to each bowl, calling out a dog name, and pointing. Each dog waited their turn, then went to their assigned bowl.
“Dogs need to be trained,” I declared. “Especially big dogs that could potentially do damage if they aren’t trained right,” I said. “Val,” I called, pointing to the bowl beside her.
“Have you always had dogs?” she asked.
“Yeah. In my old neighborhood, strays were everywhere. I used to bring them in, train ‘em up. Steal food for ‘em. We didn’t have coins to rub together. Not enough to feed our mouths, let alone the dogs.”
I never told anyone this kind of shit. And I had no idea why I was telling her.
“But your parents were okay with you stealing to feed them?”
“Stole to feed us too,” I said, shrugging. “And when they realized I could train them to keep people from stealing from us, they decided they were cool with it. That’s how I got involved with the Soto Cartel,” I told her.
“With the dogs?”
“In a way. They wanted scouts. They used kids for that shit,” I told her. “But when they saw me with the dogs, and how well-trained they were, they wanted me to teach them how to train other dogs for the cartel.”
“Did you?”
“Can’t always teach it,” I told her.
“What do you mean?”
“Some people don’t have what it takes to train their dogs. It’s why trainers still have careers. It ain’t about the dogs most the time, it’s about the owners and their attitudes and behaviors.”
“So they couldn’t utilize your skills to train the dogs. They needed you to do it.”
“Pretty much.”
Her gaze moved around the room, watching the dogs eating, then her eyes went a little dark as she looked back at me.
“When you took over the cartel,” she started, wincing a little. “Did you… use the dogs…”
“Did I make the dogs maul people? No. They are trained to do it if they sense a threat, or I give them a word,” I told her. “But I don’t want them to do it unless that shit is really necessary.”
Her shoulders loosened a bit of that, all the images of dogs ripping out human throats clearing from her mind.
“So… it’s my job to wash the bowls, isn’t it?” she asked as the dogs started to abandon them, looking to head back outside.
“The men will be bringing their dishes back in too,” I told her. “Be good if you’re hanging around… not understanding a word of English,” I said, walking to go let the dogs out the back door. “Val, let’s go,” I demanded when he kept his ass planted at Hope’s side. “Suit yourself,” I said, moving outside with a smile.
Did it make sense that I liked the fact that one of my dogs had taken a liking to her? And she to him?
Not really.
But I also wasn’t going to think about it too much either.
I figured that finding any more reasons to like the woman was going to make it harder to keep my fucking hands to myself moving forward.
And I damn well knew that I needed to keep them off of her moving forward.
Turns out, that shit would be a lot harder than I’d first thought…
CHAPTER NINE
Hope
There was a lot of… sighing going on outside my bedroom door.
I was dead fucking tired after a whole day of cooking and cleaning and listening to his men talk about chicks at the strip club and random chicks they’d fucked.
Nothing useful.
Not a damn thing.
But still, I was beat.
And I’d just gotten into the most comfortable bed known to mankind, under the softest bedding that my skin had ever touched, when I heard the sighing.
Over and over.
Then air exhaling hard through nostrils.
Nostrils on a snout, I had no doubt as I moved across my room, feeling a little smile tugging at my lips.
Because I knew who it was even before I opened the door to find Val lying there, his tail wiggling hard when he saw me.
“Can I help you?” I asked, glancing out into the hall.
The dogs all seemed to sleep in different spots. Some were downstairs. Some in the TV room. And, I figured, a few were likely with A in his room as well.
But not Val.
Val wanted to be with me.
He’d been with me all day, in fact, save for his little guard shift outside in the afternoon.
The crazy shit was, I kind of missed having him under my feet, having the little tap-tap-tap of his nails on the floor as he followed me from room to room.
I’d felt like a monster when I’d patted him on the head and gone into my room, closing the door on him.
I figured he would head to… wherever he usually slept.
