Chapter Two
Garrett had to face the fact that there was something seriously wrong with this girl. She was pretty, sure, with long runner’s legs and those gorgeous eyes that looked right down to a man’s soul. She moved with grace, obviously had a decent brain and an incredibly lengthy tongue, if she’d just put it to good use.
“Lola, baby,” he whispered. “Just a little more. Please.”
Lola stared at him, not defiant, not scared, still as lost and distant and unreadable as when she’d arrived. It had been a long time since a female of any kind had looked at Garrett Kilcannon quite that way. Especially a rescue. They were usually ravenous for his kind of affection.
He nudged the bowl closer, the scrape on tile an echo of his frustration that he couldn’t fix this girl. “You have to eat, sweetheart.”
But the dog stayed flat on the kennel floor, head on the ground, zero interest in the food for the fifth day in a row. She’d been here for almost two weeks now, and at first, he had seen all kinds of potential in this border collie-Aussie shepherd mix who had been left at a shelter about an hour away.
She’d been at that shelter only one day when Marie Boswell, a volunteer who was constantly on the lookout for dogs to send to Waterford, called to tell him about this special dog who had been left with no identification or explanation.
With her well-known breed intelligence and the fact that she was clearly trained, Lola was an excellent candidate as a therapy or service dog.
If only he could get her to eat.
She’d started to shut down on her second week here, after the novelty wore off. She slipped into a mopey depression, refusing to walk, rarely going outside and, now, on a hunger strike.
He’d seen it before, but never in a dog who showed no signs of abuse or neglect. Something told him this dog was loved, and Garrett was looking at a classic case of separation depression.
They’d put her on an IV and tried hand-feeding her soft foods on the roof of her mouth. But this dog had no will to live, which caused an ache in his chest as real and strong as if the animal had reached up and taken a bite of his heart.
He’d never failed outright with a dog before, but he was beginning to think he was about to. Neither of his brothers could reach her, either, and they were both gifted dog whisperers. His sister Molly and his dad were talented vets, and they’d run every test, only to find Lola completely healthy. Darcy, his youngest sibling and the groomer, had tried to love the dog to life again, but that had failed, too.
He stood and opened Lola’s oversized kennel door a little wider, inviting her into the hall and off to the exercise area. “Want to hit the grass, Lola?”
No response. Surely her previous owner had had a word.
“Outside? Potty? Pee? Play?”
But Lola stayed frozen in her spot, staring at him, like her soul had been removed and replaced with…nothing. Damn.
“It could be a good day for you, Lola,” he said softly, tuning out the barks of other dogs along this row of the rescue section of the kennels. “We’re starting a training course, and you could be part of it.” He stepped in again and crouched down to get eye to eye with her, reaching for her head, but she turned. Not like she was scared, but sad that he was not whoever it was Lola missed.
“Come on, baby. Look at me. If I can just get your eyes…”
Suddenly, her long floppy ears perked up a bit, and she sniffed, her gaze past Garrett with the first hint of interest he’d seen in a while. Someone must have come into the kennel. Probably Molly, who’d been carefully monitoring Lola’s health and was as worried about the dog as he was.
“Come here, girl,” he coaxed the dog again, reaching for a treat but knowing from experience they didn’t work with her.
Her gaze stayed past him, and she totally ignored him. “Lola.” He leaned closer, narrowing his eyes, willing her to obey. “I’m begging you, baby girl.”
“Oh, excuse me.”
He turned at the female voice, blinking at the sight of a woman’s silhouette, backlit from the windows and skylight.
That was so not Molly. Not with endless legs in tight blue jeans and knee-high black boots that didn’t have a scuff. Molly carried a vet’s bag, not a fancy purse. And she sure didn’t smell like she’d rolled around in cinnamon and clover.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Before the woman answered, Lola got to her feet and moved to the front of the kennel, as interested in the new arrival as he was.
“I don’t know yet.” Her voice was soft enough that he wanted to get closer so he didn’t miss a word.
“Are you here for training?”
Lola barked once—the first time in many days—then got a little closer to sniff the woman.
Could she be Lola’s owner? “Is she yours?” He stood so he could see her without the blinding sunshine making a halo around her.
“Oh, no. I’m here for…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at him.
“A rescue?” he said hopefully.
She searched his face, looking like she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.
He studied her right back. She had the reddish-gold hair of a Vizsla or setter, shiny and straight and cut right at her chin so it grazed the sides of a delicate jaw. Big green eyes reminded him of North Carolina grass after a heavy summer shower, but they were flecked with curiosity and humor and…something vaguely familiar.
More than vaguely. Definitely familiar.
“Are you delivering a dog?” he suggested, still trying to figure out why a perfect stranger would be wandering the kennels. Except, was she a stranger? She might qualify as perfect, but he could have sworn he knew this woman.
And by the way Lola looked at her, she might have had the same feeling. Not full-on recognition, but more trust and response than he’d seen from that dog before.
“Garrett, you don’t remember me.”
Unbelievable, but true. “I don’t,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”
“No worries. It’s been seventeen years, and the last time you saw me, we were in a different kennel.” She pointed over her shoulder. “An older one, much smaller. Over there.”
He searched her face and scoured his memory as he did the math. Seventeen years ago, he’d been eighteen. “Did you rescue one of our foster dogs?”
She smiled and angled her head. “If anyone was a foster around here, it was me.”
He felt his jaw loosen as recognition hit. Molly’s friend. The cute one he’d kissed once. “Jessie? Jessie Curtis?” The name popped into his head.
Laughing, she nodded and opened her arms. “The very same.”
“Holy…wow.” He stepped forward to give her a quick hug. And steal another one for the pure pleasure of how warm and soft she felt. “You’ve grown up.”
A laugh bubbled up as she inched back, but still kept her hands lightly on his arms. “I could say the same.”
“But you look…” Amazing. “Really grown up.”
She finally let go and crossed her arms as if protecting herself or fighting the urge to hug again. She tilted her head, making her hair swing and graze her shoulder. “You saying I look old, Garrett?”
“Not at all. Older and…” Gorgeous. “But I see it now. Little Jessie Curtis who came to play with Molly.”
That made her laugh, and he remembered the giggle of a freckled kid who was glued to Molly…until she transformed into a very pretty teenager. She was a fixture at the Kilcannon dinner table when he was in high school. A little girl who suddenly became not so little the summer before he went to college.
“I had no idea you were coming to visit. Why didn’t Molly tell us?”
“Molly doesn’t know,” she said. “No one does. I decided to come back to Bitter Bark to see the town where I grew up and couldn’t resist a visit to Waterford Farm.” She gestured around. “Which has changed quite a bit.”
“We’re the largest dog training and rescue facility in the state now,” he said. “My family’s built…whoa.”
He lost his train of thought as Lola, forgotten with the new arrival, stepped even closer and nuzzled her snout against Jessie’s boot.
“Hello there.” Jessie instantly bent over to pet the dog.
“That’s amazing,” he said, automatically reaching to Lola’s collar since Jessie was a stranger, and Lola, while docile, still hadn’t been trained by him. “Lola’s suffering from a pretty bad case of the doggie blues.”
“Do doggies get the blues?” Jessie rubbed her hand along Lola’s fluffy tan and white head while Garrett watched Lola’s tail ticktock with the closest thing to joy he could remember with this dog. He hadn’t seen that tail swish once, in fact.
“They do, after being moved or losing someone they love. She was a stray, so we don’t know a thing about her. Except that she sure likes you. She won’t go to anyone.”
“Ahh.” She scratched Lola’s head. “Wonder why?”
He shook his head, smiling because the whole morning had taken an unexpectedly positive turn. “Dogs are like that. They like certain people and don’t like others. Scents, pheromones, body language. It’s like people. Sometimes there’s just…instant chemistry.”
She looked up at him and held his gaze.
“Instant chemistry?” Her smile dazzled.
“It happens,” he murmured, unable to look away as the slightest color brightened her cheeks.
“Well, I’ll have to remember that,” she said, shifting her attention back to Lola. “We have chemistry, pooch.”
“And it looks like you have some experience in dog handling. Do you have one?”
“No, I don’t think my two roommates and undersized Brooklyn apartment could handle that.”
She lived in New York with roommates, which meant she wasn’t married. “What do you do, Jessie?”
“I’m a writer,” she said, straightening but keeping a light hand on Lola’s head. “So how’s everyone at Waterford these days? Does the whole family work here?”
“Just about,” he said. “Well, Aidan’s in the military overseas, and my mom…” He frowned. “I don’t know if you know my mother passed away about three years ago.”
Her shoulders dropped. “I know. I’m so sorry. I loved her like she was my own mother. Often wished she was,” she added wistfully.
He nodded his thanks. “It was tough, losing her so young. But she’s been smiling down on Waterford ever since. Her passing turned out to be the catalyst we needed to start this business.”
Lola circled once, taking a good sniff of Jessie, then looked up at her to bark again.
“I haven’t heard her bark in days. Good girl, Lola.” He reached to pet her, but Lola stepped closer to Jessie, making him chuckle. “Honestly, this dog has done nothing but confound me until you showed up.”
Lola started to walk a little, glancing over her shoulder at Jessie, a plea in her eyes.
“What does she want?” Jessie asked.
“I’d say she’s ready to go outside now and wants you with her.” Garrett couldn’t keep the unabashed wonder out of his voice. “Did you wear pheromones or something?”
“Nothing more than usual.”
“Can you go with her? I’ve been trying to get her out for hours.”
“Of course.” She followed Lola, who suddenly broke into a trot, but checked for Jessie every two steps.
He hung back a second, long enough to watch the two of them get ahead and to appreciate the incredible progress that Lola made.
And how damn fine Jessie Curtis looked in jeans.
Whatever pheromones she was giving off, they sure were working.
* * *
She couldn’t do this.
Jessie was already a nervous wreck, and it wasn’t because Garrett Kilcannon had grown from a really cute teenage boy to a flat-out dime as an adult.
She couldn’t stand there and lie to him. She’d already done enough research on him and on Waterford to know the answers to questions a casual “visitor” wouldn’t know.
Of course, she’d found Annie Kilcannon’s obituary and had cried because she hadn’t even known the dear woman had died. And there were plenty of stories in the Bitter Bark Banner about the new facility at Waterford while it was under construction.
Before that, there were stories about the handsome young entrepreneur whose love of animals inspired him to launch a pet-photo-sharing social media site almost ten years ago, and it became an Internet sensation. She knew all that already.
But after that company sold to mega-site FriendGroup, and Forbes ran that nasty piece on Garrett’s breach of contract and refusal to run the subsidiary, there was nothing in the media about him. Not even a picture.
Which was partially why she was ill-prepared for how stinking hot he was in person. Tall, built, dark, and he still had a set of dimples that ought to be illegal.
Of course, she’d forgotten that a slow, Southern drawl could be so sexy. He’d grown his hair a little, so it fell over his collar in silky black waves. He wore that little bit of whisker growth that on some men looked calculated, but on him looked…like morning sex would leave a little burn.
Morning sex?
She’d just stood and lied to him. Which made her nothing but a second-rate journalist with zero ethics. She had no right whatsoever to stand here and think about morning sex.
She’d have to tell him something. Something that was at least close to the truth so she could find out if there was any hope in hell that he’d do this interview. If the answer was no, then she wasn’t sticking around Waterford to wallow in memories of a life she’d never had. She’d haul butt back to New York and find another interview subject, because she wasn’t going to come in second.
“So Waterford looks different to you?” he asked, catching up easily with Jessie and the dog.
“Everything looks different.” She glanced up at him, drinking in the sight of Garrett’s “black Irish” looks, all dark hair and achingly blue eyes. He was no longer a lanky teenager, but a well-built man who filled out a white T-shirt and jeans to perfection. “Well, the house looks the same,” she said, realizing she was staring at him. “Do you live there?”
“Oh, no. I have a house closer to town, but my Gramma Finnie moved back in after my mom died,” he said, his gaze drifting to the main house that sat on a rise overlooking the hills and beyond to the crests of the Blue Ridge Mountains. “And Darcy lives there when she’s not scratching her travel itch. So Dad’s not alone, which is good.”
She studied the butter yellow clapboard farmhouse with dark green shutters and multiple rooflines from years of Mrs. Kilcannon building additions and remodeling the historic home. With a wraparound porch, giant shade trees, and three chimneys that were invariably puffing smoke in the winter, Waterford still had the ability to dig into her heart and twist.
It wasn’t the house, which was North Carolina picture-perfect. Anyone could build a pretty house. It was the essence of warmth, family, love, and joy that permeated every corner of this place. Waterford was a home, and the Kilcannons were special.
Longing as real as it had been when she was a young girl curled up from her chest and squeezed her throat.
“It’s still so beautiful,” she managed to say.
“Sure is. It was so easy to come back and build this business.”
Which led right to the heart of her first question as an interviewer: Why did he and half his siblings leave one of the most well-known, successful companies in the world and come back to Bitter Bark and start a dog rescue and training facility?
But if she asked that, had the interview started? Didn’t she owe him the truth first?
“It was all my dad’s brilliant idea,” he said without any prompting. Because he thought she was an old friend.
“Really?”
“The day after my mother died, we were all out back with some of the fosters when my dad came out and blew our minds.”
“How?” She tried to imagine the scene, but could think only of how much this massive brood must have hurt when they lost Annie, a strong, beautiful, joyous woman who’d never seemed to get thrown by the chaos that reigned in her house.
“He started…walking.”
She frowned, not following. “Alone?”
“Nope. He walked over here where there was nothing but grass”—he gestured to the long, large building they’d just left—“and told us this would be the new main kennel. Then he took us over there.” This time, he pointed to another, two-story clapboard structure with long wings off both sides. “That would be classroom training and student apartments. Then, the rubble pile behind it.”
“Rubble pile?”
“It is now. Then it was a field. Now it’s specially designed to train detection dogs. And past that is a huge training field with a section where therapy dogs are trained, and over there, on the other side? That’s Molly’s vet business and Darcy’s grooming shop. All of it built around this training pen.” He indicated the large, fenced-in space that felt like a heart in the center of it all.
“Dad described it all and asked if we wanted to make that happen. And if so, he’d give us the land right then and there.” He grinned. “It didn’t take too much thinking to say yes.”
So that’s why he left his old life. None of that was in Forbes. But Mac was right—Garrett Kilcannon had a story tailor-made for ITAL. “The whole thing is so brilliant, and so…Kilcannon.”
He laughed. “You know they call my dad the Dogfather for a reason. And that day, as he likes to tell the story, he made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. All six of us each got an equal part of the property with the stipulation that we turn Waterford Farm into a world-class canine facility.”
Jessie ached to take out a notebook or her phone to start recording the family-based history, which she knew would be an emotional underpinning for her story. The story he didn’t know she wanted to write yet.
Guilt slithered up her spine.
“There’s more than what you see here, too,” he continued, pride in every syllable. “We have walking trails specially designed for dogs and a law enforcement K-9 training park where those guys”—he pointed to a pack of German shepherds in a smaller pen-within-a-pen a few hundred feet away—“are headed in a few minutes. The K-9 law enforcement division is run by Liam. Do you remember my oldest brother?”
“He scared me a little,” she admitted.
“Mr. Tall, Dark, and Menacing scares everyone. He was a military dog handler, and now he has put together one of the top K-9 training programs in the country. Police and sheriff departments from all over the country bring dogs and trainers to Waterford.”
“And you run the rescue operation?”
“More or less,” he said, slipping his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “I back up Shane on all the civilian training stuff, manage the staff. His group does private training, therapy and service dog training, and special projects. But my heart is with the rescue aspect.”
“And you said Aidan is in the military, right?” A question any old friend would ask about her friend’s pesky little brother who was always pranking them.
Garrett gave a slow smile at the mention of his younger brother. “Dude’s a beast. Literally, a Night Stalker.”
Her eyes widened. “What’s that?”
“He’s a special ops helicopter pilot, currently stationed somewhere he can’t tell us. He can fly anything, though, and when this tour is over and he can get out, I’m trying to get him home to fly rescue dogs to new owners around the country. I think we can have one of the most sophisticated rescue-placement operations in the country.”
More emotional gold falling from his lips.
She let her gaze scan the breathtaking scenery, the journalist in her already thinking of ways to describe the stunning setting for a remarkable business…so different from the high-tech world where Garrett used to work.
It all begged so many questions in her curious head, the story threads were already starting to pull her in different directions. She had to tell him.
“Garrett, uh, you know I mentioned I’m a writer.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry. I’m blabbering on about Waterford. What do you write? Novels?” He lifted his brows. “’Cause that would be a cool job.”
“No, maybe someday, but now I’m working as a journalist. I write articles.”
“A journalist.” That easygoing drawl suddenly developed a slight edge. “What kind of articles?”
In-depth profiles of people like you. But with that admission, this conversation would likely end. She just knew it. The only thing written in the last three years about Garrett Kilcannon were the words declined to comment.
As much as she wanted to tell him the whole truth, and she would, she would have to, she wasn’t ready to leave the sunshine and glory of Waterford Farm quite yet. A wave of déjà vu nearly knocked her over, as she remembered the last night she’d slept here and how she’d clung to Molly when her mother and sister waited in the car to take her to the airport so she could fly to Minnesota…alone.
“I write for an online magazine,” she finally answered.
He searched her face for a few seconds, a whole lot of indecipherable emotions flashing in his blue eyes. Suddenly, his gaze flicked away, toward the dog they’d brought out here. With each passing second, Lola managed to scoot her long body an inch closer to Jessie’s boot.
Exactly the opposite of Garrett, who seemed to be drawing backward, inward, and away.
“I better get this dog back in to see if we can feed her,” he said quickly. “If you want to say hi to Molly, she’s in town this morning. She had a surgery to do in her practice there, but she’ll be back. You can hang out and…have fun. I guess I’ll see you around, Jessie.”
In other words, good riddance. Her heart dropped at the sudden change from interest to ice. “Yeah, okay.”
“Come on, Lola.”
The dog had gotten her whole body onto Jessie’s boots and curled around to effectively hold her in place. “Lola doesn’t want me to leave,” she said on a laugh that she hoped covered the hurt in her voice.
“Lola.” He crouched down to slide his fingers under her collar, but then pulled them out, slowly standing again. “She’s been so unhappy, I hate to make her move.”
“I could just stand here for a while,” she joked.
He laughed. “Sorry, but I don’t think—”
“Who do we have here?”
Jessie turned at the booming voice and felt her whole face brighten at the sight of Dr. Kilcannon, the Dogfather, the best father, coming out from the house toward them.
“Oh, hello!” she called. As soon as she took a step, Lola jumped and slinked away, wary again.
Garrett snagged her collar. “I’m going to take her in. Go say hi to my dad. I’m sure he’ll remember you.”
“Okay.” The brush-off stung, but she hid it.
“Good to see you, Jessie,” Garrett said over his shoulder, but something told her…it wasn’t that good. And it was most likely the last time.
On a sigh, she waved to Dr. Kilcannon. At least she’d have a chance to chat with him before she had to leave Waterford…as disappointed and unfulfilled as she had the first time.