Page 6 of Only Her (K2 Team)
The air behind him shifted, and he spun...
Drenched in sweat, Cody shot up, gasping for air. Nothing about the nightmare made sense. He didn’t know anyone named Asra, and was sure he’d never stepped inside her house. Why did he keep having this dream that always ended at the same place?
He’d only been injured once, but had no memory of what had happened. His team had found him unconscious on the street with a large knot on the back of his skull, so they assumed someone had hit him on the back of the head. Cody wasn’t so certain, but he had no other explanation. Yet, he couldn’t quite accept that anyone could have gotten that close without his sensing danger.
Since he had no desire to go back to sleep and risk the nightmare returning, he untangled his legs from the covers. Gray light poked in around the edges of the window blinds, telling him it was dawn. Plenty of time for a run before he had to leave for work. Pretty Girl and Sally, instantly leaving their beds when seeing him up and slipping on running clothes, pranced around his feet.
“Yeah, we’re going running.” They raced out of the room, then back in to see if he was coming. “Right behind you.” They took off again. At the edge of the yard, he clipped on their leashes, the signal that they could cross the boundary.
The early December morning was chilly, but nothing like Vermont, where he’d grown up and his parents still lived, at this time of year. It was also nothing like the winter nights in Afghanistan. Those were a ballbuster. Sometimes he missed Vermont’s winter snow, especially at Christmas, but since his time in the military, he’d become cynical where holidays were concerned.
His parents wanted him to come home for Christmas. He wasn’t sure they meant it. For the love of the son they’d never expected to have and didn’t understand, they politely sent him invitations to each of their college events, and for the love of them, he politely declined. He knew they’d been relieved he hadn’t made an appearance, and he’d been just as relieved to not have been stared at with distaste by his parents’ friends and colleagues, the son who’d disappointed the professors by not following them into academia.
If just one person asked how it felt to kill a human being, he feared he’d go ballistic. That question had been pointedly directed at him the last time he’d attended one of his parents’ socials. He had walked out the door without answering because his answer would have been, “Would you have rather seen me or one of my teammates killed?”
Don’t go there, Dog.Focusing on the sound of his feet slapping on the pavement and that of his dogs’ panting breaths, he fell back on his sniper training and let his mind go blank. Nothing else mattered but who was lined up in his sights, or at that moment, putting one foot in front of the other.
Damn, he was fucked up.
Pretty Girl whined, and Cody glanced down at her to see her chocolate-brown eyes were trained on him. Stupid dog was entirely too sensitive to his moods. He looked away from her inquisitive eyes, stumbling at seeing the woman running ahead of him, one whose sexy bottom he recognized. Catch up with her or turn around and pretend he’d not seen her? He slowed, trying to decide what to do. His saner self said to turn around. Kissing her had been too good for his peace of mind. If he got near her, he’d want to do it again.
Pretty Girl took the decision out of his hands by giving a bark of welcome, then Sally echoed her, giving his own deeper bark. Riley turned, jogging backward, and her gaze settled on his dogs as she smiled at them. Damn, he wished she’d smile at him like that. Or, maybe he didn’t wish that.
She ran in place, waiting for him to catch up, and when she finally met his eyes, her cheeks flushed and her smile seemed uncertain. Her gaze slid away as she returned her attention to the dogs. Was she embarrassed that she’d kissed him? When she knelt, he let the lines out on the leashes, giving the dogs permission to go to her.
“Hello, sweet things,” she said, scratching under their chins, laughing when both tried to lick her face. “You said this one’s name is Sally? You do realize he’s a boy, right?”
“I noticed. All my dogs are named after Eric Clapton songs. He doesn’t sing about men. Doesn’t seem to bother Sally, though.” He stepped closer, even though he should stay as far away from her as possible. “Behave, you two.” The dogs plopped their butts on the ground, peering up at him with their soulful brown eyes, as if he were denying them their fun.
“It’s okay. I’m used to being slurped by dogs.” She stood, and her eyes focused on the vicinity of his neck. “Listen, about last night, I—”
“Forgotten.” An outright lie. It would be a long time, if ever, that he’d forget how soft her lips were, how sweet she tasted. His gaze lowered to her mouth when she chewed on her bottom lip. Damn but he wanted her. But he was not for her. Until he got his head on straight, he wasn’t for anyone.
Riley was mortified. He’d already forgotten she had kissed him? Or more like, her kiss had been so out of line that the last thing he wanted to do was remember. His bristled dark cheeks, along with that intense focus he trained on her, made her insides feel like pudding. He probably hated pudding. Gah, just being near him made her silly.
From the haunted look in his eyes, though, he was probably a man she should avoid if she were smart. But there was something about him that tugged at the places inside her too long ignored. What to do about that?
She shook one leg, then the other. “Well, I guess I’ll finish my run. Wanna come?” His gaze slid over her, and his eyes darkened.Smoldering. There was no other word for the way he looked at her, and when she thought about what she’d said and his reaction, her cheeks felt like they were on fire.
He chuckled as he traced a finger over her bottom lip. “You have no idea how much Iwanna, darlin’, but I’d best be heading home.”
“Bye,” she whispered to his retreating back. “Nice butt,” she added as he and his dogs rounded the corner.
The morning was normal, no emergencies, no poisoned animals. Riley breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled off her lab coat before heading for the small kitchen. Her staff of two, an assistant and an office manager, had gone out to lunch, and she welcomed an hour of quiet. After locking the door behind them, she stuck her head inside the refrigerator, eyeing the contents. Slim pickings. A container of lemon yogurt and a half-full package of cheese sticks were about it. That she’d forgotten to stop at the grocery store to restock on her way to work, she blamed on a man with caramel-colored eyes who had sucked all thoughts but those of him from her mind that morning.
“Damn brain-sucking zombies,” she muttered. With her meager lunch in hand, she went to her office. After a few minutes of debate, she picked up the phone and called Maria Buchanan. She had first met Maria when she had brought in her cat, Mouse. After several visits to Riley’s clinic with her cat, Maria and Riley had met for lunch one day and hit it off. They had since made lunch a weekly habit. Maybe Maria could talk her out of setting her sights on a man with a sexy cowboy name, a devastating dimple, and smoldering eyes.
A lunch date set up for the next day with her friend, Riley dug into her yogurt and cheese. She’d just finished when there was banging at the door. She glanced at the clock to see there was another thirty minutes until the clinic opened again, but if a pet owner had an emergency, she couldn’t ignore whoever wanted in.
Someday, she would be able to afford security cameras, but until then, the only way to see who was on the other side was to open the door, which she did. Janie Forester, with a cat wrapped in a towel, and her young daughter, Kellie, at her side, rushed into the waiting room.
“Please, Max is dying,” Kellie said, tears falling down her cheeks.
Riley took the bundle from Janie’s arms. The poor cat was seizing and bleeding from the nose, both signs of poisoning. Riley’s heart fell at knowing the cat was too far gone to save, but she would try, dammit.
“Stay here,” she said, taking Max and running to her exam room. At the moment she set the cat down on the table, he took his last breath. “I’m so sorry, baby.” As tears fell down her cheeks, she stroked the still animal’s fur. “I swear I’ll find out who did this to you. I swear it.” She wet a cloth, and after tidying the cat as well as she could, she went to a storage closet and removed one of the small pine boxes. Little caskets.
When she had been fourteen, the foster family where she lived at the time had had a small terrier. The dog had been the only thing in the world she’d been sure actually loved her. When it got sick and had to be euthanized, the veterinarian had handed her the dead animal to take home and bury. Remembering how callously Cricket had been treated, she had bought a supply of the velvet-lined boxes for small animals shortly after opening her practice. She didn’t charge anything for them. It was her way of trying to ease the pain of losing a beloved pet. Someday, maybe she could afford some bigger ones for the larger animals.
