He looked at the dog again. Brutus sat with his gaze glued to his new best friend.
“Brutus,” Nick said, “look at me.”
The dog ignored him.
“Brutus—”
Lissa Wilde put her hand on the massive black head. “He’s a lovely dog,” she said. “He deserves to be treated with kindness.”
“I have never,” Nick said through his teeth, “mistreated this dog!”
“What do you call training him only to eat only after you tell him he can?”
“I didn’t—”
“You already admitted that you did. Well, it’s cruel. And dangerous.” Her head lifted. “Only a control freak would be into stuff like that.”
He thought so, too, but this wasn’t the time to admit it.
“It can be done for the safety of the dog.”
She rolled her eyes.
Yes. But it could.
The vet had explained it—except, Brutus had never been a guard dog or a dog whose life, whose owner’s life might depend on not obeying the orders of strangers. Aside from situations as unusual as those, the vet had said, the risks of that kind of training definitely outweighed the benefits.
And then, together, he and Nick had cursed the absent control-freak shithead whose dog Brutus had once been.
“As if,” Lissa Wilde said coldly. She folded her arms over her breasts—except, damn, not quite over them. Her arms were more or less just beneath her breasts, lifting them, framing them, flaunting them. She was wearing a light jacket with the top buttons undone. He could see the rounded shape of her breasts, could imagine the sweet pucker of her nipples… “Have you heard a word I’ve said, cowboy?”
Nick jerked his head up. “What?”
The expression on her face was grim. She was obviously pissed off at him and that was fine because he was equally pissed off at her. These thoughts about her, about her body…
Absolutely, positively he’d drive to a glittery town, find a glittery bar, find himself a glittery woman. A high-priced call girl, the kind who could make a man forget that he paid for her favors, that none of what she said or did in his arms was real.
So what if he hated those places and felt sorry for those women? A man could put aside his scruples for a night of sex. He could, anyway, because sex was obviously what he needed.
“Have you?” she repeated. “Heard a word I’ve spoken?”
It had to be sex that he needed. Why else would a woman as unpleasant as this turn him on?
“No,” Nick said coldly. “Frankly, I’ve been doing my best to tune you out.”
“Well, it’s time you tuned in. What I said was that I’d like to see my room—that is, if you’re not too busy figuring out new ways to torment dogs to point me to it.”
The woman had a mouth on her—a soft-looking mouth, which was amazing when you considered what came out of it.
“There’s half a dozen bedrooms upstairs. Take your pick.”
The glare in her eyes could have cut glass.
“Which one is yours?”
Just that quickly, he felt his body harden. Could she see what was happening to him? Shifting his weight while balancing on a crutch wasn’t easy, but he managed.
“Down the hall on the right. The one with the pine pan—”