“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.
“Please don’t tell me you’re in love with me.” She tried to make light of it. Rather than tell him outright she didn’t think she could handle that much emotion right now, even when she knew his kind of love was the temporary sort.
Maybe because his love was temporary.
He looked back at her, not a smile in sight. “Is that supposed to make me laugh?”
The depth in his green eyes, packed with flint and spark and emotion, sent a longing popping through her veins. “I’m not sure.”
Liam didn’t answer, just drove deeper into the wilds of the Everglades until scents and sounds hummed all around them. His words hung there between them, all but floating on the humidity-laden air. And as she watched Liam feed every last bite of the po’ boy to the puppy, her heart squeezed until she felt less and less like laughing too.
Chapter 11
Brandon knew when he was being watched.
He just hated that all the crap going on in his life made him question whether he was paranoid. But from the moment he’d woken up on Catriona’s couch, he’d been certain. Someone was lurking around her place. The only question? Was that individual after him or her? Either way, he needed to stake out her place until he got the answer.