Home Is Where the Bark Is (15 page)

He couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or proud. Maybe a bit of both.

“And home is?”

“Berkeley. A beautiful old Victorian I wish they’d had when I was a kid.”

“Nice for you to have them close.”

Serena laughed. “Yeah. But I am so glad I don’t share the house with them. It would be such hard work. Their aim is to leave a negative carbon footprint. They live off the grid. Only eat what they grow themselves in their yard or what comes from within a one-hundred-mile radius of San Francisco. No car. No TV. And of course no dogs.”

“Sounds admirable.”

“And uncomfortable. But we’re not here to talk about my parents.”

“No,” he said. Despite his initial misgivings, he had not been able to find anything subversive in her parents’ activities. He picked up his folder. “Let’s get things sorted for Mack.”

At the sound of his name, Mack thumped his tail and looked up at Nick with those sad, dark eyes. Nick felt he did not have to be a doting doggy daddy to read his plea for human help.

 

 

Serena
sat across her table from Nick as they ate lunch. Or rather, he ate with gusto; she played around with her salad with her fork. Maddy’s lasagna had turned out superlatively well. The cheese bubbled golden on the top and the rich, spicy filling spilled out from the layers of pasta. But Serena was way too nervous to eat.

No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on sensible conversation about surgeon’s fees, the possibility of Mack needing to wear a cast, time span of rehab, and so on, other thoughts kept intruding.

Of what it would be like to trace her finger along Nick’s sexy mouth. Of what it might be like to kiss that mouth. Or to skip past the kissing stage to get to her and Nick in her bedroom hot and naked and—Her nipples pebbled at the thought.

She pulled her thoughts up short. This was insane.

When she’d answered the door to him she’d taken one look and had to hold on to the doorframe for support. Nick Whalen in a business suit was hot. Nick Whalen wearing well-worn denim jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather biker jacket was a step up from hot. Right up to a stratosphere where the air became so thin she felt breathless and her heart pounded so hard and so fast she swore she could feel it knocking against her ribs.

He pushed his plate away, empty now of his third helping. “You’re an amazing cook,” he said.

“Thank you, but I’m not really. I—”

“Don’t be modest. That’s the best lasagna I’ve had for a long time. Maybe ever.”

“I’m not being modest. Truly. I didn’t—”

“You used Italian sausage instead of ground beef?”

“Yes. Well, I didn’t. It was—”

“And eggplant? I liked the way you did the eggplant.”

He seemed determined to credit her for Maddy’s wonderful, inventive cooking.

The thought danced insistently around her conscience. What harm would it do to let Nick Whalen think she could cook?

“It was made with garlic and fresh oregano,” she said.

That wasn’t a lie. She didn’t say
who
had cooked the eggplant.

“I like to cook,” he said. “Though nothing as impressive as this.”

Serena knew, in truth, she was the world’s worst cook. Maddy had learned to cook from her grandma, then gone on to train as a professional chef. Fried tofu was about as creative as Serena’s mom had ever gotten in the culinary skills department. Never in a million years could Serena make anything that came anywhere near this lasagna.

But Nick didn’t need to know that.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the compliment for herself. Cloaking herself in the borrowed garb of cook. And being surprised at how good it felt.

She smiled and met his gaze from across the table. The glacial blue of his eyes had warmed a degree or two, the sharp angles of his face relaxed. He leaned back in his chair with the contented sigh of a well-fed man.

It pleased her.

And it surprised her that it pleased her.

She’d never seen the need to learn to cook. The years she’d been a model she’d had to put hunger on hold and forget about the delights of food. Staying thin hadn’t come easily and she’d had to work at it. She’d gotten out of the habit of cooking much besides the basics, and that only when she couldn’t avoid it. Living single in San Francisco didn’t require expertise in the kitchen. She was surrounded by cafes and food markets where a good meal was merely a matter of the creative loading of a shopping cart.

But this was unexpectedly . . . nice. Seeing the pleasure Nick got from the meal Maddy had whipped up in minutes. Enjoying the admiration it earned her. Wanting to impress him further. And all the time, pushing aside the guilt that she had not earned that admiration.

Maybe she would learn to cook if she had a guy like Nick in her life.

“What do you like to make?” she asked.

“The usual guy things. Steak. Ribs. Chili. But I’d like to try this lasagna. Can I have your recipe?”

This Rottweiler type of guy was asking her for a recipe? This could not be happening. Panic threatened to gag her. “Sorry. No recipe. It’s . . . uh, in my head.”

That wasn’t too tortuous a stretch of the truth. After all, she had watched Maddy do it. The lasagna hadn’t actually seemed that difficult to put together.

“So you’re an instinctual cook,” he said.

“Uh, something like that.” World’s worst cook and world’s worst liar. “I, uh, never use recipes.” What if he asked to look at her cook-books? How would she explain she didn’t have any? Nuking Lean Cuisines was more her area of expertise.

“That’s clever,” he said. “I have to follow a recipe. And even then I can get it wrong.”

Frantically she sought to divert the conversation away from her culinary skills. If he wanted to swap cooking disaster stories, she’d be right in there with the best of them. And exposed for the food fraud she was.

“Uh . . . do you make homemade recipes for Bessie?”

He stared at her. “Recipes? For the dog? Hell no. She gets scraps, cans, and kibble.”

“I just wondered. Plenty of dog parents . . . I, uh, mean dog—”

“Owners?” he prompted.

“I was going to say guardians,” she replied. “That’s the most acceptable term.”

“Guardians. Right.”

“They prefer to cook for their dogs. Maddy has a TV show on home cooking for dogs. And my other friend Jenna sells organic treats through Paws-A-While. They go as fast as I can stock them.”

“Is that so?” he said. “I’ll . . . uh . . . have to try some for Bessie.”

She got the impression he was clamping down on some other, less polite comment about gourmet treats for dogs.

But then he turned to look at Mack. The big dog thumped his tail in recognition of the look and grinned his doggy grin. Nick seemed flattered by the recognition.

Both Mack and Snowball had made it clear they were very interested in the lasagna. She had trained them not to beg at the table, but from where they sat in the living room, she was aware of two pairs of eyes on full alert to the movement of food from plate to human mouth. The way her stomach was tied up in knots, they were guaranteed her share in their dog bowls later on. There was only a trace of garlic for flavor, not enough to make it dog-unfriendly.

“What about Mack?” said Nick. “What does he eat when he’s not chowing down on junk?”

The hint of hope that had sparked when Nick offered to pay for Mack’s surgery ignited and flamed. “Just regular dog food. You know, just like Bessie.”

His laugh was more of a snort of disbelief.

“Okay,” she conceded. “Maybe he does eat a little more than Bessie does.”

Nick quirked an eyebrow in response.

“Maybe a lot more than Bessie,” she added.

“My bet is a whole lot more than Bessie. Mack’s a big guy.”

“Yeah. Big guys do eat a lot.” She looked pointedly at Nick’s empty plate. Empty after three helpings of lasagna, that was. “I guess if a big guy was thinking of adopting a dog, he would probably understand that.”

“Have you got a particular big guy in mind?”

He’s sitting right across from me,
she wanted to say. But she had to let him come around to the idea himself.

“You know I want him for myself but, costs aside, it just can’t happen,” she said. “He needs a yard and lots of exercise. Snowball’s an apartment kind of dog. Mack could never be happy in such a small space.”

She looked over to Mack, his head on his enormous paws, his brow wrinkled in perpetual worry, but his eyes ever watchful. She could never, ever surrender him to the shelter, though with his knee fixed he would stand a better chance of adoption.

She looked back to Nick. “I was hoping—”

“I was thinking—”

They spoke at the same time.

She flushed. “How could you bear to spend all that money on him and then see him go to someone else?”

“I don’t have room for a dog.”

“Room in your house or room in your life?”

He shrugged. “Both.”

Odd. He already had a dog. “But you have Bessie.”

“I . . . I meant a big dog.”

“When his knee is fixed you can run with him like you told me you did with Fella. Bet you don’t do that with Bessie.”

That hit home. She could tell by the tightening of his jaw. The thought of him running through pine forests, those long, powerful legs striding out with tiny Bessie scampering alongside, yellow bow and all, made her want to laugh. The thought of Nick in running shorts, an athletic T-shirt molded to his muscles, gave her an altogether different reaction.

“Of course I don’t run with Bessie,” he growled. “And I told you, I like big dogs.”

She shrugged. “Big dogs, small dogs, they’re all amazing to me. The important thing with a big dog like Mack is discipline. You can’t risk dominant behavior in an animal that size. People can be scared of them. He has to know you are the leader of his pack. The alpha male.”

Her heart kicked in to that disconcerting rapid beat again. Nick Whalen could not be anything other than an alpha male. A strong, powerful, take-command type of guy. The leader of the pack. The dominant animal.

Just, in fact, the type of man she had learned to avoid.

Her brain kept jumping up and down to remind her of that. But her hormones had an altogether different take on the matter.

“Like you are the alpha female?” His eyes narrowed as he surveyed her from across the table. “On top. In charge.” She almost gasped at the charge of sexual energy that shot through her at his words.

She felt about as in charge of the situation as a three-week-old pup separated from its mom. But she couldn’t let him know that.

“That’s right. Mack knows I’m the boss. I crack the whip.”

“Really,” he drawled, his eyes narrowed. “I’d like to see that.”

“Uh, figuratively of course.”

“But I’d have to be the one giving the orders.”

“There’s room for both an alpha male and an alpha female in a pack. I—”

She choked on her next words when she realized what she had said. Heat burned her cheeks. Why did these dumb things spill out of her when Nick was around?

A grin played around his sexy, sexy mouth.

“Really?” he said.

“Really,” she said, getting up from the table, using the excuse of clearing the dishes to think of something to say.

“That gives me an agenda to work with,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Taming a big dog isn’t so hard when you know what you’re doing.”

She pushed that thought right to the back of her mind.

“I’m sure I’m up to the job,” he said. “But an animal is a serious responsibility. If I commit to something, I stick with it. I need to be sure I can take Mack on.”

“Fair enough.” She had to clamp down on her urge to get him over the line and sign the adoption papers then and there. He was right. A dog was a commitment. Mack was with her right now because someone else had let him down. That couldn’t happen again.

She gathered the rest of the dishes and refused Nick’s offer of help. “Would you like cookies for dessert?” she asked.

“Cookies? You bake cookies, too?”

To pretend she had any kind of skill in the baking department would push credulity to the limits. But his eyes gleamed at the very mention of them.

She should tell him the cookies were a test batch of a new recipe Maddy had asked her to taste and evaluate. But she liked seeing that gleam of appreciation leveled at her.

Anyway, cookies were easy peasy, Maddy always said.

“Sure,” she said. “Hope you like white chocolate and walnut. Because they’re fresh out of the oven this morning. Maybe sandwiched with some ice cream?”

Replete
with cookies and ice cream, Nick lay back on her comfy sofa while Serena bustled about in the kitchen fixing coffee.