CODY FELL ASLEEP before Sam had finished the third reading of Woozer, Wizzle, Wobble. He knew better than to stop. His nephew could rise out of a deep sleep, his neck swiveling like he was trying out for a part on an exorcism film, if he thought he’d been cheated of the entire third reading of his favorite book. For a kid who had given up on talking, Cody was remarkably adept at making his thoughts—particularly displeasure—more than apparent.
Sam finished the book, then slid out of the bed. Carefully, he undid the string that fastened the superhero cape around Cody’s neck. A tender protectiveness for his nephew rose up in him, but it was followed with brutal swiftness by his awareness that when it had mattered, he had not been able to protect Cody at all.
As happened sometimes, the memory hit him without warning. His brother-in-law, Adam, laughing, as he and Sam chased after a shrieking Cody trying to get the cape off him for Sue to put in the laundry. Cody, fresh out of the bath, had been naked, save for the cape.
The dog had been there, racing joyously beside them, as they went in circles around the house, out into the yard, back into the house. Popsy had no idea what the game was, but loved it, nonetheless. They all had. Sue had pretended disapproval, but snickered anyway, when he and Adam had finally captured Cody and dubbed his garb “the Pooperman cape,” a name that stuck.
What Sam hated the most was at the time he’d had no idea—none—how precious those moments were.
What he hated the most? Was that he had no idea if it—spontaneous joy—ever would come back. For any of them left living.
He was exhausted—which was probably why the uninvited memory had snuck in—but the dog was going to stink up the whole house if he didn’t look after it.
He peered under the bed.
Popsy stared back at him, the picture of innocence. His face clearly said What smell? Sam made a swipe for him, and missed, which made Popsy retreat farther under the bed. Naturally, the dog made him crawl all the way under. At least he didn’t growl—he saved that for when he was protecting Cody from the horrors of bath time. When Sam finally did manage to get him out and had him pinned in his arms, the dog trembled. Then he whimpered, a high, squeaking sound akin to the wire on a barb wire fence being tightened.
“Shhh,” Sam told him, nudging open the bedroom door with his foot, “you’ll wake Cody up.” But what he was really thinking was She’s going to think I torture you.
He stepped out into the hall. The house was dark and silent. Her bedroom door was firmly shut and no light came out from under it.
He tiptoed down to the bathroom. He had kept Cody’s bathwater, and he slid the dog in. The dog yelped and squirmed, so with a deft motion, still hanging on to the dog, Sam managed to get his shirt off before he ended up completely soaked.
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” he informed the dog, who scrabbled to get out of the tub and, as he had predicted, totally soaked him within seconds.
He managed to keep hold of Popsy. The smell intensified—wet dog and vomit—as the water saturated the dog’s fur. Sam reached for Cody’s baby shampoo, somehow managing to hold the dog and dispense shampoo at the same time.
He lathered up the dog. Popsy resigned himself, giving a good demonstration of where the expression “hangdog” came from. Soon, the sweet smell of the baby shampoo began to smother the more noxious odors.
Sam splashed up water to get the lather off, and realized he was going to have to let the old water out of the tub to do a proper rinse. His guard went down ever so slightly and in a flash, the dog leaped out of the tub, nudged open the bathroom door and flew down the hallway, leaving a trail of water and soap in his wake.
Popsy burst through Allie’s closed bedroom door, with Sam hot on his heels. In the murky darkness, Sam watched as the dog leaped onto the bed, landing with a squish on a rather delectable female body, lying on top of the covers. Even in the bad light Sam could tell she was wearing, well, next to nothing.
A pair of headphones and red bikini underwear.
Allie woke up flailing, her eyes wild with fear.
“Get away from me!” she screamed, throwing off the headphones, sitting up and swatting at the air. Popsy stayed on the bed but backed into the corner behind her, cowering.
Given the possibility she had a Harold nearby, or a suitable substitute, there was no explaining what Sam did next.
He moved slowly into the room, and sat down on the bed beside her. “I’m so sorry,” he said in a low, soothing voice. “I was giving the dog a bath, and he broke away from me. I don’t know how he got in your room. Maybe the door doesn’t latch properly?”
She went very still, the screeching stopped, and she drew in a long, shaky breath. “Sam?”
“Yes.” The fact she was glad it was him shouldn’t be having the effect on him that it was.
“Oh, God, I thought you were the burglar.”
And then she snuggled against him, tears chasing down his bare, already wet, chest. It was his turn to go very still.
He was nearly naked, and she was nearly naked.
And not at all in the way a man and a woman were usually nearly naked together. It shouldn’t have felt as good as it did, and yet somehow, he could feel himself leaning into the warmth and suppleness of her skin. He recognized the closeness, the human contact, was pushing away some of the despair his memory had caused him just moments ago.
Thankfully, the romantic picture was completely interrupted by the sopping, soapy dog deciding to insert itself between them.
She laughed, a little of that shakiness still in her.
Against his better judgment, ignoring the wet puddle of dog, he stroked the short, spiky tufts of Allie’s hair, and found them surprisingly silky. Allie softened more against him. The smell of her hair and the wet dog mingled, and somehow was not as unpleasant as it should have been.
This, he realized, was going badly off the rails. Very badly.
“How would you like to go to Paris?” he asked.
“Okay, if I wasn’t certain I was dreaming before, now I am.”
“No, I’m serious. Two weeks, all expenses paid. Paris.” He moved an inch away from her. It took all his strength. Should it have taken so much strength? She was his landlady. He barely knew her.
“Paris,” she said, her tone bemused, maybe even irritated.
He stood up, turned back, and faced her. “You could leave in the morning.”
“I’m not following,” she said. She didn’t sound the way he had hoped she would sound. Which was happy. Who wasn’t happy when they got an all-expense-paid trip to an exotic location?
“Obviously, this can’t work,” Sam informed her with elaborate patience.
She folded her arms around the wet dog, thankfully hiding most of herself, and looked at him with those eyes that could make a strong man weak. “What can’t work?”
“You and me together under the same roof. I mean...” He waved a hand at her. “You can’t wander around in your underwear.”
“It’s not my underwear,” she said dangerously. “It’s a bathing suit.”
“Dear God,” he muttered under his breath, trying not to be a complete pervert. That meant overriding his desire to look and see what the differences were between the underwear he thought it was and the bathing suit she proclaimed it to be.
“And I was not wandering around in it. You barged into my bedroom.”
“Popsy,” he corrected, weakly. “And the latch. Not working.”
She went on as if he hadn’t made those important clarifications. “Though it’s a bathing suit and I live on a beach so it would be perfectly okay if I was wandering around in it.”
Yes, indeed it would. It would be perfectly okay. For her to be prancing—wandering—around her own beachside cottage in a bathing suit. The fact that it was perfectly okay made it more of a problem, not less of one.
For him. A normal hot-blooded male.
That thought gave him pause. He had not thought of himself as normal for a long time. And hot-blooded had not been part of his equation since the accident had taken the lives of his sister and brother-in-law and plunged him into the familiar land of grief and the foreign one of parenting.
Is this how it would happen? Little normal moments would just insert themselves in his life when he was least expecting them? Not that this was a normal moment. Of course it wasn’t. And yet, still, for one heady second, he had been dealing with a very normal, hot-blooded reaction to a woman.
Was he ready for that?
He didn’t think so. She was the type of woman who would probably bring all kinds of unexpected surprises with her for a man foolish enough to tangle his life with hers.
Even ever so briefly.
Even for two weeks.
Besides, he had Adam’s family arriving soon. What would they think about him cohabitating with a young lady given to skimpy red bathing suits? Surely they wouldn’t think that was good for Cody?
No, he had to convince her to go to Paris. It felt as if his life—or what was left of it—might depend on that.
Allie glared at Adam. Paris, indeed!
Of all the places he could mention, did it have to be that one? Her ex-beau, Ryan, had whispered in her ear once, We will explore the world together, and I will kiss you in Paris and my kisses will taste sweeter than wine...
She shook away the memory, focused on something else. She was not in her underwear!
“Come on, Popsy,” she said, getting up off the bed, and taking the dog firmly by the collar. “Let’s get that soap off you.”
The truth was, she was quite self-conscious in her red bikini. And a little bit pleased with the effect it was having on Sam, too!
He looked pretty stunning himself: his chest bare and wet, his shorts, also soaked, hanging low off slender hips. He was making her bedroom feel claustrophobic, just as he had Cody’s.
Just moments ago, she had been cuddled up to him. Her skin was still tingling from it. How was she going to cleanse that memory from the room?
She could throw on a robe, but it felt as if that would be an admission he might be right about the wisdom of them sharing close quarters. It felt imperative not to let Sam win, somehow. Plus, she was going to be spraying off a dog. How much sense did it make to get dressed for that activity? She pushed by Sam.
“But you haven’t given me an answer about Paris.”
When her day had started this morning, Allie could not have predicted any of its events, and certainly not for it to end with this kind of surprise: finding herself in the arms of a gorgeous man...who apparently would prefer her in Paris!
In fact, in her wildest dreams she could not have pictured any of this. There was something oddly invigorating about it all. In her attempts to make her life stable, and predictable, had it somehow teetered over an edge into boring?
On the other hand, she had to remember that playing with fire might also be considered invigorating. She had to remind herself where excitement could lead, and that she had already visited that place, with disastrous results.
“I’m never going to Paris,” she told Sam firmly. “You are being ridiculous.”
She glanced back at him. His brow was furrowed. People did not tell him he was being ridiculous, apparently.
Leaving Sam standing there, clearly stunned by her refusal, she took the dog out the patio doors, and down into a small fenced yard, where a hose was hooked up. It had a spray nozzle on the end. Popsy twisted her wrist trying to squirm out of her grasp.
“I thought cocker spaniels were water dogs?” she scolded him.
“Here. I’ll hold him, you spray.”
Sam had followed her outside and came down the stairs. He had put a shirt on. It felt like a reprimand.
He took the dog firmly in grasp while she hosed him off. The first time she squirted Sam instead of the dog, it was an accident. But the second time, it wasn’t. Really? Who put on a shirt to wash a dog? And the third time it was pure devilment.
Of course, it was all fun and games until he grabbed the hose from her!
Given the heat of the night, the cold water hitting her did not have the effect she suspected he had hoped for. There was no cowering, no pleading for him to stop. The water felt delicious. She opened her arms to it, and tilted back her head and closed her eyes. The water stopped hitting her. She opened her eyes to see the stars studding an ink-black sky.
She lowered her gaze to earth. The hose had been set down. Sam was retreating, Popsy’s collar firmly in his grasp. He stood, for one moment, at the sliding door, looking down from the deck at her.
From here, his eyes looked darker than the night sky.
And then Allie was in the empty yard alone, soaked, her very skin tingling with an awareness of life that she had not allowed herself to feel for a very, very long time.
She was aware she did not feel afraid of a burglar. For the first time in forever, she didn’t feel afraid of anything, at all.
When she went in the house, she left the patio door wide open, so the breeze could cool off everything that had overheated this night.
Sometime during the night, her bedroom door creaked open, and she woke up, not to see the burglar the open door might have invited, but Popsy. The dog shuffled in, sniffed her hand and whined. The smell of baby shampoo barely masked the wet fur smell.
“What do you want?” Allie whispered.
The dog took that as an invitation. He put both front paws on her bed, hefted himself up and then snuggled his still-damp and somewhat smelly self into her side. He licked her cheek once, burrowed deep under her armpit and fell fast asleep.
She lay there for a moment, contemplating the rise and fall of his breath, and his uncomplicated affection for her. Maybe she needed a dog.
In the morning when Allie woke up, the dog was gone, but his scent lingered. She felt a bit cranky, almost like she’d had too much to drink the night before. The moment when she had felt so free and alive—in her drenched bathing suit under a star-studded night—now felt overlaid with embarrassment.
Allie forced herself to go for her normal early morning run along the beach.
If the trials of the past few years had taught her anything, it was that there was value in discipline and routine.
In a moment of weakness—thinking of the child, not the other set of deep brown eyes—she went as far as Mrs. Jacobs’s Beachfront Bakery and bought half a dozen world-famous—according to Mrs. Jacobs—Sugar Cone muffins. They were hideously expensive.
Worth it, a half hour later, seeing the little boy, adorable in those pajamas with red fire engines all over them, and his hair an untamed tangle, chomping enthusiastically on his muffin, dropping crumbs to the dog. Popsy looked shiny and alert this morning. There were even signs of enthusiasm in the way he was noisily vacuuming Cody’s offerings from the floor.
“Let’s talk about Paris,” Sam said.
He hadn’t even said good morning. Or thanked her for providing breakfast.