“What a beauty!” Toni whispered reverently, pointing at the Border collie shedding out a recalcitrant ewe. “Look at him. Power, presence. He’ll be spectacular when he gets a bit of seasoning.”
Devlin watched Toni with growing respect. They’d woken early and eaten breakfast under the baleful eye of their hostess, an eye made even more baleful after she’d seen Toni’s T-shirt, bright blue and two sizes too small, which said, “I Just Washed My Kilt and I Can’t Do a Fling with It!” Toni wore it with as much dignity as she could muster, only laughing after their hostess had left the room.
Dev was glad. She obviously didn’t hold last night against him. In retrospect he supposed he had overreacted a bit. But then again, that was easy enough to say when she was fully dressed and it was daylight and they were heading out on a motorcycle. Night might tell a different tale.
After breakfast they’d driven north on the island to where the first test was being held. The chances were overwhelming that McGill wouldn’t be able to stay away. Added to which Dev knew some of the professional handlers in attendance. They might help him locate his missing manager and, more important, his missing dog.
But as soon as they’d discovered that the third test was under way, Toni had been trapped, her attention riveted by the competition. Though he’d realized early on that Toni’s enthusiasm wasn’t simply the result of having watched Babe one time too many, he soon recognized her expertise. She knew dogs, and she really knew Border collies. She loved the breed. As he did. Which only made his attraction to her deeper—and more impossible to act on.
He didn’t want a simple tumble in the sack—well, actually, he did, but he didn’t think “simple” was an option anymore. If it had ever been. Instead, he wanted to learn everything he could about her. She was too good to be real, but in fact, she was real. And wonderful.
“You don’t run sheep, do you?” he suddenly asked, drawing her intent gaze away from where the red-and-white dog had successfully separated the ewe from the rest of the flock and was circling the pen.
She looked at him. “Why do you think that?”
“You’ve mentioned being too many places. People who have livestock can’t leave them.”
She nodded. “Busted. I don’t own any sheep.” Something in the way she said it, a little gruff, a little defensive, made him suspicious.
“You’re not one of these people who want to turn the breed into the perfect little urchins’ pet—the family wagger, all boundy with joy when Daddy comes home from work and ‘Look! He’s brought me slippers!’ are you?”
“No,” she answered. “I’ve been around working dogs all my life. When I was a kid, my family fostered service dogs from puppyhood until they were ready for formal training. Later I got a job training them. My dad was a cop in the K-9 division, too, so we always had a working dog at home with us.”
She suddenly grinned. “Sorry. Bit more information than you asked for. It’s just that I want you to know that I respect what’s going on here. I’ve had pets, and I’ve had pets who had jobs. In my mind that’s the best situation of all. There is nothing more beautiful, or more joyful, than a dog that’s doing what it was bred to do, whether that’s pointing a pheasant, finding cocaine at a baggage claim, guiding someone across a city street, or herding a flock of—whatever.”
“Whatever?”
“Look,” she faced him, squaring her shoulders, “I chase geese for a living. That’s what I bought Blackie to do. That and act as the base for a breeding program I’ve been developing.”
“Geese?”
“Geese. Minnesota is the land of ten thousand lakes. Most of those lakes have golf courses attached to them. The ones that don’t, the ones in the Twin Cities, have industries and corporate headquarters adjacent to them. Geese come flapping down the northern flyway from Canada, take one look at all that suburban green and all those little lakes, and see a goosey counterpart to La Costa Spa.”
“Yeah?” he said slowly, sure he was missing the point.
She gazed at him in exasperation. “Let me put it this way: The suburban green is a good deal greener after the geese arrive. In fact, the sidewalks, the parking lots, the driving ranges, the putting greens, the soccer field, and the sandlots are all green. Or rather greenish. If you know what I mean.”
“I see. And the dogs chase them off?”
“Yup. We haze geese. Initially it takes anywhere from twice a week to four times a day, but within a few weeks we’re going out purely on maintenance calls. And the dogs”—her gaze fastened levelly on his—“love it.”
His thoughts whirled. “You want to buy a Grand International Champion so that he can chase geese?”
“Live in my house, drive around with me, be my constant companion, make sure planes can safely take off and land at private airports, keep playgrounds and parks and golf courses clean, and yes, chase geese,” she said flatly. “Believe me, geese are much more formidable and five times nastier than sheep. Chase a sheep, and you’ve mastered a Schwartz toy. Haze a goose, and you’ve vanquished Attila the Hun.”
“That formidable?”
She eyed him narrowly. “Ever been attacked by a goose? It’s not fun. Not only do you look stupid, but it hurts. Why, an enraged goose nearly drowned a dog in Lake Champlain last year.”
“I had no idea,” he said, trying desperately to keep from laughing.
“Look, Sheep Boy. When was the last time you got attacked by a ewe?”
He did burst out laughing then. “Got me. Never.”
She smiled smugly. “Okay. Maybe geese aren’t exactly Bengal tigers, but they’re pains in the butts.”
“So what do you do about them?”
“Haze them.”
“How’s that work?”
“Well, to start out, I scope out the business that contracted me to rid them of geese. See where the geese are hanging about and what time they arrive and leave.
“Then I bring a couple of my dogs out. Usually I’ll send each dog in the opposite direction to circle in and drive the geese into the air. Of course, on golf courses the geese are as likely to flap off into the water hazards and jeer at the dogs from the safety of the water. But my dogs can herd even in the water.”
“Really?” he asked, impressed. Getting a Border collie into the water usually took a bit of doing; to have them actually take direction once there was impressive.
“Yup,” she said proudly. “And I’ve taught them a bark command.”
“Huh?”
“They bark on command even in the water. Scares the bejeezus out of the geese. I can haze most areas in twenty minutes or less.”
“And it sticks? The hazing?”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “Much better than any other methods they’ve tried and with much less of an environmental impact. I know of a business that used to set off pyrotechnics and sound cannons. The neighbors complained.”
He laughed. “I should imagine.”
“But with dogs, usually the geese have learned not to come back to an area within a few weeks. After that it’s just a biweekly romp on the grounds for my dogs—just in case some goose scout is watching to see if we’re being vigilant.” She smiled dreamily.
“Goose scouts.”
“Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “They have scouts, moles, spies. A whole goosey intelligence network. I told you, they’re a very worthy opponent.”
He burst out laughing.
“Besides which,” she continued, an impish light in her eye, “there’s something satisfying about watching a bunch of geese light out in front of a really intense Border collie.”
“And you can make a living at this?” he asked curiously.
“Oh, yeah,” she said in such a way that his interest was piqued even more.
“How much?”
Her smile became complacent. “Enough to get me out of Minnesota anytime from November through April. Geese,” she lectured knowingly, “are a seasonal problem. So I make a tidy little sum during the season and get to go other places during the winter.”
“Like Scotland.” He suddenly saw a lot of virtue in her profession. “You might be able to come back to Scotland this winter. If you wanted to.” He tried to sound nonchalant.
“Yes. I suppose.” She blushed and looked away. “Maybe we’d better keep looking for McGill and my dog.”
He agreed, eyeing the unconscious sway of her hips as she strode over the grassy field. He felt the pull of attraction and resolved not to do a bloody thing about it. He would convince her to come back to Scotland this winter and spend some time with him. He would use as recommendation the fact that he hadn’t pushed her for a physical relationship. He wouldn’t give her any opportunity to think he saw her as a one-night stand or a casual relationship. Because whatever the hell his feelings for her, they were most definitely not casual.
They had so much in common, it was—dear God, he couldn’t believe he was saying these things—as if they were meant to be together.
“So being a Scottish laird isn’t one long, happy stroll through the glen?” she asked, twirling her straw in the coke bottle.
“I told you, I’m not a laird. A laird is a chieftain, a martial leader. I couldn’t even raise a pony parade, not even if I bribed the local tots with toffee pudding.”
She laughed. He was so exasperated with her romanticism that even when it had faded, she kept up the moon-eyed pretense, just because she liked teasing him. Though he gave as good as he got—she’d heard more barbed editorials on American politics than in a Stephen Colbert routine.
“What I don’t understand,” she said, glancing at him sidelong, “is why you’re going through all the trouble of fixing up your castle if you don’t really like being a laird.”
“I like having a roof over my head.” He smiled. The dimples in his cheeks were fascinatingly boyish. “My family owns all sorts of things. The odd castle here, a decrepit warehouse there. A fishing boat that’s been in dry dock since the war, and a newspaper that hasn’t printed anything beside notices of Kirk rummage sales in twenty years. And a kennel.”
“But the Oronsay Kennels are world-famous.”
“I know. But you don’t make money on a kennel that has fifteen dogs. The kennel is just a very celebrated hobby, is all. I was hoping to turn it into a going concern.”
“Why?”
He chuckled. “I told you. I like having a roof over my head. The castle was there for the asking, the kennels had a good rep to build on. It seemed better than moving to Aberdeen and working for a living. We Montgomerys find the notion of working for a living most distressing.”
She smiled. He could claim to be a slacker, but she’d seen the work he’d been doing on that castle and heard the detailed and thoughtful planning that had gone into his proposed renovations. Once the rest of the renovations were complete, it would once more become a cohesive whole, a place with both modern and historic elements.
“So just how are you going to go about making the kennel a going concern?” she asked.
He stopped, cocking his head and studying her intently. The sun glimmered on his dark red hair, warmed the toffee-brown depths of his eyes. “Do you really want to know?”
She did. She wanted to know everything about Devlin Montgomery. “Oh, yes,” she said.
He smiled and proceeded to tell her.
The salt-kissed air whistled past Toni’s ears as Dev expertly guided the vintage bike toward the headlands at the western edge of the island. Overhead, blue rivers channeled their way through towering white canyons of clouds. Toni pressed her head between Dev’s shoulder blades, using his broad back as a windbreak, soaking up the heat from his body.
She was miserable and elated and despondent. They had everything in common. They were both oldest unwed children. They both enjoyed traveling—in comfort. They both loved dogs, scuba diving, Douglass Adams, and the original Iron Chef. They had the same sense of humor and the same ideas about the proper work-versus-play ratio. And they both wanted each other so badly she was afraid to buy the balloon a kid offered her for fear the damn thing would stick to her hair. The air between them was that charged with electricity.
And she was going away tomorrow, even if she didn’t find McGill and Blackie. She could not imagine leaving with things so unfinished between them, but she was a realist, a practical, imperturbable Minnesotan. This wasn’t a movie; she wasn’t going to arrive at Heathrow two days from now and discover Dev had purchased the seat next to hers on the plane. Anything that was going to happen would have to happen here. Today. Tonight.
She wasn’t very experienced. She’d never been carried away by her emotions—and were these even emotions? What if they were just pheromones or hormones or some other sort of moans? But damn…they seemed like emotions. They seemed honest and certain and strong, strong enough to sweep her off her feet and carry her beyond the stars with only one thing to cling to—Dev.
Was it a mistake to make some bittersweet memories, even if that’s all she’d take with her when she left? She closed her eyes. No. Absolutely not. Now she just had to convince Dev, and if last night was any evidence, that shouldn’t be too hard.