about him.” He nodded toward Clancy. “I’ll get that dressing changed now.”
He went into the storage room to get the bandage and ointment, and when he came out again, Shannon was gone. That was probably a good thing. It irritated the hell out of him that she was seeing a guy like that, and if she’d hung around any longer, he’d have said even more things he shouldn’t.
Russell might have thought Luke wasn’t paying attention to him when they were in the barn, but he had good peripheral vision and could read a person at twenty paces. It was a skill he’d honed through years of his father hovering over him, his face changing from irritated to angry to dangerously outraged. Sometimes there had been only a single second of warning before he got a fist across the face, so Luke had learned early to read people’s expressions. Russell might look good and have a lot of money, but he wore a blanket of insecurity Luke picked up on at first glance. It amazed Luke that Shannon couldn’t see it, too.
Luke had come there with every intention of lying low, putting in his time, and then hitting the road. But this was too much. He remembered things Shannon had told him as they sat in the grass outside the barn on those hot, humid evenings. Things he’d bet she’d never told anybody else, even to this day. Things that revealed who she was beneath the good-girl mask she wore for the rest of the world. She’d been taught from the cradle that Russell was the kind of guy she was supposed to go for, and the fact that she still bought into that crap meant she hadn’t learned a thing in the past eleven years. To watch her waste her time with a guy like him pissed Luke off like nothing else. He knew what kind of man she needed, and it wasn’t an uptight, insecure, stick-in-the-mud dentist only her mother could love.
Luke had told himself he was going to steer clear of Shannon, but that wasn’t going to happen. Already he was dying to cause a few sparks, set her on fire, and burn right along with her. He wouldn’t compromise this job. He needed it too much. And any emotional involvement he’d had with her was a thing of the past. But the first chance he got when they were both off the clock, things were going to get hotter than she could possibly imagine. Before he left this place, she was going to know the difference between a guy who had to spend a thousand bucks to get her attention and one she couldn’t stop thinking about to save her life.
On Sunday morning, Shannon didn’t set an alarm, because that was the day the caretaker was supposed to handle things at the shelter and let her sleep in. She had good intentions the night before, but could she help it that she woke up at seven thirty, anyway?
Even when George was there, she usually dropped by just to make sure everything was okay. That’s why Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Rita had told her about a dozen times, but it made Shannon uncomfortable for a whole day to pass without her stopping by at least once. And since George had been gone, showing up on Sunday hadn’t been an option.
But Luke was there now. He’d proven he could physically do the work, so she needed to roll over, shut it out of her mind, and go back to sleep. In the next ten minutes, though, she managed to accomplish only one out of the three.
Oh, hell. Who was she kidding?
She threw back the covers, took a quick shower, and grabbed Goliath. As they left the building, they met Rita returning from her morning walk.
“You’re back from vacation,” Shannon said.
“Got in late last night. Thanks for taking care of Ollie.”
“No problem. He’s a sweet kitty. How was Key West?”
“Great. It was a fun tour group.”
Rita took all kinds of vacations, hooking up with any group that struck her fancy. And she always came back with a bunch of stories and a dozen new friends.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Rita said. “But for now, why don’t you tell me about your new employee?”
Shannon froze. “You heard about Luke already?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“While you were out of town?”
“That’s the Rainbow Valley grapevine for you. So…how are things going?”
“Fine,” Shannon said, as Goliath circled her, wrapping her in his leash.