“Son of a bitch,” Morgan muttered. “No pun intended. You’re asking a dog to decide—”
“Whether you get probation,” Bo finished coolly. “Yes. She’s an excellent judge of character, in case you haven’t noticed. She doesn’t get the final vote, but I want to know her opinion. Tricks, is Morgan worth keeping?”
Tricks turned her dark gaze on Morgan as if considering. Bo felt him tense, and part of her wanted to laugh. She was only half serious, but the half that was, yeah, that half wanted to know what Tricks thought. The thing was, Bo couldn’t remember asking her such an abstract question before; she thought it was possible Tricks would at least partially understand, but she wasn’t sure. Either way, watching the faint alarm with which Morgan awaited Tricks’s verdict was amusing, and she could use some amusement now.
After a few seconds, Tricks moved forward and licked Morgan on the cheek. Then she backed away, wagged her tail, and returned to her own pursuits.
Bo and Morgan sat in silence, watching her. Eventually he said, “I’ve been blessed.”
“Not quite the same as coming from the pope, but yeah.”
“Do I get probation?”
She let the sentence lie between them for a while, but the truth was that she wasn’t ready to make a final decision, couldn’t make one. “I guess so. There’s a lot weighing in your favor.”
He laid his cheek against the side of her head. She didn’t have to spell it out for him; he knew that she was pissed and might stay pissed for a while, but she wasn’t kicking him out and they’d work through it. That was what people in real relationships did, she thought with a sharp twinge of terror. Dear God, was this a real relationship? Part of it felt real, felt like more than sex. They’d been living together for weeks, building a routine and meshing their lives together.
“Maybe it’s real,” she said faintly.
“I guess I’ll need to work on making up your mind for certain,” he said, then threw a thumbs-up toward Tricks. “Thanks, girl.”
CHAPTER 22
BO WAS GOOD WITH LEAVING THINGS UP IN THE AIR FOR a while until she was able to give the situation more thought or until something actually happened. She’d have felt a lot worse about being pressured to make an immediate decision because this was too important. She could think of this thing she and Morgan had going on, as he’d put it, though it felt strange to regard herself as half of a couple. She could imagine him being a part of her life for a while, perhaps even quite a while. She could embrace what they had now without regret despite what he’d told her. Those were the things she could do. What she couldn’t do was bring herself to think in terms of permanency because that meant she’d have to deal with more than she was ready for. She could handle the near future, she could handle the now, but she couldn’t handle more of a commitment than that.
She wasn’t blind to the circumstances that had shaped her; she had deliberately made the decision to close off the romantic part of life and be solitary. She’d liked being solitary, liked the security it gave her. It had required a traumatic event to get her to change her mind, one that had shaken her to the core and that she would rather have not experienced, but yesterday had happened. It was real, and she dealt well with reality. Things were different now. She had rearranged her priorities, willingly and deliberately.
On the drive from the lake back to the house, she sat quietly in the back, occasionally glancing at Morgan as he expertly steered the Jeep through the huge granite boulders, around trees, and angled it across dips. She liked the solid set of his head on those broad shoulders, the sure grip of his big rough hands on the steering wheel, the alertness with which he noted every detail, his head constantly turning. Nothing would surprise him, she thought.
She watched as he reached over to stroke Tricks’s neck and was rewarded by a quick lick. Tricks was practically beaming; she’d had a great day. She had ridden to and from the lake in the front seat, gone swimming, and retrieved her ball until she was too tired to chase it anymore. She’d had a good nap and a chew bone. Looking at that happy, innocent creature made Bo’s heart fill with love and tenderness, and she had to smile.
“Thank you for her,” she said quietly.
He gave her a swift glance in the rearview mirror. “I couldn’t let anything happen to either of you. I’d have killed him with my bare hands first.”
He would have too; that wasn’t an empty boast, it was a flat statement of what he could and would do. She accepted that, was even comforted by it. She wasn’t certain what it said about her that she liked having his lethal ability standing between her and the world. She’d never before felt the need to be protected, but yesterday had proved that bad things could happen anytime and anywhere, and men like Morgan stood ready to step in. Jesse would have done the same, or any of her officers, but even though they would have known Kyle, would they have recognized that something was out of whack simply because he wore a jacket? Maybe, maybe not; they hadn’t dealt with that type of situation before. Morgan had immediately recognized the threat and taken action, and no matter what happened between them in the future, she would love him forever for what he’d done the day before.
When they reached the house, he got out and went around to unclip Tricks’s harness and let her out, then waited for Bo to climb out of the backseat. When she was mostly out, he gripped her by the waist and lifted her out the rest of the way, set her on the ground.
“Thanks,” she said, pushing her hair back, then looked up when he didn’t immediately release her.