Page 94 of Puppy Love

“Yes. I woke up about an hour ago to find Bubbles missing. She’s not in any of the usual places, and she doesn’t come when she’s called. I need to set up a grid search—and I need to do it now—but I don’t have enough bodies. Will you come?”

“Um.”

“Please, Sophie.” His voice had never sounded so bleak, his expression never been so harsh. He’d also never looked so good. Maybe it was the dim lights of dawn peeking in through the window, or maybe it was the fact that he looked as honestly, openly human as she’d ever seen him, but the worried lines of his face touched something deep within her. “I know you officially graduated us, and that you technically aren’t responsible for her care anymore, but she needs you.”

He paused. “Ineed you.”

Those three words were all she needed to hear to click into awareness. She threw back her quilt and began tossing on whatever clothes were at hand. The result was a mismatch of knee-high socks, jeans that were two sizes too big, and a sweatshirt that proclaimed her the 2005 Northwest Volleyball Champion, but she didn’t care.

Harrison needed her.

Okay, so he needed her help with Bubbles, and nothing short of an emergency would have forced those words out of his mouth in the first place, but she wasn’t going to quibble over the details. Not when it came to one of her puppies.

Or when it came to one of her friends.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” she said as she led him out her bedroom door to the kitchen. Her mother was already there, wrapped up in a fuzzy pink robe and starting the coffeepot, which answered the question of how Harrison got inside. “When did you last see her, and what did you do after you left the Department of Natural Resources yesterday? Hey, Mom. Make it extra strong, will you?”

“Triple strength,” she promised. “Anything else I can do to help? That poor little puppy. She must be terrified out there on her own.”

Sophie took one look at Harrison’s expression—which had moved well beyond terrified to reveal a pale, tightly drawn frown—and laughed. It was difficult to get out in any sort of way that sounded natural, but she did it because he needed her to. “Thatpoor little puppyis probably chasing a rabbit through the woods and having the time of her life. It’s Harrison we should feel sorry for.”

“You think that’s what she’s doing?” Harrison asked. He took a cup of coffee from her mom with a slight nod of thanks. It was a strange thing to see, her mother accepting a large, strange man in her precious daughter’s kitchen at four o’clock in the morning, but Alice had always been good in a crisis.

“I do. We’ve probably been working her too hard, so she saw a chance at freedom and took it. She’s still just a baby in so many ways.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Mentioning how vulnerable Bubbles was only served to make Harrison vulnerable too.

“Hey.” She reached out and placed a hand on his arm, feeling the tense strength of him through the worn flannel. “She’ll be okay. Dogs run away from their owners and come home none the worse for their little adventures all the time. I promise.”

“Maybe it works that way for most people,” he said soberly. “But whenever anyone runs away fromme, it has a tendency to stick.”

She dug her fingers so firmly into his arm it caused him to wince. “We’ll find her and bring her home where she belongs, Harrison. I promise.”

He nodded once, accepting her vow as though she carried the authority of the world on her shoulders. Her mother watched the interaction with unblinking eyes peeping over the top of her coffee cup. Sophie knew she was paying attention because even though the mug was held to her lips, she hadn’t taken a sip even once.

Sophie also knew that somewhere along the lines, her mom had begun to see what she saw—that Harrison wasn’t some cold stranger bent on ruining her precious daughter’s life. He was just a man. One who was scared and lonely and who had been that way for so long it had never occurred to him that he deserved more.

But hediddeserve it, and for the first time since Sophie had entered his life, he was ready to push himself to get it.

“Harrison says he wants to start a—what was it?” She looked a question at him. “Grid search?”

He nodded, his firefighting training clicking into place. “Yes. It’s standard whenever anyone goes missing in the wilderness. By putting up parameters and assigning everyone a region, we can cover the most ground without doubling up. Even if she moved as fast as her legs would take her, she can’t have gone too far from the house.”

“Okay, then that’s what we’ll do.” Sophie released her grip on Harrison and grabbed the pen and notepad Lila kept in a tidy pile next to the house phone. “You set up your parameters, and we’ll recruit everyone we know to take them.”

Her mom nodded. “I’ll wake the girls and then give Paulette a call. She’ll want to help.”

“Paulette?” Harrison echoed.

“From Sophie’s knitting circle. I’m sure she and Hilda can get most of the other women from the group to join in, not to mention their families.”

“But—”

“And Oscar and as many DNR people as he can rustle up,” Sophie added before Harrison could protest. She knew what he was thinking—that the women of the knitting circle were the ones who caused her mother to move into the house in the first place—but that hardly mattered now. When it came to protecting their own, those fierce, loyal women were a godsend. And Harrison, whether he knew it or not, was one of their own.

Because he’s mine.

As Sophie was rapidly coming to learn, the people who loved her, who took such good care of her, didn’t just throw the mantle over herself. It automatically extended to everyone she held dear, no questions asked.