this.”
“Shower here,” he offered. “And borrow my clothes.”
Her gaze dropped to the fly of his jeans, which was well-worn and well filled out. “Your clothes won’t fit me,” she said, feeling her cheeks tinge pink.
“They can’t fit any worse than yours,” he countered. “Breakfast is almost ready.” He gave her a mildly insulting swat on the behind.
“Hurry up.”
In the master bath, she took a quick shower, using his masculine-smelling soap and shampoo sparingly. She wrapped a towel around herself and opened the door to let out steam as she rifled through the contents of the cabinet for toothpaste. When she found his deodorant, she pulled off the cap and inhaled, delighted to have found his scent.
“You can use that if you want,” he said, standing in the open doorway.
She applied the deodorant to her underarms nonchalantly, as if that had been her intention all along.
With a slight smile, he pulled one of his T-shirts out of a drawer and handed it to her. “All I have is large,” he said, getting an eyeful of her bare legs beneath the hem of the short towel.
“It’s okay,” she said, hugging the shirt to her chest. “I can wear it with my jeans from yesterday.”
She got ready quickly before joining him downstairs.
At the kitchen counter, there was an abundance of scrambled eggs, coffee, orange juice, whole wheat toast and fresh fruit. “Did your mother make this?” she asked.
“No, I did. She’s at church.”
“Hmm.” Taking the plate he offered, she piled it high and sat next to him at a small table overlooking the backyard. “Who takes care of the lawn?” The grass looked freshly clipped, if a bit dry in places, despite the recent rain.
“Me. Why? Can’t you picture me engaging in domestic duties?”
“Cooking, maybe. Cleaning, definitely. Mowing a lawn? No.”
“I think you just offended my masculinity,” he said dryly.
“You know what I mean. You aren’t the power tools and monkey grease type.”
He smiled. “And yet, you are. I’m having a wild fantasy about you tinkering around under the hood of my car.”
“Is that some kind of innuendo?” she asked.
“No,” he said with a low laugh.
“You know what you need?” She gestured with a forkful of eggs. “A dog.”
“I suppose you have a candidate in mind?”
“Yes,” she said in triumph. “Blue.”
His smile disappeared. “Even if I wanted a dog, which I don’t, I wouldn’t take that one. He’s a maniac.”
“I think he could get over his aversion to men, if he found a trustworthy one.”
His expression was bland. “If you think I’m trustworthy, you don’t know me very well.”
“Maybe not with women, or relationships,” she conceded. “But you take care of what’s yours.” When he didn’t argue, she knew he wasn’t interested in pursuing the conversation. “Tell me why you hate dogs,” she continued anyway.
“I don’t hate dogs,” he said after a pause. “I just never really understood their…appeal.”
“You never wanted one, as a boy?”
“I suppose I did.” He paused, as if remembering something. “I fed a stray once. Several times, actually, behind my mother’s back. I thought if I kept feeding him, he’d stay. He didn’t.”
What he’d said was so incredibly revealing that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. It embodied every childhood wish, every lost hope, every unfulfilled dream he’d had growing up. The stray dog was a metaphor for his absent father, whether Marc realized it or not.
Then he continued, having never known how much he’d given away. “In Saudi, there were strays everywhere. I hated the sight of them. They were mangy, ill-bred and ill-kept, like the dogs that roam the streets in Mexico. I couldn’t understand why people with so little to spare would feed an ugly mongrel instead of their own children.”
“I thought Saudi Arabia was a wealthy country. Oil-rich.”
“It is, for the minority elite, but most people just scrape by. In the refugee camp next to the base where I was stationed, the residents were dirt poor.”
“Go on,” she urged.
“There was one dog the other soldiers took a liking to. He was always getting into the chicken coop, making a nuisance of himself, stealing hens. But he was so sneaky and clever he gained their respect. They called him Houdini because they couldn’t figure out how he was getting in and out. I caught him once while I was on night watch, skulking away with a dead bird. I could have shot him then, but I followed him instead, just to see where he was going.”
Sidney nodded, finding the sound and cadence of his voice wonderfully pleasant.
“He was taking the chicken to a little girl. A family, I suppose, although I only saw her. She plucked the bird right out of his mouth, and he gave it up so easily. I couldn’t believe it.
“After that, I looked at the camp dogs differently. Not all of them were loyal and selfless, like the chicken thief, but the people who tossed them scraps were genuinely fond of them, and I finally realized why they did it. It was just basic human nature, to give. To share. To see something hungry and feed it.”
“This is a nicer story than I thought it would be.”
He laughed harshly. “No. It isn’t. We’d all grown fond of the dog, had taken to giving him our leftovers in hopes that he wouldn’t raid the coop. I didn’t see him around for a while, but one afternoon I spotted him walking down the deserted dirt road next to camp.
“It was clear something was wrong with him by the way he was moving. Unsteady, and sort of convulsing every few steps. When he got closer I saw the foam around his mouth.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“I didn’t have any choice but to shoot him. But just as I raised my rifle, the little girl came running out to him.”
“My God.”
“I walked toward them, shouting at her to get away, to get out of the line of fire. She only understood that I was going to kill her dog. Even half-crazed with rabies, he was protective of her. When he lunged at me-” he stared down at his open palms “-I broke his neck.”
She raised her hand to her mouth, speechless with shock.
He was silent for a moment, then he arched a brow at her. “What do you think? Was it as good as the ones Daddy told?”
“No. Although I don’t doubt he had some similar tales, being a veteran himself.”
“That’s what your sister told me. Right before she took off her clothes.”
She bristled at the provocation, which was too strong to ignore. “I know you didn’t sleep with her.”
He smiled smugly, telling her he could have if he’d wanted to. “And who would you be mad at if I did?”
“You. She probably considers it her sisterly duty to test you.”
“To see if I’ll cheat?”
“No,” she said. “To see if you’re any good.”
He studied her face. “Did you two compare notes about Greg, as well?”
“You’re not fooling me,” she said, tamping down her anger.
“You didn’t want to expose yourself emotionally by telling that story, so now you’re pushing me away.”
“Honey,” he said, his expression one of great pity, “I don’t have any emotions to expose.”
“You saved a girl’s life,” she argued. “Why did the dog’s death affect you more?”
A light flickered in his wary brown eyes, but his voice remained flat. “The dog meant more because he represented compassion, a phenomenon I’ve rarely encountered in life and scarcely understood. And when I found it, I killed it with my bare hands.”
As warnings went, his couldn’t have been clearer. He substituted sex for intimacy because he had nothing more to offer, although he was so skilled at what he did, women probably didn’t complain.
