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rescue her. He couldn’t be here all the time. He had to focus on his mission, which was to at least make it safe for her to have the dog, to handle it on her own. The way it was behaving now, she could end up with a broken bone.

“Gather yourself, make him sit, try again.”

But now she was rattled and trying too hard, and the dog was confused. Jonas stepped in, took the leash—careful not to touch her this time, Chance was obviously picking up on something agitated—and made the dog sit.

Jonas passed the leash back to her. “No, don’t go right away. Make him sit. You decide when to go, not him.”

“I’m terrible at this,” she decided dejectedly.

“Try this,” Jonas said. “Act the part. Shoulders back, long, confident stride. Exaggerate it at first. You’re a model on the runway.”

She cast him a doubtful look.

“No, really. Just give yourself to it. Lots of attitude!”

He could see the moment she decided she would try it. Her shoulders came back. Her chin went up. With the leash firmly in one hand, she set the other on her hip. She stepped out, long strides, placing her feet one in front of the other, as if she was walking a tightrope with deliberation. Her hips swung. She narrowed her eyes and did a stern little purse with her lips.

Jonas had to bite back laughter. He was tempted to tell her the facial expressions were probably not necessary, at least for the dog’s sake, but he was enjoying them too much to stop her.

Chance, sensing the difference in Krissy instantly, came to attention and walked well at her side. Jonas watched from behind them, trying to be teacher-to-student analytical, but he was now aware he was definitely checking her out!

Krissy turned her head back to him. It’s working, she mouthed, as if it was a big secret they needed to keep from the dog. She seemed to realize he was checking her out. She lost her rhythm and Chance catapulted into her.

Jonas leaped forward and caught her before she fell. The moment intensified around him: her softness, her scent, a pink, plump petal falling from a flowering tree.

Her lips looked as plump and as pink as that petal. A command blasted through his brain. Kiss her.

He was so shocked by the impulse that he shoved her away.

“Okay, so modeling material I’m not,” Krissy said.

“Actually, I think you nearly had it. But you could try something else. Maybe an actress going up to get your Oscar?”

She made a face at him, gathered the leash and concentrated. He watched her face form into haughty lines. Confident and untouchable, she sashayed forward. Then, really getting into the spirit of the thing, she bobbed her head to the right and left, nodding at her imagined fans. It was hilarious. The dog was taking tentative steps with her, glancing at her face with utter confusion. After half a dozen steps, he sat down in protest.

“I’m not really feeling this,” she said. “It’s phony—it’s not me.”

In other words, absolutely the wrong choice for fake mate. She wasn’t good at pretending. The dog knew it, too.

“That explains the dog being confused,” Jonas said. “But sometimes you can at least fake the body language. Try the queen.”

Krissy shot him a look, but gamely recomposed herself. She cupped her hand and marched along with the dog, her face solemn, her hand turning languidly in her impression of the royal wave. The dog was now dragging behind her, shooting Jonas aggrieved looks at what he had created.

“Toodle-loo,” she told the dog, in a very bad impression of an English accent. “Come along, now.”

Jonas had been trying to hold back, but this cracked him up.

She stopped and looked at him. The dog, relieved, plopped down. Jonas stifled his laughter and moved to them. He tried to convince the dog to get back up. Chance pinned his butt to the ground as if it had been crazy glued.

His stifled laughter broke free. It rolled out of him.

Still with the accent, she said, “Are you laughing at your Royal Majesty the Queen?”

“No, Your Highness.” Snort, chuckle, snort.

“The Royal Dog?” she asked, aghast.

“I wasn’t laughing, Your Highness. Coughing. See?” He demonstrated a cough, but it didn’t work. It turned into a fit of laughter that he had no hope of stopping.

And then she was laughing, too, and the dog got all excited and raced around them, binding them up with the leash.

Somehow, they were pressed together again, and instead of feeling all wrong, a pretense that had gone too far, it felt all right.

She gazed up at him, and he looked down at her. The world—even the dog—faded away. So did the laughter.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HE’S GOING TO kiss me, Krissy thought, dazed by Jonas’s closeness, his scent, the glory of his hard, muscular frame pressed against the softness of her curves.

She closed her eyes; she leaned into him. She might have even puckered her lips. Anticipation tingled along every nerve ending. Her heart was beating way too fast. And then…

Nothing happened.

It reminded her, exactly, of his hesitation to accept her offer to be his fake mate the other night in his car. It reminded her how quickly she could be hurt by Jonas when she expected one thing and then another happened. Or didn’t happen, as the case might be.

Krissy did what she should have done in the first place. She opened her eyes, sandwiched her hands up between them and pushed. It opened the smallest gap, enabling her to reach down to loosen the leash that was holding them together.

Unfortunately, that required much squirming. The dog, held tight by the wound up leash, cocked his head and looked at them with frank adoration but no cooperation. There was more shared laughter, though now it had the faintest edge to it.

Awareness.

By the time she’d extricated them, Krissy was flushing madly: over the shared merriment and thwarted kiss and the rather intimate contact.

She realized this was exactly what the