Brand didn’t say a word in the car as Lia drove them to MJ’s for lunch. She should have warned him about the shelter. She hadn’t expected it to affect him as deeply as it clearly had. Something about Trevor seemed to have resonated with him. The dog didn’t have much time left. He wasn’t responding to any of the conventional rehabilitation techniques, and Dr. Gunnerson-Smythe, the shelter’s vet, had begun making the warning noises he usually made just before an animal was about to be put to sleep.
“I’m sorry,” she said after parking the car, and he blinked, like someone coming out of a deep sleep.
“I beg your pardon?” His words nearly made her smile—they were so innately British.
“About the shelter. I should have warned you or something.” He shook his head.
“People can be dicks,” he muttered. “You help the victims of that dickery. Try to make their lives a little happier. It’s commendable. Nothing to be sorry about.”
“You weren’t prepared for it.”
“Nothing you said could have prepared me for that. It’s just one of those things you have to see for yourself.”
“Did you have dogs as a boy?”
“Not even a goldfish.”
“Seriously? That’s . . .” It was surprising, was what it was. He’d been so deeply affected by Trevor’s plight, Lia had been certain that he must have had at least one dog in the past. “It’s unexpected.”
“My mum and I moved around a lot when I was a kid, not the best life for a pet,” he said, and her eyes narrowed. Not the best life for a child, either, if you asked her. “And then when I was older, I joined the army. Did that for a while. Then started the agency with Mason. There was never time for any pets.”
“I see.”
“Where are we?” he asked, changing the subject without any finesse whatsoever.
“MJ’s. For lunch.”
“Great. I’m a little hungry. All that dancing earlier has worked up quite an appetite.”
Sam’s eyes took in every aspect of the town’s local eatery. There were a few people dotted around the place, mostly women and kids. The tension, always present when he entered a new place for the first time, left his back and shoulders as he ascertained that there were no immediate threats present. He rolled his neck in an attempt to loosen up even more. All eyes were on them, and he knew the exact moment when that registered with Lia and she started to doubt her decision to bring him here.
He went straight to a round table dead center in the place and politely drew back the chair and ushered her into it. He made a deliberate show of it, knowing that the last thing she wanted was to draw any kind of attention.
“So where to after this?” Sam asked after they were both seated. Lia couldn’t seem to meet his eyes, which annoyed him a little. He remembered her being equally evasive when he first met her—of course, back then he’d considered it a challenge. But while he enjoyed a challenge, he didn’t enjoy the tedium of going through the same motions over again. He wanted to get all the boring shit out of the way and move straight back into bed with her. He didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d be able to convince her to pick up where they’d left off in November, but first he had to play this ridiculous game with her. Where she got to act innocent and outraged for a hot second in order to appease the outdated moralistic code she operated by. He didn’t know if he had the patience for that.
He watched cynically as she fiddled with a saltshaker, still coyly denying him her pretty eyes.
“I’m stopping by the library for story hour,” she muttered, finally lifting those luminous gray eyes to his.
“Story hour?” he repeated blankly, trying very hard not to be affected by that beautiful gaze.
“It’s part of the Books Are Fun campaign that the head librarian and I have devised. It’s a grassroots program aimed at elementary school children. I read to them every week from whatever our spotlight book is, and after that we encourage the children to read or even act out the scene I just read.”
“It’s almost inevitable that I get to see you in a library,” Sam said with a grin. “It was written in the stars, you know.”
Predictably, she blushed, and Sam refrained from rolling his eyes. He didn’t want her to be predictable. Predictability was tiresome, and he needed Lia to be interesting, exciting. He needed her to surprise him and keep him on his toes.
He wasn’t sure how long his interest in her would last, but with her shyness and her sweetness and her do-goodness, he was pretty sure it would wane in short order. He wanted to at least sample her charms a few more times before the inevitable boredom set in.