Before Gavin could stop them, they nudged the door open, and one raced down the steps. Hell!
The second pup ran to join the first, and Gavin was led on a merry chase. He managed to scoop up the one closest to him and finally reached the other, grabbing him up in his left arm. The puppies licked him as if this was just part of their playtime.
The problem was that Samoyed puppies all looked the same to him. These two were both white, identical to each other. And they looked just like the photos he had of Kodi and Shiloh.
One pup secure in each arm, he hurried back to the house, ran up the steps, and hollered through the open door, “Miss White? Your front door was open, and your pups ran off.” If they weren’t the right pups, he wasn’t about to confiscate them and be accused of stealing her pets! On the other hand, he worried about foul play because the door was slightly ajar and no one was answering. What if something had happened to her?
Suddenly, a wet, naked woman streaked across the living room, glancing at him for a second as she ran, and disappeared down a hall. “Put them down, get out, and close the door,” she called out.
Shocked, he just stood there, his mouth hanging agape, the image of the gorgeous blond in the raw still imprinted on his brain. She was in great shape, her hands covering her bouncing breasts as she’d dashed down the hall. He closed the front door so the puppies wouldn’t run out of the house again and set them down on the hardwood floor. “I’m leaving,” he called. “Sorry… Your door was open, and I was worried something might be wrong.”
He needed to question her about the pups…maybe later. He started to back away from them slowly and had almost reached the door when they came bounding after him. He was trying to figure out how to keep them from dashing out again as soon as he opened the door, when suddenly the woman reappeared with a blue towel wrapped around her curvy body and a Taser in her hand—and shot him.
***
After taking down the man, who was unlawfully in her house, Arctic wolf shifter Amelia Marie White knew she recognized him—the uniformed, human cop from Seattle. The man who’d been taken hostage on the plane she’d been forced to fly as the getaway pilot. What angered her also was that the man in charge of the heist, Clayton Drummer, the gray wolf she’d been dating, had been a Seattle cop too. She knew now that he’d only been dating her because he wanted to use her to fly him out of Seattle after stealing the jewels.
Had the two men known each other?
Possibly. What if this one was really here to take her down for killing Clayton? Not arrest her, as she’d thought initially.
“Stay there. Don’t move a muscle. I have another Taser all ready and fired up to use on you. And the police are on their way.”
Not that the guy was moving. He lay prone on her floor near the door, watching her, groaning. In her home. He was half-dazed and looked like he was having trouble focusing. Maybe he hadn’t seen enough of her to recognize her as the pilot of the plane that day. But if not, why would he be here?
Confident he wasn’t going anywhere, Amelia rushed back to her bedroom, her foster pups running after her. She pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, then grabbed her phone to call the police.
Wouldn’t you know, of all the times her front door hadn’t locked properly, she’d stripped to take a shower, and the faucet handle had fallen off in her hand—probably due to mineral water corrosion. She’d had to use the guest bathroom and remembered only after she showered that she’d washed all the towels in there. Which were still in the dryer. And she hadn’t brought clothes with her because she normally just walked from her master bathroom to her dresser.
When she’d heard the deep-voiced male calling out her name inside her house, shocking her, she’d had a split-second decision to make. She could shift into her wolf and scare the guy off, but she worried she’d scare her foster pups too. Or she could dash through the house naked, grab a towel and her Taser from the master bathroom, and take care of the guy. Dashing through the house as a naked woman had seemed to throw him off guard, at least long enough for her to tase him.
She’d hoped he would be gone by the time she returned. When he hadn’t been, she’d had to take action.
Once the police were on their way, she hurried back into the room where the guy was still lying on the floor, stunned. She wasn’t sure if he was staying put because she told him to or if he really was still incapacitated. Too bad he wasn’t a wolf, as sexy as he was.
“Who are you, and why didn’t you leave when I told you to?” She prayed he didn’t say he was still a cop and investigating her leaving the scene of a crime.
“Gavin Summerfield,” he managed to get out. “Former Seattle police, private investigator now, looking into the theft of a pair of Samoyeds in Seattle, which led me here to Big Lake. And your place.”
Now that she could really observe him—unlike the first time she’d seen him, when he’d been hustled into the back of the plane and she’d been forced into the cockpit, or when he was lying on the ground half-conscious after the crash—Amelia couldn’t believe the hot-looking man she’d just tased was now a PI. Dazed green eyes, red hair, all dressed in black, his T-shirt showing off his nice muscles.
She’d really thought he’d been in on the heist, offering himself as a hostage as a cover. When Clayton had tried to kill him, she’d taken her boyfriend out, mainly for trying to kill the cop, but also because as a wolf, Clayton couldn’t go to jail. And because Clayton had used her and would have killed her if she hadn’t gone along with the program.
“Stolen Samoyeds?” What Gavin said wasn’t registering because all she could think of were the jewelry heist and the downed plane. Sure, she was taking care of a couple of Samoyed puppies. She was fostering them, for heaven’s sake. Just like she fostered tons of dogs until she could find them good homes.
Then she worried. What if Molly and Snowflake were the stolen pups he was searching for?
Two cop cars pulled into her driveway, and she met the uniformed men at the door. She prayed Gavin hadn’t recognized her and wouldn’t say anything about the Seattle business to them.
Brenham, one of the cops, began checking Gavin over and verifying his identity, ready to take him into custody.
“Call London Lanier, the retired police detective who worked in your department. He gave me the information about the pet theft ring in this area,” Gavin gritted out.
The other cop called London to see if Gavin’s story checked out.
“Do you want to press charges?” Brenham asked Amelia.
“No,” she said. “He shouldn’t have stayed in the house when I told him to leave, but he did return my pups when I could have lost them for good.”
“I was working my way toward the door, and the pups were following me. I was afraid they’d dash out again,” Gavin said.