“Yes, sir,” I said flippantly even though I knew it wasn’t casual, I knew I’d see the muscle tense in his square jaw and feel the flare of heat emanate from his body.
He ignored me as he opened the door, flipped on the switch and disappeared farther into the apartment.
“Bossy,” I told Hero, who responded by lifting a paw and putting it on my bent thigh.
I laughed into his warm, clean fur and wrapped my arms around him for one of the best embraces of my life.
“Clear,” Danner said from the doorway, something working behind those jade green eyes as he stared at his dog and me. “I’ll get you two settled, you’re tired.”
I rolled my eyes as he turned back into the apartment, calling Hero to him with a click of his tongue. I dusted the dog hair off my black pants and followed after them.
Danner was in the kitchen, unloading a dog dish, food and a thick, rolled up blanket I recognized as Hero’s doggy bed because I’d bought it for him five years ago.
“Make yourself at home,” I muttered drily as I moved passed him to the fridge, grabbed a Corona and hit the cap off on the side on my chipped countertop.
He stared at me as I took a long, cool pull from the bottle. “Gonna offer me one?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
His lips twitched, but he returned to pouring feed into the bowl then placing it on the ground, then doing the same with a water dish.
“I want you to take him with you everywhere, H.R.,” he ordered again like I was some lackey.
“I’ve got class,” I reminded him. “I’m not done for another three weeks, and I can’t very well drag a dog with me into my labs.”
He stuck his hand into the pocket of his deliciously soft, faded jeans and emerged with a folded piece of paper. He waved it in the air than thumped it down on the counter. “Got you a note and everything.”
“What am I, blind now?” I asked angrily.
“PTSD,” he said without missing a beat as he finished setting up Hero’s stuff and turned to settle his lean hips against the counter across from me. “You need him in case you have a panic attack.”
“That’s bullshit,” I cried, slamming my beer bottle so hard against the counter that beer sloshed over the edge and onto my hand. “I’m not fucking traumatized. Look at me,” I dared him with a licentious sneer, gesturing to my tight, cleavage-bearing biker babe outfit. “Do I like fucking traumatized to you?”
“It’s a wound you wear behind the eyes, Rosie,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and tipping his chin up at me like he was settling in to ride out my anger, a bull rider seizing up his mount and finding it amusingly lacking.
Anger seared through me hot and heady as my daddy’s rye whiskey. “You’re not in charge of me, Officer,” I hissed at him. “I know you haven’t noticed but I’m a fuckin’ adult now and I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
Danner stared at me in that implacable, asshole way he had that gave away nothing but made me feel about two inches tall, childish and truculent.
“Not in charge of you,” he repeated slowly, his mouth moving around the words in a way that made them cursive, smooth and rounded and emphasized. “Never have been, though can’t say, Rosie, that the idea of it hasn’t crossed my mind. Takin’ all that wild and leashing it, breaking it under a firm, calm hand… yeah,” he drawled. “Thought about it.”
I blinked at him. In all the years I’d know Lionel Danner I’d come to know many things about him. He was an old-school gentleman, the kind that held doors open for women, that said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ without thought. His reserve, dedication to justice, and smooth, low Canadian drawl gave him a cowboy sheriff vibe like John Wayne or Paul Newman, men who had morals and loyalty in such abundance that you felt like a jackass just standing beside them.
He was not a flirt. Oh, women threw themselves at him in McClellan’s where he was known to throw back a beer with his partner Riley Gibson and his other cop buddies, or in Mac’s Grocer, or anywhere they could reach him. Some even ventured out to the piece of land he’d bought on the outskirts of Entrance where he’d kept a few horses and a potbelly pig I’d named Irwin. It wasn’t unheard of that a group of them would congregate Sunday mornings at the corral to see him work with one of his wild horses.
But he was discreet. I knew he dated, or the very least, fucked any number of women, but they didn’t talk about it, even though the urge to brag must have killed them, and I knew it was because Danner demanded that. As a lovelorn girl, his secretiveness gave room for my fantasies to blossom even though he’d always treated me, at least until the very end, like a kid sister or pal.