Not That Kind of Girl by Susan Donovan Page A

course you’d want me to repeat it. You get off on hearing women beg for help, is that it?”
    Eli blinked. The voice was clearer and louder now. He felt his belly drop to his boots.
    “What did I expect?” she continued with renewed vigor. “That you’d be something other than an arrogant bastard about this? My God, I must have been crazy to think you’d help me.”
    “Roxanne?”
    More silence.
    “This is Roxanne Bloom, correct?”
    “How in the world would you know it was me?” she asked sharply.
    Eli laughed and was about to answer her but lost his train of thought when the airline employee tapped his shoulder again, this time without the friendly smile. He held up his index finger to indicate he’d just be another minute.
    “Because I know you, Roxanne,” was Eli’s answer. Immediately, he realized how odd his statement sounded. What he’d meant to say was, Because I know your voice. Talk about losing his equilibrium!
    “I hardly think so,” she said, her words flat.
    “Ms. Bloom, is there something I can do for you? I don’t mean to be rude but they’re holding a plane for me.”
    “A plane? But you can’t!” Roxie’s voice softened again. She sounded truly frightened. “Oh, God! What am I going to do?”
    If Eli heard right, Roxie then began to cry.
    “Tell me exactly what’s happened,” he said, already guessing the general nature of this call. With everything that had transpired between them, there could be only one reason Roxanne Bloom would ever contact him—her dog had attacked someone and she needed his help.
    “Yesterday, Animal Control took her … they’re going to destroy … Oh, God … I have to prove she can be rehabilitated or they’ll put her down!” Roxie stopped a moment, unable to speak. Eli heard her struggle to contain her emotions. “There’s a hearing …”
    That’s when Eli heard Bea Latimer’s voice in the background, insisting Roxanne spit it out.
    “Please! I can’t let them kill her! You’ve got to help me. Please come back! ”
    Eli sighed deeply, then made his way to the chair he’d vacated only moments before. He let his overnight bag fall to the floor and took a seat. “Did she bite someone, Roxie?” he asked calmly, his voice free of blame.
    She cried hard.
    “Roxanne, please listen to me.”
    She cried some more.
    “Was the injury serious?”
    “No!” She sniffed, pulling herself together. “It was totally minor stuff. He had some lacerations to his throat, but no major arteries were severed or anything.”
    Eli’s eyes went wide. “I see.”
    “All it took was ten stitches and some intravenous antibiotics and he was outta there!”
    Eli coughed. “But he’ll be all right?”
    “Oh, sure. He’s going to need some plastic surgery down the road, but, you know, nothing major.”
    “Ah,” Eli said, realizing he’d hate to hear what Roxie considered a serious injury. “And who, exactly, did Lilith bite?”
    “My pig-faced dickhead of an ex-boyfriend.”
    Eli sucked on the inside of his cheek a moment before he continued. “And where is the dog right now?”
    “They’ve got her. They said I can’t take her home until after …” Roxie stopped. In fact, it sounded like she’d stopped breathing altogether.
    “Roxie?”
    She let out a long, low howl of grief. The emotional pain he heard in her cry would’ve brought him to his knees if he weren’t already sitting. It reminded him a great deal of the way she’d cried at the horse paddock just the day before.
    Eli took a slow and steady breath. He pulled air into his chest and let it out through his nose. He saw where this was headed, and he would need to be steady. In fact, he would need to be steady enough for the three of them—himself, Roxanne, and her dog. And that was saying something.
    He smiled softly, realizing that the whole situation had the feel of inevitability to it. Here he was, in an airport, trying his best to run away from Roxie Bloom, and now it seemed