Page 38 of Operation Protector
She and Hayley sat on the back porch. And after about ten minutes, she was looking at Hayley in amazement. “He really is trying to teach Ziggy how to fetch.”
“That dog,” Hayley said, “could teach just about anybody to do just about anything.”
“You’ve obviously trained him well.”
Hayley looked back at the girl and the two dogs. “Wish I could take the credit, but he came that way. At a time when I desperately needed him.” Then she looked back at Ali. “He showed up on my doorstep shortly after my mother died.”
Something in the way the other woman was looking at her told Ali what she wasn’t saying. “You know. About…my husband, I mean.”
Hayley nodded. “Foxworth does our research.”
Ali thought about that for a moment. About the idea of being “researched” by an organization the size and scope of the Foxworth Foundation. It was intimidating, and a bit scary. But that was outweighed by something else.
“You checked me out because you wanted to be sure I truly wanted to help Grace.”
“Yes,” Hayley said simply.
Ali let out a long breath. “All right.”
“You’re okay with it?”
She nodded. “Grace deserves that kind of care.”
“Yes.”
Ali gave the woman she was starting to wish really was a longtime friend a sideways look. “I assume you did the same with Colby?”
Hayley smiled. “We did. You’ll have to trust us as he did about you, he’s all he appears to be. A good guy to the bone.”
She blinked…as he did about you?
As if she’d guessed what had rattled Ali, Hayley said, “Understandably, he’s not completely confident of his own judgment about women. The reason is right over there, and by the way, she’s looked out the window toward us at least twice since we sat down here.”
Ali let out a long breath. “I’m really glad you’re here. This…undercover stuff is so not my milieu.”
“Yet you’re doing it so well,” Hayley teased, making her both smile and relax a little.
The first drops of rain hit the roof over the porch in almost the same moment that Ziggy finally seemed to grasp the concept of fetch. At least, he brought the rubber bone back to Grace, with a proud Cutter trotting behind.
“A good note to end on,” Ali called out to them as they neared. “It’s going to open up so get inside before you get soaked. I think some hot chocolate is in order.”
Grace gave a happy little whoop, and the trio trekked inside.
She had only known the child for a short time, but the change in her demeanor seemed both blatant and wonderful.
Almost as wonderful as being a part of this.
Chapter 17
Colby told himself he liked meeting with Ali because she told him things about Grace, things he sorely missed, things he didn’t know because he wasn’t allowed enough time with her. He liked meeting with her simply because she was spending afternoons with Grace and freely shared every aspect of that. She told him everything his girl had done and said in those five days so far, and he could convince himself it somehow made up, in part at least, for the huge hole in his life.
Especially when she told him how Grace talked about him, and he knew the child understood that even when he wasn’t physically there with her, she was always first in his thoughts.
This was their second meetup here at the Foxworth headquarters, marking exactly a week since he’d made that surprisingly great decision to punch out the window of Grace’s room. Ali didn’t seem to mind at all spending time talking about her time with Grace, and he seized on that gratefully. That was the big reason he looked so forward to meeting with her.
He even almost believed that was the only reason.
“—Hayley amazed me, pulling that off.”
