He looked around, giving a chin-up greeting to the bartender. And then he looked straight at her.
Jori lifted her hand in greeting, unable to guess by his expression what he was thinking and feeling. It was his professional face. But Sam looked at ease. A good sign.
His slow deliberate movements betrayed a trace of weariness. Yet it was the stride of a man on a mission as he came toward her.
He slid into the booth beside her, not quite touching her but close enough to leave no doubt for anyone who cared to notice that they were together. He didn’t look at her at first, just stared at the men, who suddenly found their game of pool much more interesting than anything going on in her booth.
After a moment, he reached under the table and grabbed her knee and squeezed. Hard.
She stared at his profile. It was that of a man hard, determined, whole. Her heart flipped over. Oh God. She had fallen so hard in love with him.
When he finally spoke his voice was low, steady, deep.
“Scud wasn’t an easy K-9. Most military handlers refused to work with him. But we were a good team. He was wounded, too, in the blast that took my leg. He went berserk when he realized I was down. Wouldn’t allow my own squad to touch me. Bit two of the guys. I saw the marks. I was bleeding out. They had no choice.”
He turned to her, a smile at last edging into his expression. “Thanks to you, I now know the truth. And I can live with that.”
Jori held the weight of his gaze as long as she could, choked by happiness and the realization that he really was grateful. Yet she knew not to make too much of it in public or she’d embarrass him.
Instead, she pushed a shot of tequila in front on him then picked up her own and held it up. “To Scud.”
A look intimate enough to set the liquor on fire entered his gold-black gaze. He picked up the shot glass and touched it to hers. “To Scud.”
EPILOGUE
Sam awakened in the night. The cabin was quiet and dark, except for the tree glowing in the corner near the fireplace.
She pulled herself to her feet and stepped out of her new bed, a fluffy round thing Alpha had given her when she came home. It was better than the floor on chilly nights. But not as good as the foot of Alpha’s bed. Still, there were different rules when Jori came to visit. At least she had not brought Cat.
Sam stretched her back, paws pushed forward while her rump and long tail thrust toward the ceiling. She still wore protective booties. Law said she was “Good Sam” because she did not chew them. It was not a difficult command to master. They did not taste good, and they did keep her paws warm.
She looked toward the refrigerator, as usual, and then toward the tree. The lights on it were still bright.
A few days before she and Alpha had gone into the woods nearby. He had hacked at it with a long sharp object until it fell over. Then he had dragged it back to the house, set it in a pan of water, and wrapped lights that twinkled all around it. He seemed very proud. Sam did not know why.
Earlier today, it had been surrounded by boxes of bright colors with shiny strings. Jori and Alpha had played with them until the strings came loose and the boxes broke. Then they took what was inside and played with that.
Sam did not understand why until they offered her a bright paper with strings. She tore at the paper as they had done. And out popped a ball with a bell. That was a good thing. It made a good treat.
Treat.
Maybe there were more treats. She’d checked regularly throughout the day. It paid to be sure.
She padded over and sniffed the tree. It smelled of pine resin, old bird droppings, the accumulated debris that had once been a nest, the shells of several cicadas, a few tiny insects burrowed in for the winter, and a faint whiff of bear urine that was more than a year old. All things Sam had smelled on an outside tree before.
The pair of cat eyes staring back at her from the interior was a new addition. She woofed her opinion of Argyle’s commandeering of the center of the tree. Better there, however, than in Alpha’s bed.
There were also shiny globes and hooks of sugary candy in the tree, hung too high for her to reach.
Alpha said No.
Sam huffed and turned toward the refrigerator. Since her return from the vet she did not have to hunt for midnight snacks anymore. There was always some tidbit of meat left unwrapped on the lowest shelf for her.
She pulled open the door and slid her nose inside. Treats!
Her mouth began to water. There were several small chunks of ham from dinner and two slices of turkey that Jori had brought with her the night before.
Jori made Alpha happy. Sam liked Jori.
Finally, when the treats were gobbled up, Sam closed the door and slowly made her way into the bedroom.
There were no noises now but those of sleeping people in the room, the signal that she could enter.