Buch lesen: «Second Chance Soldier»

Chapter 1

Was this demonstration going to be as unimpressive as all the others had been so far?

Amber Belott could only wait and watch—and hope that, finally, she and her mom, Sonya, had found their answer at last, a skilled person who could take over training potential police K-9s and other dogs, as well as additional trainers, now that her father was gone.

Evan Colluro was the eighth person who’d come to the Chance K-9 Ranch, just outside Chance, California, to perform a demonstration. A tryout. An audition of sorts.

Evan had just arrived. At least he was right on time, unlike most of the others, whose excuses tended to be how remote this place was. At the top of the driveway near their house, he exited his black sedan along with his dog, who was, unsurprisingly, a German shepherd.

His résumé had described his extensive work with dogs, particularly in the military, but nothing had prepared her for how good-looking he was. He was tall and slender with broad shoulders, and the fit of his charcoal knit shirt implied strong muscles beneath. He wore black slacks and new-looking athletic shoes, somewhat informal attire, yet he looked ready for both a job interview and a critical dog-training test session.

Again unlike some of his either more formal, or more sloppily dressed, predecessors...

Amber, on the other hand, wasn’t dressed particularly to impress. Neither was her mother. Both wore casual blue work shirts tucked into jeans. Amber didn’t care what Evan thought of her, except as a potential employer.

She approached the man with short black hair who now stood beside his car, his dog at his side. “Evan?”

“That’s right. And you’re Amber?” Though he stood facing her, he didn’t quite look at her. He had a hint of dark beard stubble on his long, angular face, a cool expression in his deep blue eyes that gave no indication at all as to what he was thinking or feeling. Maybe he was watching her mother. Or looking at their black Labrador retriever, Lola, who stood beside Sonya.

“Yes. Welcome. And who’s this?” Amber gestured toward his dog, wanting to approach to pet him but recognizing that was a bad idea with a trained K-9 without asking permission.

“This is Bear.” There was a note of pride in Evan’s voice. “He’s been with me for a while.”

Which suggested he might be a former military K-9.

“May I pet him?” Amber asked.

“Sure.”

While she stroked the apparently pleased dog’s head behind his ears, she next asked, “Would you like to come inside for a cup of coffee?” That would mean a chat about Evan’s background, which Amber already somewhat knew from their online conversations, or the job, which he’d learned about the same way. “Or just start with the dogs?”

“The dogs,” he said with no hesitation.

“Fine.” In fact, that was good. Talking with the guy now wouldn’t tell her what she needed to know.

Watching him in action would.

“First,” she said, turning away from Bear, “I’d like you to meet my mother, Sonya, and our dog, Lola.”

Lola, though restrained by a leash held by Sonya, had leaped forward and now traded nose sniffs with Bear. No animosity that Amber could perceive—a good start. Whatever his background, Bear also appeared well behaved.

“Hi.” Her mom stepped forward. She held her hand outstretched and Evan grasped it but didn’t look straight into her eyes, either. Amber wondered once more what was on this guy’s mind.

“Hi,” he responded, letting go right away.

Amber exchanged a brief glance with her mother, then turned back to Evan. “The first puppies who need training are over there.” She pointed toward the location just beyond the wide driveway that he had probably noticed before.

Three German shepherds about six months old stood watching them from a small area surrounded by a chain-link fence, just beyond the main wood-plank fence at the edge of the rolling lawn. The pups had been selected by Amber’s dad when they were even younger as having the temperament to potentially have a future as skilled police K-9s.

By Amber’s now-deceased father...

Now wasn’t the time to think about that.

For the first time since he arrived, Evan smiled. “I noticed them,” he said, not taking his eyes off the canines. “Okay if I join them and check out where they are in their training?”

“Sure,” Amber said, but almost before the word was out of her mouth he began striding in that direction.

Trading glances once again, Amber and Sonya followed, not far behind. Her mother still held Lola’s leash, restraining their dog from getting too far ahead—and in Evan’s way. Bear stayed at his side, though, without a leash.

It was May, and the air was warm, the sky a brilliant blue. A lovely day—if there could be such a thing in this family any longer. A good day, at least, for this kind of test.

As Evan reached the fenced area, the ranch’s barely trained K-9 German shepherd puppies—Rex, Hal and Lucy—all stood as they saw him, clearly excited. Rex started barking, the sound shrill and loud, inciting the others to do the same.

Evan looked down into the face of the initially guilty dog, gestured and said, “Sit!” softly yet firmly.

Amber was both amazed and pleased to see Rex immediately both sit and quiet down, and the others followed suit.

“Wow,” whispered her mom at her side, obviously equally impressed.

Was it this man’s body language, his clear intent to take control? Amber had no idea, but it felt different, very different, from the others who’d been here before him. Some had yelled orders above the barks, some had shoved the pups into place, and some had done both. Others had bribed them with treats.

Evan’s approach was different. So was his attitude. He seemed strong yet caring.

And that was just the beginning. Without looking toward Amber or Sonya for consent, Evan opened the nearby gate to the lawn, and he, Bear and Lola—whose leash he’d removed—then entered the smaller fenced area.

“Hi,” he said to the pups, who all squirmed on the ground beside him. He appeared to study them for a while, then Rex dashed around and the other two rolled on the grass as if wanting to be petted. He didn’t touch them but asked Amber for their names. He repeated the names, watching each dog to see their reactions. “Okay,” he finally said. “Let’s do it.”

The three young shepherds plus Lola were then subjected to a whirlwind of instructions, including commands they might not have heard before. Bear, too, participated, clearly knowing and obeying each order.

Evan’s large, strong hands moved in an assortment of gestures that were each tied to one of those verbal commands. He sometimes repositioned his large, lithe body while getting the dogs to move, too. His hand movements were gentle as, looking straight into their faces, he guided them into the positions he wanted them to achieve. Each time they obeyed a command, a touch or both, he rewarded them with praise.

His tone was encouraging, as if the dogs understood every word, and maybe they did thanks to his accompanying gestures or their limited prior training.

Evan seldom scolded them, but he did distract one or another when they didn’t obey by walking in front and grabbing the dog’s attention by movement and a strong tone of voice.

He also rewarded them now and then by extracting a toy that resembled a small fabric suitcase handle that Amber knew was called a tug from one pocket, and at other times a ball out of another pocket, each time tossing it for an obedient dog to chase and bring back.

Meanwhile, Bear followed all of Evan’s commands, as if he provided an example each time.

The pups that Amber found so adorable, so sweet—and so disobedient—now acted as if they couldn’t wait to receive and obey the next command.

After about twenty minutes, when Evan had worked with all the shepherds—plus Lola—several times, he turned and looked toward Amber and her mother, who both watched him over the fence. It was the first time he’d glanced at them since starting.

“I gather that these pups have had a small amount of training,” he said, “but they’ve a lot to learn. I’ll want to hear more about their background. I assume the intention is for one or all of them to wind up as police K-9s, so I could start their initial training for single-purpose use—just finding and attacking bad guys. But most police departments prefer dual-purpose dogs, those that can also do drug or explosive sniffing, cadaver location, search and rescue or more, and I can help prepare them for that, too, though what they’re taught will depend on their individual skills and what their ultimate handlers will want from them.”

“And you can provide all that training?” Amber asked. She was definitely impressed. None of the others she’d invited here had come even close to what Evan had already accomplished.

“Well, sure,” he said, as if that was a foregone conclusion. He briefly looked her straight in the face, as if trying to read her mind, but only for an instant before he glanced away and turned back toward the dogs.

Amber started walking away and gestured for her mother to follow. They didn’t go far before she stopped, looked at her mother and asked in a low voice, “What do you think?”

“Grab him while you can,” Sonya said equally softly, but with a large smile.

Amber nodded, then called to Evan, “We’d like to discuss a possible job offer with you.” She walked toward him and added, “Please shut the pups into their enclosure, then let’s go into the house and discuss it, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed—and Amber knew her responding smile was even larger than her mother’s.

Unsurprisingly, after more commands, followed by petting, verbal rewards and a few more tosses of toys, Evan got the three young pups to sit and stay while he locked the chain-link fence gate behind him, as if the dogs lived to obey him. Amber could only grin about that.

But surprisingly, rather than join them directly, Evan held back as they walked toward the house. Amber turned often to look at him, admiring the wide smile on his angular face that was leveled only on the two canines still with him, Lola and Bear.

Maybe it was a good thing he was so wrapped up in communicating with the dogs...for now. Once they reached the house, only the humans would be speaking.

“I’m really surprised,” Sonya whispered from beside her. “I’d figured we’d find the right choice thanks to one of your dad’s cop contacts.”

All the others who’d come to try out for this job had either been sent by nearby police departments after Amber had contacted them, or were recommended as skilled trainers by the law-enforcement associations her father had joined because they had K-9 handler members.

But none had worked out. And this guy, from what Amber had seen online, had appeared potentially perfect.

She knew from his résumé and the references he’d provided that Evan Colluro was in his early thirties, a couple of years older than her. His credentials were impressive: seven years in the military, the last three working in a K-9 unit. He had earned several commendations and had left the military just over a year ago after an injury.

“Hey, I know you’re not an internet fan,” Amber replied softly, smiling as she looked down at her mom. “But sometimes people even meet their true loves thanks to websites. It’s worth a shot at trying to find the right employee there.”

Amber winced at her own words. She had badly misstated her thought. A shot? How stupid of her to use that term.

But, of course, she thought about gunshots constantly since the morning two months earlier when her mother had called to tell her that her dad had been killed.

She hazarded another glance at her mom, who was shorter than Amber and somewhat heavier. Her wavy auburn hair—which, unlike Amber’s, was not its natural color—blew in the breeze.

Amber had worried about her mother, too, before she’d returned home, since her dad had been killed for no apparent reason on the ranch’s grounds. She still worried about her but had seen nothing threatening since she’d gotten back. And the local cops seemed to think the killer could have been a former student, since her dad wasn’t always as nice to the people he taught as he was to the dogs, or maybe it was a robbery gone wrong.

“So how are you going to handle this offer?” Sonya asked, fortunately not latching onto how Amber had misspoken.

“We’ve discussed some terms in emails,” she told her mother, focusing again on what she needed to. “He must be okay with that part, at least, since he’s here.” But however she phrased the actual offer, she wanted to make sure the guy liked it. They needed him to accept it.

Of course, despite that impressive demonstration, no one could ever be as good at training as her father had been. No one could ever fill his shoes. He had worked alone, with no assistants, and had been wonderful at it. But Dad was gone. Dead.

Murdered.

By...who?

The K-9 Ranch was still here. And thanks to her dad’s loner attitude, there was no one skilled enough to take over where he had so abruptly, and terribly, left off.

Amber had no intention of closing the ranch and ceasing the dog training that had been so important to the whole family. Unfortunately, she’d never been taught the necessary skills. She could only hope that Evan Colluro was the right person to take over as their first new trainer, to make sure that the Chance K-9 Ranch survived. “We’ll see.”

They reached the base of the porch and she turned to face the potential employee, who was only a few steps behind them. She tried to look him in the eye, but though he seemed at first to mirror her smile, he quickly lowered his gaze back down to the dogs.

Interesting.

Was this really going to be a wise decision?

* * *

Evan knew he should be more outgoing, talk about all his experience and what he could do here, rather than walking behind the two women as if he only wanted to be in contact with the dogs. Which, in some ways, he did.

But he ought to make small talk, thank this gorgeous and sexy woman who’d communicated with him online and invited him here to possibly teach dogs and other trainers and, most important, to also train police K-9s and their handlers, and perhaps eventually service or therapy dogs, too. He’d have some learning to do himself to accomplish it all, but it was still his ideal situation.

He at least thought his audition had gone well.

Even so, was this a bad idea?

He’d been wondering that before, particularly as he’d driven here from Los Angeles. That was where he’d hung out over the last months, to be near its veterans’ facilities, as well as police K-9 units and instructive handlers. He’d taken some classes himself, and eventually landed jobs teaching others how to train dogs.

But he hadn’t felt comfortable there.

Well, here he was. This sounded like the perfect long-term job for him—working with dogs and some human trainees, way off the usual grid of stress and having too many people around.

And Bear was with him. Dear Bear. They’d saved each other’s lives in more ways than one...

The two women reached the front porch of the main house on this vast piece of property. They stopped, turning to look at him.

“Come on in,” Amber said. Before, when he first introduced himself, he had looked her straight in the face only long enough to see how pretty she was, with smooth skin and full lips, and wavy hair that was a pretty reddish color. He’d also noted how intense her deep brown eyes were as they regarded him. That was why he’d quickly looked away.

He’d observed the rest of her then: Amber was curvaceous in her casual clothes.

Her mother, Sonya, who resembled her, was an older, shorter version. Again without looking her straight in the face, Evan had observed her. He knew she had recently lost her husband, had suffered pain.

He identified with that, though the circumstances were very different.

Now Amber had invited him into their house so they could chat for a while. Discuss a possible job offer.

And maybe interrogate him.

Well, she would be his boss if all went well. He had to deal with it. Once, he would have considered how to lure someone as gorgeous as her off to bed. Now, he had to decide only if he could put up with her giving him orders.

“Fine,” he said. “Is it okay if Bear joins us?”

The amazing shepherd, at his side, heard his name and snuggled against Evan’s leg. Evan couldn’t help smiling down at the wonderful dog.

“Sure. I’ll bring Lola in, too.”

Evan stopped briefly behind the women as they walked up the tiled stairs to the wide porch at the front of the ranch house. It was a two-story home, its facade made of long slats that looked like redwood, with decorative lighter wood arching over the door and around the windows at either side and on the second floor, as well as framing the entrance. The sloping roof was covered with contrasting black shingles. In all, it was a nice place and fit the rural, sparsely populated surroundings Evan was seeking.

Once they were inside, Amber led them into the moderate-sized kitchen, where Sonya started bustling around, brewing coffee. Amber gestured for him to sit at the round wooden table, and put a plate of cheese and crackers in front of him. She seemed like a nice person. An attractive woman...a very attractive woman. A welcoming woman. He started to relax, at least a little.

“Okay if I leave Bear loose?” he asked. It was.

Soon all three humans sat at the table with coffee in front of them. Bear lay down on the tile floor beside Evan, and Lola settled near Amber.

Then the fun began... Not.

Amber started with easy questions. How long had he liked dogs? How long had he worked with them? Where had he worked with them? He could answer those without much angst.

But then she began asking about the military experiences he’d had while working in the K-9 unit in Afghanistan.

It was all he could do to remain sitting there, answering, not looking at her...while the pain throbbed inside him.

Even so, he remained honest. Yes, he’d enjoyed what he’d done...but, yes, he had been wounded overseas. Bear had been there for him. Had saved him, bringing help when he had been injured by an improvised explosive device. And then...

Evan cringed. He saw again the IED’s explosion. Heard the concussive blast. Felt the pain. Watched Bear bring the other human member of his team who saved him...and saw Bear as he was shot by an unseen sniper.

Never mind Evan’s own injury, his agony. He’d stood and found a way to lift his dog and get him into the armored vehicle his comrade had driven there.

“Evan, are you all right?”

He hadn’t noticed Amber rise and rush over to him. Now she stood at his side. Bear, too, was standing.

He glanced toward the area around Bear’s hip where he had been shot, where his coat had grown back over the scar. Then Evan closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep, calming breath. For the first time, he looked up and stared deeply into Amber’s brilliant brown eyes and managed a smile.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just a touch of PTSD. But working with dogs? That’s what I do. Did you say you wanted to discuss a possible job offer?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice cracking. “I do.”

* * *

Was this a mistake? This man she’d considered handsome and sexy and more, apparently had a messed-up mind.

PTSD. She was aware of it, of course, without really knowing how it worked.

It wouldn’t make a difference if this guy truly could train dogs and handlers the way he’d claimed.

He’d certainly looked good at it. And hopefully, with his experience, he’d do much better than the others.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking.” She knew her smile wavered a bit. But before she pulled her glance away she felt gratified that, for the first time, Evan Colluro had actually looked her straight in the face for more than a nanosecond.

His PTSD might be why he hadn’t before, but his stare at her now, his wry grin, made him appear different: vulnerable, sad, damaged, yes, but also even sexier.

He listened as Amber told him that the first classes he would teach would be to a core group of her father’s students from this area who’d been helping each other with their pet dogs to keep the skills they’d already learned here fresh. They would be at the ranch tomorrow afternoon, and Evan could start right away by working with them.

“But we’ll want you to go into it deeper, teach them more—just general training skills, though, not K-9. You’ll work with our three shepherd pups for that, and we’ll hopefully place them with police departments when they’re ready. Plus, you can provide new and refresher classes to other police K-9 handlers soon. But tomorrow’s students? We’ll use them as our basis for bringing in even more students who have their own dogs. Some can become therapy dogs, and we may also acquire younger puppies to start training as service dogs. If classes increase the way we hope they will, we’ll hire additional trainers to assist you, and you’ll get some say in who we bring on. Does all that work for you?”

“Definitely,” he responded. “We’ll need to figure out the scheduling, of course, and we’ll also need to talk about a hiring protocol once bringing in other trainers becomes more likely, but it’s a good way to start.”