The vet just watched Buck as I complained to her. I had a list: barking, aggression to other dogs, would not come when I called, willful, refused to walk on a leash anymore, attacking any man who came near me, jumping on people.

"I'm going to get kicked out of my apartment if I can't get the little bastard under control," I told her.

She stroked Buck's muzzle and her strong fingers made him sigh. He was so calm with her. He just stood there, letting her keep him in one place as she began her exam.

"He won't let you touch him there," I warned her.

He let her. Of course. Buck has begun to make a game out of making a fool out of me. I glared at him. Was that a grin he gave me in return?

Buck licked the vet's hand and wagged his tail as she continued her exam. "He's an Alpha. He'll do what comes natural. It's not his fault he doesn't understand how to behave in your life. It's yours," she said.

"Mine?" My mouth fell open.

"Yes, yours. You're the human; you have to teach him what you expect."

The little shit.

Except that very night, he was overjoyed to see me when I came home. He's so nice to come home to. Who else in your life loves you like a dog does? He's turned my world upside down but I already love him so bad that even when he's driving me crazy, I'd still not trade him for all the cats in the world.

A few nights later, I was standing inside this big open building at the fairgrounds for my very first obedience class. The vet had recommended this trainer. Dog yelps bounced off the cement floor. A bunch of us novice dog owners stood around trying to get control of our dogs. Yeah, me, I was holding Buck in my arms because he had refused to walk on the leash from the car and I'd been dragging him by the leash but then I thought that looked awful mean so I'd carried him in. And he was trying so hard to get down. He kept growling at the other dogs. I could feel the way the growl traveled through his body, shaking him with the aggression he wanted to get out.

The dog he wanted to take on the most was a German shepherd that was at least three times bigger. "Give me a break, Buck," I whispered to him.

It was a horrible night. The first thing the instructor, Dale, told us was to make the dog sit on our left side, facing forward. "Are you absolutely kidding me?" I moaned out when I tried to get Buck in control for like the 50th time.

Dale came over, took the leash, walked off with Buck ... who resisted for about two seconds until Dale gave it a yank that Buck respected. Oh man! Was that my dog trotting along? Dale stopped, looked Buck in the eye and said, "Sit!" Buck yipped at him. Dale shoved Buck's ass to the ground. Buck yipped again. Dale yanked up on the leash and pushed his ass back down to the ground saying very firmly and decisively, "Sit!"

Buck sat.

Dale walked him back to me, handed me the leash, addressed the class, "You gotta mean what you say. You are not asking the dog, you are telling him. Say it once, say it firm, do not tolerate disobedience."

Oh, yeah. Right.

He told us to walk our dogs in a big circle, yanking crisply on the leash to get their attention and then releasing immediately. To practice giving commands. Every so often, he'd tell us to make our dogs sit. Christ. Second time I tried, Buck lunged for the German shepherd, who happened to be next to us. It took Dale and his two assistants to yank Buck off the German shepherd, who, as it turned out, was not going to take that shit off a little pipsqueak Sheltie.

I called Egan when I got in my car. I was in tears. "I have a devil dog," I told Egan.

He is such a calm person. He had been the one to tell me which vet to go to. He had been the one who helped me find the right size collar and all that other dog stuff that I didn't have a clue about. I think over the last week, I'd called him twenty times exasperated with Buck and each time, he'd calmly listened until I felt better. "No such thing, love. Dog's just looking to do what his master expects."

"Would you take him to the obedience classes for me from now on? I bet he'd obey you. You like dogs. You could control him, teach him."

"You don't need classes, Ann. Just show him who's in charge. It's all he wants."

"I've tried that, Egan. You know I have." My voice quivered. "I love this dog. I need him."

"Sure you do, love. Sure you do. And he knows that."

"Christ, everyone keeps telling me that he's an Alpha dog ... that I need to be the master ... that I have to be the boss ... that he has to respect me ... that I have to learn to make him obey ... it's not working."

"Why don't I come over? Let me have a look at this devil dog of yours, okay? See what's what and all."

"I would be so grateful, Egan."

Yes, the dog attacked Egan. Egan shook him off like he was a gnat. When Buck wouldn't stop yapping while Egan was trying to say hello to me, he reached down and flicked his thumb firmly under Buck's jaw. It stunned the dog; his teeth rattled together as his mouth was shut from the force of Egan's simple flick. And in that space of time, a look passed between them. Buck stopped barking and just stood there looking at Egan.

I catalogued that away.

We took Buck walking on the levee. Egan's dog Corey came with us. He didn't need a leash. He simply walked with us. Buck tried to attack him; Corey snarled at him and Buck stopped.

After a while, we stopped and sat along the grassy bank of the levee and looked out over the river. Egan was holding Buck's leash lightly. Corey meandered over to Egan. The two dogs sniffed each other's privates and I groaned at the obscenity.

"Never owned a dog before, Ann?"

"No."

"Why now?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I guess I didn't have enough men in my life."

We grinned at each other. He shook his head at me. "Now the truth."

"I was lonely."

"Are you still?"

Who would admit that?

"Of course not. How could I be?" The way he looked at me ... it made me blush. It was just a bit too frank, too open, too interested. "So, the devil dog. You got the touch, it seems."

"Dogs and horses. Seem to like me, right?"

"And women. They like you, too."

"You think?" He gave me such a shy grin. I gave him a playful shove in response and he pretended I'd laid him out flat. As soon as his back hit the grass, both dogs chose that moment to jump him. When I started laughing at how funny it looked to see those dogs attacking him, Egan picked up Buck and tossed him at me.

There is nothing like a puppy, is there? One minute they are driving you around the bend and the next they are just so damned cute that you would die before another moment went by that you weren't kissing on them.

Before I knew what was happening, Egan had tossed Corey on me, too. I was laughing too hard as both dogs decided to lick me to death.

And the moment slipped away into something else. He slipped over me ... Egan, I mean ... joining in the wrestling bodies of two dogs and one woman ... growling out to us like he was taking all three of us on ... except the dogs leapt off me and then it was just him on top of me ... Egan, I mean.

Just there. On top. His body. On mine. His eyes, shining. His mouth ... the wide smile of playful Egan slipping slowly away to evolve into the serious barely-open-mouthed contemplation of interested Egan.

"Don't kiss me," I whispered to him. My hand was on his collar. I pulled him down to me. "I couldn't stop if you did."

"No one's asking you to stop."

The first touch of his lips was on the side of my mouth, like he just didn't want to hurry it. I turned into the next descent of his lips. His mouth rocked into mine, nibbling just a bit on the bottom lip until I opened ever so slightly and let him in.

I was aware of everything all at once. I noted so many details: the way his thigh felt impossibly large between mine, how his knee began to push up into my crotch even as his hand went behind my hips to yank my groin into a better fit with his, how sweet he tasted, how his hair felt between my fingers, how he turned his face and went deeper, how he held back from grinding against me until I arched into him, how he turned us over on the grass until he was on the bottom and then flipped us again until he was between both my legs and I had spread wide and was about to wrap my legs around his hips ...

Except Corey let out a loud bark and Buck yelped.

Do you know the nicest thing? Egan never apologized for doing that. I liked that. He just hopped off me, pretended he didn't see me staring at the bulge, grabbed my hand and gave both Buck's leash and my arm a bit of a yank to get us moving with him.

At my apartment, he handed me Buck's leash and was leaving. I asked him to stay with me. He said no; that he thought maybe slow was better.

I watched him walk to the elevators. He looked back at me as the doors opened. He had the oddest look on his face but he still left. I think he wanted to stay.

He called me an hour later. Said he wanted me to know that if he'd stayed, he'd not have stopped.

"No one was asking you to stop," I said.

I didn't hear the ghost that night ... though the alley cat still made noise. Rather than the singing and caterwauling, though, he sounded really angry. All this hissing and screeching at other cats.

The ghost?

"What ghost?" he asked me deep in that night.

I snuggled up against him, my arm wrapping around his chest, my body encircled by his strong arms. "I think I have a ghost. He likes to visit me, especially at night."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, it's kinda hard to really say. I hear these bumps. No one's ever there. The super says he doesn't have a clue. He thought maybe it was air in the pipes."

I didn't tell him the other thing ... the new thing my friendly neighborhood ghost had started doing a few days earlier. He had started moving things. Little things. Like ... I had this jade Buddha that sat on my bookshelf in my living room ... it was only a few inches high ... it always sat on the third shelf. Always. It would be on the third shelf at night ... it would be up on the fifth shelf in the morning. Things like that, I mean, just for no real conceivable reason, the ghost had started moving mementos around ... I think the ghost just wanted me to notice that he was still there. It had become this little routine. The ghost would move something; I'd put it back in the morning.

He shifted around; one hand stroked down my hair and then down to scratch himself. "Have Jeff come take a look at the plumbing."

"Good idea." I paused and rolled away. He followed. I felt his breath on the back of my neck as he moved my hair aside so he could snuggle in. He wanted sleep. He wanted me to slip into sleep with him. He wanted me to quit shifting in the bed and tossing around.

In the morning, he was gone when I woke. I had this strange feeling that maybe he'd been a dream produced by my active mind that had needed a restful night's sleep. Like maybe I'd invented him coming to my apartment last night because I wanted someone to hold me and keep the ghost from visiting me that night.

But he was there. Never fear. He was sitting in my dining room, drinking coffee.

When I bent to give him a kiss, Buck started barking. 

"No bark!" I said, very firm, very definitive, and using the command I'd been taught the night before in obedience class. Buck's mouth opened, like he was going to bark, but then his head cocked and he just didn't. Bark, I mean.

He started chuckling. 

"What?" I grumped at him.

"You ever tell me to 'no bark' in that voice and I think I would tuck my tail between my legs and run for cover."

"Yeah?" I climbed into his lap. "And what if I gave you a different command?"

"Like what?" he asked me, his voice gruff and serious. His hands were opening my robe and he was simply staring into my eyes, defying me, testing me.

"What would you find hard to obey me on?"

He crooked an eyebrow at me. "I am not into kinky."

"I didn't say kinky. Geez. When did I develop that reputation?" Except I think I knew.

"I do not obey women," he said, with finality and in this way that meant business.

"Are you playing with me?" I whispered it to him. "I may be many things, mate, but a woman to play with? You may find different."

"I don't play."

"I don't obey men," I said, and I knew before I said it that I was upping the ante.

"I don't need to be obeyed. But then, I do not give orders to women. I don't have to."

"No?"

"No."

"Cocky man."

"It is not being cocky if it's the simple truth."

I licked my lips and felt the tremor pass through me. "Next time, I'm going to be ready with an answer to that."

After he left, I called Jeff and invited him to lunch. When I told him about the noises and the super thinking it was plumbing, he got so adorably peeved at me for not calling him sooner.

But two hours after he came to my apartment, he told me he could find nothing wrong with the plumbing. He'd examined my piping, of course, and then the super let him in the basement and the two of them had a good time just doing whatever it is plumbers do to check things out. I, of course, hadn't a clue because I didn't go with them. I was out running errands on a glorious Saturday and didn't really regret that decision to forego watching Jeff and my super wax on and on about the glories of modern plumbing.

When I returned and they told me they'd found nothing wrong, I nodded and felt oddly enough that I'd expected that. I got the requisite lecture about tightening taps and cleaning out traps and what I could or could not use in the drains.

I fixed Jeff dinner and he hopped up on the counter to yak at me while I cooked. He asked me all sorts of rude questions, brought me up to date on what was happening at the pub and told me all sorts of things he probably shouldn't have shared about his own love life.

After dinner, we played Battleship and drank a very nice bottle of merlot. I came so close to asking him to stay over that night, to camp out in my guest room ... but I realized I really was being a ninny.

Imagine if he let slip at the pub and it got back to someone like Terry, who'd never let me live it down, that I was afraid there was a ghost at my place. Doesn't that sound really crazy? I mean, first I think I'm terrorized by either a mysterious intruder or a nasty ghost at the pub ... and then I admit I've been hearing a ghost at the apartment? I mean, don't even get me started ...

And when I did hear a noise in my apartment that night ... and Buck gave another of his barking rants ... and the cat started screaming beneath my window ... I sat up in bed and screamed to the ghost through my closed bedroom door: "I am not scared of you anymore! So fuck off, ya bastard!"

I didn't hear anything else after that. I smiled very smugly at Buck the Wonder Dog. "See? Nothing to be afraid of at all, mate."

In the morning, I stumbled into the bathroom while Buck dashed into the living room. This was our morning routine. I made a semblance of order about my body, threw on shorts and a t-shirt ... while Buck pranced at the apartment door waiting on me to take him for his morning constitutional.

I was brushing my teeth when I looked down because I realized Buck was in there with me. "If you piddled on the floor, buckaroo, I'll kill you," I mumbled around a mouth full of toothpaste foam.

Five minutes later, I was hopping down the hall, trying to get my running shoes on, when I stopped dead cold with one foot in the air and my hands on the laces of that shoe just as I hit the living room.

I just stood there for the longest time and stared.

Every single piece of furniture in there was piled very neatly, very concisely in the exact center of the room.

This was NOT where I'd left it the night before. It was piled floor to ceiling. The walls were completely bare of furniture. Even the pictures I'd had hanging were piled in the center of the room.

I gulped hard, walked forward, looked down at Buck who was slowly circling the display ahead of me. He was sniffing the air like something really intrigued him.

"Holy shit," I said to Buck. He looked back at me and gave me a little nod.