Dylan (Bachelors of the Ridge #1) (5 page)

“He’s not
my
dog.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Brian called over his shoulder.

“It’s just Dylan,” I said to his retreating back, but he either didn’t hear me or was ignoring me.

I shifted the puppy again and walked back to my truck. After carefully lifting him over to passenger seat after I’d sat down, he immediately tried to crawl over the console and back into my lap.

“Ohhhh no way, dude. That is not happening.” Setting him back on the seat next to me, I scratched into the scruff of his neck, and he settled down quickly. His coloring was kinda like a Golden Retriever, but with shorter fur, with pointier ears and some whitish markings along his shoulder blades and around his eyes.

“You kinda look like a fox, dude.” He lifted his head off the seat and looked at me, panting a little now that we were in the warm interior of my car. My phone chimed from the console and I lifted it up to see a text from a phone number with an area code that I didn’t recognize.

I couldn’t help but grin at the cat face emoticon that she used after her name. Very interesting girl, that one was. While Google Maps was loading, I cranked the truck on and blasted the AC so that little guy wouldn’t overheat. Then I rolled my eyes because it was only like seventy out, and the passenger side of the truck wasn’t getting direct sun.

The address loaded and I looked down at my companion.

“Well, I guess I’ve gotta go see a girl about a dog.”

He snuffed out a little bark at me, and we were off.

“
D
on’t freak out
, Kat,” I scolded my flushed reflection in the bathroom mirror. I’d already splashed water on my face, but my heart was still thump-thumping erratically behind my breast bone. “He’s just a man. Just one averagely good-looking man, there is nothing to freak out about.”

Yeah. Just averagely hot.

With averagely freakish blue-green eyes.

And averagely broad, muscular shoulders and chest that filled out a basic white shirt like it was custom made for him.

I sank my still-wet cheeks into my hands, then ran them through my hair. And this right here? Was the number one problem with being a twenty-four year old with an uncashed V-Card and the world’s most awkward personality around men. Which was absolutely why I was still a virgin.

All it took was one dimpled, white-toothed smile and I was a stammering mess. Pulling in a deep breath, I smoothed a hand down the front of my blue scrubs and let it out slowly. He was just a man. I could do this.

I pushed from the bathroom and sank into a chair in the waiting room of the clinic that I’d worked at for the last three months since I graduated with my Veterinary Technician degree and the extra year long certification I’d worked for in Animal Rehabilitation. Working at Rocky Mountain Animal Rehabilitation Center was quite literally my dream come true from the time I was nine, which was when I first knew that it even meant anything to have a dream that I could wish for and that was in my control.

Our receptionist, Glinda, watched me from over the rim of her cup of coffee from behind her desk, a knowing glint in her blue eyes.

“What?” I snapped, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.

“Why are you so nervous, doll?”

I waved a hand. “I am so
obviously
not nervous. Because why would I be? It’s just a possible new patient and I happen to know the guy bringing the dog in because he’s my
boss
. So what?”

Then Dylan walked in, cradling a reddish puppy in his arms, and I could practically hear her bark of laughter at the sight of his muscles and blue eyes and dark hair and yup, the freaking dimple.

He was just a man. He was
just a man
.

“Hey,” I exclaimed a little too loudly and popped up from the chair, immediately zeroing in on the puppy, in all his fluffy, golden perfection. “Oh my goodness, look at your little face!”

“Puppy isn’t bad either,” Glinda muttered from behind me. I shot her a squinty-eyed look that hopefully passed for a glare. But Dylan didn’t hear her, shifting his arms so that I could look at the two front legs on the dog.

“Hey sweetheart,” I cooed to the pup, who lapped at my fingers with an excited tongue. Smoothing a careful hand down his right forearm, there was no wound or anything causing him immediate pain, just a bone that tapered down to a small stump a few inches before it should have formed a normal paw.

“So what happened to him?” Dylan asked, talking in a hushed tone that was entirely unnecessary in our office. I glanced up at him and had to work to swallow at the concerned look in his bright bluish-green eyes. They were so … so—

With a sharp cough, I cleared my throat and gestured to take the dog from his arms. Even though it was only a moment, Dylan hesitated, looking down at the dog. Oh my stars, could he get any hotter with not wanting to let go of the stray dog he found and was taking care of? Screw him. Seriously.

“You know what?” I said, smothering a smile and looking back toward the open area where we’d evaluate the dog, “Why don’t you just carry him? He looks pretty comfortable with you.”

“Yeah, sure. That’s fine.”

Glinda grinned down at her calendar while I turned and unlocked the half door that lead to our main work area used for therapy and the exam rooms that branched off of it. Grabbing my clipboard from the long desk that stretched along the wall between rooms, I stepped back and gestured for Dylan to go in the room in front of me.

There was a mat on the ground, but instead of lowering the puppy there, Dylan settled in one of the chairs next to it with the dog still in his arms. I tilted my head while the dog stretched and groaned, getting comfortable again in their new seat. The cuteness was probably going to kill me before the end of this appointment.

“Did you see him walk at all when you found him?” I asked, putting on my very best professional voice.

Absently, he stroked one of the dog’s ears, thinking back. “Yeah, a few steps towards me. But then I noticed the pretty major limp and picked him up.”

I scribbled that down and then pointed at the mat on the floor.

“Can you set him down for a minute? I want to see what we’re working with here.”

Like he was carrying a newborn baby instead of a probably twelve to thirteen-week old puppy, based on what I could see, Dylan carefully moved from the chair into a crouching position on the floor, depositing the dog on the black mat.

We both laughed when the dog immediately stretched his back legs out and flopped back down onto his belly. Stroking the silky fur on his side, I felt around the dog’s frame. A him, apparently. Everything else looked good, except that missing front paw.

“So, did another animal do that to him?” Dylan asked.

I gave him a quick look where he stayed crouched on the floor next to me, our shoulders almost brushing. Why were his shoulders so
big
?

I shook my head. “I doubt it, not by how completely this is healed around the bone. It’s probably a birth abnormality. And obviously it’s hard to say how he ended up back by those dumpsters, but he doesn’t seem to be malnourished, maybe just a little thinner than we’d like to see.”

When I scooted backward and made clicking noises with my tongue, the puppy perked up, his floppy ears lifting around his face. He stood and stretched again, then loped towards me. Even though I was watching the puppy’s jerky movements, I saw Dylan shift closer, like he might need to help. I held up a hand and shook my head, and Dylan sank back onto his haunches.

The pup sniffed around, keeping the deformed paw lifted up when he wasn’t in movement. But when he walked, his right shoulder dipped significantly to compensate for the missing paw.

“Okay,” I said, after taking a few more notes. “Come here, young man.”

“It’s a he?”

I lifted my head and nodded, scooping the puppy up and lifting one back leg to show the proof to Dylan, who laughed and wiped a hand across his mouth. His smiling, dimpled, completely ordinary, averagely appealing mouth.

While I took some measurements of the puppy, I could feel Dylan watching me, his gaze hot on the top of my head. Not
hot
hot, not like that—men didn’t give me that kind of look. But hot in the way it filled the room, like there wasn’t room for anything else, even the oxygen that I needed to breathe.

“He’s a strong little guy,” I said to break the silence, scratching down the puppy’s back, smiling when his rump arched up into my fingers.

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“What do you mean? With his leg?”

The dog loped over to Dylan, scratching at his knee with the paw-less leg. The sadness on Dylan’s face was so sudden that I moved forward, ready to … what? I couldn’t
touch
him. You know, him being my manager and all that.

“What’s wrong?” I finally asked.

After taking a second to scratch under the dog’s jaw, he looked up me. “I hope he finds a good home. He’s sweet.”

Obviously he didn’t expect me to burst out laughing, but his wide-eyed look made me laugh even harder, until I was wiping away tears of laughter.

“Oh, Dylan, this dog is
yours
,” I said when I’d caught my breath. “We’re not an adoption agency. We rehabilitate animals that deal with these kinds of issues. We don’t rehome them.”

“But I can’t,” he waved a hand at the puppy, who was sniffing along the seam of his jeans, “I can’t have a
dog
. I work a million hours a week.”

With a groan, I unfolded from the ground and stood, wiping my hands together. There was no way I could not smile at the picture they made, the floppy golden puppy wriggling around Dylan’s legs, and Dylan’s large hands unthinkingly pulling it closer onto his lap.

“See?” I pointed at what he was doing. “That, right there. I think you’ve officially been taken over, boss.”

Dylan’s eyelids fell closed, and I took just one tiny second to mourn the loss of those vivid irises trained at me. The flutter thing going on in my belly was weird. Weird, weird, weird. And even more fluttery was my heart when he picked the puppy up and held their faces together with a deep sigh that made his whole chest heave. The dog licked Dylan’s nose. And my ovaries
exploded
.

“I guess I have,” he said slowly. “What am I going to call you, oh great conqueror of the dog-less man?”

Oh, I had to turn and leave the room. Pressing up against the hard edge of the desk, I pressed a hand over my pounding heart.

“Kat?” Doctor Ramirez called from her office. With a deep breath, I went around the corner and gave her an update on our newest patient and his owner.

* * *

“
S
o
,” Dylan said from the chair that he’d moved back into when Doctor Ramirez and I came back in the room so she could examine him, “you’re putting a fake leg on my dog?”

She laughed, turning the pup’s leg over in her hand. “I suppose that’s a simplified way to describe it, but yes. We’re going to want to see him regularly for a few more months, do some physical therapy to ease the tension in his neck and back from favoring that front right leg, and when he gets a little bit bigger—more his permanent size—we’ll cast his leg and send out for the prosthetic leg.” She moved her hands along the small stump to show Dylan where the leg would fit. “It’ll go right around here, he’ll wear it twenty-four-seven, and it’ll take all that pressure off of his spine and his neck. He’ll be as good as new.”

Dylan stared down at the dog, then flicked a glance up at me. I gave him an encouraging smile. He pulled in a deep breath. “Okay, yeah. That sounds good. Insane, but, you know, good.” He stood up and held a hand out to her, which she took. “Thank you, doctor.”

She winked at me when she turned to leave and I rolled my eyes.

“So, uhh, where do I go to get stuff for him? And what kind of food should he eat?”

Pausing where I was putting some stuff away in the cupboards, I looked up at him, looking so adorably clueless and uncomfortable.

“Have you … have you ever had a dog before?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “My parents had one when I was really little. And my sister and her husband have one now, but that’s the closest I’ve ever been to a pet owner.”

I blew out a breath and looked at my watch. “Okay then. We don’t have any more appointments tonight since Clyde’s massage got cancelled.”

“Clyde?”

I nodded absently, thinking through what Dylan might need. “The pit bull. He gets a massage every Thursday, but they couldn’t come tonight. So you’re in luck.”

Dylan looked down at where the dog was chewing the edge of his shoes. “Luck?”

“Yeah, because it looks like we need to do some shopping.”

He stared at me for a few long seconds, my words not registering at first. Then he started shaking his head, lifting his hands up like he was warding off an attack. “Oh shit, I can’t have a dog, Kat. I can’t.”

“Sure you can,” I soothed, patting his forearm like I’d done to the dog’s head. Then I snatched my hand back because the heat from Dylan’s skin made me get all quivery in places that did
not
need quivering. “I’ll help you get everything you need.”

“No, you don’t understand. I work like eighty hours a week,” he pointed a finger at me, “and isn’t that a horrible, sad life for a dog?”

“I’m pretty sure that Bill said his managers won’t be working much more than fifty.”

He scoffed, probably because he knew I was right. “Well, I don’t know how to potty train a dog. Or how much to feed it, and I definitely don’t know anything about training.”

The puppy started whining, pawing at Dylan’s leg and I coughed out a laugh. “You don’t
potty train
dogs, Dylan, that’s kids.”

Dylan sank into the chair underneath him, spearing his hands into all that dark, dark… umm, very average hair.

“Did you name him?” I asked quietly.

“Yes.” He sounded miserable.

With a smile, I crouched down again and the pup lumbered over to me, plopping down and immediately showing me his belly, which I gladly scratched.

“So what did he name you?” I said to the dog. “Fido? Boomer?”

Dylan lifted his head and scoffed. “No way, he needs an epic name.” I waited, looking back down at the blissed-out dog almost falling asleep next to me. Finally, Dylan sighed and reached a hand down to one of those floppy ears, rubbing the fur between his fingers. “Leonidas.”

“Come again?” I laughed.

“You know, the King of Sparta?”

“Umm, no?”

“Gerard Butler in
300
?” In answer, I shrugged. Dylan exhaled heavily like I’d done him some personal injury. “Well, this guy kicked ass, right? And if this one dog can manage on his own, missing a leg, then he probably kicks ass too. Plus,” he smoothed a hand along the puppy’s haunches and the subtle white markings that were there. “He kinda looks like a lion. You know, Leo for a lion?”