Read Online Lissa- Sugar and Spice 1.6 - Final - Free Book Online

have to be a good dog and let me get up.”
    “He won’t obey anyone but me,” Nick said.
    This was far safer ground because, unfortunately, it was true.
    Brutus had not had an easy life. Among other things, the nutcase who’d originally owned him had exercised his power by forcing the dog to respond only to him and, in some cases, only to code words.
    Nick had worked diligently to break the habit, though not always with success.
    “He won’t obey anyone but you?” Lissa Wilde said with indignation. “But that’s an awful thing to do to a dog. What if you weren’t here? Would he eat if you didn’t tell him he could?”
    Until recently, no. He wouldn’t. They’d finally reached the point at which Nick didn’t have to use a code word to get the dog to eat, but Brutus would still only accept food from him.
    And she was right. It was not a good thing. In fact, it had been one hell of a problem the weeks he’d been hospitalized, when the only way to get Brutus to do something as simple as eating had been to record the coded command so that the guy he’d hired to take care of the dog here at the Triple G could get him to eat.
    He thought of telling her that, but why would he?
    The dog was none of her business. She was a temporary blip on the horizon. And the dog was a fool for thinking otherwise.
    Enough, Nick decided.
    “Brutus,” he said sharply. “Up!”
    The Newf shot him an Are you nuts? look and went back to total adoration of Lissa Wilde.
    “Dammit, dog—”
    “Brutus,” Lissa Wilde said softly, “you wonderful boy, up!”
    The dog shuffled to his feet.
    “That’s my good boy. Now go to that despicable man who thinks he owns you.” The dog hesitated. “Go on,” the woman said, and the dog heaved a sigh and went to Nick’s side.
    The cook-who-almost-surely-was-not-a-cook-but-might-be-a-dog-trainer rose to her feet and slapped her jeans free of dust bunnies.
    “That,” she told Nick coldly, “is how it’s done. You want the dog to love you, not fear you.”
    Nick looked from the woman to the dog and then to the woman again.
    “How did you do that?”
    “I established a bond with him.”
    “Yeah, but how did you…” Nick stopped in mid-sentence. His eyes narrowed. “The dog doesn’t fear me.”
    “Uh huh.”
    “He doesn’t, goddammit!”
    “Right.”
    He looked at the dog again. Brutus sat with his gaze glued to his new best friend.
    “Brutus,” Nick said, “look at me.”
    The dog ignored him.
    “Brutus—”
    Lissa Wilde put her hand on the massive black head. “He’s a lovely dog,” she said. “He deserves to be treated with kindness.”
    “I have never,” Nick said through his teeth, “mistreated this dog!”
    “What do you call training him only to eat only after you tell him he can?”
    “I didn’t—”
    “You already admitted that you did. Well, it’s cruel. And dangerous.” Her head lifted. “Only a control freak would be into stuff like that.”
    He thought so, too, but this wasn’t the time to admit it.
    “It can be done for the safety of the dog.”
    She rolled her eyes.
    Yes. But it could.
    The vet had explained it—except, Brutus had never been a guard dog or a dog whose life, whose owner’s life might depend on not obeying the orders of strangers. Aside from situations as unusual as those, the vet had said, the risks of that kind of training definitely outweighed the benefits.
    And then, together, he and Nick had cursed the absent control-freak shithead whose dog Brutus had once been.
    “As if,” Lissa Wilde said coldly. She folded her arms over her breasts—except, damn, not quite over them. Her arms were more or less just beneath her breasts, lifting them, framing them, flaunting them. She was wearing a light jacket with the top buttons undone. He could see the rounded shape of her breasts, could imagine the sweet pucker of her nipples… “Have you heard a word I’ve said, cowboy?”
    Nick jerked his head up. “What?”
    The expression on