Page 37 of Silent Threat
She gave him instructions to Harry Ormuz’s place, a few blocks away. Cole felt weird walking onto private property and taking the fence posts. Maybe that too was a small-town thing.
They weren’t halfway across the front lawn when a giant black dog raced around the house and charged straight at them.
Cole reached for Annie to shove her behind him, but she was already running forward. His heart stopped when she dropped to her knees and let the dog jump and slobber all over her.
“Hey,” he called after her, his hands on his hips, “are therapists supposed to give patients heart attacks?”
She grinned back at him, hugging the behemoth dog for all she was worth.
“Could have warned me.” Cole came up next to them, holding his hand out for the dog to sniff. Good-looking dog, he noticed, once his heart wasn’t jumping out of his chest.
Annie kissed the beast on the top of its head. “This is Mouse. Tossed from a car when he was a puppy. He had a broken leg when I found him. Harry adopted him from me.”
Why Cole hadn’t expected this, he had no idea. Of course the dog was one of Annie’s. Cole patted the massive head that reached above his waist. “Mouse?”
“He was tiny when I found him. He fit in my cupped hands. You should have seen him. He was the sweetest thing ever.”
Looking at the dog the size of an elephant calf, Cole had trouble believing he’d ever been that small.
Mouse jumped circles around them, his tongue lolling like a big doofus. He practically sighed in pleasure when Cole scratched him behind his ears.
They spent more time with Mouse than they should have before they finally loaded up the fencing, the dog underfoot the whole time. He barked at the truck as Annie waved at him through the window when they left.
“A big dog like that would provide more security at your place than the llamas,” Cole said as he pulled away from the curb. “A pig and a one-eyed donkey aren’t going to do much for you, no offense.”
A wistful look came into her eyes as she turned to him. “It’d be nice to have a dog. But they’re adopted out so easily. If I keep one, every bag of food, every vet bill ... I’d have to take that money from the animals nobody wants.”
“You mean you might not be able to take in another litter of skunks.”
She was hopeless. Yet there was something in her stubborn dedication to all things living that touched his hardened soldier’s heart. Her company was like a feather drawn over an old, puckered scar that had only a little feeling left, just enough to appreciate the soft caress of that single feather.
There.He’dneverhad thoughts like that before he’d met her. Her weirdness was definitely contagious. She softened him and made him think about things he wouldn’t normally think about. Being with her was like ... reading poetry. And why he would think of that, he couldn’t fathom. He hadn’t read poetry since high school, dammit.
The two of them couldn’t be more opposite. She’d saved countless lives, and he’d taken them. They had nothing in common.
Then a strange little thought unfurled in his mind: Maybe a world that had people like him in it needed people like her. Maybe they balanced out the cosmic scales.
He found the thought reassuring. He also discovered that the twin boulders of anger and regret that usually sat on his shoulders felt lighter when he was with her. Annie Murray threw light into all his dark places.
Another damn stupid thought he couldn’t believe he was thinking. Yet he couldn’t deny that he liked spending time with her. He enjoyed her company more than he’d enjoyed anyone else’s in a long time. She did make him feel better.
He wanted to return the favor, help her if he could, with whatever he could.
He would start by fixing her fence.
Of course, he ended up needing her assistance.
Since the accident, every time Cole forgot that he was now a cripple and was confronted with his limitations, he’d flown into a dark rage. But the hours with Annie, having her by his side, didn’t feel like a bad thing.
She’d had a rough morning, but she was all right. She was smiling, working without complaint, talking about the birds and the trees and her animals. She filled up the space around her with sunshine. She was an oddity, a curiosity. Which was why Cole kept watching her. Hehadto watch her to read her lips.
Keep telling yourself that.
When they finished with the fence, the job not half-bad, she let out her animals. The one-eyed donkey, Esmeralda, brayed her fool head off in delight, kicking her feet in the air.
Annie laughed. Cole strained to hear the sound. He couldn’t, not a single note.
A strange feeling spread through his chest. Someone else might have called it longing, but Navy SEALs didn’t long.Jesus.
