Page 56 of Lock ’N’ Load

“N-no.”

“Is the guys’ snoring keeping you up?”

“Um, n-no.” Shit. The stammering thing wasn’t going away after all.

His eyes narrowed, intensifying his cop look until she worried she’d unintentionally blurt out the truth. “Then what?”

I was thinking about you running your hands across my silk-covered skin, then—

“I was w-worried about that reporter,” she lied again. “Has he returned your call?”

“No.” Matt shook his head. “But it’s only seven in the morning.”

“What is all this?” In a desperate attempt to derail his interrogation, she swung her arm to encompass all the equipment.

He followed the direction of her arm. “It’s a training facility. Or, at least, I hope it will be one day.”

“For K-9s?” She should have realized it immediately.

He nodded. “Partly, yes. Since September 11 and all the recent terrorist attacks around the world, there’s a shortage of trained K-9s. I’ve been gathering the necessary equipment here and building a classroom in there.” He indicated the red-roofed structure. “It’s not quite finished. I still need AV equipment and a few other things. But I could use some grant money to finish it up.”

“You said partly K-9s. What else d-do you plan to do here?”

“I want to help kids. Teens with alcohol problems.”

Wow. She should have seen that coming. The other night at her house, when she’d offered him a drink and he declined, he’d said he hadn’t had one since he was sixteen. There had to be a story there. Whatever it was, she’d bet her last USB drive it was something bad. “Does the place have a name?”

“Jerry’s Place.” His eyes softened, and it was obvious there was more behind him opening up this training facility than he was letting on. “After getting a grant, my goal is to get listed as an approved community service facility, so that when a juvenile offender is sentenced to community service, he or she can come here and work with the dogs. To start with, I’ll select a few rescue dogs from local shelters so the kids can work with animals that need them as much as the kids need the dogs.”

Pausing, he looked off in the distance. He seemed to be somewhere far, far away, seeing something she couldn’t. Something that wasn’t really there, of course. “Who’s Jerry?” she asked.

“My best friend. Or, he was. Jerry would have loved this place.” Turning back to her, his gaze was sober, and if his face hadn’t been composed of all those hard, chiseled planes and angles, she’d say he looked sad. He took a deep breath. “Jerry and I were both crazy about dogs, but our parents would never let either of us have one of our own. They said we weren’t responsible enough, so…”

“What did you do?” she asked softly.

He chuckled and looked away again. “What any kids who wanted a dog would do—prove our parents wrong. We did everything to show our folks we were mature enough to take on that responsibility. We both got every dog-walking job we could find after school and took care of neighbors’ and friends’ dogs while they were on vacation. But we never did manage to get our own.”

His face went sober again. “Jerry died a long time ago, and this is the best way I could think of to remember him. Helping kids and dogs in need. Taking care of a dog and training one can give a kid a sense of purpose and responsibility.”

“How did Jerry die?” she whispered, inherently sensing whatever had happened had left a painful mark on Matt’s soul. Their gazes met, and she hoped he’d tell her. Thus far, she knew him solely as a cop and her protector, but now, she found herself wanting to know the man inside.

His eyes went hard. “In a fire.”

“Oh God.” No wonder he’d gotten in her face about what fire does to the human body. “Were you there?” She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that he had been. The scars on his hands and forearms. Only now, she realized they were burn scars.

“Nice try, lady. Getting you out here isn’t about me.” The corners of his mouth lifted, instantly transforming his somber expression back to mischievous. If she didn’t already think he was the handsomest man she’d ever met, she did now. Holy shit. Right then, she was practically bowled over by him. “It’s about you.”

Before she could react, he turned to the red-roofed building and whistled. To her horror, a dog—Sheba—launched through the open door.

For a millisecond, she froze. The signals from her brain warning her to flee weren’t transmitting to her limbs. The travel mug slipped from her fingers to the grass. She began to shake, and her heart hammered against her ribs. “What are y-you d-doing?” As if her words broke the spell, she turned to run, but he caught her arm, pulling her to him, her back to his chest. “N-no! Let me g-go!”

As the dog’s athletic gait quickly ate up the distance between them, Trista tried backing up, but that only pressed her deeper against Matt’s enormous body, giving her a small measure of safety.

“Relax,” he said against her ear. “I keep telling you she won’t hurt you. You need to trust me on that.”

Sucking in deep breaths, Trista’s chest rose and fell as Sheba came closer. In two seconds, the dog would be on them. “P-please,” she whimpered, her entire body shaking with fear. “D-don’t do this.”

Sheba neared them, her jaws open, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Trista squeezed her eyes shut, tensing, waiting for those sharp canines to puncture her flesh.