Coward. She stared at the empty screen as if it had voiced that accusation.
She’d choked. Too afraid to say yes to anything bordering on commitment, she’d told him she needed to think about it. So he’d nodded, kissed her a little too hard, and then boarded his flight. She hadn’t heard a word from him since.
Opposing emotions Ping-Ponged through her thoughts. For three months she’d worried that something bad was keeping David from her. She’d even called her half brother Law to get his advice, which was embarrassing to think about now. At this point, she realized that kind of worry had no basis in fact. Maybe the truth was that her fear of him being in trouble was easier to accept than the fact that she’d ruined her chances with David because she couldn’t commit.
She felt something splash her cheek. Crap. She pushed the offending moisture away with the heel of her hand. She never cried. Ever. Certainly not over a man who had dumped her without so much as a good-bye. Her father would be ashamed of her.
That thought pushed even Dr. David Gunnar from her mind.
Being the daughter of the late Bronson Battise, one of the most famous trainers of military and police K-9s in the United States, had its perks. And drawbacks. The biggest one being that she’d been born female. Battise didn’t think women were equal in any way to men. Harmonie Kennels wasn’t meant to be hers.
Well, she had it, even if it was by default. Her half brother Law, whom she’d known only slightly at the time, had refused his father’s legacy. He’d signed over the hundred pastoral and wooded acres bordering the Blue Ridge Mountains to her and walked away.
Even so, she’d fought harder than anyone would ever know to be worthy of this legacy. But it was a burden, too. This place, these acres, the business was an all-consuming life. Her trainers got to go home for the holidays to families and friends, parties and traditions. Harmonie Kennels was all she had in the world.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Yard.
Too bad if she wanted more. She knew what it was to have so much less. Maybe wanting to be loved was asking for too much.
So she’d screwed up. She wasn’t one of those women who needed a man to feel complete. She wasn’t like Georgiana. She’d never known what it felt like to be so in love her brain stopped working because her feelings had taken control.
Liar. She felt her face catch fire as her conscience called bullshit. She had been in love once before. Kye McGarren.
Yardley did a mental head shake. Where had that thought come from? She must be more shook up than she thought. McGarren was her first romantic failure.
She wasn’t good with people. She was good at being a boss. Everyone looked to her to be strong, make the hard decisions, make it work. She was respected and admired. The only ones who gazed at her with unguarded love and appreciation were her K-9s.
At the moment, Oleg was rotating his head back and forth between her and the road ahead, as if he needed to keep an eye on both. Unlike most of her K-9s, he preferred to keep his distance from his handler. He’d been bred for protection. His job, safety of the pack. She supposed they were a lot alike.
She reached out to brush a hand over Oleg’s tall ears. That brought his attention back to her. In his gaze, which she knew better than to hold long, she saw that he accepted her as his alpha. But he didn’t adore her, as every other dog she worked with did. “You’re my male challenge of the moment, are you, big fella?”
Or maybe she was losing her touch.
Suddenly she was angrier than she could ever recall being. She hauled back and put everything she had into the toss that sent her phone arcing into the undergrowth on the hillside. On Monday she’d get a new phone with a new number. And go back to her life.
“Screw love!” And screw Kye McGarren, wherever he might be, and the memories of a time when she’d wanted more.
CHAPTER THREE
Kye swallowed the last of his extra-large Styrofoam cup of coffee. It was lukewarm, revealing the oily dregs from a convenience store pot that needed cleaning. The liquid hit his stomach and spread acid burn like napalm. Even so, he regretted that it was his last gulp. After a final working day on the slopes, he’d spent New Year’s Eve on a red-eye flight from Salt Lake City to Washington, D.C.
Being a big man, flying coach middle seat wasn’t his favorite way to travel. But he really couldn’t have asked the six-year-old at the window to change with him. Not when she’d been face-glued to the miracle of darkness outside and offering a running monologue about its “awesomeness.” On the other side of him the girl’s mother, with a three-month-old in her arms, needed the aisle. Lily, down in luggage, had more room in her crate.
No worries. He’d plugged in his headphones, turned up the volume, and tried to forget that he was wedged in like tuna in a sardine can.