Groomed for Love

Groomed for Love
Helen R. Myers

Is she too perfect?Dog groomer Rylie Quinn lights up the local animal clinic with her charming laugh, but there’s a dark secret lingering behind the radiant redhead’s bright smile. One man seems determined to dig up Rylie’s past…and gets under her skin in a way that no one ever has before…As Assistant DA Noah Prescott’s investigation reveals secrets she’d rather stay under wraps, the heat they generate flares out of control. But when Noah finally learns Rylie’s story, he’ll have to decide whether his desire for the truth is more important than winning the heart of the woman he’s come to love…

“What difference does it make to you, anyway?” she replied, feeling a little desperate now.

Her resistance was crumbling under the power of this somber, intense Noah.

As soon as she uttered those words, she wished she could take them back, because he started to walk toward her. The expression in his gorgeous but compelling brown eyes had Rylie backing away, completely forgetting the truck behind her, until she bumped into sunset-warmed metal. From bra line to hips, she felt the heat; however, that was tepid compared to what his look stirred inside her.

When Noah was toe-to-toe with her, he framed her face with his hands. “Only this,” he whispered against her mouth.

* * *

Sweet Springs, Texas: Where love springs eternal!

Groomed for Love

Helen R. Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

HELEN R. MYERS is a collector of two- and four-legged strays, and lives deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. She cites cello music and bonsai gardening as favorite relaxation pastimes, and still edits in her sleep—an accident, learned while writing her first book. A bestselling author of diverse themes and focus, she is a three-time RITA

Award nominee, winning for Navarrone in 1993.

Contents

Chapter One (#u281f958a-0b69-5ab7-96a5-9ad1e465b84e)

Chapter Two (#uf59e16de-9d13-5e27-95f9-3c69b7b81d47)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One

“Rylie, sweetheart, you are the best thing to happen to Sweet Springs since they started putting in drive-through windows at pharmacies.”

Rylie Quinn, the new groomer at Sweet Springs Animal Clinic, grinned at Pete Ogilvie, the eldest of the four war veterans who conducted a daily coffee klatch in the corner of the building’s reception area. It was she who’d dubbed them the four musketeers after characters in the famous Alexandre Dumas novel, and Pete himself Athos, after the eldest of the adventurers, because the former marine was the boldest yet most complicated of the group. He also had somehow taken Jerry Platt under his wing. At sixty-six, Jerry, whom she called D’Artagnan, was the youngest and had become the fourth member of the veteran group, as D’Artagnan had become the fourth musketeer in the story.

“Why, thank you, kind sir.” Holding out the hem of her maroon smock, as though it was a skirt, she offered a quick curtsy, bemused, even though the comparison was confusing. She suspected he hadn’t meant to imply that she was appreciated because she was a convenience. “All because I asked Mr. Stan if he wanted sweetener in his coffee?”

“That’s right! None of us can tell him that he’s being an old grouch the way you can and still bring a smile to his face.”

Stanley Walsh—aka Porthos, as far as Rylie was concerned—was sixty-nine, the second youngest, and an ex-navy man, as well as a retired master sheet-metal fabricator. Sometimes—like today—his hangovers caused him to grouse a little more than usual, which was saying quite a bit, since Stanley had a dry sense of humor to begin with.

“That, along with being as bright and as pretty as a black-eyed Susan, which is about the only damned flower that can survive the summer like we had with any grace. Whew, can you believe it officially became autumn yesterday?” Pete asked around the room. “If you hold that front door open for too long, I swear those bags of dog food stacked on the shelves over there are gonna pop like popcorn in a microwave.”

As others grunted their agreement, Rylie said, “I’m sorry for the strain it is on animals, but I sure don’t mind it being warm. I was born and raised in the desert country of California. That said, I’m getting seriously partial to your trees here, especially the pines.” She had arrived in this Central East Texas community early in July, in time to attend Dr. Gage Sullivan’s marriage to Brooke Bellamy last month, the niece of the lady who used to be Gage’s neighbor. That neighborhood, as well as several parts of town, was enhanced by pockets of the pines and hardwood trees that had once earned the region its other name—The Piney Woods. She told the men, who had also attended the wedding, “If I had Doc and Brooke’s yard, I’d sleep with the windows open every night to listen to the breeze whispering through the trees.”

“Well, don’t try it here, even if your fancy RV’s windows are high off the ground,” Roy Quinn said from inside the reception station in the center of the room.

As usual, her uncle pretended to have as gruff a personality as any of the old-timers, but Rylie knew the middle-aged bachelor saw her as the daughter he’d never had. “I wouldn’t do that. Besides,” she reminded her only relative in the area, “as far back as those trees are beyond the pasture, it’s easier to hear the highway traffic out front.” The clinic was on the service road of a state highway that ran north to south on the east side of town. The overpass that led to downtown was only a few dozen yards beyond the clinic’s parking lot.

“Good. Keep those miniblinds shut at night, too. What we lack in woods, we probably make up for in Peeping Toms and lechers, and word’s getting around about you and that RV being parked in back.”

As he spoke, he glanced over her shoulder to fork his fingers from his eyes to Jerry, who tended to think of himself as quite the ladies’ man. Recently, Jerry Platt had the bad judgment to get involved with a certain widow in town, who had really been angling to get closer to Doc. It had caused quite a stir among the old-timers, who feared losing the congenial atmosphere at the clinic, and they were keeping Jerry on notice, too.

Rylie shook her head, thinking Uncle Roy was being silly. Jerry was more than a decade older than him! Besides, he’d been nothing but a gentleman to her. Noticing Jerry’s embarrassment, she leaned over the counter to whisper, “I’m twenty-five, not fifteen.”

Roy grunted. “You’d have to dye your hair gray to convince anyone. I’ll bet you still get carded when you go out for a beer.”

“My last beer was a week ago with you guys at the VFW hall, and you know they would serve me anything because I was with you.” However, he was right; she did look ridiculously young, but what could you do when you had red hair and a squeaky-clean face that made you perfect for the front of a cereal box but was never going to trigger wolf whistles as a cover girl’s would? Something else she didn’t have going for her was height—she hadn’t grown an inch above her five foot three since the seventh grade. To redirect Roy’s focus, she reached across the counter to straighten his wrinkled shirt collar lying awkwardly over his maroon clinic jacket. “If you don’t like to iron, at least take your clothes out of the dryer before they dry all mangled. Better yet, let me do your ironing for you.”

“Don’t change the subject.” Roy playfully swatted away her hand away. “Just remember that I have to answer to your parents if anything happens to you here.”

She thought about her parents, who were considering becoming foster parents since she, too, had “abandoned the nest,” as her parents put it. Her older, adopted brother had struck out on his own four years earlier, finding his career restoring old homes on the East Coast. “Nothing is going to happen to me, Uncle Roy. I was born under a lucky star, remember?”

It was her longtime joke, ever since learning that she had been born one night on the side of the road after the family car had suffered a flat on the way to the hospital. When asked as a child, “Which star?” she would spread her arms wide and declare, “All of them!” The truth was that Roy had been a lifesaver in helping her get a job here, and Rylie intended to quickly make him see that she was fine on her own before he found out the full truth about why she had made the move.

“Well, Ms. Lucky,” he said, nodding toward the front, “your first appointment is arriving—along with her sourpuss courier.”

Noting his grimace, a confused Rylie glanced over her shoulder to see a sleek black BMW sedan pull up to the front door. She couldn’t stop a little sigh as she recognized that once again Ramon Bustillo wasn’t here in Mrs. Prescott’s Cadillac.

“I wonder how Mrs. P talked His Highness into delivering her pooch again.”

“Behave.” Rylie looked from her uncle to the four musketeers, to see if they were listening, then back to the expensive car. She knew why Uncle Roy called Noah Prescott that—Noah wasn’t only the son of Mrs. Audra Prescott, one of the state’s most admired ladies in society, he was also District Attorney Vance Ellis Underwood’s assistant and expected successor—and he acted the part. As a result, her uncle didn’t care for him, calling him a “stuffed shirt,” and, after two meetings with the man, Rylie had to admit Roy had some cause for his opinion. However, Noah was maddeningly sexy, too, with his intense brown eyes, serious five-o’clock shadow that tended to keep her from having a clear view of the slight cleft in his chin, and gorgeous, wavy brown hair with enviable gold highlights. The first time she met him, she’d concluded that he must shave three times a day to keep the elegant image his tailored suits and expensive shoes exuded. He undoubtedly went for a weekly manicure, too. His long-fingered, pianist’s hands had made her want to shove her banged-up, laborer’s hands into her jeans’ back pockets.

“Ramon must have experienced some kind of problem again,” she replied. Ramon Bustillo wasn’t only Mrs. Prescott’s driver; he was the caretaker at Haven Land, the family estate. Last time, Ramon had needed to get Mrs. Prescott to an early doctor’s appointment, so Noah had brought her dog, and it was evident to anyone with eyes that Noah couldn’t wait to be rid of the adorable bichon frise, registered as Baroness Baja Bacardi. It had been equally clear that the little dog couldn’t wait to get into friendlier hands, as well.

“I suspect having an audience won’t improve his mood any, so I’m going to take MG and Humphrey out back. C’mon, Humph,” he called to Doc’s basset hound. “MG, pretty girl,” he added to the large, black retriever-mix dog. “Let’s go out.”

“Thanks, Uncle Roy.” Seeing Noah struggle with closing the car door, she started toward the front door to help, only to stumble. “Oh!”

She knew immediately what had happened—instead of following her uncle’s directive, MG had come to stand beside her as though waiting for permission. Luckily, Rylie had good reflexes and grabbed the edge of the counter before falling face-first to the tile floor.