The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(101)

“You’re keeping the dog because of Toby, aren’t you?”

Mike merely shrugged.

She needed Mike a lot more than he needed her, and she pressed on. “He was upset about his friends not coming back. Thank you for volunteering to break the news. Martin has really helped cheer him up.”

He tossed his sports coat over the nearest chair. His tan dress shirt was virtually unwrinkled, with none of the sweat rings under his arms the day’s heat should have produced. “I might as well tell you that I put my foot in it again,” he said, not quite looking at her as he loosened his tie. “I wanted to give him something to look forward to, so …” His faintly guilty expression wasn’t encouraging. “I asked him if he’d take care of Martin whenever I leave the island.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

He pulled off the tie. “The logistics.”

She got it. Mike lived too far away for Toby to bike to his house, especially in the winter, and it would be impractical for Bree to drive him back and forth several times a day. “So the dog will have to stay with us at the cottage,” she concluded.

“Sorry,” he said. “I should have asked you first.”

She made herself nod even as she eyed Martin’s enormous paws with a sense of foreboding. “It’s okay,” she said.

Toby wrestled the puppy for a stick. He was outgrowing his only pair of decent pants, and it wouldn’t be long before he needed shoes. She pushed the thought away. “Tell me about your house.”

“It’s one of the most expensive on the island, one of the biggest—” He stopped, his customary enthusiasm deserting him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to brag. When you sell real estate, you get used to lining up your talking points.”

She was surprised that he’d recognized how he was coming off, but he seemed more tired than embarrassed. She didn’t know what to make of that, so she asked to see the inside of the house.

Mike tossed Toby a dog leash. “How about taking Martin for a walk while I show Bree around?”

As Toby clipped the leash to the pup’s collar, Bree followed Mike through the glass doors. They stepped into an enormous great room with log walls, a high-beamed ceiling, and a massive stone fireplace. The magazine-worthy decor was both masculine and comfortable, with a color scheme of chocolate, cinnamon, and bittersweet. Old-fashioned snowshoes, topographic maps, and forged iron wall sconces hung on one wall; a big picture window with a view of the lake occupied another. A round coffee table rested in front of a deep leather couch draped with a black-and-gold-checked Pendleton blanket. The hearth held a twig firewood basket and a roughly carved wooden statue of a black bear.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“I always wanted a North Woods house. Cool and dark in the summer. Warm and comfortable in the winter.”

“Pure Michigan.” She smiled. “I’d say you accomplished your goal.”

“I hired a decorator. A great guy. He and his partner visit once a year and throw out the kind of stuff I tend to pick up on my own. I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with a couple of U2 posters and a stuffed carp.” His eyes were laughing at her, but as she smiled back, he looked away. “The truth is, I don’t have what you call first-class taste, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

True. Mike only had first-class kindness. “It’s a big house for a bachelor,” she said.

“I had a family in mind when I built it. I was engaged at the time.”

That surprised her, although it shouldn’t have. A man as attractive and successful as Mike wouldn’t have trouble finding women—at least women who hadn’t known him when he was younger. “Anyone I know?” she asked.

“No.” He nudged an ottoman out of the way so she wouldn’t have to step around it. “Her family summers in Petoskey. Breaking that engagement was the hardest thing I ever did.”

“You broke the engagement?”

“You figure I was the one who got dumped, right?”

“No. Not at all.” That’s exactly what she’d thought. “I just didn’t know you’d ever been engaged.”

“We had different values. She didn’t like island life or most of my local friends. But she had good qualities, too.”

“Just not enough for you to marry her.”

He refused to put down his former fiancée. “She took it hard. I still feel bad about it.”

And he would. The adult Mike Moody didn’t like hurting people. Maybe he never had.

He reached up to open his collar button, a simple gesture, but so completely masculine that she felt a little queasy. The sensation threw her off so much that she asked a question she’d never otherwise have posed. “Have there been a lot of women?”

“A lot? No. As much as I enjoy sex, I never slept with a woman I didn’t care about. If that makes me an oddball, I can live with it.”

It didn’t make him an oddball; it made him a decent guy. But she still wished he hadn’t brought up sex. All right, so she was the one who’d brought it up, but he didn’t have to give her any details. She wanted to believe he …

She didn’t know what she wanted to believe, and she was glad when his cell rang.

“A client,” he said, glancing at the display. “I have to take this.”