Man's Best Friend Read Online Free PDF Page B

my name."
    "Oh." A warm blush suffused her face.
    "He'll fly with me," Rand stated, going back to the travel debate.
    "They don't let hundred pound Rhodesian Ridgebacks ride first class, at least not as far as I know." She drank some water. The man was nuts.
    He looked at her as if her sip of water had poisoned her brain. "I don't fly on commercial aircraft. I have my own plane."
    "Oh." The money gap again, but this 'oh' business was getting old. She needed something more deliberate, more intelligent, like 'I see.' Yes, much better. "Whether you take him with you or not, doesn't change things. You don't... love him."
    "I'll learn."
    "You don't 'learn' to love."
    "Wrong." He pulled out a credit card and tossed it on the bill. The waiter whisked it away. "There isn't anything you can't learn, if you invest time and effort enough."
    Tessa wasn't sure if such logic applied to puppy love. Before she could think up a good argument, the waiter returned with the card. Rand signed it and stood. "Ready to go." He offered her his hand and she couldn't see how to avoid taking it. Then, grasping it firmly, she wondered why she'd been reluctant in the first place.
    "I'm ready to go—" she stood beside him, looking up, and up, into his eyes, "—but I'm not moving in with you."
    He smiled, a cool smile accompanied by a rise of those spectacular brows of his. He practically radiated practiced charm—and determination. "We'll talk on the way to our cars."
    "Talk all you want. I have a life, which you don't seem to appreciate. And I have a job."
    "Managing a kennel, I understand."
    "Yes."
    "Would they mind if you take Licks to work?"
    "No, but—"
    He touched her mouth with his thumb, stopping her words where they sat. "Like I said, we'll talk on the way to the cars."

 
     
     
    Chapter 4

     
    Rand looked out the upstairs study window—again—in time to see Tessa turn into his driveway. She drove as if she were maneuvering a tractor on spring ice. Reluctant? Definitely.
    The possibility that she'd put her old Chevy into reverse and take off made him uneasy. At his front door, she killed the engine and sat a long time in her car. When she did get out, she freed Licks from his crate in the backseat, clutched him to her breast, and stood gazing up at the house, her expression unreadable.
    His unease abated, replaced by... what? Expectations? No.
    Accomplishment, he told himself. She was here. He'd won. He always felt good when he won.
    In the end it came down to money. He'd made his offer, saw her turn it over in her mind as if she were a child offered a shiny silver coin. He'd been generous but cautious. Some kind of sixth sense had told him if he offered too much, she'd turn him down. Her conscience? Perhaps. Or maybe she was sly enough not to show her mercenary side too early in the game.
    There's two types of women in this world, boys, the needy and the greedy. Either one will drive you crazy.
    Rand stepped back from the window, shaking his head. The world according to good old Dad, a voice silenced ten years ago in a mountain climbing accident that had taken both his life and Griff's, Rand's twin brother. Ten years, and yet the advice still echoed in Rand's brain.
    His father, Boyd Fielding, had hated women and made sure his sons knew why.
    And then there was Griff.
    Whenever Rand thought of him, a cloud, black and heavy, settled over his mind. They'd come into this world together—a package deal, bonded by birth, love included. Damn, but he missed his brother. He rubbed at his forehead and walked back to his desk.
    Griff. The brother he adored, cast in the image of the father he detested. Rand itched to pace, but instead forced himself to sit and pull out a file.
    He'd given up on finding any logic in that particular equation. Easier to blame his father for using Griff's loyalty to turn him into the man Boyd had wanted him to be: ambitious, materialistic, and completely dedicated to improving the Fielding fortunes. The man he'd