The bumper sticker wasn’t the only thing he noticed. She was tall and strikingly pretty in an understated, natural way, and she had an hourglass figure.
Not that her looks mattered.
What mattered was that Rob didn’t make the ludicrous decision of sending a bunch of dogs off to end up hammering her. Dogs treated the way most of these had likely been treated—stuck in crates or tied to chains and freed only to fight—needed much more than soft words and treats passed through the bars of their crates. The blond’s Hispanic coworker seemed to know a thing or two about how to handle fighting dogs, but from what Kurt understood, he wouldn’t be working at the site where the dogs would be kept.
“What do you think of her, Fidel?” Her voice was easy and calm like the slow pour of honey. “She seems sweet enough,” she said of the mastiff mix displaying submission along with a good deal of stress while being stared down through the door.
Fidel squatted to inspect the info sheet in the plastic sleeve attached to the side of the crate. There must have been something on it that the man didn’t like because his forehead knotted into a V and he mumbled something Kurt couldn’t hear.
Kurt gritted his teeth as she pulled free a yellow sticky and pressed it on top of the crate. Yellow. Seriously? Her and her stickies. He’d stifled a laugh earlier when he figured out her system. Pink for definitely, yellow for maybe, blue for pass. She’d only used one blue sticky so far, and the way that Rott had attacked the cage door, Kurt wouldn’t have been surprised if he was rabid.
The next dog they came to was a giant. Rather than being crammed into one of the crates, he was in an oversized kennel. He stood when they approached, making it easier to inspect him. The long hair around his neck and along his upper back pricked straight up, declaring the animal’s unease.
His fluffy brown-and-black coat bore markings similar to a German shepherd, but he was much bigger and fuzzier than any shepherd Kurt had ever seen. He’d place him at a hundred and fifty pounds easy. With the dog’s massive size and powerful build, Kurt figured he must be part Neapolitan mastiff or Great Dane, or both. And unlike most of the gigantic dogs Kurt had come across at one time or another, this one seemed anything but easygoing.
With his tail stuck straight out, the massive animal looked at each one in the group alternately, fixing them with a striking stare that in Kurt’s mind was akin to a dare.
“He’s so beautiful. Definitely a yes, don’t you think?” the blond asked her coworker. “Look how calm he is.”
Kurt was opening his mouth in protest when Rob unexpectedly pulled him in for a second hug.
“Boy, you feel like a tree trunk.” Rob let go and ruffled his hair. “With you extending your service like that, heading off to hell and back again, I was starting to think you had a death wish.”
Kurt nearly sent him sailing over a crate for the unanticipated hug. Had Rob forgotten his service years completely? Then he remembered that Rob had never left the States. His entire military career had been as a dog trainer and instructor. He didn’t know how impossible it felt to let go of the hypersensitivity it took to stay alive in a war zone.
“No death wish, just a larger than necessary sense of duty.” Kurt forced a smile as the blond pressed a pink sticky on the front of the giant dog’s kennel. So, she’d be throwing a man-sized dog with a heavily alpha demeanor into the mix, wherever she was taking them.
“Well, I’m glad you’re back. And still in one piece. So many of them boys…” Rob shook his head and seemed to realize they had the girl’s full attention. “I’m really glad you’re back. To stay this time?”
“Stateside for certain. I’ll be looking for work. I was thinking somewhere cool. Maybe Alaska.”
Rob laughed heartily as if the Alaska comment had been a joke. He waved toward the crates. “Son, I’ve got work.”
“Thanks. But like I said, I’m finished working with dogs.”
Rob chuckled some more. “The question you should be answering is whether they’re finished with you. However bad it went in Afghanistan and Honduras, I suspect they’re not.”
That was Rob for you. Taking things where you didn’t want them to go. Kurt forced his gaze not to stray to the blond, not to give in to the part of him that wanted to see her reaction.
Not liking the turn the conversation was taking, he nodded to the partitions blocking off the back of the warehouse. “What’s behind door number three?”
Rob’s lips pursed almost imperceptibly. “Long shots and TLCs. None these guys need to see. For the long shots, it’ll be a bit before we have a sense of whether or not they can be rehabbed into traditional homes. The others will stay until they need less intensive care.”
Maybe the dogs in those cages would shake some sense into the girl. “She should know what she’s getting into. Know how bad it can be.” He gave himself permission to look at her. Her eyebrows furrowed as she listened. She closed one arm over her stomach, wrapping her hand around her other elbow, drawing his attention to her chest, though he knew not intentionally. She reminded him of one of those ancient hand-carved fertility statues. No makeup that he could see, light-brown eyes with flecks of gold, and hips in perfect proportion to her chest. And he had the distinct feeling she had no idea of the
