Page 55 of Puppy Christmas

“Damn,” she said. “Patrick really got into your head, didn’t he?”

There was only one way to answer that—with a nod.

“And Ford?”

There was only one way to answer that, too. Lila nodded again.

She waited while Dawn drummed her fingernails on the desk, thinking. “I don’t know, to be honest,” her sister eventually said. “I mean, we don’t share a lot of interests—outside of the puppies, that is—and you definitely wouldn’t have come across me in an ice-fishing shack somewhere.”

Lila’s lips lifted in a slight smile. “You’re never going to let that drop, are you?”

“Then again, I don’t have much in common with Sophie, either. Not if we look strictly at facts. She likes to knit and hang out with old ladies, and she’s even started playing in the Deer Park bowling league. She’s pretty good at it, actually. It’s weird.”

“But if you met her, you’d want to get to know her, wouldn’t you?” Lila persisted. “Someone who knits and hangs out with old ladies and goes bowling is interesting.”

Dawn blinked at her. “Yes, but so is someone who has a master’s degree in animal behavior and lies under piles of puppies when she’s stressed and would willingly take a man ice fishing if she thought he might enjoy it.”

“He won’t enjoy it.”

“And thank God for that,” Dawn said, laughing warmly. “I supported you throughout that whole dating-Patrick thing, and I’d do it again a thousand times over, but I don’t know how well I’d do if you took up with a fisherman. Every sister has her limits.”

The light words were meant to reassure her, Lila knew, but they only made her feel worse. Dawn would support her if she datedtenfishermen, but that was because she was her sister. She had to. It was one of those rules that Lila was so fond of.

“He really did a number on me,” Lila admitted. It was the first time she’d ever spoken the words out loud, and they felt stiff on her tongue. “Patrick, I mean. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to shake this idea that he’s right—that I’m cold and reserved and unable to let my guard down with anyone.”

She should have known that Dawn wouldn’t accept a statement like that without a fight. Her sister leaned close and gave a lock of Lila’s hair a tug. “But your guard is down with Ford, Lil. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. When you’re with him, you’re like an entirely different person. Not”—she said firmly—“a better one or a worse one, but a different one. One I like and love just as much as the one I liked and loved before.”

Lila’s vision swam with sudden tears. That was the entire problem in a nutshell. When she was with Ford, shefeltlike an entirely different person. He made her laugh and sparked life in parts of her that she hadn’t known existed. And then she came home, and those parts were still open—raw and exposed and unlikely to close ever again.

He’d done that to her. He’d done that to her, and she’dlethim.

“I really like him, Dawn,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I know you do, Lil.”

“And I really like Emily and Helen and maybe even Principal Brown, too.”

Even though Dawn had no idea who that last one was, she nodded and extended her arms to pull Lila into a hug. Lila went willingly, taking comfort from her sister’s strong, capable, judgment-free clasp.

“You’ll find the perfect date idea, I’m sure,” Dawn soothed, the wavy strands of her hair tickling Lila’s cheek. “And if you don’t, you can always fall back on my dinner-and-sex plan. It’s not very innovative, I’ll admit, but it does the trick almost every time.”

Lila laughed, the sound of it muffled by her sister’s shoulder. Trust Dawn to restore her humor just when it was needed most.

“To be honest, sister dearest, I’m surprised you bother with dinner,” she said.

Dawn responded with a laugh of her own. “To be honest, sister dearest, I rarely do.”

* * *

“What are you drawing?”

The sound of Lila’s voice had Ford scrambling to hide the pages he’d been scribbling on. They weren’t, as he’d so optimistically planned for the day, the remaining figures for his coffee-maker project. The idea of Lila the Lizard Queen had taken hold of his imagination in a big way. He was having a difficult time working on anything else.

Not so difficult was the decision to hide any and all evidence of it from Lila’s view. Acting mostly on panicked instinct, he swept a frantic arm over his drafting desk, scattering papers all over the linoleum floor. Luckily, the only ones that fluttered sketch side up were of coffee makers. And a quick likeness of Jeeves that he’d done while the puppy had twitched his way through a dream last night. Though not his best work, at least the drawing wasn’t one of the many images of Lila with a tail and a knife strapped to one shapely thigh.

“I thought you and Emily were outside working on traffic sounds today,” he accused.

“Did you do this?” Lila asked by way of answer. She held the picture of Jeeves between two fingers. “Ford—this is good. As in,reallygood.”