“Call her off,” he ordered.
“She isn’t a pet. Call him off.”
Reggie wasn’t a pet either, but he had been trained by the best.
“Nein!” Owen ordered. “Aus!”
Reggie released the wolf’s leg, as ordered. The black beast circled the brown one.
“Hier!”
The dog hesitated, his eyes flicking to Owen, then back to the wolf. Owen couldn’t blame him, but he also couldn’t let Reggie disobey.
“Lass das sein! Hier!”
This time Reggie followed the commands of “don’t do that” and “come.” Though his neck craned so that he could keep the wolf in his sight, he trotted to Owen’s side and sat without being told to sitz!
“What was that?” Becca asked.
“German.”
She cast him an exasperated glance. “I got that much, but why?”
“Reggie’s a military working dog. Er gehorcht auf Kommando. He obeys German commands.”
Most K-9 working dogs were purchased from Germany. There they not only nurtured the bloodlines necessary for K-9 work, but they had the best training programs for the same. Even dogs purchased young and trained in the States still learned commands in German to match their initial training—sit, come, stay—as well as to align them with all the other dogs.
“That’s a Belgian Malinois.”
Most people thought Reggie was an oddly unmarked and slightly small German shepherd. Not Becca. She knew her dog breeds. Always had.
“He is,” Owen agreed. “A lot of Belgians are bred in Germany.”
Becca offered her hand to Reggie, palm down, nonthreatening. He glanced at Owen. Military working dogs—MWDs for short—were not pets. They accepted admiration as their due, but only if it was allowed by their handler. Anyone who knew anything about MWDs would never touch one without asking first. That was a good way to lose a finger.
Reggie was better than most, he didn’t need a muzzle in crowds, but he still wasn’t cuddly and probably never would be.
“In ordnung,” Owen said. Okay.
The dog sniffed her fingers. The wolf growled, and Reggie pulled back, with a low woof.
“Hush,” Becca murmured, to one or both of them, Owen wasn’t sure, but they both hushed. The wolf paced back and forth a dozen yards away. There was something odd about the animal that went beyond its far too human eyes.
“What kind of military work does he do?”
Owen didn’t want to say, but from Becca’s expression she already knew or at least suspected. It wasn’t rocket science to figure it out, and for a veterinarian even less so.
“Explosive detection,” he answered.
“Then why is he here?”
The world shimmied, as if something had exploded nearby, though Owen knew nothing had. He was still hoping that remnant would fade along with the constant urge to hit the dirt after any loud, sudden noise. It was embarrassing. Though much better now than it had been when he’d first woken up. Back then, a door closing could make him shake like a tree in a strong breeze.
“There was an accident.”
“An accident with a bomb-sniffing dog would involve a bomb.”
“Can’t put anything past you.”
“Must you be sarcastic?”
“Apparently.”
She looked like she wanted to smack him, except that would involve contact, and from the way she hovered just outside his reach, that wasn’t going to happen. Was she keeping her distance to avoid setting off the wolf, or to avoid setting off Owen?
Owen wasn’t sure what he’d do if she touched him. That single second of touching her—before the wolf took offense—had been bad. Or maybe it had been good. He couldn’t decide.
“You’re in one piece,” Becca said, “and so is he.”
Only because they’d been put together again better than Humpty Dumpty, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. He also wasn’t going to walk where she could observe him long enough to register that he still couldn’t walk quite right. While the coldness in those eyes that had once gazed at him so warmly was hard to stomach, the pity would be even harder.
“We’re fine,” he lied. “Home on leave. I plan to get this place ready to sell, then we’ll be out of here.”
“You’re staying in the house?”
“Where else?”
She eyed it as if it might collapse in a heap any second. He wouldn’t be surprised.
“I’ve slept worse places,” he said.
Her hazel eyes flicked to his. “Where?”
He wasn’t going to talk about that. Not now. Not with her.
Actually, not ever and with no one.
“I’ll only be here until I sell the place.”
“Sell?” she echoed, as if hearing the word for the first time. “But your mother—”
“Isn’t ever going to be well enough to come back.”
It had taken him a long time to accept that, even longer for his mother to, but now that they had, the house was an unnecessary burden.
“You don’t want to live here when you—”
“No,” he interrupted. Here was the last place he wanted to live. Here was too close to her.