Author: Susan Donovan
Thomas Tobin is a lawyer who works as part of a murder-for-hire task force. He's proud of the work he does, but seeing the bad side of humanity day in and day out is starting to wear him out. He too often finds himself looking for the dark side to every person he meets. It doesn't help that his fiance dumped him when a rugby accident left him unlikely to ever father children. Now his team's best informant,Scott Slick , is dead and Thomas is feeling guilty over coercing him to continue as an informant. After all, if Slick had quit when he wanted to he might not be dead. It's that guilt which leads Thomas to take home Slick's dog Hairy, a Chinese Crested. After only two weeks Thomas is at wits end with Hairy's behavioral problems and seeks help from a veterinary psychologist. If only he didn't find her so attractive he'd be a whole lot happier.
Emma Jenkins is an animal behaviorist and all around good person. Ever since she divorced her husband, a fellow animal behaviorist and partner in her practice, she's had her hands full keeping her clinic afloat and raising her best friend's daughter. Then there's her ex-husband coming around trying to get money from her and acting so strangely. She doesn't have time to date and she certainly doesn't have time to be distracted by someone who blows hot and cold like Thomas Tobin. He wears expensive suits, but his face and body scream bad boy and one minute he's drawing her closer and the next he's pushing her away. She wants nothing to do with him, not even as a client, but when Thomas suspects that Hairy's behavior might lead to catching a murderer how can she say no?
I was with Emma on her opinion of Thomas and his two-step. I liked that she wasn't afraid to confront Thomas about it too. She didn't take crap from him and I love that in a heroine. Thomas was a bit of a wanker at times. When he started looking for Emma's "dark side"I could kind of understand it. In his line of work it would be easy to expect the worse out of people, but he was letting it turn him in to a misogynist. This is evidenced later when he starts riffing on how women mess a man up and how often the men he sees in his line of work are there because some woman has them all twisted up. I get that his fiance dumped him at the worse possible moment, but that wasn't what hit him so hard, It was the news about his malfunctioning equipment and the end of his plans for the wife, kids and white picket fence thing. He was letting it make him bitter. I hated that because of those issues he gave Emma such a hard time. The things he said to her towards the end of the book were horrible. I get why he said them, what with always expecting the worse of people and his damaged equipment, but had I been Emma, I don't think I could have forgiven him quite so easily. He wasn't a bad guy. There were spots where I liked him a lot and felt sympathetic towards him. It was just during his bonehead moments that he bugged me. I really loved Hairy and that he had his own occasional POV in the story.
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