Page 104 of Puppy Christmas

And why wouldn’t they? These women had only seen the fun, flirtatious Ford Ford—the man who’d wear a Speedo at a pool party just to give them something to ogle, and who could be counted on to make a pirate costume look amazing. They didn’t know that he struggled to get his work done every day, sitting down at his desk whenever he could squeeze in a few minutes. They didn’t know that he constantly worried about Emily’s well-being, putting every single one of his own needs behind hers. They didn’t know that he was an amazingly talented artist who was too afraid and too humble to do anything but dream.

But Lila knew. She also knew that swooning and adoration weren’t what he needed. What he needed was someone who saw him for what he really was: strong and scared, fallible and funny, and most of all, incredibly protective of his heart.

He’s just like me.

When she glanced up at him again, she expected the earnest expression on his face to be gone, once again replaced by the charming smile that characterized him. She was wrong. Not only did he remain perfectly serious, but his hand was held out in a gesture of supplication, his palm up and waiting for hers.

“Will you come with me for a minute? Emily has something she’d like to say to you.” He drew a deep breath that swelled his chest and made his ruffles flutter. “For that matter, so do I. But I think I should let her go first.”

Lila might have been able to withstand the request if he’d laughed or joked or done something intensely piratical, like winked at her, but he didn’t. All he did was hold his hand flat and add, “Please.”

There was nothing for Lila to do but give in. As her palm touched his, his fingers closed tightly around hers, clutching as though she were the only thing keeping him from plunging off the edge of a cliff. If that wasn’t alarming enough, the fact that he said nothing more than a terse “Thank you” as he pulled her toward the bedrooms would have been.

“What is it?” she asked, trying to keep the sharp note of worry out of her voice. “Is it about Emily’s hand?”

“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.” He cast a look over his shoulder back at her, his face relaxed despite the urgency of his grip. He even managed a smile. “She has a confession to make.”

Ford led Lila to a bedroom almost identical to Emily’s, but crammed with a bunk bed and shelves full of action figures in every possible shape and size. It was incredibly messy, although a space had been carved out in the middle of the floor where Emily stood over an abandoned board game.

Lila couldn’t help but laugh as her gaze landed on the color squares and candy-coated figurines on the game box.Candy Land.Of course. Her pink dress really did look like it could preside over a field of those lollipops.

The laugh didn’t last long. As soon as her gaze landed on the little girl, all thoughts of joy fled. Emily’s eyes were wide and wet with tears, her hands clasped behind her back. Lila had seen far too many puppies stand exactly like that—hurt and dazed—to react any other way.

“Oh, love.” She dropped to her knees and held out her arms. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Emily didn’t, as she expected, come running into her waiting embrace. With a shuffle of her feet and an even more stricken glance at Lila, she said, “It was me.”

The words came out barely above a whisper, but in addition to sign language, Lila’s skills in lip reading were also growing by leaps and bounds. “What was you, Emily? What happened?”

Pulling her injured hand from around her back, Emily held it out to Lila. She looked over Lila’s shoulder toward her father and gulped before continuing. “Jeeves didn’t bite my hand. And he didn’t growl or bark or jump or do anything bad.”

It took everything Lila had not to turn toward Ford and demand a more concise explanation, but she did it. Emily was obviously taking this very seriously, which meant Lila would, too. If there was one thing she remembered well from her own childhood, it was feeling annoyed whenever an adult acted like her problems didn’t matter.

Emily mattered. She mattered a lot.

She took the proffered hand and held it lightly, careful not to press on the injury but unwilling to let the girl go. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?” she said.

Thatearned her a hug. Emily came tumbling in to her, her arms winding up around Lila’s neck and holding on with a desperation that hooked on her heart. “I bit myself,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. “I bit myself and then I got Jeeves in trouble, only now he’s all locked up and I don’t want him to be.”

“Of course you don’t,” Lila murmured, but she doubted Emily heard her. She must have felt the soothing rumble of her voice, though, because she only burrowed deeper into Lila’s chest. “He’s your trusty steed, isn’t he? Your valiant knight? You need him. A princess always knowsthat.”

Ford cleared his throat. Lila glanced up to find him watching them with a furrow between his eyes. “That’s not the whole story, I’m afraid,” he said. “The part she isn’t telling you iswhyshe did it.”

Lila didn’t want to jostle Emily out of her embrace, so all she did was lift an inquisitive brow. Ford sighed and ran a hand along the back of his neck before gesturing at the space on the floor next to them. “May I?”

Lila nodded, scooting over just enough to make room for Ford to join them. Emily noticed the shift and turned around to face her father. As though it were the most natural thing in the world, she settled herself in Lila’s lap, those warm little legs pressing against Lila’s own. For a moment, Emily made a move as if to put her thumb in her mouth, but she decided against it.

She took Lila’s hand instead.

“Tell her, Daddy,” she said. “Tell her that we don’t want her to go.”

For the first time since they entered the room, Ford relaxed enough to chuckle. It was such a familiar sight—that gorgeous smile of his, the easy way he allowed joy to spark his life—that Lila found herself gripping Emily even tighter.

“Well, I was going to segue in a little more delicately than that, but Emily’s not wrong,” he said. “She doesn’t want you to go, Lila.Idon’t want you to go.”

“Me?” she said, somewhat taken aback by the direction the conversation had taken. She wasn’t the one who’d been offered a job three hundred miles away. She wasn’t the one about to pack up and move her heart to the other side of the state.

“Her methods were a little drastic, I’ll admit, but her intentions were pure.” Ford bestowed a smile on his daughter and leaned in to give her nose a tweak. “She thought that if Jeeves had to be retrained, we could hold on to you a little longer. How much longer, I don’t know. A few weeks, a few months… Maybe forever.”