Chapter Two
Of all the things Zero thought he’d be doing today, interviewing a far-too-attractive dog trainer he’d stumbled over at Dairy Queen was not it.
Of course, the side trip to Kilgore that Tag had insisted on hadn’t made the list, either, so his schedule had already veered off-road and hit a metric ton of potholes.
Why not add more chaos?
He glanced in the rearview mirror to see the little silver hatchback keeping pace with his truck. At least he hadn’t lost her along all these winding backroads, a tick mark in the positive column. How many more would she have to earn before hiring her felt like a good idea? Question of the hour.
There was something about her. Delilah. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he’d kept himself alive in hostile territory by never doubting his gut—and she’d tripped some landmines in his.
Possibly because she was so pretty. But he didn’t think that was the reason.
Tag made a noise as he tapped at his phone. “Huh. Her dad is pretty famous.”
Glancing over at his friend in the passenger seat of the truck, Zero lifted his brows. “She was telling the truth?”
Not that he’d asked Tag to check up on her. He’d done that all on his own. But that didn’t mean Zero wasn’t interested in the answer.
“Seems like. The Kersey Method is listed on all these dog training sites as the one they use, just like she said.”
Interesting. There’d been a high probability Delilah had oversold her credentials, which he’d hoped would be the case, so he could explain away the weird niggle she’d set off in his gut the second she’d flounced into his conversation without an invite.
Since that wasn’t the case, something else had to be to blame. Looked like he’d have to interview her after all in order to find out what.
Of course, he’d never expected her to take him up on his suggestion to come to the ranch. That had been an out, designed to save them both the trouble. Joke was on him.
As Zero turned down the tiny lane toward the ranch, the stone wall edging the Flying Pig came into view, nearly swallowed by the dense overgrowth that had taken over the property during the years his grandfather’s health had started to decline.
Clearing it out sat on a long list of things to do, things he hadn’t tackled yet, because he spent half of his time cleaning up messes the blasted dogs made.
Delilah rolled to a stop beside the truck and jumped out of her car, her gaze darting everywhere at once as she checked out the ranch. It wasn’t much. Yet. But he was working on it.
Okay, a pretty pond dominated the property, reflecting a million beams of light from the sun, which he liked looking at in the morning.
A giant red barn edged a couple of large pastures bisected by barbed wire.
It could be called picturesque by someone with more poetry in their soul than him.
The sprawling Victorian-style house sat to the left, painted in proper gingerbread style, bright white with light blue trim, with an endless wraparound porch that looked wrong without his grandma in a rocker holding court front and center.
“This place is beautiful,” she murmured as they crossed the large front yard gracing the front of the house, her long skirt nearly touching the ground. “I have to tell you honestly that I didn’t know what to expect from a ranch called the Flying Pig.”
Well, she wouldn’t be able to wear long skirts like the one she had on currently, that was for sure. Though he liked it on her. More than he should.
“My grandpa always said this place would be a working ranch when pigs fly. The name stuck.”
Tag strolled by on his way to the bunkhouse where he’d lived as long as Zero could remember, since they were kids shoving each other into the pond and trailing water all over Grandma’s wood floors.
“Zero’s going to get it up and running, though,” Tag called with a tug on his cowboy hat in the direction of the man in question. “Then he’ll have to change the name.”
“That’s why the training emergency?” she asked with lifted brows in a way that didn’t come across as a question. “You’re too busy fighting your grandfather’s curse to deal with dogs?”
He blinked, waiting for the punchline to her joke, and the longer she let the pause draw out, the more he wanted to laugh to dispel the tension. But her point wasn’t funny all at once.
“Yeah,” he affirmed gruffly, impressed she’d both realized the psychology he battled every day and had gotten him to admit it. “Not that I’m saying I believe in woo-woo nonsense. But there’s something larger at play than just a guy who inherited a ranch.”
“Tell me.”
A lock of hair blew across her cheek, and he had the strongest urge to feather a thumb over it to brush it back. That was going to be a problem.
“Who’s interviewing who here?” he shot back.
Instead of being properly cowed, she smiled, and that did not make it better. “It’s okay, we can get to it later, once you trust me more. Though I do think you’d want to be super nice to the one candidate you have, instead of biting my head off when I hit a sensitive subject.”
Well, that was a fair point. And he didn’t like she’d clued in on the dynamics of his personality so fast. Delilah Kersey might well be the most intuitive woman he’d ever met, which should decrease her attractiveness. That didn’t happen.
“You’re here to show me your skills. That’s it. If I hire you, we’re not going to be friends who confide in each other.” She could play armchair therapist with someone else, on her own time. After losing Rob, he’d done enough chatting with professionals, thank you.
“Touché.”
She didn’t look away from his biting glare, another point in her favor.
He’d been known to make recruits fresh from boot camp cry, a necessary evil when they came to him full of optimism and hyped-up notions about the reality of going into battle on behalf of those who couldn’t fight for themselves.
The dog trainer might well be stepping into another kind of battle if he hired her.
Her ability to handle him might be what landed her the job.
Of course, he didn’t normally put civilians through this kind of ringer. But that niggle in his stomach hadn’t lessened any, an internal warning system he respected. So he’d cop to being a little harder on her than maybe he’d be with someone else.
Especially someone he wasn’t attracted to. Because that needed to go away fast. He had no time and no right to think about the potential with any woman. Making her hate him seemed the most expedient route.
Or he could just not hire her.
“So,” she said brightly, following him into the house. “When does the audition begin?”
Zero jerked a thumb at the formal living room with the overstuffed couch so old it could have arrived in Texas via wagon train. His sister, Sheridan, loved antique furniture and made faces anytime he so much as thought about calling Goodwill to come take away the monstrosities.
“We can sit in here,” he told the woman standing in the foyer, who wasn’t even trying to hide her curiosity about him.
The way she looked at him threw him for a loop, as if he fascinated her. She made no bones about it, no apologies.
He had a feeling everything she did rode on the surface of her life, cresting waves and occasionally tumbling to the ocean floor in a whirl of energy as the water crashed over her. Looked like she always came up for air before she drowned, though.
Delilah climbed onto the couch, which was really the only way to actually sit on the thing, so he let her get comfortable before picking his own interview pose: leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
He didn’t sit in this room under any circumstances.
The fumes wafting from the furniture reminded him of moldy cheese and old wax.
Plus if he sat, that would give Delilah the idea this interview might go on a while and that was not the case. The shorter, the better.
“I’m trying to get this ranch operational,” he told her. “While balancing some…family issues.”
That’s when he realized she’d be here, day in and day out, and keeping her in the dark about the nightmare his life had turned into wouldn’t fly. She had to understand a few things about why he needed a drastic reduction in the chaos he dealt with on a daily basis.
Plus, she’d already proven herself to be a lot more in tune with undercurrents than he’d expected, as well as someone who didn’t hesitate to pry into things that were none of her business. The faster he headed that off, the better.
“My sister was supposed to be doing this with me,” he admitted, and saying it out loud stabbed at his heart. “She hasn’t been herself lately, so I’m pretty much on my own.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said with genuine concern. “I hope she feels better soon.”
“Doubtful. She has a bad case of being a widow,” he told her bluntly, mindful that Delilah needed to understand the lay of the land from the very beginning. “That’s not likely to change.”
Her expression softened, which somehow made her face more arresting. “Um, no. I can’t imagine that it would be easy to get over such a thing, so I totally understand the circumstances.”
The dog trainer had a compassionate streak. Noted.
“You don’t,” he corrected her, “understand the circumstances. Her husband, Rob, wasn’t just my brother-in-law, he was also my brother-in-arms. My teammate.”
And so much more. A friend. The man he’d trusted with his sister, with his own life. And vice versa, to a fault. Because at the end of the day, he hadn’t protected Rob and he’d died under Zero’s command. This mess left behind? Zero’s fault. One hundred percent.
“So you’re both grieving,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”
Just as he was about to tell her that was beside the point, a commotion wrapped up inside of a catastrophe barreled into the room in a tangle of fur, paws, and the stench of wet dog.