Chapter Ten

Delilah had only thought applying for a job at Dairy Queen equaled rock bottom…

How could her loan paperwork be missing? Delilah stared at the email she’d received from the financial aid department, rereading the words for the eighteenth time. They didn’t make any more sense than they had the first time. Probably because her brain had drained out of her head the moment she’d realized Zero had been about to kiss her last night. And then didn’t.

She blinked and read the email again.

Apologies…no paperwork has been received…nothing in your file…

There was nothing filed. No application and certainly no approval or, like, money available that she could access immediately.

This was bad. She basically had to start over at this point, putting her timeline very behind. She had to stay at the ranch a lot longer than expected. Was that even an option?

She groaned. Once the money came through, she’d planned on locking herself in a very stark room with no distractions and working on her dissertation for twelve or fourteen hours a day. Even then, she might not catch up.

Maybe she could reduce her training sessions to half days and spend some time at the museum in Kilgore without anyone at the ranch missing her.

Okay, focus.

Loan first, then figure out how to balance. She picked up her phone to call the financial aid department, hoping if she talked to someone directly, there might be some way to expedite, given how long she’d been a student and how close she was to finishing.

Someone knocked on her door before she could dial. Sheridan. With a distressed wrinkle between her brows.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Sheridan murmured. “But Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa got into the house and just slung a bag of sugar all over the kitchen—”

“Oh my God.”

Delilah took the stairs down two at a time, slipping her undialed phone into her pocket before it hit the deck and cost her the price of a cracked screen.

The kitchen was in chaos, with Hunter in the middle of it, desperately trying to use hand signals from on top of a chair. The Captains were ignoring him, Jack rolling around in the white swirls on the hardwood floors that looked vaguely like snow. Barbossa ran around the chair, barking at the fun game of Hunter spinning to follow his movements.

That dog. She’d swear on a stack of Bibles all four of them had been testing the waters with how well they could train their humans, and here was further proof. The faster Barbossa ran, the faster Hunter spun to follow, which seemed to thrill the dog.

First things first.

Delilah crossed to Captain Jack Sparrow and gave him the evil eye. Then held up a treat so he could see it, but well out of his reach. He immediately rolled to his feet, eyes on her fingers. She flashed him the signal for sit, which he did, sugar frosting the fur around his muzzle, which made him look like he’d aged overnight.

Grandpa Dog would be the name of that painting, done in bright acrylics with a whimsical edge.

It was hilarious, but she didn’t dare laugh. Sheridan stood well out of harm’s way, a disapproving glint to her gaze. This was a mess. Her only saving grace—Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann had opted out of the fun, so she could at least claim some small victory.

“Outside for you, my friend,” she told Captain Jack and gave him the command for heel as she led him to the door that dumped them out onto the wraparound porch.

Once Captain Jack Sparrow picked his way down the steps to the ground, she threw him a treat and ordered him back to the barn, not that she thought he’d do it, but she needed to deal with Captain Barbossa before Hunter had a meltdown.

Double-timing it back to the kitchen, she entered to find Captain Barbossa with his paws on the chair, barking at a cowering Hunter, who had his hands over his face.

Delilah cursed under her breath and moved into eye-contact range, shooting the dog her business expression until he noticed her and shifted his attention to the one who always had the treats.

“That’s right,” she told him with a frown. “Mama’s here, and you’re in big trouble.”

The dog didn’t bother to look chagrined, just launched off the chair to dart through the sugar drifts in her direction, granules kicking out behind his hind paws. Captain Barbossa dropped his haunches at her feet, tongue out as he eyed her pocket.

“You think you get treats for sitting on your own? Hah,” she practically spit and pointed to the front door, despite being a staunch proponent of using the correct commands in all situations. “Outside.”

Predictably, the dog didn’t do what she said until she used the command for heel and then led him herself, just like she had the first Captain. At least they hadn’t completely abandoned their training. Though to be fair, she had never taught them the command for “don’t destroy the kitchen.”

Both dogs went with her willingly to the barn, snickering behind their sugary snouts as she locked them back in their individual stalls. Why she bothered, she had no clue when the pair of them had mastered the art of the escape. Mental note—talk to Zero about changing the lock mechanism on the stall doors.

The current latch might work fine for horses, but the dogs had obviously figured out how to bump the door until it disengaged. Probably she should be grateful the one who’d discovered the trick hadn’t taught it to all of them.

When she got back to the kitchen, she helped Sheridan sweep up the worst of the mess and then volunteered to vacuum while Sheridan tended to her still shaken son. That was the part that hurt the worst. Hunter had made such great progress so far. This might set him back days, maybe even back to the beginning.

“Is he okay?” she murmured to Sheridan in passing, loath to upset the apple cart when things seemed relatively calm at this point, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Hunter going back to being scared of the dogs again.

“I think so.” Sheridan had taken Hunter to his room and had just returned to the kitchen. “He’s upset that he couldn’t get the dogs under control himself and that you had to come save the day.”

Shocked, Delilah paused on her way to the closet under the stairs to return the vacuum cleaner to where it lived. “That’s what he was upset about? Not because he was scared the dogs would bite him?”

Sheridan nodded, arms crossed as she contemplated Delilah with an enigmatic expression that reminded her of the woman’s brother all at once. They were both hard to read with personalities that could shift like the wind in a thunderstorm.

“I mean, maybe a little. But that didn’t seem to be the main complaint. I appreciate you working with him as much as you have. It’s been a long time since he’s taken an interest in anything.”

Huh. She had no idea what to take from that other than it seemed she’d gotten Sheridan’s stamp of approval, despite the mess in the kitchen. Regardless, Hunter should be able to command the dogs, but he hadn’t worked with the Captains at all, something she might need to change.

She added that to her never-ending to-do list.

If Delilah hadn’t been trying to sort out the mess her loan had become, she’d have been downstairs and likely already working with the crew. But she couldn’t be in two places, and she still needed to call the financial aid department.

Tomorrow, she decided. It would have to be. One more day wouldn’t hurt. Right? She’d been lax in the research department, too, a reality that needed to change pronto, but right this minute, dog training paid the bills. Art did not.

Plus, dog training had the distinct advantage of being accompanied by a boss who looked like Zero Renshaw, whom she often ran across on the ranch grounds. She didn’t even pretend she wasn’t enjoying the show as she hustled back out to the barn for the second time that day.

This morning’s task appeared to be tractor taming. Zero had strewn the guts of the poor thing all over the crushed gravel driveway in front of the house. His short T-shirt sleeves rode up over his biceps, which bunched as he used a wrench to turn something mysterious and engine-y.

She didn’t dare stop. Or speak to him. She might be there a while, drooling.

After the almost kiss of last night, she could barely glance at the man without recalling the hard plane of Zero’s arm under her fingertips. There’d been a moment when she’d been breathless with the anticipation of him leaning into that gap…but she needed to make some headway with the Captains, not dreaming about her bossy boss who probably had no idea that moment had even happened. Because on his side, it hadn’t been a thing.

Good. She didn’t need the distraction of a thing. Balancing her job with her PhD had already proven to be hard enough without adding a fictional romance to the mix.

The morning vanished rapidly as she worked with the Captains—solo, because Hunter never made an appearance. She tried not to fret about it. Likely his mother had him in school today since Sheridan had seemed present earlier in a way that she hadn’t always been in the past. Not that it was any of Delilah’s business, but she lived in the house. She knew Sheridan had bad days and good days. The bad days usually meant Hunter ended up in the barn sooner rather than later.

A couple of hours into what had been a pretty productive session, she opted to try for something she hadn’t done before. A risk. But necessary, given the situation in the kitchen this morning. Instead of continuing on in the barn under ideal conditions, she snapped a leash on both Captains and took them down to the pond.

It was time to start moving past basic training and onto the hard stuff. Following basic commands had been easy thus far. Now she needed the dogs to start learning to deny themselves things they wanted to do, like swim, in favor of maintaining their last instructed position.

She’d only just unleashed both Captains when she felt the laser-sharp presence of the man she’d been actively pushing out of her mind.

“Taking a field trip?” Zero called from behind her.

His voice slid across her skin with that sexiness factor she’d spent a lot of time trying to ignore. And acclimate to, since he talked to her all the time. But pretending he didn’t affect her didn’t seem to be working, so she gave up and turned to face him.

Dang, that T-shirt clung to his chest with a slight dampness that followed every line of his torso, the one she still saw in her mind from the bathroom incident. Since he was clothed this time, social protocol didn’t dictate she avert her eyes, so she didn’t, instead soaking in the visual treat of a man who’d just done a great deal of physical labor.

“I guess that’s a good name for it,” she told him, thrilled her throat hadn’t seized up with the additional stimuli. “Did you show that tractor who’s boss?”

Instead of teasing a smile from him, which probably wouldn’t have done her knees any favors, he quirked a brow, drawing attention to the scar that gave him such dangerous appeal. “We’re still arguing over that particular title.”

A joke. Sort of. His dry humor wasn’t what she was used to, but she liked it.

“I’m sure you won. The tractor is just taking its time coming around to the fact,” she told him, one eye on each Captain as she tried to gauge whether she should releash them or let them show off some skills to their audience.

They made the decision easy, plunking down their haunches and keeping their eyes on her instead of jumping right into the water, which she’d half thought would happen the second the leashes came off.

Zero shot the dogs a look, a slight frown on his face. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“No?” Mystified why the man signing her paychecks would even question such a thing, she nodded toward the Captains. “They’ll sit until I tell them to do something different.”

A tiny lie. Possibly.

She’d worked with them enough she’d never assume either would do a blessed thing they hadn’t already decided to do. Whether that aligned with her commands remained to be seen. But what was she supposed to do, tell her boss the Captains needed to be running around with a boy in a field for two hours?

“I’m not sure what to make out of that,” he said, his expression still maddeningly unreadable. “After the incident this morning.”

Oh, man. Sheridan had told him about SugarGate. Was he angry? Looking for an explanation? She split the difference since she had no clue how to play this not-so-casual meetup of boss and employee. “I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what got into them. But it was pretty easily remedied. They went right back outside with no trouble.”

“I know. I heard.” He crossed his arms, peering down at her in a way that made her feel both short and a little breathless at the same time. “That’s a first. Usually they just dash into another area of the house and create even more havoc. So it seems like we have a bit of progress.”

“A bit?” she repeated, stung by his stingy praise. “The dogs follow my commands. Hunter pets them willingly. What more are you looking for?”

“What we agreed on. Trained dogs who can perform ranch tasks. When can we expect to see that?”

She crossed her arms in kind. “When we have livestock to train with.”

“Good. You get your wish tomorrow. Can we have a demonstration later in the day?”

Agape, she stared at him. “You want results in one day? As in, the cows show up, I snap my fingers, and voila, the Captains are herding them? That’s impossible.”

For more reasons than one. Mainly because she didn’t know how to train them to herd cows and had no interest in witnesses as she fumbled through it.

The stubborn set of his jaw didn’t ease. “How long will it take?”

“How long is a piece of string?” she countered hotly, wholly unable to stop the panic that had started coursing through her gut. “These dogs have never been around cattle before. They might freak out over how big they are. I can’t predict how quickly the dogs will get used to the idea that they’re in charge.”

Not to mention the slight issue with Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner, namely neither dog would be too keen on the plan in the first place; they’d turned themselves into lap dogs who liked long naps and equally long belly scratches. At best, the Captains would be the ones to do the job, but she hadn’t quite figured out how to explain Zero might have half the dog staff he’d envisioned.

Zero’s expression finally wavered. A little. “I guess I can see that.”

“Did I just win the argument?”

“I, um…didn’t realize this was an argument.”

For whatever reason, that pulled a grin from her as the tension eased back into the manageable realm. “You have this way of coming across that makes me feel like I should be snapping to attention and making sure my bed is made.”

Running a hand through his hair, he nodded. “Job hazard. Former job. I’m told I have that effect on people.”

“I get it.” The conversation from last night chose that moment to rear its ugly head. “You’re trying to take care of everyone, and you can’t do that if I don’t do what you hired me to do.”

The reality of that sat funny in her chest. Ugh, now she felt horrible for getting sideways with him. He’d hired her to do something that meant everything to him and his future, his family’s future, and she’d been treating it more cavalierly than she should have.

“To be fair, you’re doing an okay job,” he told her gruffly, as if the admission hadn’t been easy.

She arched a brow at the rehashed faint praise from earlier. “Okay? That’s almost as bad as a ‘bit of progress.’ I’m doing a great job.”

That, she believed with all her heart, given what she had to work with. And her lack of experience. But of course, she couldn’t exactly use that fact to make her point since she’d convinced him she had expertise. If you looked up honorable in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of Zero Renshaw. He’d probably never even cheated on a test.

Who would have thought she’d like that about him so much? Or she’d still be here at the Flying Pig, carefully stacking up these dog cards, desperately praying for them not to fall?

Because if they did, she’d have to stop working with Hunter, and after learning he’d been trying to control the dogs himself this morning, she couldn’t stop now. He needed her to help him. He needed emotional support dogs, and they were more than halfway there with Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner.

“I’ll reserve the high praise for when I see how you do with the livestock,” he advised her.

Which was totally fair. But she wished he understood how much it meant to her that she’d taken four semi-wild dogs and gotten them to trust her. Hunter’s progress felt like nothing short of a miracle. She’d done that all by herself, no Dr. Kersey breathing down her neck.

The last week had been one of the greatest of her life. Nothing she’d ever done with art could compare to the thrill of seeing Hunter with Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann piled around him.

“You won’t be disappointed,” she said with as much cheer as she could muster after just realizing she liked training dogs. That she might actually be good at it, SugarGate aside.

A bird chose that moment to land near the water, pecking at the high grass near the shore. The Captains’ ears perked up, and she could tell the exact moment when they both decided birds might be more fun than sitting patiently in wait for their next commands.

“No, Captain Barbossa,” she snapped, totally aware that, unlike SugarGate, Zero would have a front-row seat for her mastery of this situation.

The dog glanced at her, and she gave him the command to heel, which would orient him facing away from the bird. In what should amount to the eighth wonder of the world, he did it, which blessedly caught Captain Jack Sparrow’s attention. The other dog barked at the bird but then meandered over to sit at her feet, doggy eyes on her pocket.

“You heel, too,” she ordered, but the bird flapped its wings in the water a couple of times, which must be code for let’s play in dog language, because Captain Jack took off like a shot, charging into the water.

The bird flew off in an indignant huff of feathers and squawks. Captain Jack skidded to a halt in the shallow water, giving Delilah a few precious seconds to dash after him, then snap the leash onto his collar so she could haul him back onto dry land.

“That’s enough of that,” she advised him and gave him the sit command, which he did, likely because he knew he couldn’t go anywhere now that he was back on his leash.

It wasn’t as good of a demonstration as Captain Barbossa heeling a moment ago, but it wasn’t too shabby, either. She dared sneak a glance at her audience, who was watching the scene with his arms crossed.

“That didn’t go very well,” he said, a slight frown marring his perfect jaw. “After the sugar mess this morning, I’m starting to wonder if I was too quick to comment on your progress.”

Geez, he really was a hard grader.

“You’ll note that Captain Jack didn’t shake himself off like he normally does after getting in the water,” she pointed out, not too happy she had to be the one to bring it up. “Captain Barbossa didn’t move from the spot I left him in. These are all huge improvements. You, of all people, should recognize that.”

He looked unconvinced. “The goal was to get them under control.”

“And they are,” she said, exasperated. “They’re dogs, not soldiers. You have to reset your expectations.”

“Maybe you’re the one who needs to have expectations reset. By the one paying you.”

Arms crossed in kind, she stared him down, refusing to be cowed by His Grumpiness. “Sounds like you need a real demonstration of how this works.”

Before she could talk herself out of it, she gave both dogs the command to jump, which was one of their more impressive tricks. Or would have been, if Captain Barbossa wasn’t still leashed, the handle of which she had looped around her wrist.

It’s possible she might have tightened her grip and pulled the line taut as she let nature take its course.

Everything happened in slow motion. The dogs getting tangled up with Zero as they jumped. Her arm flying out. And suddenly, Zero falling backward…right into the pond with a splash. Exactly where he needed to be to cool off.