A chill gripped Karly Krane, even though the mountain air was finally above seventy degrees. Today would be the first time she’d seen Thad since he walked out of her life 3,726 days ago.

Her heart thumped in synch with the car radio’s toe-tapping tune, but she wished the usual carefree bliss had followed along. She twisted the radio’s knob full volume to distract herself and avoid pondering the one thing she didn’t want to think about.

For ten years, she’d struggled to understand why. Why, after she and Thad spent a good chunk of every day together for six plus years, he decided to leave Elkridge. Leave her.

During their final three-minute phone call, she told him to never ever talk to her again. At eighteen, she had no notion of how long never-ever could last, because on that sunny spring morning, he did as she asked and disappeared from her life, only to show up again more than a decade later, wounded and alone.

The soul-slicing pain had created a festering wound, and the hurt still burned deep, buried underneath the rubble of rationalization.

If only she hadn’t promised her brother she’d look in on Thad. If only she didn’t need his help.

I guess it’s time to put the big girl panties on and get this done.

From the back of her mother’s hand-me-down red and tan Subaru hatchback, she retrieved the extra-large, folded up dog kennel and began reconstructing the metal frame next to Thad’s recently patched plank porch.

A movement spotted out of the corner of her eye hitched her breath. Thad? She swallowed her anxiety. No, just an elk passing by.

Get a grip. He doesn’t matter anymore, remember?

“Yeah. Like that’s the truth,” she mumbled, and stood to wipe her hands on the jeans she’d washed so many times the chic, manufactured threadbare was threadbare.

She opened the back passenger car door. The standard poodle mix studied her with his intelligent brown eyes and expressed his opinion of her procrastination with an impatient whine.

“Take it easy, Custer. This is for your own good.” She scratched the dog under the chin, then leaned in to kiss his nose and fluff his ears. “This is your last chance. Don’t let me down.”

Karly’s throat burned as she remembered the urine and feces stench which greeted her when she entered the hoarder’s home. She and three other shelters committed to finding homes for the animals, although the local kill shelter had already euthanized eight that couldn’t be saved. The thought of others suffering the same fate made her sick.

The large furball shifted nervously in his security halter. “You need to get it together. You hear me?” She rubbed the dog’s fuzzy chest, unclasped the buckle, then lifted the dog’s muzzle. “You’re too smart, and I don’t mean that in a good way. A little girl is depending on you. You’d better straighten up. Three weeks. That’s all we’ve got.”

The young sixty-pound male, sensing freedom, nudged past her and gave her arm a good yank when she grabbed the end of the leash. She gently snapped the lead back, reminding him of his training, before shutting the door.

“See, Custer? This is what I’ve been talking about. Stop fooling around. I need the money, and you need a forever home.”

“Talking to animals again?” The familiar voice made the goose bumps pop up on her skin and shiver. She sucked in a rush of air.

There he was. Heart-stopping, gorgeous Thad Lopez. “You scared the poop out of me.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt your lecture.”

Like a hunter tracking a deer, he watched her. Methodical. Calculating. Measuring.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, which pushed his jeans low around his thin hips and cleverly displayed his black cotton boxers. A sight she had no right to gawk at, but curiosity made her look anyway.

An army green baseball cap sat low on his forehead, and the long-sleeve performance V-neck tight across his chest made him look downright delectable. If it wasn’t for the intensity in his amber eyes, she might have sighed. Damn her breakable heart for the pang of regret.

“Why are you here, Karly?” Thad asked in a low baritone that had once been a tenor.

“You’ve changed.”

Gone were the long hair, baggy clothes, and stand-aside cocky attitude. And looking him directly in the eye wasn’t possible anymore. He’d sprung up a couple more inches.

“You haven’t.” He scratched his shoulder to relieve an itch. “Your hair is a bit longer, and you’ve grown some curves, but that’s about it.”

Curves? Figures you’d notice. She gestured to the large, curly mutt looking at her with those please-don’t-leave-me eyes. She forced her attention back to Thad. “Rumor has it you’ve been looking for work.”

Thad shifted his weight off his left leg and leaned against the side of the cabin, then crossed his arms. “Are you here to offer me a job?”

His mocking disbelief almost made her get back in the car and leave. She would have if she hadn’t promised her brother, Kenny, she’d try to help Thad.

And if she didn’t need the income to save her business and her four-legged friends.

And if she didn’t believe an injured soldier returning home deserved and needed community support.

And if this wasn’t literally Custer’s last happily-ever-after chance.

All of which added up to a quadruple load of responsibility, an obligation she couldn’t ignore.

Custer circled her legs and sat on her left foot—rather than beside her where he’d been trained to sit—then released an impressive, guttural growl, perfectly expressing her feelings.

“As a matter of fact, I do have a job for you.” She raised her chin a couple of centimeters to generate a pump of courage. “I’ve partnered with several organizations who train service dogs.” Karly glanced at Custer, who at the moment was having a good scratch behind the ear, and doing his best to demonstrate that the past several days of training hadn’t made one iota of difference.

She fidgeted and cleared her throat. “I know a hunting dog isn’t the same as a service dog, but training is training. Since you were always good at figuring things out, I thought you might like to help. The pay is forty-five hundred dollars if he passes the service tests and the service family adopts him.” She rushed on, no longer certain this last-minute training idea was smart. “I keep thirty percent. You get seventy.” She swallowed hard to keep the trepidation from choking off her air. “It’s real money for a couple of weeks worth of work.”

He studied the dog, then her, his eyes narrowing with disbelief. “Double the time, and you’d be lucky to get that dog to sit properly.”

She plucked her foot out from underneath the dog’s hind leg and moved to the wire kennel to lift up the plastic protector with Custer’s fact sheet displayed inside. “A little girl in Arizona has a rare disease and requires oxygen full time. She needs a large-breed dog that can carry the tanks and follow her around, even down park slides and around the yard. The insurance company picks up most of the cost. You would be making a difference.”

“That’s not why you’re here.” The humor dancing in his eyes called her bluff. Damn you, Thad Lopez.

“Yes, it is. My kennel is overcrowded, and Custer needs a handler.” She fussed with the dog’s eyes, gently rubbing the crusty goobers out, then dithered over a piece of dried mud on his leg, doing her best to not look at the man who at one time held her whole heart and all her dreams.

Well, the “at one time” bit wasn’t quite true.

He still had that giant magnet, the one even now drawing her closer and closer and closer, like a Star Trek tractor beam. She didn’t want to feel the tug. He’d broken her heart—smashed it into a million tiny pieces—and she wouldn’t allow him to do it again.

When the silence got to be too much, she sought his face. He looked tired. No. He looked like life had dragged him out of his bed, beat the crap out of him, and left him by the side of the road.

Don’t feel sorry for him. Don’t you dare.

He dumped you. Remember?

You’re doing this for Kenny and Custer. End of story.

“I’d better go.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “It looks like you need to get back to whatever it was you’re doing…or something.” Thankfully the trembling on her insides didn’t cause her voice to jitter. She tugged on the dog’s leash. “C’mon, Custer. In you go.” The dog entered the kennel, circled and then flopped onto the metal floor before she secured the latch.

“Karly. That dog is not why you’re here.”

It really sucks letting people into your heart. They get to know every mood, tic, and nuance. There isn’t any place to hide or find refuge from the hurt when things sour.

“I’m here to offer you work which will help a little girl who needs a service dog.” At least that wasn’t a lie, but the excuse didn’t answer his question. Guilt nibbled on the edges of her integrity.

Wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans, she retreated to her car’s hatchback to grab the donated items. “Here are Custer’s supplies.”

He didn’t move, or offer to help. He just watched her drop the dog’s printed ceramic bowls and a twenty-pound bag of dry dog food by the crate.

“You should call Kenny.” She made the wide-arc trek back to her car, maintaining her distance. “He’s worried about you being alone out here on the ridge.”

“I need the quiet.”

You need something, all right. She twirled the key ring around her finger, in time with her whirling misgivings. “Kenny’s worried. He thinks you should be around people. Not spend so much time by yourself.”

The muscles across her shoulders tightened when he shifted to rub his unshaven jaw. The red, puckered skin on his hand disappearing under his shirtsleeve drew her sympathy. He noticed, and his expression hardened. He obviously didn’t want her sympathy. In fact, his go-away attitude made it clear he didn’t want anything from her.

She clenched her fist and let stubbornness and the keys press into her palm. “Something happened over there—something bad—didn’t it?” She had trouble drawing in a complete breath, because she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear the truth.

“Tell Kenny I'm all right.” Thad brushed off her comment as easily as a mosquito.

“Tell him yourself.” She dropped her shoulders to keep the concern from destroying her need to remain indifferent. “You’ve been in the zone. You know what it’s like to get letters and phone calls. Soldiers need to hear from people back home—remind them who they’re fighting for.”

She closed her eyes and wished she hadn’t blurted out that last bit. “Elkridge supports our military veterans.” She drew a line in the red soil with her cross trainers, then squinted into the sun. “That’s what people in small towns do, right?”

A shadow drifted over his eyes, and he became eerily still, except for his fingers twitching randomly at his side. Nothing in his relaxed stance showed alertness, but still, after all these years, she could sense the underlying emotional turbulence that had always plagued him.

What are you thinking, Lopez?

Thad walked to the dog crate with a slight limp and lifted the eight by eleven plastic envelope holding the training details. He shook his head. “You need to take this dog with you.” His whispered statement barely carried on the breeze. His expression escalated to serious. “I can’t do this. I can’t train him.”

“Look, I know this is last minute and all, but—”

“No.” His voice was raw in a way she’d never heard from him before. “You don’t understand.”

Custer’s ears drooped, reflecting how she felt. This wounded soldier was his last hope—her last hope.

The overlarge mutt stood and shifted uneasily in the wire box.

“No, you don’t understand.” She gestured to Custer. “By law, I can only keep a specific number of animals in my kennel. I’m over the limit now. If you can’t train or keep Custer, then someone needs to take him back to the kill shelter, and that won’t be me. You hear me? I. Will. Not. Do. It.” She opened the driver’s side door, slid behind the wheel, and rolled the window down. “If you don’t want to train him, you take him to the kill shelter. The address is on the paperwork.”

He took a step toward her. “Karly, don’t you dare put this on me.”

“The way I see it, you’ve been asking for work around town, and I’ve just given you work. Is it the responsibility you don’t want, or is it because of me? If it’s just me…that’s a pathetic excuse for refusing to help a little girl.”

“Our history has nothing to do with this, and you know it.”

She studied the former soldier, who looked both comfortably familiar and vastly different. “When it comes to you, I don’t know squat. What I do know is I have a business to run. Every day I have to decide which animals to keep and which animals I can’t save. I can’t keep them all.” Like I couldn’t keep you.

Thad studied the dog for a good long while before his head dropped onto his chest in acceptance. “Give me overnight to think about it.”

Cautious. Introspective. Calculating. Things never changed.

At least he’d given an inch. If he’d set his mind against helping, nothing would have changed it, short of the sun falling out of the sky.

“Then think about it—hard. I meant what I said. You’re Custer’s last chance. I know you can train him. You’re the only one I know who’s more stubborn than he is.”

She rolled up the window, and then shoved the gear into reverse, spinning the car around so fast she lost sight of him in the cloud of dust.

A seething cauldron of emotions boiled her senses to the point of numbness. She shoved the car into drive.

Halfway back to town, she realized the one question she needed to have answered for so long had gone unanswered.

Then again, maybe discovering the real reason he left town wouldn’t help.

Sometimes knowing the why of things didn’t heal a hurt…and this hurt had almost destroyed her.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Thad glared at Custer.

The dog gave him a woe-is-me look that just about did Thad in. He’d sworn never to train another dog. Damn mutts could burrow in and tear a man in two when they paid the price for their loyalty.

He fisted his hand, fighting back the memories blowing into his head like a sandstorm—memories of trauma, pain, loss.

With every tick of the second hand, details came trotting back to remind him of his time in the hospital, and worse, reminding him of the brotherhood killed by his carelessness. Loneliness and isolation were his legacy in the aftermath. He’d thought he wanted to get away, disappear, but the past few weeks had proven he didn’t know what the hell he wanted.

Custer whined and pushed his nose through the metal grid. “I’m okay. It’s okay.” Thad poked his fingers through the metal holes to provide comfort and a scratch.

The vibration of his phone brought him back, and he looked at the number. A smile meandered into place. “S’up, Neon?”

“How’s that mountain life treating you? See any bears yet?”

The friendly conversation eased his knotted muscles and wrestled down the relentless voice in his head. Day and night, the sound of his father’s disgust rattled on and on and on. He couldn’t sleep or eat, and sometimes he wondered whether breathing was still the right thing to do.

Thad shifted to look at the mountain ridge behind his cabin. “They’re around. Elk. Moose. Mountain Lions. Fox. They’re all here. You can look them up on the internet if you don’t know what they look like.”

“Bugger off.”

Thad managed to summon a laugh, something he hadn’t been able to accomplish in weeks, and all because of Neil Doucette. “Just because you’re a city boy from New Orleans who thrives on spicy food and women, doesn’t mean I live in Dulltown, USA. What’s up?” Thad asked, trying to keep a gut-wrenching regret from seeping into his voice. “Ready to go back to work?”

“It won’t be the same without you, buddy. I always thought you’d be a lifer.”

“If it weren’t for that IED, I’d still be there.” Thad closed his eyes, fighting against the sounds and sights and smells of war.

The first day of basic training, he and Neil were as different as odd and even. Seven months of training and bullet-flying conditions created moments where opposites could become best friends. He counted Neon among the best.

“Nothing will ever be the same.” A heated blade of guilt slid into Thad’s gut.

“Catch your meaning, Monk. I wish—”

“Don’t be getting all pansy on me.” Thad dropped his head and closed his eyes to lock down the memories. “No looking back. Remember? You promised.”

“You got it.”

The silence weighted his shoulders like a sixty-pound rucksack on a ten-mile uphill march. The cool mountain breeze brushed across his skin.

“Hey, have you seen Kenny’s sister?” Neon pushed to break through the conversational lull. “From her recent picture, she’s a hottie.”

“Her name’s Karly, and, yeah, I’ve seen her.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Don’t tell me you’re still flipping that coin—heads or tails.” Neon’s chuckle reminded him of prairie dog chatter. “Every girl who ever turned your head looked just like her. You need to pull your head out and decide one way or another. You could have been killed protecting Kenny. And don’t give me any of that protect-your-brother bull. You’ve gotten in more shit shielding his six than at any other time. I don’t get you, man.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s history.”

“That’s crap, Monk, and you know it. You have the hots for this woman, or you wouldn’t have dismissed every girl I’ve ever introduced you to.”

“Maybe if you introduced me to women who wanted more than a meal and a roll in the sack with a guy in uniform, then maybe I wouldn’t have bailed.”

“Dude. Women are all the same.”

Not all women. “Neon. You’ve got a red neon sign with the words ‘come to daddy’ plastered on your chest. One of these days, you’ll want something different. Something steadier.”

“I doubt it. If you want to stay a monk the rest of your life, that’s your problem.” Neon gave another snort and a chuckle. “Hey…I forgot. Did you ask her yet?”

No confessions here. “Didn’t get a chance. Besides, she wouldn’t apologize.” She didn’t before. “She was too busy dropping off a dog.”

“A dog? That’s just harsh.”

Thad’s gut seized and knotted. “She doesn’t know. No one stateside does except my mom and sister, and they’re in Texas. I’d like to keep it that way.”

He’d spoken in such a hushed tone, he wasn’t sure if he’d said the words aloud. His brain traffic seemed rather congested these days.

“Hey, Thad? You okay, man? ’Cause if you need me to come up there and kick your butt, I’m still game.”

“No. I’m okay. Just need some space to breathe, and a few months to get the dust out of my pores.”

His voice remained stable and level, but the tilt-o-whirl of life unbalanced him. No matter what Karly believed, another dog wouldn’t help him find his steady.

“Didn’t you tell me Colorado was lacking in the air department?”

A laugh managed to leak out as Thad shook his head. “You mean oxygen, not air.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I swear, sometimes I wonder how you made sergeant.”

“I keep telling you. Those Air Force ladies have multiple levels of talent when it comes to tutoring.”

“The next time I take some classes, I’ll keep that in mind. However, you should stick with the Army women. I wouldn’t want that large, protruding object on the front of your face to get busted up again. It would ruin that pretty Hollywood profile of yours.”

“I can handle those boys in blue.”

“I’m sure you can, but when you get a nasty one, it’s somehow always perfectly timed to get the whole platoon involved. Keep in mind, I won’t be there to bail your sorry ass out anymore.”

“Go to hell.”

Already there, dude. Already there. Thad released a self-deprecating snort of humor. At least he could still laugh, even if the cause was a bit off-kilter. The IED hadn’t taken that from him, even if it had taken pretty much everything else.

He gave the dog watching him a long study. “Hey, Neon. I’d better run. I’ve got a dog I’m supposed to teach a thing or two.”

“If anyone can train that dog, it’s you.”

“Thanks for the vote and call. Hey, and watch out for Kenny, would you?” ‘Cause Karly would lose it if anything happened to her brother.

“Will do, Monk. You have my number. Keep in mind the phone works both ways.”

Yeah, but I can’t handle hearing about the guys right now. “Catch you later.”

Thad shoved his phone back in his pocket and slowly lowered into a squat in front of Custer’s cage—searing pain blasting up his leg to the middle of his back. He gritted his teeth and stuck his fingers through the wire to give the dog a good sniff.

“Bet you didn’t know George Armstrong Custer was my favorite United States Army commander.” But Karly did. “He’s a screwup…just like me. I joined the military to show my dad I could take a bullet—tried damned hard to make it happen. I should be dead.” He snorted in disgust, “I couldn’t even manage to do that right. I got my friends killed instead. How pathetic is that?”

He opened the kennel and let the dog smell him some more. Custer turned to look down the road with a sorrowful face.

“You’ll see her again. Don’t worry. But here’s your first lesson.” He slid his hand gently over the dog’s head. “Women are trouble. Heaps of trouble. They can kick you in the balls and break your heart. Stay away from them.” He gave the dog a good scratch behind the ear. “That is, unless the female in question is under the age of four and needs you to carry her oxygen tank.”