He grunted as if she had made a joke. “Are you afraid of me now?”
“No.” And she meant it. Afraid for you. But she couldn’t say that. He wouldn’t thank her for her concern. Not her place to be afraid for him. Her job here was as a trainer. So she’d use that.
“If you’d stayed for the full ten days of training, you’d know we teach our dogs to do perimeter searches.”
“But you don’t expect them to ever find anything.” His expression said he knew exactly what she was implying. “The perimeter search training is just a placebo to reassure us paranoid head cases that the Bogeyman isn’t real.”
His sarcastic tone rubbed her the wrong way. “Our dogs provide a reality check. Don’t underestimate the value of knowing, despite what your senses are telling you, that your dog says there’s nothing to worry about.”
“But your service dog did just alert.”
Law walked over to the table and held his hand a scant inch above the closed laptop.
“What are you doing?”
“I turned my computer off this morning. It’s warm. Someone turned it on recently.”
Jori folded her arms. “Or maybe you left it plugged in and the heat is from the battery charging.”
“Do you see a cord?”
Jori didn’t. “Why would someone want access to your computer?”
“Good question.”
“So, Sam really did alert on an intruder?”
Instead of answering, he reached into a pocket and produced a few treats. Obviously he wasn’t going to share his thoughts with her. “Sam. Heir. Gute Hund.”
Jori noticed he’d reverted to German, law professional K-9 command mode.
Sam didn’t seem to mind. She came forward and got her petting and kibble treats for a job well done from her Alpha.
“Has she learned much German?”
Law frowned. “There’s an ongoing debate about how much language a dog really understands. A few words, certainly. It’s more the tone of voice.” He petted Sam absently, as if something else was on his mind. “She did all right. For a doodle.”
For a doodle. The phrase bothered Jori. It was obvious that Sam was totally devoted to Battise. But Battise had yet to return that full-hearted affection.
She bent and let Argyle, squirming like a dervish, down onto the wood floor.
Argyle meowed as if someone had stepped on her tail, became an arched ball of fur that skipped sideways, and then shot across the floor and down an unseen hallway.
Sam, spying the cat, followed their uninvited guest at a cautious stalking pace.
Jori sighed. It seemed as if every other living thing in the room was operating off some high-frequency intensity she couldn’t hear.
“You want a beer?”
“No thanks.” Jori supposed this was his way of saying the emergency status was over. “I need to get back on the road. I didn’t leave a deposit with the motel in Springdale. I just planned to stop by to let you know I had arrived.”
“You could have just called.”
Jori held his gaze. So could you.
And there it was, the reason they were dancing around each other.
Not wanting to sound like a woman left behind, she concentrated on the reason she was being paid to be here. “Do you have those moments often, where you need Sam to reset reality for you?”
He blinked twice, as if calibrating his thoughts. But if she hoped he was going to answer the question, she was disappointed. “Why did you agree to come, Jori?”
Another, more dangerous question. But if he could ignore questions he didn’t want to answer, she could, too.
She looked around. “Nice place.”
“I rent.” The keep out sign went up in his gaze. “It provides the privacy I like.”
She rounded on him. “I wasn’t hinting that I wanted to stay with you.”
“Too bad. You would make a nice change from having Sam in my bed.” He hadn’t moved an inch closer but she suddenly felt crowded as he watched her with his lids at half-mast.
He seemed so calm, so in control. The challenge in his expression said it didn’t matter if she jumped him or walked away. He had six other things on his mind and none of them, or all, might be about her. He wasn’t giving away clues. His cool made Jori want to wipe that smug look off his gorgeous face and replace it with a lustful grin from lips swollen and damp from her kisses.
He set his Smokey Bear hat on the table then reached to unhook his rig and lay the twenty-plus pounds of his utility belt on the table beside it. “I’m going to make this easy for both of us.”
When he looked up she didn’t have to wonder what this was. It was there. Direct. Hot and volatile as his sludge-gold gaze. Absolute lust.
He stopped just inches away and leaned in to bring his lips on a level with her own. “We already know how good it can be between us. That makes it simple. We either act on it. Or we don’t.”