Page 233 of Falling for the Grumpiest Protector

I always follow.

***

Emma

The box cutter slips on the third box.

Not badly. Just enough to remind me I've been unpacking for hours and my hands stopped cooperating somewhere around dinner.

I set it down and look around the back room of the clinic.

Boxes everywhere. A shelf that needs two more inches than it has. Supply lists I've already rewritten twice. And a framed photograph the previous owner left behind, Dr. Gerald Whitman, arms slung around two golden retrievers, smiling like a man who never had a bad day in his life.

Everyone in town talks about him like he walked on water.

Dr. Whitman always kept the back door unlocked for emergencies.

Dr. Whitman knew every animal by name.

Dr. Whitman once drove through a snowstorm to check on a cow like it was his own.

I smile at every story. I mean it. He sounds like a wonderful man.

But he's retired.

And I'm here.

I hang his photo back on the wall.

He deserves to stay.

My assistant, Pam, left at six with an apologetic look and a casserole dish covered in foil I still haven't opened. The clinic is quiet now, the kind that either settles you or makes you feel every inch of your aloneness.

I choose to feel settled.

I pull the last box toward me.

The knock comes at nine forty-seven.

Not a knock, really.

A fist against glass. Hard. Urgent.

I'm already moving.

The man on the other side is tall. Broad shoulders. Dark jacket. Jaw locked tight like he's holding himself together with muscle alone.

And in his arms…

A dog.

Large. Limp. Too still.

I unlock the door.

He steps inside, and the fluorescent light catches his face. His eyes find mine, steady, but something in them fractures at the edges.

"Help him," he says. Low. Bare. "Please. Help him."