The Danforths: Marc, Tanya & Abe: The Laws of Passion / Terms of Surrender / Shocking the Senator

The next thing she knew, she was flat on the ground, staring up at a ferocious set of snarling teeth.

Two

“Laddie, heel!” Marcus shouted. “Get off of her, you big lummox.”

Dana rolled out from under the collie and got to her feet. She checked her weapon and reholstered it while the oversize dog sat on his haunches, wagging his tail and breathing hard.

“I’m sorry about that,” Marcus quickly told her. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. What made him jump me that way? Is he a guard dog? I’ve never heard of anyone using a collie for that kind of thing.”

“Laddie? No. He’s a big wimp. But he’s good with the sheep.” Marcus bent low to rub the dog’s head and gave him a quick hug. “Did you miss me, boy?”

Marcus stood and turned back to Dana. “He’s really just a big puppy. I’ve tried to train him not to jump up on visitors, but obviously we have some more work to do.”

She lowered her chin and nodded once. “Right. Well, no harm done.”

He took a second to study her again. Dana was much more than just a bodyguard. Marc was sure of it.

“That was some quick action with the gun, slick,” he chided her. “Where’d you learn to draw like that?”

Dana adjusted her jacket down over the holster again before she answered. “Would you believe anyone can do that with a lot of practice?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“No? I guess you wouldn’t,” she sighed. “Let’s just say that handling weapons is one of my many talents.”

“Uh-huh. And driving is another one of your many talents?” The minute he said it, his mind wandered off to what other kind of talents she might possess. Or which ones he could bring out in her…if he had a chance to do all the things with her that he’d been imagining.

“I learned to drive that way in bodyguard training. It’s a good thing to know if you anticipate a potential kidnapping.”

That stopped the images. “Do you anticipate a kidnapping?”

She shook her head. “It’s not something a bodyguard can ever ignore. But in this case, I think that an execution-style killing might be more likely. Either way, we’ll be prepared.” She headed toward the front door.

Man. Talk about throwing a wet blanket on his ardor. “I’ll open up the house for you and give you a quick tour, but then I have to see to the animals,” he finally managed after swallowing hard a couple of times.

Her eyes widened and her brows shot up. “You take care of them yourself?”

“Sure I do. Who else?” He suddenly thought back on the last couple of days. “Well, there is my neighbor who looks after them if I’m gone. He’s a full-time farmer, not a hobby farmer like most of the rest of us around here.”

“I need to stay with you while you tend your animals,” she told him. “If you want to do that before you clean up, then I’ll go with you. What exactly do you have to do?”

She was too much, this tough cookie with curly soft hair and a spine made of steel. Intelligent and athletic to be sure. But she also had a tiny hint of softness behind those big brown eyes.

“You’ll see.” Marc unbuttoned the top button on his shirt and threw his jacket over the little bench beside the front door.

Then he turned to Laddie. “Come on boy. Time to work for your supper.”

As they walked toward the sheep pasture, he began to wonder about Dana and her background. “Have you ever had a pet to take care of?”

“Never. I don’t have time for such things.”

“Not even when you were a kid?”

She looked away and hesitated, apparently trying to decide how much of herself she was willing to reveal.

At last she gave in and shrugged her shoulders. “Where I was raised, animals were too much of a luxury. I knew a couple of kids from the block who had dogs.” Her eyes were dark and stormy. “But my father always used to say pets were a waste of money and that their families would be better off eating them rather than feeding them.”

Marc winced at the thought. “Where were you raised?”

“Somewhere far removed from where you were brought up,” she replied with sarcastic fervor. “Not all of us are lucky enough to have mansions and luxuries while we’re growing up. The place where we lived was smaller than one of your guest bathrooms, I’m sure.”

“Hey. Take it easy. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just that the thought of eating a pet is a little hard for me. I have enough trouble thinking that someday I’ll have to sell off some of my sheep. So far, all I’ve managed to do is have a man come in to shear them in the spring.”

“My father…thought about things a lot differently than your average man.” A couple of beats went by in silence. “So, you think of your sheep as pets?” she asked with an abrupt change of topic.

“I try not to, but sometimes it isn’t easy to treat them like a business proposition, either.”

They’d arrived at the gate between pasture and pen. Marc swung open the gate and whistled for Laddie to get around behind the small herd and begin moving them toward the pen.

“Come on,” he urged her. “I’ll show you how to set out their feed. And then you can learn how to clean out a chicken coop. Won’t that be fun?”

She threw him such an incredulous look that he had to laugh. Wherever she’d grown up, she certainly hadn’t been raised on a farm.

But the surprise was that she was willing to get her hands dirty. She dug right into the chores. He’d never met a woman quite like her.

Dana was so far removed from the last woman in his life that it was almost a joke. Nothing, however, about that miserable affair had been a bit funny.

Dana took the last dish from Marcus, dried it and put it in the cabinet. She turned and watched him clean the counters. He was such an intense kind of guy that this domestic scene seemed slightly off.

While he’d been in the shower, she’d done a cursory search of the house. No one else was here at the moment and, judging by the absence of anyone else’s personal effects, he lived alone. She hadn’t had the time to go through his papers or files, but she’d noted that his answering machine had an even dozen messages blinking.

She wanted to find out more about him, before she did anymore digging. “Whatever made you decide to live on a hobby farm?”

When he turned to her with a slightly embarrassed smile, she felt a lump forming in her throat. She couldn’t figure out why the handsome and outgoing man’s sudden red flush should bother her so much. But she felt her own pink-tinged blush rushing up from her chest and spreading over her neck and face.

He looked good enough to eat for dessert. His hair was still wet from the shower and had darkened to a deep coffee color. He’d changed into a pair of jeans. No shirt. No shoes. Just a worn pair of work jeans.

His well-earned muscles rippled with the slight sheen of sweat, making her want to touch him—to learn the ins and outs of every crevice on his body. He was the first man that had ever made her tremble at the sight of a bare chest.

But she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on his formidablebody, she chided herself. He was her suspect and a potential informer. She had to play this smart.

“I don’t quite know how to answer you,” he replied. “I work hard at my job and don’t have many hobbies…anymore. I bought this place a couple of years ago because I thought it would make a good place to raise a family.”

He hung up his dish towel and sat on a stool at the kitchen counter. “About a year ago I…uh…changed my mind about the family. But then I thought the place seemed lonely without youngsters around, so I bought a few lambs. And here we are—a real working farm.”

“You don’t mind the work?”