Chapter Eleven

Caught off guard, Zero hit the water at exactly the wrong angle. Sludge and maybe some dog hair gushed into his half-open mouth. Nice.

He rolled, planting his feet underneath him, and came up out of the water sputtering, a few choice words slipping out as he spat. Water poured from his clothes in rivulets.

Those blasted dogs. First the sugar and now this. They’d be lucky if he didn’t put an ad in the paper—free to a good home. Free to any home that wasn’t his, regardless of the quality. He might throw in a dog trainer for free.

Delilah stood there on the shore, hand over mouth in silent horror. Then her shoulders started shaking. Was she crying? Concern shoved everything else out of his head as he started toward her, bent on assuring her he was fine, no harm done. He didn’t really want her gone, despite the wisdom of the idea.

A squeak wormed its way through her fingers, and that’s when he realized she was laughing, not crying.

“It’s really not that funny,” he said, which just made her laugh harder. “Those dogs are a menace.”

Which he would have thought had been made abundantly clear, hence the need for training. Why was his own mouth twitching in response to her gales of laughter? This was not a situation that would normally amuse him, but there was something about the pureness of Delilah laughing that lightened everything inside. Against all odds.

“I know,” she gasped. “It’s not funny at all. It’s terrible. You’re going to fire me and I’ll be homeless. It’s a disaster.” Tears leaked from her eyes, giving the impression she really had started crying, but since she hadn’t stopped laughing, it was hard to sort out which reaction she’d picked.

“I’m not going to fire you,” he told her gruffly, mostly because he was trying to sort his own reactions, none of which made sense.

He should be firing her, if for no other reason than to get her off his property before he did something dumb like try to rescue her again. He was a sucker for someone who needed his help.

“You should,” she said in an echo of his thoughts. “That wasn’t exactly an accident, and I’m not sorry. I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and you needed a minute to think about that.”

She’d knocked him in the water on purpose? Well, well. Two could play that game. Without weighing the consequences for the first time in longer than he could remember, he wrapped a firm hand around her shoulder and pushed her backward. Into the water.

Except he forgot she still held the dog’s leash. It tangled around his ankles as she went down, taking him with her. Instinctively, he tightened his grip on her, twisting as they fell so he wouldn’t land on her.

The splash drenched them both, dogs happily barking and frolicking in the water around them. Water dripped from her hair into his face as she sucked in a shocked breath, but he couldn’t breathe at all. She’d landed so snugly into his arms he couldn’t believe it had been an accident. Obviously his subconscious had acted to land them in exactly this position, and now he’d never wipe the sensation of her from his soul.

She was so close he felt the rise and fall of her chest. Probably he should be untangling everything and helping her stand up, but he was only human, and this was the most contact he’d had with a woman in a million years—the fact it was Delilah only heightened his experience to the point of spiritual.

Except he’d just done something deplorable to her, and she should be shoving him away with lightning speed. Since she hadn’t, he’d do it for her. He had no right to enjoy a second of this.

Stiffly, he sat up, taking her with him, then hauled her to her feet as he rose, his twice-drenched jeans weighing heavily on his hips. He walked them both to the shore and deposited her at the edge of the pond, water sluicing off them both.

At least the dogs seemed to be having fun.

“I’m sorry. That was inexcusable,” he told her as he stepped away in a hurry, eyes averted when he realized her wet outfit clung to every curve of her body.

It was kind of too late to unsee it, though. She had very nice curves.

“Don’t apologize. I deserved that,” she told him drily, drawing his gaze back to her smile, which should not be on the face of a woman he’d just deliberately shoved into the water. “I’m thrilled to find out you have a sense of humor.”

Only he hadn’t retaliated due to some resurfacing of his old personality, the one that had once been fairly pleasant for others to be around. All of a sudden, he longed to be the guy she’d just described, the kind of person who could get into a playful shoving match at the pond with a woman he was interested in. Someone who didn’t have the weight of so many lives on his heart.

The funny part was Delilah didn’t seem to realize he wasn’t that guy. She’d never been as put off by his grumpiness as she should be. Would it really hurt anyone if he let it go for a few minutes?

“Maybe next time we should put on swimsuits before we try to give each other a bath.”

Her grin widened. “Mr. Renshaw, are you asking me on a swim date?”

Geez, this was why he tried to maintain some distance between them. Worse, his tongue formed the word yes before he could stop it. At least he had the will not to spit it out. Small victories. “I don’t date. And when I do, I definitely don’t invite women swimming.”

“Good thing I’m not women,” she shot back with a wink. “I’m just your lowly employee, which I think means it’s fine if we do the same stuff at the place where we both live, possibly at the same time. Like swimming.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Her gaze did this slow perusal of him that threw sudden awareness and tension into an already dangerous situation.

She bit her bottom lip. “You’re all wet.”

He glanced down at himself. His shirt was plastered to his chest. “Yeah, I am.”

“This is probably the wrong time to mention it, but you might consider entering some wet T-shirt contests if you’re short on cash. The competition would burst into tears the second they got a look at you.”

His ears stung as he registered the compliment. “Job hazard.”

“You say that a lot,” she murmured. “It’s interesting how you define everything about yourself around your job, when most people just work for their paycheck.”

Since he’d left his current job of tractor wrangling, to come tell her the livestock would be here tomorrow, he didn’t quite get why she found that noteworthy, but it was clear from her expression that she found the concept intriguing. Maybe as much as his wet T-shirt. He didn’t know what to make of that.

“Maybe one of us should run back to the house for towels,” he suggested hoarsely, uncomfortable that his heightened state of awareness had infiltrated his voice.

“Towels.” She made a noise in her throat. “That’s one of your better looks.”

She was flirting with him. Wasn’t she? The probability of it put a fierce flutter near his heart. And it was pretty clear she’d meant to reference the bathroom incident, also known as the last time towels and stages of undress had been involved. Since he’d been unable to get that scene out of his mind, it didn’t take much to relive it.

“To dry off, not to provide a fashion show.”

“Too bad,” she responded with genuine cheer. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

Somehow, he extracted himself from her grip, despite there being no physical contact involved. She’d had him pinned down, though, and he finally dragged the first deep breath into his lungs in forever as he headed back to the house, leaving her by the pond with the dogs. For his next cowardly act, he sent Sheridan back with towels for Delilah and the dogs, claiming a need for a hot shower.

Yeah, he needed a shower, all right, but not a hot one.

Zero did his level best to avoid Delilah the rest of the day. But that didn’t stop him from having a keen awareness of anything going on related to her, like Hunter slipping from the house to hike down to the barn where Delilah had resumed her training sessions. He watched the boy disappear between the double doors…just to be sure he got there safely and no dogs exploded from the general area, bent on mischief.

It was eerily quiet, and he almost trekked down to the barn himself to check on things. But didn’t. He should get a medal.

…

The livestock arrived the next morning. Zero and Tag spent a good hour with the MacGregors, talking shop and getting the cattle situated. The beasts lumbered into the pen he’d painstakingly created for them. They were so big up close like this, docile with their goofy faces and twitchy ears.

The gate swung shut behind the russet-colored hides, and suddenly, it was real. He owned a ranch with cows and everything. Shouldn’t he feel a lot more excitement? This had been his grandpa’s dream, never realized for various life reasons. And all it had taken for Zero to pick up the mantel was an untimely death, a premature retirement, and months of back-breaking work.

“I wish your grandpa had been here to see this,” Tag muttered.

“He was as much yours as mine,” Zero allowed with a nod, grateful for the reminder none of this was for him—it was for everyone else, and they deserved his efforts. “And yeah, he would have been pretty choked up to see these pens being used as God intended.”

Now that it had happened, Zero felt at loose ends, like he should be doing something, but Tag had filled the cattle’s feed trough before they’d arrived, and there wasn’t a lot of other care needed right out of the gate, apparently.

“I’m heading down to the south pasture,” Tag threw out off-handedly as if he’d likewise figured out standing around staring at the cattle, waiting for one to fall in a hole or something, didn’t make a lot of sense. “Thought I saw evidence of a rattlesnake yesterday, and it needs to be cleared out before we can put the cattle in there.”

Zero nodded again, his mind already scouting around for an obvious task he could shift his attention to. But his brain did the thing where it immediately insisted on thinking about Delilah when given the slightest opening.

Well, maybe there was no harm in it, especially given that the cattle had arrived and the dogs’ training progress did fall into the category of something worthy of his attention.

Before he could remind himself that he’d imposed a Delilah moratorium, he hustled down to the barn, running plausible reasons through his head for why he’d shown up to check on her for what felt like the umpteenth day in a row. It had started to wear a little thin to keep telling her that she needed to be making progress when clearly, she’d already worked a significant amount of magic on the beasts.

But when he got to the barn, the scene inside drained all the practiced lines from his head.

Hunter sat on the floor of the barn, all four dogs ringing him, Elizabeth Swann half in his lap in what amounted to a blissful swoon as the kid scratched her belly. He was laughing. Which counted as a miracle in his book all day long.

“What is this?”

He hadn’t meant for everyone inside to jump half a foot like the Ghost of Christmas Past had just made an appearance in East Texas. But he’d obviously startled the humans and dogs alike.

Guilt flashed across Delilah’s expression, but she hid it behind a wide smile. “A break. We’ve been working on making sure Hunter kicks his fear of dogs to the curb. He’s doing great, don’t you think?”

Zero shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling like he’d interrupted something and wasn’t particularly welcome. “Yeah, it’s great. Definitely one of the things I’d hoped would come out of these dog training sessions. The cattle are here. I came to remind you that we talked about a demonstration.”

“We did.” She arched a brow at him as if he needed the reminder of something. “If you recall, I told you that wouldn’t be possible for at least a few days while I get the dogs acclimated to a new training program.”

The Captains had taken an interest in his presence, their heads swiveling to watch him warily. The interloper in his own barn. What, were they afraid he’d ruin their good time by barking out orders? Maybe they should be afraid after being mostly responsible for his wet meetup with the pond yesterday.

Maybe everyone around here could benefit from his attention going forward.

“Can we set a day? On the calendar,” he stressed. “So I have it in my head what we’re working toward. You could share your training schedule with me, too, if you don’t mind. Use the printer in the office at the house if you need to.”

With a laugh, she waved that away with a flick of her hand. “I’m more of a Wing It girl. Why squeeze the process into something so defined?”

“Because that’s how you get things done,” he informed her, a layer of frost creeping into the sentence as he struggled to explain something that should be fairly obvious. “Lists and schedules are the tools of people who achieve their goals. Winging it gets you home from the grocery store without all of the ingredients to make an entire cake.”

Hands on her hips, she stared right back at him. “You don’t have to say ‘winging it’ with verbal air quotes that make it sound ridiculous. I’ve made it home from the grocery store lots of times with all the ingredients for cake. One box of Betty Crocker cake mix isn’t hard to get into a buggy.”

“You’re missing my point. How can you achieve anything if it’s not ordered, with structure and a plan?” That’s how he’d led his unit. That’s how he’d stayed alive through multiple deployments. It should be how a rational person trained dogs, too, especially when someone else was paying them.

“And you’re missing mine. There’s more than one way to make a cake.” Delilah glanced at the boy, who was avidly listening to the conversation.

Point taken. Helping Hunter with his fear of dogs wasn’t part of the original ask, but she’d delivered on that without specific instructions. So they could split the difference.

“Sounds like I need to see this cake-making ability of yours myself,” he told her in his no-arguments voice that always worked with new recruits. “I’ll start attending your training sessions. Then you don’t have to tell me the plan. I can witness it for myself.”

Bonus—then he didn’t have to make up excuses to see her. As spur-of-the-moment ideas went, he liked this one a whole lot.

“You want to watch?”

Her tone colored the phrase, making it sound vaguely dirty. Not a thread he had the luxury of pulling at the moment. “Watch. Evaluate. Same thing.”

Guide, if needed. After all, a self-confessed wing-it girl might run into multiple pitfalls, like the sugar incident. Probably he should have inserted himself into her world much sooner.

“You don’t trust me,” she said, her arms crossed, a knowing glint in her gaze. “You want to prance around the barn and tell me what to do.”

There went that annoying twitch at his lips he had to fight before it turned into a smile. How did she do that? “There probably won’t be a lot of, uh, prancing.”

“Shame. It might get you further.” She jerked her chin in his general direction. “What are we talking? One week?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to negotiate that down to three days, then he nearly bit it off to keep from blurting out such a stupid thing. One week in Delilah’s company as he got to witness her train the group of menaces. One whole week where he had a front-row seat for her smile and no need to make up excuses to get there. An entire week to sate himself with the feel of her hand on his arm and the flutter in his chest when she flirted with him.

Because after that, regardless of what happened, she had to go. He couldn’t keep her around much longer than that, or something bad might happen, like giving in to the swirling awareness between them.

“One week,” he agreed with a nod. “Demonstration at the end.”

“We’ve already established that you won’t be prancing, but you can’t dictate my training methods, either.” She met his gaze head-on. “If you’re causing problems, I get to kick you out. You don’t get to argue. Deal?”

“Deal.” When she stuck her hand out, he didn’t grasp it. “This is it. No more chances. No more sugar incidents or accidental meetups with the pond. The dogs will satisfy my criteria at the end of this week.”

Something flashed through her expression that he couldn’t name. “Or what?”

Or what, indeed. He’d given her so much leeway, and while she’d made progress, it wasn’t enough. He had to stop being so halfhearted about one of the critical pieces of this ranch becoming operational.

“I find someone else to train the dogs.”

There. Stake in the ground. Back to business, like it should be. That way, he could spend the week in her company knowing the end loomed closer each day. Either way, she’d be gone in a week, because if she did train the dogs, her job would be done. There would be no reason for her to stay.

“And if the demonstration goes well, no more oversight committee,” she countered, and when he raised his brows in question, she continued. “You don’t get to prance around during the sessions any longer. I work on my own after that.”

The ground got a little unsteady as he soaked in the fact that she expected to continue past the end of the week. “But the dogs will be trained then. What more will there be to do?”

Her laugh hit him like a shot in the gut. “A demonstration isn’t an indication they’re done. Just that they can perform on command. It might take six months to get the dogs up to speed on how to operate inside a working ranch. It might take you six months to get the ranch going. All I’m aiming for here is showing you that I’m still the right person for this job.”

Zero swallowed. Good thing he’d already inserted himself in the process. This way, he could make sure she failed before the end of the week.

“I’ll take that deal, then.” He did reach out to shake her hand then, knowing he’d struck a devil’s bargain. How had he gotten to the place where he hoped to halt her forward progress so he could have an excuse to get her off his property and out of his head?