Wild Thing
Автор
Tawny Weber
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Chapter 1
“JOLENE, I’M A P.I. Not a puppy-retrieval service.”
For just one second, Percy Graham visualized changing careers. Enthusiastic dogs with wagging tails, happy pet owners eager to greet their furry companions. Sure, maybe he’d get the occasional ankle biter, but that was probably better than being shot at.
He sighed. He was damn tired of being shot at. And cussed out. And failing.
All of which were becoming an irritating constant in his life lately. Ever since The Failure.
It was enough to give a guy a complex.
“Besides,” he continued before his secretary could insist again that picking up a dog from the groomer’s was a job requiring a licensed investigator. “I’ve got a plane to catch. Vacation, remember?”
“I know, sugar. You’ve got big decisions to make.”
“Right,” Percy murmured. The partnership. Wasn’t taking on a partner the ultimate failure? It meant he couldn’t make it alone. Even if he liked the guy he was considering, admired his work, it still meant giving up control.
“Just think about it. That’s what this break is for, right? You’re falling apart at the seams. I swear, you keep up this pace and you’re gonna ruin your health,” Jolene said, her two-pack-a-day voice coming through his car’s speaker in a loud rasp. “You’re going too fast. You need to spend some time in front of the TV instead of all those hours you work chasing jobs, and maybe visit your momma instead of doing paperwork in the office on the weekends. That’d do you more good than flitting off to Bermuda for a week.”
It’d definitely get him a fast pass to an early grave. At least, the weekends with his mother would.
“Jolene,” Percy interrupted before she got to the inevitable dissection of his love life. It was something that’d always amused him before. But now it was just depressing. “What’s the deal on the dog?”
He could almost hear her grin through the dash of his prized ’67 Corvette. He couldn’t say no to her, and she knew it. She’d probably already deposited the fee.
“It’s a last-minute job. I didn’t have the heart to say no. You handled a background check for this guy last year, did a few smaller jobs. With how bad things have been lately, I figured it’d be like good karma or something. You help him out by getting his dog then go catch your plane. When you get back, karma will have a bunch of new clients all lined up.”
“I’m not sure that’s how karma works,” he muttered. Then again, what did he know? He wouldn’t have said bad luck could grab hold and turn a guy’s happy life upside down, yet it had. Ever since The Failure, he’d had nothing but, well, failures. It was like a chain reaction of suckiness.
Failed cases. Failed communications. Failed dates. Hell, it was getting so he was scared to take a woman to bed. Who knew what else might fail?
Yeah, he had to decide what to do about the partnership offer. Because while things were sucking right now, he did have a damn good rep in the business. Which was why he wanted—no, needed—this vacation. A change of scene, a chance to regroup, rethink and revive his libido, and he’d be good as new.
While he sat lost in thought, Jolene continued her verbal restructuring of his habits and despairing over his ever finding the right woman. Percy let the lecture wash right over him, focusing instead on traffic and the knots of stress wrapped around his spine. For a man who’d had life handed to him on a shiny platter, things had lately taken a turn toward Suckville. And he could pinpoint the exact moment they’d turned—the morning the sexiest woman he’d ever tasted had walked out, leaving him sleeping in the bed they’d spent hours in together.
It’d been his first. First time falling in love, first time getting dumped, first time feeling like a total failure. But like that stupid law-of-attraction stuff Jolene was always jabbering on about, one failure had drawn in another and another. And before long, he’d blown two cases in a row and his office had burned down.
“I’m on vacation,” he interrupted when Jolene had reached the suggested-therapists portion of her lecture. “Give the case to Matthews. He wants this partnership. Let’s see how he handles a spur-of-the moment job.”
“No can do. Mr. Day wanted the best and that’s you. You wouldn’t have me lie to a client, would you? Especially one who’s willing to pay this much money? It’ll be easy. I texted you the address of the groomer. All you have to do is go in there and stage a rescue.”
Rescue a dog from the groomer’s? It smelled a little fishy to him.
“What’s the real deal? Since when does a dog getting a haircut require a rescue mission?”
“Mr. Day is in the middle of an ugly divorce. He was awarded custody of the dog but his soon-to-be ex-wife won’t hand it over. Today it’s the mutt’s thrice-weekly grooming appointment, so he wants you to go over there and get it for him.”
“Custody. Of a dog?”
“It’s a really special dog.”
“And he wants me to steal it?”
“It’s legal,” Jolene insisted. “He sent me the paperwork.”
“This is what my career has come to?” he summed up, only a little bitter. All it took was one woman to dump him, and everything else went down the toilet.
“You’d be crazy to turn away from an easy-paying job right now, Percy. I do your books. I know these things. Just rescue our client’s baby, drop it off here and I’ll take care of everything else,” Jolene commanded before he could argue more. Then, to make sure she got in the last word, she added just before she hung up, “And remember, don’t shoot anyone.”
“I haven’t even fired my damn gun in three months,” Percy groused to himself. The way his luck had been running, he’d been afraid he’d shoot himself in the foot. Jolene was right, though. He couldn’t afford to turn away a quick and simple job.
Still, who the hell fought over a dog? Kids, sure. Property, cars, money, those made sense. He could even get on board with duking it out over membership to the country club. But a dog?
Must be one helluva cute mutt. He checked the address Jolene had sent to his phone. He was about three minutes away. He didn’t need to consult the GPS since he knew Berkeley like the back of his hand.
Parking in a high-end neighborhood, he had to admit, he was impressed. He remembered Gregory Day. The guy was money. Big money, and an ass about it. The kind who made people come to him, not the other way around. Yet his wife dropped her fancy dog at a small, local groomer instead of some fancy dog salon? Why?
Heaving a sigh, Percy rolled out of his painstakingly restored ’67 Corvette, pocketing his keys as his eyes swept from one side of the picket-fenced little house to the other.
Flowers spilled in a waterfall of melting pinks, purples and reds over and around the pale blue patio in a welcoming wave. A statue of a prancing dog stood next to the white door, one of the many canine figurines scattered through the postcard-size yard. Fitting, he supposed, since the small sign on the gate proclaimed this to be “Fur”sace Grooming.
“Fur”sace? Like Versace, the designer? Percy snickered. Cute.
Still, as pretentious as it sounded, someone clearly loved what they did. And he was about to make their job a whole lot harder. He glanced at his smartphone, noting that Jolene had uploaded the legal documents that said, yes indeed, one Chinese Crested by the name of Medusa had been awarded to Gregory Day. It should be enough to get the groomer to hand the dog over.
“One pup, coming up,” he muttered as he checked the door. Finding it unlocked, he stepped inside. The entry was small and bright, trimmed in purple-and-pink stripes. But the unnatural quiet made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Shouldn’t there be yipping mutts?
Passing through a tiny kitchen, he glanced into a large room that looked like a puppy playground. Pillows and toys and a mini trampoline took up one side of the room. A big-screen TV and a treadmill filled the other half. But no people. And no dogs.
Percy moved on.
At the other end of the hall, the lower half of a door was shut. Through the open upper half he heard grumbles and rumbles. He moved closer, glancing carefully around the door frame.
Metal crates filled with a rainbow of fluffy blankets ranged the walls. Pampered pooches, indeed. Their beds looked cozier than his own.
And finally, he saw the dogs. There were at least a dozen of them, all curled up on their pillows. How’d the groomer get them all to sleep at the same time? That wasn’t natural, was it? His spine tingled, warning Percy that a dramatic scene was the least of his worries. His quick and easy canine rescue was definitely going to be a big ole pain in the ass.
Percy reached beneath his light jacket to the small of his back and pulled out his gun. Sure, it was overkill, but he couldn’t ignore the itchy feeling on the back of his neck.
Holding the weapon low, he surreptitiously rounded the last corner. Grooming room? He noted the sinks and tables, the scent of flowery shampoo and something else. Something sexy that gnawed at his memory, turning up the heat on his libido, even though he didn’t know why.
“What the…”
A man in his line of work saw a lot of things. At thirty-two, he figured he was well past the age of being shocked.
But… Holy shit.
He didn’t know what was the bigger kick to the gut. Seeing Andrea Tanner, the very woman who’d had top billing for three months straight in his most prurient sexual fantasies despite crushing his heart beneath her unknowing stiletto heel.
Or finding her, here, in an upscale canine beauty parlor. Tied to a chair. Her long, golden-brown curls were a mess and the green bandanna tied around her mouth made her hair mushroom around her in an angry halo. Brown eyes, so big and doelike with their lush fringe of lashes, widened in what looked like horror.
Percy’s ego, once so strong and healthy, whimpered a little. Clearly, this little meeting was a surprise for both of them.
Then he saw the angry red marks on her arms where she’d struggled against the ropes that tied her to the chair. Fury surged, almost knocking him on his ass. Sure, he might have entertained the idea of tying Andrea up himself. But in his dreams, he’d had her permission, they were naked and they took turns. But this? He could see she wasn’t hurt. Pissed, but not damaged. Still, whoever did this, he was kicking their ass.
Cocking his head, he did a finger swirl to indicate the room. Was there anyone still here? Andrea shook her head, no. Still, Percy did a quick scan of the room. He looked under tables, inside cabinets. Assured that they were alone, he holstered his gun.
Brow furrowed, he sauntered across the room. He shook his head at the slender figure staring at him through tear-drenched eyes. Even wet and filled with angry despair, her brown gaze was compelling. Lushly lashed, meltingly dark and hypnotically expressive.
Her hair gleamed, damp strands clinging to her flushed face and long, slender neck before cascading over her bare shoulders. The fantasy of that silky hair teasing the hot, slick hardness of his naked body had kept him awake many a night. Long after he’d given up hope of the fantasy ever being a reality.
“Okay, first things first,” he said, pulling the bandanna out of her mouth. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. He’s gone—”
Before she could say more, he tugged the bandanna back into place. Sure, he wanted to know who did this. It’d make kicking that person’s ass easier. But first, he couldn’t resist the gift in front of him. A chance to tell Andrea a few things while she was hog-tied and gagged. It was probably the only way he’d get her to listen to him.
“What a surprise,” he said, offering his most charming smile. “If it isn’t the luscious Andrea Tanner. Didn’t we have a date? Did you forget? Or, what, you got tied up?”
That shifted the gleam in her eyes from tears to anger. Good. He’d rather deal with an angry woman than a weepy one any day. Especially one he had such strong feelings for.
Like a cork shooting out of a bottle, all his frustration, hurt and, yes, anger, suddenly spewed out.
“So what happened, Andrea? You had to hurry out to talk to a man about a dog? That’s why you couldn’t wake me up before you left? And, oh, I know. The dog ate your phone. That’s why you didn’t return my calls.”
He acknowledged, if only to himself, that it was that last part that infuriated him the most. He’d never called a woman twice in his life. He’d never had to. Once they had his number, they ran after him.
“And now, after months of wondering what the hell happened, I walk in and find you tied up like a present. My very own present. What part shall I unwrap first, hmm?”
Despite his anger, Percy couldn’t stop his gaze from traveling over the soft swell of her breasts emphasized by the damp cotton of her dress. Even rumpled and tear-stained, with the anger shooting off her in sparks, she was still gorgeous. Throw in clever, sweet and funny and there you had it.
She was the woman of his dreams. And she wanted nothing to do with him.
