Her mother had died investigating a dog-fighting ring. The owner hadn’t taken well to seeing so many of his “assets” seized. He’d gone after her mom with a baseball bat to the head. She’d never regained consciousness. The loss, her mother’s fierce bravery—it all welled up inside her until her throat closed.
Liam accelerated, the Jeep plowing deeper into the tunnel of Everglades foliage. “Seeing that guy go ballistic on his dog must have made you think of your mom and how she died.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at the time, but now that you put it that way… Sure. I guess a lot of what I do is ingrained from watching her. She was an amazing woman, strong, passionate about her work being a voice for homeless and abused animals.”
“She sounds a lot like you.”
Chuckling, she shook her head. “I wish. I certainly wanted to be like her. I even got to go to work with her sometimes.”
“To the shelter?”
“Sure. But sometimes I even got to ride along when she went out for a seizure. Not as often as I would have liked, though.”
An eyebrow shot up toward his hairline, the tips of his hair bleached blond from time in the sun. She couldn’t help but think how people paid serious bucks for a look like that, yet he was a hundred percent natural. She’d accepted that she wanted him, but the whole how of a relationship with him boggled her mind. Hell, what did they really even know about each other beyond sharing info about past relationships?
“Rachel?”
“Oh, right, my mom.” She popped another fry in her mouth, suddenly ravenously hungry. “This one time, Mom got called in for an emergency seizure on a weekend. The shelter was understaffed—aren’t they all?—so she couldn’t say no. There wasn’t a sitter to watch me, so Mom took me along. I was supposed to stay in the truck.”
A smile dug a dimple into one cheek. “But you didn’t.”
“Of course not.” She’d been so curious. So certain she would be just like her mother someday, a fearless defender of the helpless. And as much as thinking about the past hurt, she realized that Liam wanted to know more about her, which sent her digging around in that dark memory to share something of herself. “We drove to a crack house. There was a report of dog-fighting activity on the premises.”
“God—please tell me you weren’t there when your mother was attacked.”
“No…” She rested a hand on top of his on the gearshift. “I wasn’t. This was a different raid, much earlier than that horrible… I was twenty when she died.”
“How old were you that time you rode along?”
“Nine. Old enough to understand what I was seeing was very, very wrong. The suspects were already in handcuffs, so I wasn’t in any danger.” But she could still remember the feel, the stench, of evil that permeated the place. “I snuck out of the animal shelter’s van—it was getting dark by then. On my way over to the house, I saw all the standard dog-fighting paraphernalia—a rusted treadmill, blood-stained tarps.”
The puppy scooched a paw between the seats and she stroked Fang lightly, gently building a bond. “Once I made it to the house, I watched from the bushes, through the window. There were nine dogs inside and not much else. Just some crates, a few bedrolls, and garbage from food wrappers. There wasn’t even a television or refrigerator.”
Tears and rage burned her throat. She set the bag aside. “But there were rats in cages. The people—and I use that term loosely—would entertain themselves by starving the dogs, then letting rats run free.”
She tipped her head to the last rays of sun heating down on her, wishing she could fill herself, lose herself, in the lush nature scents around her, as Disco did.
“Out of the nine dogs confiscated that night, only one lived. Seven had been fought too aggressively to be rehabilitated, so their outcome was a forgone conclusion.” The puppy pawed at her hand and she resumed petting. “The bait dog… God, he broke my heart, he was so chewed up. I rode all the way back to the clinic sitting by his crate, talking to him, begging him to hold on just a little longer. But he didn’t make it.”
Silence stretched while she stroked under the pup’s neck rather than on top of the head, every touch chosen deliberately to help instill confidence in the cowed canine.
Liam cupped her neck, gently. To instill trust? “What about the one that lived?”
“The female breeder dog… Her name was Ruby.” She could still see the reddish brown gleam of her shiny coat. “She was so terrified, she didn’t even flinch from being touched. She just held herself completely still, and kept her eyes averted, locked on a faraway spot. The first time I looked into the eyes of a soldier suffering from PTSD, I saw Ruby’s eyes. I saw the pain underneath the disconnect.”
He looked across quickly, his eyes stunned, then shielded. “You and your mother kept Ruby.”
“We did adopt her. She lived for four more happy years. I miss her every day.” That sweet dog’s unbroken spirit inspired her, helped forge her determination not to let life bend her.
What had happened to make her lose sight of that direction for her life from her mom and Ruby? Her spine stiffened, straightening with some of the old starch. She refused to cave. She had to fight to get her life back.
She had to be strong enough to be Liam’s wingman.
“Rachel Flores…” He whistled softly. “You’re an amazing woman.”
The light in his eyes when he said those words had nothing to do with sex. But something deeper hummed across the air like a live wire snapping along the ground after it has been uprooted by a storm.
She was ready to acknowledge attraction, even some kind of kindred-spirit friendship. But what she saw in his eyes… she wasn’t ready for that.