Page 59 of Her Intense Protector

Ezio gave a slow smile as he set down his fork and topped off her lemonade. “I’m not mad at either of you anymore. I’m too happy about this set-up right now. I figure that four days’ time we’ve had the equivalent of a month’s worth of dates.”

Samantha tilted her head. “How do you figure that?”

“We had an actual date at a restaurant. We’ve had breakfast and dinner together—that’s nine dates. Add in two times we’ve met in the middle of the night for midnight snacks, that’s eleven. I would say eleven is about right for a month.”

“Yeah, but you’d be sleeping with her by now.”

“Except in our case, it’s only been a few days,” he argued.

She picked up her glass while she was laughing. “You know you have a habit of liking things to go your way. This is definitely some convoluted logic to prop up the way you want to believe.” She took a long sip of lemonade.

“You were the one who said you had to choose your mood. I’m just choosing my reality. What’s wrong with that?”

“You must have made your mom go gray before her time.”

“Nah, I only started doing this with you. It’s the only way I can survive is to fight fire with fire. If I tried to argue in such an illogical fashion with my mother, she’d snatch me bald-headed.”

Samantha looked at his pretty hair. “That would be a shame.”

“So, are you caught up with work?”

“I will be until the samples get here. Why?”

“I want to take you someplace pretty special tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“It’s a surprise.”

17

“Do I get to play with them?” Samantha’s eyes were huge with excitement. She was like a kid in a candy store. “Am I allowed to open their cages? This boy looks so sad. Can I take him out?”

“We call them pens, not cages. And that’s Duchess, and she’s a girl. She takes a long while to warm up with people, so don’t be upset if she just cowers in the corner, okay?”

Ezio opened the enclosure and Sam bent down and slowly duckwalked in, extending her hand. The entire time she was quietly crooning to the shivering border-collie mix. As soon as she was in the middle of the pen, Sam just squatted down and waited.

Ezio listened.

“Aren’t you just the most beautiful girl? You’re precious, do you know that? I’m sorry you’re scared. I hate that.”

Ezio waited to see if she was going to stop, but she continued in that vein for three minutes, so he went over to check on some of the other dogs until he hit Tabitha’s pen. He let her out.

“Hello, Gorgeous.” He scratched her behind her ear, then ruffled the hair on her back. Tabitha rubbed her nose against his other hand, trying to get closer.

“Did you miss me?”

Once again, Ezio could swear she understood because he saw a distinct nod. “I’ve got a surprise for you. Yes, you get to meet somebody pretty darn special today. You’re going to love her.”

Tabitha’s brown and blue eyes looked up at him with love and excitement.

“Come on girl, let’s go meet her.”

He was surprised that Samantha wasn’t waiting for him outside of Duchess’s pen. But what floored him was that when he got to the enclosure he found Duchess cuddled up to Samantha in the middle of the floor where Samantha was still squatting.

He still could hear her crooning to the abused collie and whispering words of encouragement.

“Hey, ladies,” he whispered as soft as he could. They both turned to look at him. Duchess looked as confident as he’d ever seen her. Tabitha trotted into her pen. She joined into the lovefest.