Page 22 of To Belong Together
She cautiously raised her head.
Both animals sat at arms’ length, brown eyes fixed on her. The gray one wiggled and inched closer, nose extended, sniffing. He actually looked friendly, unlike his master, whose stare was as pointed as the pit bulls’ teeth.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” So much for the apology she’d planned. Fight or flight must’ve kicked in when the dogs charged.
John sighed. He surveyed her and the dogs, then stepped around them all. The deadbolt clicked, the door opened, and from behind her on the stoop, he issued his pets another command. “Inside.”
Again, they were quick to comply. The brown one with thin black stripes slopped his tongue across her cheek on his way, and then they were gone. The door clicked behind her, and quiet returned.
Alone again, she stared into the woods as she contemplated her next move.
She hadn’t expected him to literally shut her out quite so quickly.
She pressed her palm across the wet spot, wiping up the drool before it froze. The apology would’ve made a better icebreaker.
If she turned around and knocked and knocked, would John’s patience eventually wear thin? Would he come back to the door, let her apologize and make things right, saving the business from a lawsuit?
“I did tell you who I am.”
She twisted.
John hadn’t followed the dogs in as she’d assumed. He stood on the step just two feet from her, his stare less pointed and more … pained?
She swallowed the impulse to complain that he’d startled her, as if his dogs hadn’t already done that thoroughly enough, and rose. “I’m sorry I misunderstood your request for a test drive.” Even the rehearsed apology came out like the rebuke she’d suppressed.
He studied her. “You understood.”
His sincerity left her unbalanced. Nervous. “I thought you wanted to kill me in the countryside and dump my body somewhere.”
Surprise played across his face.
Okay, so that scenario had never been likely. Still. “You can’t tank our business with a lawsuit.”
“What?”
“We’re a small business, and my family doesn’t deserve to have everything they’ve spent their lives building taken away because I set boundaries.” Even if she wasn’t so sure anymore that she’d needed to set those boundaries.
“What makes you think I’m suing?”
“The paperwork this morning. Why else would you suddenly care who we talk to?”
“I told you, I don’t trust your cousins, and one of them recognized me.”
Her cousins. So when she’d told Sam that John must’ve sent the agreement because of him or Roy, she’d been right. And that meant … That meant that John’s interest in her had been …? No. He hadn’t been serious about that. About her.
John’s lips formed a flat line, and when he spoke, he seemed to measure his words. “I can handle a no, Erin. I’m not suing. You told me to go elsewhere, and I did.”
“Where?”
“Lakeshore.”
“The dealership?”
He shook his head.
“Rodney’s?” The place she had heard all the complaints about? “Not Rodney’s.”
John watched her without indicating one way or the other.
