Page 17 of Puppy Love

“There,” he said, arranging the pillowcase so that it wrapped around Bubbles. She looked like a fluffy, brown cherry atop a swirl of ice cream. “Now you can be warm and settle down.”

All he got in reply was another one of those mournful blinks.

“Goddammit, Sophie didn’t say anything about you sleeping in the bed!”

Since the words had been uttered more forcefully than he intended, he reached down and scooped up the puppy—pillows and makeshift blanket and all. Almost immediately, Bubbles emitted a small, contented sigh and tucked her head in the crook of his arm.

“Ten minutes,” he warned as he lay back on the bed. Bubbles stayed exactly where she was, stuck to his armpit like Velcro. “You can be up here for ten minutes, but then it’s back to the floor where you belong. I can’t have you up here with me all night. If I roll over the wrong way, you’ll die.”

Apparently, death by his crushing weight held no danger as far as Bubbles was concerned. She’d spent the entire last hour fighting sleep and shivering on the floorboards only to fall asleep within seconds of being cradled against him.

“Goddammit,” he said again. This time, it came out more like a whisper. “What am I supposed to do now?”

At least he had his pillows back. Moving carefully so as not to dislodge the sleeping puppy, he arranged things so he was more comfortable. Even then, he only had the flattest pillow of the lot under his head. The other two he set up along the mattress’s edge as a kind of barrier. Babies rolled. Did puppies roll? Hell, for all he knew, he wasn’t supposed to have pillows in here at all. What if she suffocated?

“I’m going to give that woman a piece of my mind tomorrow,” he said, careful to keep his voice low. “In fact, I’m going to start making a list of all the things she forgot to tell me. Does she think we’re all born knowing how to take care of dogs? I wasn’t kidding about that goldfish thing. You’ve seen this place—who would willingly bring anything living into it?”

Bubbles gave a twitch of her small body.

Harrison tensed, afraid he’d done something to hurt her, but she only sighed and settled into a deeper sleep. Puppies he might not understand, but the heavy, dreamless sleep of the exhausted was a thing he knew well. Some of the men and women on his wildfire team had been known to literally fall asleep on their feet after a particularly grueling day.

It was what made this whole Pomeranian-service-dog thing so upsetting. It was impossible to explain to anyone who hadn’t been on the edge of a forest fire just how close it was to being at the gates of hell. Those flames moved fast—faster than most humans could run, let alone a small animal—and were as unpredictable as the wind.

People died out there. Good people, strong people, people who knew what they were getting into and made the decision to fight anyway.

How could he ask this little nugget—yes,nugget—to tackle that with him?

“I’m adding that to the list too,” he muttered as he suppressed a yawn. The warm lull of the puppy’s body had him sinking lower into the mattress. With a quick, furtive look around the room—which was ridiculous for a lot of reasons, but most especially the fact that no one else had been inside it for years—he planted a soft kiss on top of Bubbles’s head.

“Tomorrow, we’ll get everything sorted out,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll make her see reason.” Tomorrow, he’d say a lot of the things that lodged inside his throat and inside his chest.

It was a thing he could promise with absolute certainty because, tomorrow, he was going to get to see Sophie again.

Chapter 5

At first, Sophie wasn’t sure she’d gotten the right house.

The structure itself was about on par with what she’d expected. A grumpy bachelor who spent most of his time battling the elementsshouldlive in a huge, ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere. The sense of isolation with each passing mile, the dirt drive leading in, even the weird metal sculpture rusted over and broken at the hinge all seemed to fit Harrison’s personality to a tee.

Rough and grizzled. Unwelcoming.

And, with a little work, probably one of the best things she’d ever seen.

But as the tires of her sleek, little Fiat crunched over the gravel, it wasn’t a brawny, steely-eyed firefighter who appeared at the door. Instead, there stood an older man, tall but gaunt, slowly lifting a cup of coffee to his lips.

“Hello,” Sophie called as she rolled down her window. “I’m looking for where Harrison Parks lives. Do you know if I’m on the right road?”

It took the man a second to absorb her arrival, but he eventually nodded. “You sure are, darling. You found us. Well, most of us, anyway.”

Most of us?

She put the car in park and got out, pausing just long enough to grab her canvas work bag. “I’m Sophie Vasquez,” she said.

She put a hand out too, but the man only stared at her outstretched palm and took another slow sip of his coffee.

“Um.” She jiggled her hand in an effort to bring it to his attention. “Sophie Vasquez? The service dog trainer? Did Harrison tell you I’d be coming?”

“He mentioned something along those lines.” The man finally took her hand and shook it. As had been the case with Harrison, it was a surprisingly gentle grip. “You’ll find him upstairs. There’s been an incident.”