Bound By Temptation (3 page)

Escalate?

And just like that, Lucas’s muscles tightened again. All of the scenarios that played through his mind ended with Emma hurt and terrified.

“What the fuck’s she supposed to do until you bastards decide to step in and protect her?”

“I told you, she getting a dog.” Rio paused, and Lucas could hear the shrug in the smooth voice. “I’ve put in a request for extra patrols around her place. That’s all I can do for now.”

Which was a whole lot of nothing, damn it.

“What’s her address?” Lucas committed the address Rio rattled off to memory and turned around to beat his forehead lightly against the Jeep’s doorframe.

You stupid fucking moron. What the hell are you thinking?

The most effective deterrent against this incessant itch he had for her was the simple fact he hadn’t known where she’d moved. Sure, it wouldn’t have taken much effort to find out, but at least the lack of an address had prevented him from spur of the moment foolishness—like visits or drive-bys.

That first line of defense was officially gone now.

But damn it, he couldn’t just leave her alone and unprotected either. At the very least he could teach her to defend herself. If he could convince her to buy a gun, he could show her how to use it. Even loan her one of his own, until her permit worked its way through the system.

The trick was to keep things in the friends-helping-friends territory. Establish a firm hands and mouths to themselves rule.

He grimaced, running tense fingers through his hair. Hands to themselves…sure…piece of fucking cake.

W
ith a disgusted groan
, Emma threw back the scratchy sheets and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped beneath her weight, eliciting a chorus of distressed twangs from the box springs. The night had been long and restless thanks to the uncomfortable bed, an endless string of nightmares, and the strange, vaguely threatening sounds coming from outside her motel room.

Perhaps she should have sprung for a more upscale motel. But the string of units had looked clean and well-tended, and the price had been reasonable.

Giving up on the prospect of further sleep, Emma brewed a cup of the complimentary coffee, and sat down at the pseudo wood desk to list what she needed to accomplish through the course of the day. As the coffee brewed, its rich, slightly bitter smell masked the pervasive scent of artificial air freshener.

Visiting the gun store and getting her hands on a revolver was her number one priority for the day. Although, picking up a canine companion came in as a close second. Opening her laptop, she logged onto the motel’s Wi-Fi and googled firearm sales. She picked the closest pawnshop to her motel that listed handguns in their inventory. The shop didn’t open until ten a.m., which gave her four hours to research firearm laws in San Diego.

As it turned out, her search raised two immediate problems. Number one, state law required government documentation with the applicant’s correct physical address when applying for a gun permit. A driver’s license was acceptable as long as it had the applicant’s current physical address—which hers didn’t. Of course she could just hand the pawn shop her license and lie about the address being correct, but if the permit was mailed out, it would go to the wrong address.

But even worse than the lack of correct documentation was the waiting period. She couldn’t even buy a gun for ten days—and that was ten days
after
she passed the firearm safety exam which might take a few days. She chewed the cap of her pen while that bad news sank in. She couldn’t afford to sit tight in the motel for the next ten to twelve days either, which meant she’d have to make do with the dog, at least until she was cleared to buy a gun.

Regardless, getting her address changed at the DMV was her new priority. She couldn’t even apply for a gun permit until her documentation showed her correct address. But googling the San Diego DMV brought even more bad news. While their office was open every third Saturday, today wasn’t one of those magical Saturdays. And while she could change her address online, it would take a week for her new license with the correct address to arrive. In the interest of saving time, she’d have to hit the DMV during her lunch break on Monday.

At least the animal shelter was open today, although the doors didn’t unlock until ten a.m. She glanced at the flashing digital clock next to the lamp on the nightstand. She had three hours to kill before choosing her new dog. Plenty of time to hit the pet store and pick up some dog food, along with a collar and leash.

She killed an hour browsing the San Diego humane society’s adoptable dogs. From the pictures and breed descriptions, it looked like there were several that would fit her criteria. As she perused the website, anticipation built. She should have gotten a dog weeks ago. The company would be welcome.

Three hours later, the anticipation still hummed through her as she entered the animal shelter. However, it dimmed dramatically upon entering the adoptable dogs’ wing. The heavy duty industrial cleaners used on the cement floors didn’t come close to masking the smell of urine, or the sharp scent of desperation. Most of the dogs were front and center, barking wildly, jumping on the chain link gates, or whirling around and around in their excitement. The noise was deafening.

She wandered from kennel to kennel, paralyzed by choices. It was impossible to choose just one animal when there were so many in need of a home.

She’d visited three quarters of the kennels, when a skinny, small dog with a knot of bristly hair atop its head caught her eye. The animal was the total opposite of every dog she’d seen so far. Still and silent, the poor thing just sat there in the middle of the kennel—its shoulders hunched, its spine arched, its pom-pom of a head hanging despondently. It was a mottled gray, some kind of a terrier mix based on the wiry coat with its patchy bald spots. Except it didn’t have the cocky confidence she associated with terriers.

Move along, Emma. This poor old girl isn’t big, she isn’t barking, and she’s not the least bit intimidating.

But something about the dog’s despair reached out to snag her, stopping her in her tracks. The animal had completely given up.

Emma’s heart hitched, and she knelt before the wire gate. “Hey there, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

Slowly the animal lifted its head. A startled look filled its misaligned, mismatched blue and brown eyes. It slowly cranked its head to the right and looked over its shoulder toward the back of the kennel, as though it couldn’t believe someone was actually talking to it. The reaction was so pathetic, Emma’s heart hitched even harder.

“Her name’s Scruffy,” a woman’s voice said from behind her. “The poor thing. She’s so shut down she doesn’t even respond anymore. I suppose it’s a mercy today’s her last day.”

“Did she get adopted?” Emma asked with the sick feeling that adoption wasn’t the escape the woman was talking about.

“Unfortunately no. I don’t think anyone even asked to see her the entire time she’s been here. Everyone goes for the cute and cuddly. And then there’s her medical condition. If prospective owners got past her looks, those twice daily insulin shots scared them off.”

“She’s diabetic?” Emma asked, that sick sensation digging deeper. The dog—
she refused to call her Scruffy
—had gone back to staring at the cement floor with the weary, patience of a creature mired in soul-sucking hopelessness.

“Diabetic, plus there’s her teeth,” the woman said.

“Her teeth?” Emma leaned closer to the gate, but the animal’s head was hanging so low its bristly pom-pom was brushing the concrete floor, which made it impossible to see her mouth.

“She doesn’t have any. She has to eat a special kind of dog food.”

Move along, Emma. Not only does this dog not fit any of Officer Addario’s criteria, but it would take more money than you can afford to keep her healthy and fed.

“When are you euthanizing her?” Emma asked, fervently hoping she’d misunderstood the woman’s earlier comment. She’d never actually said they were killing the dog, after all.

“After viewing closes.” The woman’s voice tightened. “It’s for the best. She’s completely miserable. And she’s taking up space that should be given to animals that are adoptable. She won’t feel a thing. She’ll just go to sleep, that’s all.”

Emma suspected the woman was trying to convince herself of that pile of horse crap, more than she was trying to convince Emma. She stared at the still dog and tried to force her legs to carry her to the next dog run.

You can’t afford her. You can barely afford to take care of yourself.

“What’s her story? Is she house broken?”

A whiff of cigarette smoke reached her and she glanced over her shoulder at the woman behind her. The kennel worker was tall, with the gaunt frame of someone who existed on nerves, cigarettes and caffeine.

“Some guy brought her in. Said his ex had left her after the split and he couldn’t afford her medicine.” Disgust sharpened her tone. “Although he sure didn’t have any trouble affording that brand new four-wheel drive pickup he was driving.” She paused to take a rattling breath. “He said she was house broken. But then again, the dude obviously didn’t mind bending the truth to suit his needs.”

Dumped by some asshole the poor baby had trusted. Emma’s jaw set beneath a sense of kinship. “How much does the insulin run a month?”

The woman jiggled her bony shoulders. “She goes through about a vial a month—so I don’t know, somewhere around $100.”

A hundred dollars a month, plus her special dog food. Combined, it would be more money than she could afford to spend.

It took immense effort to take that first step away from the kennel. If she’d been smart, she wouldn’t have looked back. That way she wouldn’t have witnessed the dog’s expression as it watched her leave. Because yeah, it had lifted its head and was watching her go with the most heartbreaking emptiness dulling its mismatched eyes.

Emma turned back, ignoring the dog’s and shelter attendant’s identical looks of shock. “Does she bark?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

Drat. Drat. Drat.

Two hours later she was on her way home with her new canine BFF frozen on the passenger seat beside her. She could swear an expression of befuddled disbelief still glazed the misaligned, blue and brown eyes.

The dog was wearing the collar Emma had picked up at the pet store. The second collar. The first collar had been so big the poor thing could have used it as a hula hoop. In the back of her car, the regular bag of dog food she’d bought earlier had been exchanged for two flats of canned dog food that cost twice as much, and lasted half as long. Next to the food was a bag containing a vial of insulin, a glucose monitoring kit, and a box of syringes.

Her savings account, which had already been cringing, might never recover.

“I’ll just have to cut back elsewhere to cover the costs of your food and medicine,” she said, glancing at the frozen animal to her right. “I don’t watch much television. I doubt I’d even notice it was missing.”

Canceling her cable would cover the insulin and other medical expenses the dog might incur. If she gave up her morning latte habit, that would cover the cost of the food. She glanced at the skinny animal beside her and frowned. Or at least the latte fund would cover most of the dog’s meals. At the moment, the poor thing was so skinny she needed some serious fattening up.

The dog turned its head slightly, the brown eye watching the road unfurl in front of them, the blue eye fixed on Emma’s face. The disbelief had shifted to tentative hope.

Maybe it was her imagination, but honestly the animal had the most human expressions.

“First order of business is to change your name.” Emma settled her hand on the fragile, prickly shoulders beside her. “I see a lot of cuddling in your future, so how about we call you Cuddles?” A smile bloomed as she ran her hand down the hunched spine.

Her smile vanished as the dog flinched beneath her fingers. Gently she ran her hand over the protruding spine again, trying to familiarize the animal to her touch.

“Second order of business is a bath,” she announced, grimacing at the tacky, grimy feel to the rough coat. Now that they were out of the shelter and alone in the car, there was an obvious and offensive odor too. Rather akin to the way the shelter had smelled.

This time the blue eye watching her broadcasted alarm.

Emma laughed. “Relax. I’ll let you off the hook for tonight. You’ll fit right in at the motel. But tomorrow, when we return home, a bath it is.” She suppressed a shiver at the thought of returning home. “And baby, you have to learn to bark.” She hadn’t heard a peep from the dog yet, which didn’t bode well for her new canine alarm system. “If I can learn how to give insulin shots, you can learn how to bark at intruders. That’s a fair deal, don’t you think?” Cuddles cocked her head and furrowed her bushy gray eyebrows in a quizzical expression. “And that reminds me, baby. Just bear with me on the whole shot thing, okay? I’ll try not to hurt you, but there may be a bit of a learning curve there.”

The vet tech at the shelter had showed her how to prepare the insulin dose and how to give the shot under the skin between the shoulder blades—although the next shot was supposed to go under the skin in a different area so her shoulders didn’t turn into a pin cushion. Cuddles hadn’t even winced, which put the constant flinching as Emma gently stroked her into grim perspective. Apparently the dog was so used to getting stuck with a needle it didn’t even phase her, but the stroke of a hand was terrifying. God only knew what kind of abuse the poor thing had suffered in the past.

“You’re safe now,” she whispered with another long, slow glide of her hand. This time, although Cuddles’s body remained rigid, she didn’t flinch. “Nobody is ever going to hurt you again. I’m not going to rush you or anything. Trusting someone again after you’ve been burned is hard. You’ll have to get there in your own time.”

Emma slowed the car in preparation for taking the turn onto her street. Cuddles seemed a bit unstable during sudden stops and starts, or shifts in direction, as though she hadn’t ridden in a car enough to learn to adjust her balance. “But I’m here for you now, baby. And I will never abandon you. You have my word on that.”

After navigating the corner, she glanced at the silent animal beside her. The gray head, with its wild tuft of hair, was cocked slightly to the left, as though she were listening to Emma’s ramblings. Was it her imagination, or had some of the dog’s rigidity softened?

“As for your new home, it’s a bit of a mess right now, but we’ll get it straightened up in no time. And you’ll have a big fenced yard to explore.”

That backyard, which was a major pain in the butt to water and mow, might actually be worth all the effort now.

“That’s your new home up there, fourth house on the righ—” Emma’s voice fractured at the sight of the black Jeep Renegade parked alongside the curb in front of her house. Every muscle in her body tensed.

Don’t be an idiot. There are plenty of people in San Diego who drive a black Renegade. That’s not Lucas’s car. He proved two dozen phone calls ago that he has no interest in visiting you. It’s a coincidence, that’s all.

Still, her foot automatically eased off the gas as she scanned the area surrounding her home.

A surprisingly loud and menacing growl erupted from the dog sitting beside her. Emma shot Cuddles a look of astonishment. The depth and threat in Cuddles’s growl could have come from a Rottweiler. The dog’s attention was solidly fixed on the Jeep. She must have sensed Emma’s sudden anxiety upon spotting the vehicle. Perhaps she’d make a good watch dog after all.