‘And the registration number of the vehicle, sir?’ the police officer asked him politely.
Tersely Piers gave it to him.
‘There was a dog in the car,’ Piers told the officer, ‘and to be honest I’m more concerned about him than I am about the vehicle.’
As he spoke Piers realised, a little to his own astonishment, that it was the truth. His first thought when he had realised that his car had gone had been for Ben.
‘A dog, you say?’ The policeman frowned.
Ten minutes later Piers was at the police station reporting the theft of his car—and Ben—in more detail.
‘Look,’ he told the police officer taking his statement. ‘If it will help I’m fully prepared to offer a financial reward...’
The police officer pursed his lips.
‘I doubt it will do any good, sir,’ he told Piers politely. ‘It’s more than likely that the car—’
‘It’s not the return of the car that concerns me,’ Piers interrupted him. ‘The reward would be for the safe return of Ben, the dog...’
‘We’ll do our best, sir,’ was the police officer’s courteous response as Piers signed his statement and got up to leave.
* * *
Georgia looked anxiously at the kitchen clock. She had been expecting Piers back with Ben ages ago. Where was he? Where were they? Had Ben misbehaved, perhaps even run off, refusing to come back? She closed her eyes. She could just imagine how Piers would react to that. ‘Oh, Ben,’ she pleaded under her breath, ‘please, please be good.’ In championing the dog she knew that she had destroyed whatever slim chance there might have been of Piers changing his opinion about her, and...
And what? Falling in love with her, feeling something much, much more than mere unemotional sexual desire for her? How could she have deserted Ben, though? How could she possibly have wanted a love that came with that kind of price tag? And besides, she didn’t want Piers’s love, did she?
She started up as she heard the front door being opened. The front door. A small feather of alarm curled through her stomach. Piers would never bring Ben in through the front door after a long walk, risking the dog’s muddy paws on his godmother’s elegant carpets.
When Piers opened the kitchen door Georgia was standing with her back to the kitchen table, the same table on which he had threatened so sensuously, so temptingly, to make love to her. Her body tensed.
‘Where’s Ben?’ she demanded as soon as Piers walked in.
As he heard the accusatory note in her voice and saw the look in her eyes, Piers felt his heart sink.
It was going to be so hard to tell her what had happened... The fear he could see in her eyes only mirrored his own feelings of concern for the dog. He was a man who was used to being in control of things, and to have to acknowledge not just to himself but to Georgia as well that he had no control over what was happening, no way of guaranteeing Ben’s safety, of promising her that all would be well, was dealing a very hard blow to his in-built male sense of self. And because of that he responded in a way which he later was forced to admit was a world away from the gentle care with which he had been planning to break the news to her all the way back to the house.
‘Is that all you can think about?’ he demanded shortly instead. ‘The dog? Well...’
As she heard the anger in his voice and her senses picked up the guilt that underlined it Georgia immediately accused him, ‘Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it? You’ve done something to him. If he’s been hurt... If you’ve hurt him...’
If he’d hurt him? Piers opened his mouth to defend himself and then closed it again. What, after all, could he say? He was responsible for Ben being put in a position where he could be hurt, even if he had done so by accident rather than by design.
Too anxious about Ben’s absence to interpret correctly the look in Piers’s eyes, Georgia only knew that his silence totally condemned him.
‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’ she demanded, her voice breaking on a small sob of anguished despair as she mentally visualised poor Ben locked up in a cage, waiting to be found a new owner, not understanding what had happened to him.
There was no way she was going to allow Ben to be hurt like that. If she spoke to her parents, explained the situation, she knew full well that they would generously help her to fund the purchase of her own small property, somewhere where she could have a dog. Yes, if necessary she would give Ben a home herself rather than...
‘Where is he?’ she repeated fiercely. ‘Where?’
‘I don’t know,’ Piers told her gruffly. The sight of the tears she was trying valiantly to hide had brought a lump of emotion to his own throat.