Justine Davis - Operation Blind Date

When a loved one goes missing…and no one believes you…

Weeping in front of customers isn’t Laney Adams’s style. She would have gone unnoticed if security expert Teague Johnson hadn’t come to her grooming shop to pick up his boss’s dog, Cutter. Something about Teague—or maybe it’s the uncannily perceptive canine—compels her to open up about her best friend who’s gone missing and how she feels responsible. The confession reminds Teague of his own secret guilt. He can’t turn away. With the help of the Foxworth Foundation—and Cutter—Laney and Teague launch a dangerous search that leads to unexpected twists…and undeniable passion.

“I introduced them. This is my fault.”

Instinctively Teague reached across the table and put his hand over Laney’s. “You didn’t know.”

He needed to know more about what had triggered her worry.

“Tell me what about your friend’s texts you felt were off. You showed them to the police?”

She grimaced again as she nodded. “They thought it was just drunk texting. I know better.”

“Because?”

She reached into the low front pocket of her shirt—when had scrubs become somehow sexy? he wondered—and pulled out a phone. She tapped it a few times, then held it out to him.

He took it and read the message:

Take care of Pepper 4me, pls? He’s such a gd dog. Thx

“Seems innocuous enough,” Teague said.

“Yes. Except for three things. Pepper? A cat. And a she.” She took a deep breath. “And she’s been dead for ten years.”

Cutter’s Code: Men of honor offering the ultimate in private witness protection

Dear Reader,

I once set up a friend on a blind date. While they were out doing the traditional dinner and a movie, I sat at home in a panic. It would go horribly, they would have a horrible time, they would hate each other and then both hate me, what was I thinking? As time passed and my friend didn’t call to berate me, and I couldn’t reach her, that writer’s imagination that is both blessing and curse went crazy. By midnight I’d decided they’d both been killed in a car accident. By 2:00 a.m., they’d picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be an ax murderer. By 4:00 a.m., I’d sent my friend into the clutches of a serial killer.

Ten months later, they got married. They’d been talking all that time, and never once thought of me and my wicked imagination. Hmpf.

I recovered, basked in my own cleverness for a while, wore the official title of “matchmaker” at the wedding with some embarrassment, and laughed at those awful moments when I feared the worst. But apparently I never really forgot them, because they resurfaced as I was toying with the beginnings of this book. May this be as close as you ever come to this scenario!

Happy reading,

Justine

Operation Blind Date

Justine Davis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JUSTINE DAVIS

lives on Puget Sound in Washington State, watching big ships and the occasional submarine go by, and sharing the neighborhood with assorted wildlife, including a pair of bald eagles, deer, a bear or two and a tailless raccoon. In the few hours when she’s not planning, plotting or writing her next book, her favorite things are photography, knitting her way through a huge yarn stash and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster—top down, of course.

Connect with Justine at her website, justinedavis.com,at Twitter.com/Justine_D_Davis, or on Facebook at Facebook.com/JustineDareDavis.

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A lonely little girl.

A mistreated pup who needed a home.

A perfect match.

Ten to nineteen, important years for a girl.

He was the brother I didn’t have.

My playmate, my confidant.

My comfort through some rough family years.

He showed me the heart hole only a dog can fill.

And the real meaning of unconditional love.

Decades later, and a slew of dogs afterwards,

I miss him yet. Love ya’, Scamper!

—Pam Baker

This is the second in a series of dedications from readers who have shared the pain of the loss of a beloved dog. For more information visit my website at www.justinedavis.com.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Change was coming.

He could feel it in the air, Teague Johnson thought. It wouldn’t be long before the trees started to turn. Soon after that there would be a riot of color as the Pacific Northwest said goodbye to summer and settled in for a long, likely wet and maybe cold winter.

He’d missed that. As a kid, all he’d wanted was out of the wet, but after a while spent at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, he’d found the lack of defined seasons oddly disconcerting. It messed with his sense of time passing. And when he’d finally come home, he’d welcomed the shift from summer to fall and winter to spring in a way he never had before.

You never miss it until you lose it.

Terri’s voice echoed in his head as the pain jabbed at his gut. He steeled himself against it with the ease of long and frequent practice. The past had been nagging him lately, in all its various ghostly forms. That was usually a signal he’d been living too much in his head, and the cure was something hard, physical and exhausting. Maybe he’d borrow Cutter for a long, mostly uphill run.

“Crazy dog,” he muttered, but he was smiling. The uncannily clever beast had quickly gone from being the pet of his boss’s fiancée to being an amazingly useful member of the team.

He hesitated for a moment, looking at the small coffee place next door to the groomer’s. Another sure seasonal sign; they were putting up the sign for a string of pumpkin spice items. Tempting. He had a silly weakness for them. Maybe he’d pick up a latte and grab a muffin to share with Cutter, who seemed to have an affinity for the particular flavor as well. That would, if nothing else, guilt him into taking that long, hard run.

After, he decided. He continued toward the groomer’s, smiling at the image of a floppy-eared dog in a tub of suds painted on the window.

A bell rang as he pulled open the door of the small shop. A humming sound from the back halted just as he stepped inside, and a split second later he heard a woof of greeting come from the back. He couldn’t see the dog, but obviously Cutter knew he was here.

“Almost done, be right out.”

The female voice calling from the room at the back was low, even husky, but there was another note in it that made his brows furrow. An unsteadiness or something that was noticeable. He shrugged it off; it wasn’t his business. Maybe she had a cold. Or maybe the mess Cutter had gotten into—Hayley, said fiancée and the dog’s first chosen person, had said he was mud and muck from nose to plumy tale—had required some heavy-duty cleaners, although the only thing he could smell was a faint scent of something that reminded him of cough drops. Eucalyptus or something.