Irresistible Force (3 page)

If he hadn’t been a police officer she might have caught him off guard, but he was accustomed to dealing with suspects. The bite hurt but her knee bounced harmlessly off the thigh he lifted to deflect her jab. He did lose his hat as she swung a slap in his direction before dancing away.

The hellcat palmed her phone and began jabbing numbers into it.

“Shit! Give me that!” He jerked the phone from her hand.

Shay stumbled back out of his reach but lifted her chin in triumph. “Too late! I’ve already called 911 once. You’d better leave. The police will be here any minute.”

“Dammit, lady! I
am
the police!”

As his roar of rage died away, James glanced at her phone. Sure enough, she’d dialed the emergency number. He ended the call and tucked it in his pocket. He had to give her credit. She had balls.

He swiveled his head in her direction. For the first time she came into focus as a person, and it was a revelation. She was about five six, with a thick mahogany ponytail that had been skewed to one side by their struggle. Thick dark bangs framed her eyes, which appeared darker than before and were narrowed in calculation. But to be honest, he was more interested in the fact that her hoodie had come unzipped and it was spectacularly obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She followed his pointed gaze to where the vee of her jacket had widened to the waist and the globes of her breasts were trembling with the heated rise and fall of her breath.

“Pervert!” She jerked her zipper up, her cheeks coloring with emotion, anger, or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell. The zipper didn’t budge. Cussing under her breath, she yanked again, and then a third time before it moved, locking the plastic teeth back together all the way up to her chin.

James stood staring at her a moment longer, wondering whether she’d yanked open her jacket to distract him or if it was just an accident. Either way, he was distracted. None of this had gone the way he’d expected.

He glanced over at his long-lost partner to help him regain his balance. Bogart sat up and gazed at him with a lolling-tongue expression that looked for all the world like a big fat grin.

James’s attention switched back to the woman. She had recovered her composure with surprising speed. But her expression caught him totally off guard. She wasn’t just angry; she was dead furious and ready to do battle.

He watched her judge the distance between herself and the door and then between herself and him, before she spoke. “You say you’re police? I want to see some ID. Now.”

He reached into his jacket for his badge and then held it out toward her. “Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Special Operations Division.”

Shay glanced at the shiny badge and then up into his face. If she’d been asked before this moment what her attacker looked like, all she could have described was a very angry male in camouflage clothing with a rifle.

Now she needed a whole new vocabulary.

He was young, maybe not even thirty, and tall. And he was gorgeous. He had that old-fashioned handsomeness with a broad brow and strong jaw, baby blues, spiky short dark hair, and the kind of mouth that made bad boys so irresistible. Not that it made any difference. So what if his muscular shoulders and tapered hips gave him the look of an Abercrombie & Fitch model? He had attacked her. In her home.

Shay tore her gaze away.
Stop staring.
Where was her sanity?

She drew herself up and found a safe place halfway between his chin and his belt buckle to stare at. “Why the hell would you break in here like that?”

“You’re in possession of a canine belonging to Charlotte-Mecklenburg law enforcement.”

Shay’s gaze jerked up to his face. Even his scowl was, well, damn sexy, now that she didn’t feel her life was in danger. Then understanding dawned.

She moved quickly over to stand by her pet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is my dog, Prince.”

“The hell he is! That’s my dog, Bogart.”

Both turned to gaze at the dog who had been silently watching them. The K-9 barked twice, thumping his tale in good spirits, but didn’t move an inch.

They seemed to be at an impasse.

Which was just as well, because the siren wail of a law enforcement vehicle closing in fast was filling the morning with sound.

A minute later a sheriff’s vehicle rolled to a stop in her yard.

CHAPTER THREE

“Hello, Shay.” Chief Deputy Sheriff Elijah Ward stood wide-legged on the porch of Shay’s home, surveying her through the mirrored lenses of his shades. “You make a 911 call?”

“Yes!” The deputy was one of the local enforcement officers she’d known since she was a teen. He was a big man, twenty years her senior, with a polished-pecan complexion sprinkled with chocolate freckles across his broad nose and cheeks. “I’m glad you got here so fast.”

“I was just round the bend in the lake, checking on Malcolm’s house. Everything okay?”

“No.” Shay pushed her door wide and pointed inside to the man standing in shadow several feet behind her. “This man just forced his way into my house. I want you to arrest him.”

The deputy whipped off his shades with a crooked finger as he entered the room. The stranger in question stood at ease but slowly lifted both hands as the lawman approached. “Ms. Appleton says you forced your way in here against her will.” He squinted at the man dressed as a hunter. “What do you have to say about that?”

“It’s a misunderstanding, Deputy.” James turned his right hand palm out so that his badge was in view. “I’m on a case. My name’s James Cannon, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.”

“You got a driver’s license, son?”

James duly produced it.

The deputy examined the badge and license closely then nodded in seeming satisfaction. “What brings a Charlotte officer over to this part of the state?”

“The theft of a K-9.” James lowered his hands as relief flooded through him. The deputy could have made things hard for him if he had wanted to. “This young woman is in possession of a canine in service with my police department. I came to arrest her for dog-napping.”

Shay took a step toward James. “You lying son of a—”

The deputy cut her off with a raised hand. “Dog-napping.” He continued to stare at James. “Is that a real crime?”

“Yes, sir.” James reined in his annoyance. There were still people even in law enforcement who saw K-9s as little more than tools instead of valued partners. “My canine partner was kidnapped from a vehicle in Charlotte a month ago. I doubt you got a bulletin about it all the way up here. But I’ve been following leads for weeks. It led me here. I should probably have come to the sheriff’s office first, but when I saw Bogart in this yard last night—” He noted Shay’s jerk of surprise at his mention of the night before, and filed that reaction away for later. “You could say I lost perspective.”

“Over your pet.” The deputy’s tone was still skeptical.

“Bogart’s a highly trained and crucial member of the K-9 service.”

The deputy turned his gaze on the big-eared dog who sat happily panting away at Shay’s side. “What have you got to say about this, Ms. Appleton?”

“This is my dog. I adopted him from animal control last month.”

“The hell you did.”

Shay took an instinctive step back at James’s hard tone. His expression was neutral but the tension in his body could not be interpreted as anything other than coiled strength under stress.

Deputy Wood moved his considerable bulk between James and Shay. “Easy, Officer. Go on, Shay. Tell the man your story.”

Shay shot James a rude look. “I volunteer at one of the animal shelters in Raleigh. I was at the desk when a woman came in with Prince.” She reached out to rest her hand territorially on her dog’s head.

Her accuser shifted his weight, as if uncomfortable. “What name did she give?”

“She didn’t.”

“Keep talking.”

Shay sucked in a breath of annoyance. She’d never done well with authority. His every word sounded like an interrogation. It was reminiscent of Eric in a bad mood. It worked her temper. “The woman said her dog had mauled a child’s pet. That’s why she had a muzzle on him. She said he was vicious and uncontrollable, and needed to be put down before he could hurt someone else.”

James swiped a hand over his mouth to block the vulgarity he couldn’t quite squelch as he gazed down at Bogart. The eager interest in his partner’s black eyes and happy thump of his tail highlighted the absurdity of the accusation. Bogart was too well trained to attack without cause. Yet his partner was capable of becoming a very dangerous adversary if commanded to be so. Had Bogart gotten frightened and attacked a child’s pet? He doubted that. Yet his heart tripled its beat. Everything he learned from now on could be crucial to protecting his partner’s future.

When James’s gaze rose to meet Shay’s again, it was the opaque, official stare of a lawman on duty. “She told you specifically to put him down?”

She nodded.

“Shit!”

Shay decided she couldn’t have worded her own response to the idea any better.

“Continue.”

“I told her our shelter doesn’t destroy an animal unless it’s so sick or injured that a vet recommends it. Or we have a formal complaint and court order. That’s when she got all huffy and said she didn’t have time for all that. If we wouldn’t destroy him, then she’d find a place that would.”

“Why didn’t you ask for verification of her accusation?”

Shay folded her arms protectively across her chest. “We aren’t the animal police. When a person walks in the door with a pet, shelters don’t ask them to prove ownership. We allow a person to surrender their pet without question. It’s better than trying to catch animals after they’ve been abandoned.”

“Go on.”

Shay glanced away, flushing with annoyance. Definitely, this guy was a cop.

“She was leaving when I decided something wasn’t right. Prince wasn’t showing any signs of aggression or anxiety. He even ignored a kitten that got loose from its owner and wandered over to brush up against him before being retrieved. So I stopped her and said that I’d fudge a few things, and personally take care of her dog.”

“You let her think you’d destroy him?”

Shay smirked at her interrogator. “I let her think what she wanted to think so she’d leave him with me. She actually gave me a ten-dollar tip.”

“That was fast thinking, Shay.” The deputy looked at James for confirmation.

James nodded. “No argument with you there.”

Shay let the deputy’s praise wash over her as she knelt down and hugged Prince’s neck.

The action exposed a collar James had not seen before. It was royal blue with rhinestones and silver studs. He winced at seeing his partner decorated like some kind of show dog. Yet he couldn’t fault the instincts of the woman before him for recognizing what a great dog Bogart was.

As for Bogart’s would-be executioner, an ugly suspicion had begun to creep into his mind. “Describe the woman who brought him in.”

Shay was really beginning to hate the way this man talked in commands. “Tall. Lots of blond hair and makeup. With big boobs. Your type, right?”

Shay was surprised to see her interrogator blush. Then she realized it wasn’t embarrassment but the seething complexion of a man about to blow his top.

“Any of this making sense to you, son?” Deputy Ward watched James with a raised brow.

“Yes, sir. Though I never would have thought—” James quashed the expletive that accompanied any thought of Jaylynn Turner. She had been a three-month nightmare in his life. He should have listened to … hell, everyone. His friends, his sisters, even Bogart seemed to find fault with her. She was just one of those dumb things men sometimes succumb to when they were following their dicks.

But never in a million years would he have thought she would stoop so low as to steal Bogart, and then try to have him put down.

Another thought struck him, one that made him queasy. He eyed Bogart with some anxiety. “They neuter animals before they’re allowed out for adoption.”

Shay seethed under the glare of his stare. Even his questions didn’t end in question marks. “It wasn’t a formal adoption.”

James’s exhale of relief was audible. “I guess I owe you a debt there.”

She snorted. “I didn’t do it for you. The shelter people agreed that because she handed him over to me, personally, there was no need for an adoption.”

“Well, then, no harm done.” The deputy hooked his thumbs in his belt, all smiles to have the matter settled. “I’ve known Shay a long time. I can vouch for her.”

Shay felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. “Excuse me, Deputy Ward. I’m not the one who needs a character reference here. He broke into my house.”

As she said this Prince decided he’d been obedient long enough. He leaped up on her, barking and wagging his tail.

Trying to hold on to her outrage under the onslaught of Prince’s doggy affection, she hauled him in by the collar. “My dog needs to go out before he pees all over the place. Excuse me.”

She walked over to her door and reached once again for the leash, and a net bag that she slung over a shoulder. To her consternation Prince wasn’t the only one to follow her. Her intruder crossed the room toward her.

After she snapped on Prince’s leash, she turned on him, thunder in her expression. “We don’t need company.”

James reached down and scratched Bogart behind the ears, smiling despite his anger at the situation. Bogart answered his affection with long wet licks of his hand and wrist. Happy for actual physical contact with the friend he’d thought he’d lost forever, he bent to allow Bogart to lick his face. No matter how awful the day, how tired or weary or worried he was, having Bogart within reach calmed him down.

It worked. In fact, his voice sounded almost mild when James stood up and spoke to Shay. “I’m coming with you.”

“Hold up, son.” Deputy Ward waved James toward him. “I’m calling this in. I may need some additional verification from you.” He stepped away from them as his radio crackled to life on his shoulder.

James bent down again. “I’m taking this damn decoration off before Bogart catches it on something and chokes.” He unsnapped her leash, released Bogart’s fancy blue collar and tossed it aside. He shoved a hand into one of the deep pockets in his camo pants and pulled out a nylon service collar with the word “police” spelled out in block letters. He strapped it around the dog’s neck.