Page 95 of The Woman By the Lake

Forty-five minutes later, he stood back and witnessed a mother and child reunion.

That being a big, blue cane corso loping right to Nadia, who had crouched to make herself less threatening without Hutch telling her to do so, and the dog slobbering all over Nadia’s face after barely a sniff.

Whereupon Nadia threw her arms around the terrifying-looking animal’s neck and cried out a joyful, “Puppy!”

“Jesus Christ,” Hutch muttered, standing at his side. “I’ve never seen anything like that. And I been doing this awhile.”

Hutch was a former SEAL who’d been breeding and training police and guard dogs for at least seven years.

“She’s Russian by heritage,” Riggs told him.

“That explains it,” Hutch replied.

Nadia turned to Hutch and called, “What’s her name?”

“Gia,” Hutch called back.

She returned to Gia and cooed, “Oh my God. Gia. Who’s a darling girl? Who’s a pretty girl? Who’s the prettiest girl in the world? Gia is!” while the ninety pounds of packed muscle that made up Gia pranced around her like she was, well…fuck.

A puppy.

“She’s gonna undo six months of training in two minutes.” Hutch was back to muttering.

“Welcome to my world,” Riggs muttered in return.

But in his case, he reckoned, it was more like thirty-eight years.

TWENTY-ONE

That Did It

Riggs

“You gotta go low, hit it on the back flat, like this,” Ledger said, then let fly, and the stone he was holding skipped seven times across the lake before it sank.

Riggs watched as Nadia bit the tip of her tongue, tried to mimic Ledger’s stance, then let fly.

Her stone immediately kerplunked.

“I’m failing my latest nature girl test,” she said to the lake.

And damn, she was.

That was about her fifteenth stone. And Ledge was giving her the best ones.

“They don’t have stone skipping in the Olympics, so it’s okay,” Ledger placated her.

She turned to his son, “I’m much better at looking cute in a pink slicker and tramping through the rain.”

Ledger burst out laughing.

Riggs smiled.

“They don’t have that in the Olympics either, but they should,” she went on.

Ledger kept laughing.

Riggs kept smiling.

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