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  She placed the dog on the table and held it firmly while examining its eyes, ears, and teeth.

  “It says here that you found Sasha on the freeway?”

  “He was running through traffic and a bunch of people tried to catch him. I was the lucky one, I guess. Is he going to be okay? How do we find his people?” Sophie rushed on eagerly.

  “Well, first,” Dr. Blythe said chuckling, “he is actually a she.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, how old is she?” Ryan asked.

  The veterinarian lifted Sasha's lips and shone a penlight across her pink gums and sharp canine teeth. “She appears to have all forty-two of her permanent teeth. I’d guess that she’s about nine or ten months old. In terms of breed, I’d say she looks a lot like a Finnish Spitz.” The veterinarian got a device from a shelf that looked like a handheld grocery scanner and ran it along the dog’s back and scruff.

  “She has no microchip,” she said to them. To the dog she said, “You’re a little mystery, my dear Sasha.”

  The doctor continued to examine the dog and Ryan looked at Sophie questioningly.

  “So,” Sophie asked. “What do we do now?”

  “The city law gives you a couple of options,” she said matter-of-factly. “You can turn her over to the pound, and if all goes well her owner will find her. Otherwise, she will be available for adoption in four or five days. Or you can keep her and post flyers around the neighborhood where you picked her up, trying to find her owner. It’s up to you guys, but I’ll hand her off to you with a good bill of health.” The veterinarian scribbled some notes in a folder and left the room as briskly as she had entered.

  “Do you think we should keep Sasha while we look for the owner?” Ryan asked her.

  Sophie paused, thinking about his question. Even though she’d known him for less than an hour, she felt close to him. Quietly she answered, “Honestly, part of me would like to, but I think taking this little cutie to the pound would be the right thing to do. I wouldn’t want to get too attached while fostering her.”

  “But what if no one claims her?”

  “Do you want her? Do you have a dog already?” Then she looked at his clothes and shook her head. “Obviously you don’t,” she said emphatically. “You look like the kind of person who’s never had a speck of lint on his clothes, much less blonde dog hair.” Sophie scratched between the reddish blond upright ears. “Someone will claim her or adopt her. How could they not?” she said as the dog yawned and tucked herself more securely into Sophie’s arms.

  “I’ll drive you to the pound right now. That way we can drop off the dog and make sure she’s safe,” Ryan said as if this were some kind of executive crisis to be managed.

  So-called alpha males rankled Sophie. She’d grown up with a father who’d issued commands, and she did not like take-charge men to decide what she was going to do next—even when their ideas were good ones. She fumed silently…then pouted. “Why do we have to go together? I’m perfectly capable of driving all by myself.” Her words came out with more of a whine than she’d intended. When he didn’t budge, she continued. “How do I know you’re not some pervert? Maybe this is all a ruse to kidnap me or something. This button-down thing you have going on here,” she said gesturing at him, “could all be an act.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. Sassy makeup artists are not my type.” She shot him a look of mock outrage. Ryan smiled in return. His tone oozed reasonableness. “Look Sunflower, we don’t have a leash. She can get squirmy, and I don’t want to have to worry about you crashing that brand new car of yours. Let’s just see this thing through.”

  Sophie didn’t argue. He didn’t come across like a mass murderer. If documentaries were anything to go by, he wasn’t charming enough. She had her cell phone. If she admitted it to herself, she wanted to spend more time with him—even though he wasn’t her usual type. The fluttery feeling in her stomach was annoying, downright irritating to tell the truth, but in a tiny corner of her brain, she had to admit that it felt good to spend time with a man she was attracted to—even if nothing was ever going to come from it.

  “All right, I’m in,” she said while opening the passenger door.

  In Ryan’s low-slung car, they followed the directions the receptionist had given them—back along the freeway, then north on Van Nuys, a boulevard aesthetically caught between its 1950s roots and its current immigrant residents.

  They pulled up to the public facility. Sophie was surprised at how modern and clean it looked. The only way it was distinguishable from any other new municipal building was the incessant barking of the dogs in the indoor/outdoor cages. Ryan opened her car door as Sophie held Sasha tight. His chivalry continued as he opened the other doors leading to the shelter’s cavernous lobby. It was too bad he wasn’t her type. He seemed like a nice guy, and a single girl in Los Angeles could always use more nice guys in her life.

  Nothing about the squeaky clean, blue-speckled linoleum floors or sparkling white walls of the shelter suggested it was a home for wayward Los Angeles animals. She’d expected something more akin to a turn of the century orphanage with worn tiles and grimy floors. The large reception area and the adjoining educational center were empty save for one man pushing a dust mop across the already clean floor, and a couple of uniformed officials behind the counter.

  Sophie handed the dog to Ryan and looked at the two people dressed like prison guards, a man and a woman. They fit into her vision of an animal shelter much better. The substantially built woman ambled forward. “Can I help you guys?” Her name tag identified her as Hortencia G.

  “We’re here to drop off a dog,” Sophie said.

  The woman reached beneath the counter and pulled out a clipboard. “Is he yours or a stray?”

  “He’s a stray, I guess. I…um, I mean we,” Sophie stammered, inexplicably nervous. “We found him running on the 101 this morning.”

  Hortencia nodded knowingly. “Yeah, we saw that snarl on KCAL Nine from their helicopter camera. You guys caused quite a tie up on the freeway this morning.”

  “Yeah, it was something. We certainly never made it into work,” Sophie said.

  “You’re doing the right thing by dropping this dog off. With all the TV coverage this morning, I’m sure his owners will come to claim him.” Sophie didn’t bother correcting the dog warden about the dog’s gender. “Just fill out these forms here,” she said, handing Sophie a pen. Sophie wrote down her personal information and what she’d learned about the dog from the vet, while Ryan handed the dog over to the male shelter worker who’d yet to say a word.

  Sophie signed her name to the bottom of the form. Horrified, she watched the man put the dog into a contraption similar to a dumbwaiter. As soon as Sasha was in the small metal chute, he closed the stainless steel door with a snap and threw the bolt into place. It was as if Sasha were going to jail. Sophie pushed the forms forward and ran outside without a backward glance toward Ryan. She had a sudden and desperate need for fresh air.

  She had pulled her large sunglasses off her head and down onto her nose to cover her eyes when Ryan eventually emerged. Attempting a casual pose, Sophie leaned against the car, legs crossed at the ankles, trying to look for all the world like she was taking in the sun on a warm day.

  But Ryan didn’t seem fooled. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, his voice only loud enough for her to hear.

  Her throat swelled shut as feelings overwhelmed her, and she could not speak. She was not used to feeling this way, and her mind’s inability to override her body frustrated her. She just nodded in his general direction.

  He grabbed her right hand in his large left one. Its warm strength swallowed hers whole. “Hey, it’s not so bad. They said she’ll have her own crate back there—food, water, a blanket. It’s a hotel for dogs. I’m sure that she’ll be home in no time.”

  “Can we just go?” Sophie choked out, trying unsuccessfully to pull her hand from Ryan’s.

  He fished the keys from his pocket and popped the
locks of the luxury car with a flick of the remote control. He finally let go of her and they got in. The car was quiet save for soft jazz thrumming quietly from about a dozen hidden speakers in the car. Though Ryan took the scenic route, in deference to her need for time to get herself together, she assumed, they were pulling up behind her car on Ventura Boulevard in less than fifteen minutes.

  Sophie grasped the door handle to let herself out when Ryan’s large male hand on her left arm stilled her movements. Until that moment, she’d been keeping herself together pretty well. She took great pains to hold herself as a confident, assertive woman, and wanted it to remain that way. However, his gentle touch was her undoing. Tears, which she’d held back by sheer force of will, came forth, silently leaking under the oversized dark glasses. She pulled her arm back and pressed her hand, the skin on her knuckles straining with effort, to her mouth, but not in time to stop the sob that escaped.

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie began, gasping for breath softly. “Leaving Sasha at the pound just made me remember something I’ve tried to forget.”

  “What?” he asked, concern obvious in his voice.

  When she shook her head, he pulled her hand from her mouth and intertwined their fingers, her small neatly manicured fingers almost disappearing between his larger ones. Distracted by her thoughts, Sophie didn’t try to pull away this time. He squeezed her hand reassuringly and he asked again. “What could be so bad that it would make you cry like this over a dog you just met?”

  She was quiet for a long time. The hum of the car’s air conditioning muffled any sound from outside. When she finally spoke, Sophie’s voice was unusually quiet. She looked beyond him as if seeing the past. “I was nine. My mom got me a small white puppy with stick-up ears and lots of fluffy fur, kind of like Sasha.” She paused to accept his proffer of a tissue from the surprisingly well-stocked center console, and wiped her nose. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” she said.

  Sophie had to admit, though, it was easy talking to him. She chalked it up to him being a total stranger who she would never have to see again, like the person next to you on a plane during bad turbulence. She continued talking, suddenly feeling cathartic.

  “Growing up, I’d wanted a dog for years. I just knew it would be my best friend. Not like my older sister Selie who never gave me the time of day. We could play together, sleep together, and go for walks together. I know that all sounds a little weird, but I was kind of a lonely kid.

  “Anyway, my parents surprised me with a dog for my birthday. Daisy, that was her name, was a better friend than I expected, but I wasn’t that good at training her—so she sometimes went in the house or chewed things she wasn’t supposed to. One day, I came home from school to find Dad and Daisy sitting on the front step. My dad didn’t look happy. He told me that my mother and he had talked and that the dog wasn’t well trained enough to stay with us and that they were bringing her to the pound for a more suitable family to adopt.”

  “Did he really take her back?” Ryan asked, amazed that some parents could be so cold. No matter how out of hand he and his brother Cameron had acted—and as two boys with a single mom, it had sometimes gotten really out of hand—he couldn’t fathom his mother doing anything that heartless.

  She nodded, and a single tear dripped from her small upturned nose. “I ran to my room crying when I heard my father’s station wagon drive off. I never saw Daisy again. When that woman put Sasha in that chute today, I could just imagine how lost Daisy must have felt being separated from me and not ever knowing why.”

  Ryan’s heart went out to her. All at once, he realized that the bravado, the crazy hair, and even the outsized earrings were probably nothing more than a hard outer shell to protect the softhearted woman underneath. He put aside his attraction to her for the moment. Ryan wanted nothing more than to soothe the past hurts she must have suffered.

  He leaned over the car’s center console, pulled the sunglasses gently from her face, and wiped the tears from her soft gray eyes with his thumb forgoing another tissue. Before he could properly weigh his options, or consider her response, he closed the distance between them and kissed her—gently at first on her tear-stained cheek, then brushed her lips with his. Ryan told himself he did it because it was the best way he could think of to make her feel better. However, his soothing intentions quickly escalated into something else. Her lips were softer than he’d imagined. His hand slipped from her face to her breast, so temptingly on offer, covered only by the thin fabric of her shirt.

  Sophie didn’t respond to his kiss at first. It took a few seconds to realize that Ryan was kissing her. Any thoughts of dogs or lingering feelings of sadness fled, and she realized that his lips felt even better than they looked. When his tongue ran against the seam of her lips, she opened for him almost without thinking. He tasted like mint and wanting. She stopped being hesitant, and responded with ardor. It felt good to be kissed like this. She moved to clutch his shirtfront for support, but instead smoothed her hand against it, entranced with the hard chest underneath the once crisp shirt. When his hand stroked her breast, her breath caught in her chest, releasing in a slow hiss.

  Reluctantly, it seemed, Ryan pulled away. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Sophie felt awkward, overwhelmed by the response he’d evoked in her. Her encounters with the opposite sex were usually far less emotional. Looking at his now rumpled shirt and his stained pants covered with dog hair, lint, urine, and God knows what else, she couldn’t help herself and laughed. Once she started, she couldn’t stop her giggling.

  Ryan sat back in his seat, a chuckle or two escaping his sensual but masculine lips.

  “This has been nothing if not a crazy morning,” she said, trying to quell her laughter.

  “Do you want to get coffee, something to eat? I missed my breakfast meeting in Burbank and I’m starving.”

  Sophie’s guard came back up, cloaking her like armor. Both the tears and laughter cleared from her face and the cool mask of indifference she usually wore came over her countenance. “You should eat. I should go,” she said. She pulled the door handle and stepped out into the bright sunshine. The hot Valley sun did little to cool her overheated body.

  Ryan pushed open his door quickly and looked at her over the top of the car. “I know we don’t exactly know each other. I don’t even know your name, Sunflower, but something clicked between us this morning. I think we should—”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re not my type.” The words rushed from her lips. Sophie unlocked her car door. She’d made the mistake of letting her guard down, and everything had gone too far. She needed to get out of there quickly before she did anything else completely out of character. And she really was sorry. But she had a rule against dating tight-assed suits, no matter how well they filled out that proverbial suit, and she wasn’t going to break her number one tenet. The two of them were a train wreck waiting to happen. She was a smart girl, and smart girls avoided train wrecks. “I have to go,” she threw over her shoulder as she slid into her car. She started the Beetle and made a quick U-turn on Ventura before she could fall into the depths of his blue eyes and change her mind.

  Chapter Two

  Two days later, Ryan Becker got up from his high-backed, leather office chair and stretched. His hand-tailored shirt strained against his biceps and outlined his deeply muscled back. He looked out his window toward the mountains that surrounded Malibu. It was an unusually clear day in Los Angeles—neither fog nor smog marred the endless blue skies. He had a fine view of the pleasure piers, the water, and the topography surrounding the area. But neither his long morning meeting in Burbank nor the view could distract him from thinking about the woman with the bright yellow hair. He was one hundred percent sure she’d had the same jolt of awareness he did.

  Driving back from Burbank to Venice, across the Ventura and Hollywood freeways, then down the San Diego freeway, he couldn’t help looking for her car today as he had every moment on the road for the past two mornings
and evenings. Every Volkswagen Beetle caught his distracted eye, the yellow ones made his heart beat a rapid tattoo, and the convertibles made him break out in a sweat. He scrutinized every personalized license plate looking for her unique brand of humor. In a city of almost four million, and a metropolitan area of about ten million, he knew the chances of seeing her ever again were about one in, well, ten million. Still, looking out on the blue horizon, he couldn’t help hoping.

  Sophie’s small house had always seemed like a cozy and welcoming artists’ retreat. Suddenly it felt as empty as a funeral parlor, too big and eerily quiet. The house was modest by Los Angeles McMansion standards, but the post-World War II tract house was her pride and joy. Just the simple fact that she’d bought it with her own money gave her a heady sense of accomplishment that no put down from her family could take away.

  She had put in a lot of the sweat equity to fix up the house herself, from painting the outside a pleasing butter yellow, to sanding decades’ worth of grime and varnish from the narrow oak plank floors. When she was bored or restless, working on some aspect of the house usually took her mind off whatever was bothering her.

  But no matter how hard she tried, over the last couple of days, she couldn’t shake Sasha from her mind—nor, if she were being honest with herself, could she get images of Ryan’s handsome face and gentle nature out of her head. She tried watching TV, but even her usual critique of others’ makeup work bored her after a few minutes.

  Sophie passed the slightly warped bathroom mirror on her way to the small second bedroom she used as a den. She peered at her distorted reflection in the funky flea market mirror and imagined herself with a nose ring. She had never given that or a tongue piercing much thought, but maybe it was time to reconsider. Instead of going the body mutilation route, she opened a new pack of hair dye and turned her yellow hair purple.