Free Lissa- Sugar and Spice 1.6 - Final Page B

tried. But he couldn’t quite make it. She could hear his hind claws scrabbling against the rug.
    “I’ll help you,” Lissa said.
    She grabbed him around his middle. Between the two of them, he finally ended up on the mattress beside her.
    “Poor baby,” Lissa said softly. “You’re an old man, aren’t you?”
    Old. And sweet. And even if he’d been trained to some kind of idiotic command procedure, you could see that Gentry was good to the dog.
    Lissa had put in time volunteering at animal shelters in almost every city where she’d lived and worked; sadly, she’d become good at identifying abused animals pretty quickly, and it was obvious that Gentry had not abused Brutus, that—despite what she’d said—the dog wasn’t the least bit afraid of him.
    Back to Gentry again. The man was a mystery.
    Not a likable mystery.
    Lissa sighed. Why would he be likable? To her, anyway?
    This place wasn’t what she’d expected. But she wasn’t what he’d expected. That should have made them even, she thought as she looped her arm around the Newf, but Gentry had taken things too far.
    He refused to believe that she was a chef.
    What did he think she was, then? What was it he’d accused her of being? Some blond ditz hoping for stardom?
    The dog blew out a noisy sigh. His head dropped to his paws.
    “Really,” Lissa told him, “your Mr. Gentry started the whole thing by not believing that I am a cook.”
    Which was, she supposed, a kind of compliment.
    Not the ditz part. The part about his assuming she was a wannabe actress. Didn’t that mean he thought she looked more like an actress than a cook? No, wait. All it meant was that he was foolish enough to think women chefs were unattractive. Idiot. Still, it was a kind of back-handed compliment if you figured it meant that he thought she was, well, attractive.
    Brutus yawned again. So did Lissa.
    Not that she wanted him to think that. Why would she care what he thought about her looks? Just because a man who spent his time surrounded by beautiful women would see her as attractive…
    Brutus’s big brown eyes blinked once. Twice. Then they shut. Lisa yawned.
    “A fine idea,” she told him.
    It was mid-afternoon and she’d been up since dawn She had plenty of time for a nap, then a shower, then a trip to the kitchen to discover, no doubt, cans of beans and chili and boxes of mac and cheese and—and—
    Her lashes drooped.
    Seconds later, she and Brutus were both snoring.

CHAPTER FIVE
    M ontana was one of those places that drove meteorologists crazy.
    One of the wranglers his father had employed when Nick was a kid used to sit in a rocker on the bunkhouse porch in the early evening, his hands busy with a pocket knife and a piece of wood, his rheumy eyes fixed on the mountains. He was an unending source of fascination for Nick, mostly because the old guy could whittle a stick into damn near anything, but also because he chewed tobacco and unerringly spat into an old tin can between offering bits of homegrown philosophy.
    One of the favorites had been that old saw about changeable weather.
    “If’n you don’t like the weather in these parts,” he’d say between chews and spits, “jes’ wait a while and it’ll change while you’re lookin’ at it.”
    Nick, seven or eight at the time, had been amazed at what he’d thought was the brilliance of the remark. It had taken years before he’d realized that the statement was true of lots of places though time and travel had taught him that up here, in the high mountains, the weather really could change in the blink of an eye.
    This day had dawned cold and clear, but it had devolved quickly when gathering clouds had brought snow and wind.
    By now, the weather was close to blizzard conditions.
    Seated at his desk in what had been his old man’s office, Nick looked out the window at a thick wall of steadily falling white flakes.
    Visibility was close to zero. The temperature had to be close to that, too. Thankfully, it