LITMIR.BIZ

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would have propelled her forward.

      “Sorry,” he said, giving her an exasperated smile, letting her go and stepping back immediately.

      Up that close, she thought he definitely wasn’t old.

      There’d been a flash of an impression of power and the firm, muscular build that few men had once they hit middle age.

      And the eyes, with those little, crinkly lines at their corners…Maybe they’d led her to believe he was older than he actually was.

      Was he even forty?

      Audrey looked up at him, feeling every one of her thirty-nine years and wishing all the more that he was sixty and balding.

      She wasn’t doing this again, wasn’t throwing herself at a man, thinking it was the way to forget all her problems, to solve them, to make everything right again.

      He looked nearly as taken aback as she felt and went still for a second once he’d let go of her, as if he might have actually lost track of the orders he was firing off for a moment.

      “Sorry,” he said again, recovering before she did. “I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself.”

      He looked down toward her feet. There, mere inches in front of her, was a narrow, deep hole dug into his front lawn.

      “This is my second problem,” he said.

      “A hole in the ground?” She was lost.

      “A number of them, all over the place. You really have to be careful walking out here. I don’t want you to break a bone. The last landscaper did. He’s trying to sue me right now. One more thing I have no time for.”

      “Oh,” Audrey said. “I’ll be careful. You have some kind of…animal problem?”

      “A dog,” he said, as if the mere word implied something vile. “It digs.”

      Audrey worked to keep a straight face.

      A mere dog could get the best of this perfectly controlled, very powerful man?

      So he was human, after all.

      He looked as if he knew she was thinking of laughing in his face and didn’t believe for a minute she’d actually do it, that anyone would.

      Audrey wiped every trace of amusement from her face, and then watched in amazement as his own mouth started to twitch; he shook his head and swore so softly she wasn’t sure she could even make out the words.

      “Yes, I know, bested by a dog. I realize how ridiculous that is. Nevertheless, this is the state in which I find myself. I despise the dog. The dog despises me. We have been waging war for weeks, and the dog is winning. You have no idea how much it pains me to admit this—”

      “Oh, I think I do,” Audrey said.

      Once again, the ends of his mouth threatened to curl upward a bit. She could almost feel him battling the impulse, before tamping it down and banishing it completely.

      He cleared his throat and went on. “Marion also said you had a very well-behaved dog.”

      “We had a wonderful dog. She died two years ago.”

      “She didn’t dig up things in your very well-designed yard?” he asked.

      “She had a small corner of it where she was allowed to bury her bones. Would that be acceptable? One small, out-of-the-way spot where such things are allowed?”

      He sighed. “If it’s absolutely necessary.”

      “I think it probably is,” Audrey said.

      “Fine,” he said, as if he’d just agreed to millions of dollars in concessions on a contract he was negotiating. “The dog belongs to my daughter, Peyton. She loves the dog, much more than she loves me at the moment. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll admit, I tried to buy her affections with the dog and to some extent it worked. She’s very happy to come here now. The problem is her mother only allows her to come for a weekend here and there, and the dog is here all the time. Because Peyton’s mother decreed that the dog could not go to her house with Peyton. I think just to torment me even more than my ex-wife already has, and if that’s the case, she’s succeeded beautifully because the dog has wreaked havoc on my entire home life.”

      “I’m so sorry,” Audrey said, surprised he’d admitted to so many of his own weaknesses—the child he indulged and the ex-wife who’s needling still got to him—so forthrightly. Most men wouldn’t have, would have relished seeming invincible. And there was something in his manner that Audrey imagined could be thoroughly intimidating but she found oddly amusing.

      And there was something else. The distinct impression that while the situation at hand was annoying, he knew he would triumph in the end. As if it was a secret he knew, one that kept him calm and able to deal with just about anything.

      Except a dog.

      “It’s here all the time,” he complained. “It digs. It eats my socks. It ate my favorite pair of shoes, makes all sorts of noise at all hours and generally makes a nuisance of itself. I’m afraid it hasn’t been successfully housetrained, either.”

      Audrey nodded, hopefully giving the situation the proper gravity he thought it deserved. “I assume you’ve tried dog trainers with no success?”

      He gave her a pained look. “Three.”

      And they’d all just annoyed him and wasted his time, as had the poor, unfortunate, would-be landscapers. She wondered how Simon Collier acted when he was truly annoyed. If the earth literally shook or something?

      “Again, I really don’t have any formal training in…training animals,” Audrey began.

      He shot her a look that said 1) he obviously knew this. 2) they’d covered this point before, and he’d pronounced already that he didn’t care about formal training, and 3) he didn’t care to repeat himself.

      “Okay,” Audrey said. “I’m to train the dog.”

      He nodded, no doubt satisfied that he hadn’t had to repeat himself further and she hadn’t wasted any more of his time.

      “Just so you know, it eats bushes, too.” He pointed to an unfortunate azalea, which she assumed was the dog’s latest victim. “It eats vines, flowers, everything. The dog eats it, chews it enough to kill it or pulls it out and drags it around the yard, in addition to digging in unexpected spots. Something else you’ll have to contend with.”

      “Does the dog have a name?” Audrey asked.

      “I call it any number of things,” he said, dry as could be, but amusement flashing beneath the surface.

      Audrey was sure of it.

      And she wondered for a second, in that flash of humor, if he was even younger.

      Thirty-eight?

      Thirty-six?

      She suddenly felt ancient, envying him the utter confidence, the air of power, the obvious wealth and all the security she imagined it would bring, that he didn’t depend on anyone to secure his own future except himself. The kind of security that could not be taken away.

      How would it feel to have that and know that no one could take it away?

      “What does your daughter call the dog?” Audrey tried.

      He made a face, distaste obvious, and reluctantly admitted, “Tinker Bell is its formal name.”

      Audrey made a choking sound as she tried as hard as she could not to laugh, then covered her mouth and coughed—she hoped realistically—and then finally managed pure silence.

      It was hard, but she managed it.

      His mouth settled into a hard, straight line. “We’ve settled on Tink for short. It’s the most dignified thing we could come up with, given what we had to work with.”

      Audrey

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