by Lucy Gilmore
He twisted his head to get a better look at Sophie. She was exhausted, obviously, with bags under her eyes and her hair an odd mixture of puffed-out spikes and sweat-dampened curls. She’d also shed her heavy sweatshirt for a faded AC/DC T-shirt of his that was tied in a knot at the waist.
To make matters worse, she was limping from a fall into a gopher hole. Of the two of them, she was the one who most needed a break.
Not that she’d take one. He’d never seen anyone so good at field morale, pushing when it was needed, pampering when it wasn’t, indefatigable from start to finish. They could use a woman like her at the fire sites.
He could use a woman like her in his life.
“She thinks Bubbles went in search of you?” he asked.
“I mean, it’s possible.” She examined the hangnail with renewed interest. “Lila’s in the kitchen making a few calls to animal control. She asked me to come get you so she can ask you a few questions.”
The mention of animal control got him moving. In his experience, that was who you called to scrape up the roadkill from the side of the highway in winter, the people who put dangerous animals down and fought cougars that wandered a little too close to town. Not exactly the people he wanted to talk to about his lost puppy.
The walk back to the house was slow because of Sophie’s limp, but neither one of them attempted to fill the minutes with small talk. Harrison appreciated it more than Sophie could possibly know. It was enough to have her beside him, to hear the soft sounds of her breathing and the steady crunch of her footsteps. He’d said terrible things to her, had blamed her for a situation that was well beyond her power to correct, but that hadn’t stopped her from coming to his aid.
“Sophie, I—” he began, but she yanked open the back door and pushed him through it before he could finish.
“Not now,” she said in a tone that was firm but kind. “You can tell me later. After we have her safe.”
What if we never have her safe?
He couldn’t voice the question aloud. It was caught, sharp and barbed, in his throat. Besides, he stepped into the kitchen to find himself facing not just Sophie’s oldest sister, but Dawn too. Both of them were standing near the sink with their arms crossed, their conversation low pitched and ominous.
It became all the more ominous when they stopped the moment they saw him standing there.
“Ah, there you are,” Lila said unhelpfully.
“Take a seat,” Dawn added as she pulled out a chair at the rough-scrubbed table covered with its nicks and scratches. For all that his house had been taken over lately, no one had managed to get a tablecloth over it. It sat there, ugly and stark, for everyone to see.
He might have run then, escaped with what was left of his energy, but Sophie stood by the back door, her hip resting against the kitchen counter. He was trapped on all sides by Vasquez women.
Strange that it should feel so comforting. Strange that he welcomed the cushioning, enveloping embrace of them.
“Why does this feel like you’re about to give me bad news?” he asked, looking from one face to another. The sisters probably didn’t realize it, but they were almost identical when they wore those serious expressions. They each had their own unique smile, but this earnest intensity was worn in the same flat press of their lips, the same dark eyes that appeared both troubled and concerned at the same time.
It was probably the shared tragedy of Sophie’s youth that had done it. They’d learned to share their grief. They’d figured out how to tackle the harsh realities of the world together.
Oh, how he envied them that. To face another tragedy alone was more than he could bear.
“What did animal control say?” he asked, his voice sharp. “They found her? She’s dead, isn’t she? You just don’t want to tell me.”
“We haven’t heard anything bad, Harrison, I promise.” Lila’s voice was kind but firm. “And you’ll be the first to know if we do. Do you love my sister?”
“What?”
Harrison took a wide step back, eager to put as much distance between himself and that question as possible, but it didn’t work. Sophie appeared just as startled as he was. She’d jumped away from the counter and was standing stock-still in the middle of the doorway. Instead of retreat, he only managed to ram his body into hers, which was not the place he wanted to go right now. Touching her, even by mistake, reminded him of how soft she was, how yielding, how warm.
In other words, of how much he loved her.
“Answer the question, please. It’s important for finding Bubbles.”
He swiveled toward Sophie. “Did you put her up to this?” he asked. He hadn’t finished the question before he already knew the answer. That look of wide-eyed alarm couldn’t belong to anyone else.
“Of course she didn’t,” Dawn said. She shook the back of the chair in a pointed effort to get him to sit. As it appeared he was trapped anyway, he sat. He might as well be comfortable. “If you haven’t figured out by now that Sophie is the sweetest and most thoughtful person on the face of the planet, then you never will.”
“Um, guys? Maybe now’s not the best ti—”
Dawn waved her sister off. “The sweetest,” she echoed firmly. “And the most thoughtful, and everyone who meets her falls instantly in love.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, watching the woman in question. Memorizing her. “I know.”
“That includes humans and canines,” Lila added. “It’s uncanny, to be honest.”
“I know that too,” he said, his voice gaining strength. A few months ago, this was the exact kind of conversation that would have had him shutting down and running away. These were his feelings they were talking about—he and these three women, he and the woman he loved. A Parks man didn’t just loosen his tongue and say what he felt. He was supposed to hide these things, bury these things, pretend that he didn’t need these things as much as he needed the air he breathed.
“Of course I love her,” he said. “I’m in love with her. What kind of a fool would I have to be not to? She’s beautiful and capable and strong. She sees good things growing in terrible places. She’s the best person I know, and I’ve been hers since the moment she yelled at me for giving Bubbles table scraps.”
“I didn’t yell at you!” Sophie squeaked. Her cheeks were suffused with pink, her whole body motionless.
“You did, and you meant it,” he replied, strangely relaxed now that he’d gotten over that first hurdle.
Dawn cast a wide smile over them all. “There now. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Are you going to stand there glaring the whole time, Sophie, or are you going sit down too?”
She gulped. “I’ll stand, thanks. I feel like I should be on my feet for this.”
To be perfectly honest, Harrison would have preferred her in his arms for this, but he wasn’t going to push Sophie into any kind of declaration she wasn’t ready for. It was enough that she knew what was in his heart.
Lila cleared her throat. Of the three sisters, she was the most naturally authoritative—and it was a skill she obviously had no qualms pulling out whenever she felt the impulse. “Now, Harrison. Would you say that Sophie’s presence in your life is integral to your happiness?”
“Yes, of course it is. She’s everything to me.”
An indistinguishable sound escaped from between Sophie’s lips.
“Excellent.” Despite her sister’s growing discomfort, Lila continued her interrogation without so much as a blink. “Would you say that you’ve been particularly adept at hiding these emotions? Particularly from your puppy?”
“From Bubbles?” His chest squeezed at the thought of that tiny bit of fluff—the one creature in his life he thought he hadn’t driven away. “Unfortunately, no. I’ve been miserable since the moment I said those awful things to Sophie, and the puppy knew it. I told you, Sophie, remember? I begged you to fix her.”
“I remember,” Sophie said, her voice low.
“Then, yesterday after we left the DN
R, she kept licking my face and hands over and over again. She wouldn’t leave my side even to go to the bathroom. I tested my blood sugar eight extra times yesterday, thinking she was trying to alert me, but it was always normal.”
“And what were you doing last night that might have set her off?” Lila asked. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
He thought back to the evening before, trying to remember everything he’d said and done that Bubbles could have misconstrued as his determination to give up on life. He’d spent several hours digging his never-ending ditches, yes, and had eaten his sad, plain chicken breast for one while standing over the sink, but those were hardly signs of a man on the brink. A man who desperately wanted his woman back, yes, but that part went without saying.
“I don’t think so. It was pretty routine, as far as life goes.”
“His pillow,” Sophie offered.
Lila cocked her head. “What’s that?”
“Ask him about his pillow.”
“What?” Harrison turned to the woman standing next to him—the light in his heart, the joy of his life, the missing piece of his soul. She looked the picture of innocence, but Harrison wasn’t fooled for a second. Behind those wide, gorgeous eyes lurked the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
And the best.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned.
But of course she dared. She always had.
“He makes out with it sometimes when he’s feeling lonely,” she said, a gurgle of laughter at the back of her throat. “I don’t know how hot and heavy those sessions get, but he might have taken things a touch too far. Maybe Bubbles was traumatized.”
“Goddammit, Sophie!” He jolted out of his seat, pushing the wooden legs across the floor with a screech. “For the last time, I don’t make out with my pillow—and even if I were in the habit of defiling inanimate objects, I wouldn’t do it while my puppy was watching.”
“Oh?” she asked, head tilted. “When would you do it? In the shower? That makes sense. That’s where I like to—”
He took two long strides to stand before her, attempting to make his glare as menacing and outraged as it had ever been, but it was no use. He couldn’t look at her and feel anything but love. He couldn’t be near her and think of anything but joy.
“Since the day you entered my life, I haven’t known a moment’s peace,” he grumbled, though his voice was soft. “You’re the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning and the last memory I have before I fall asleep at night. I picture you when I’m in bed and when I’m working out and when I’m driving my truck. I can’t hear the wind without picking up the sound of your laughter in it. I can’t look at Bubbles without seeing your face smiling up at mine. There’s a good chance I’ll never be able to shake you. Not for a single second. Not for as long as I live.”
She hadn’t blinked even once during his tirade. Perfectly still, she held his stare, matching it with an increasingly resolute one of her own.
“You’re everywhere inside me, Sophie,” he said, his voice cracking. “You’re everywhere inside this house. I did everything I could to scrub you away, but even though I washed my sheets three times, I swear I can still smell you in them.”
“That’s it.”
Harrison had forgotten that they weren’t alone in the kitchen, that his audience included Sophie’s sisters. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t really care. He’d hid his emotions for so many years, buried any sentiment that might cause his father to decide that he too would rather live his life without Harrison in it.
He was done with that. He was angry at his parents, scared for Bubbles, annoyed with Oscar, and unsure about the future. Above all else, he loved Sophie Vasquez with everything he had.
And he didn’t care who the fuck knew it.
“The sheets,” Dawn said. “That’s it. You say you washed them yesterday?”
He nodded. “I had to. They were killing me.”
“No, they weren’t.” Lila’s tone was matter-of-fact, but her gentle smile eased some of the sting of them. “But Bubbles wouldn’t have known that. I was right.”
He looked a question at her.
“Her job is to protect you, remember?” Lila asked. “And she’s done nothing over the past six weeks but learn how to do that. She knows the way you smell. She knows the beat of your heart. She knows what you need long before you do.”
He finished the rest for her. “She knew that if I wiped the last of Sophie away, I’d never be whole again. She knew she had to go get her for me.”
If he’d thought having sheets that smelled like Sophie was painful, then it was obviously because he’d never felt anything like this before. That little dog was so much smarter—so much better—than him. Instead of accepting the way things were, instead of sitting around and steeping in her own misery, she’d gotten up off her tiny puppy ass and set out to change her fate. To change his fate.
She’d saved his life. Again.
“But where would she have gone?” he asked, transferring his gaze from one sister’s face to the next. “Where would she expect to find Sophie?”
Lila snapped her fingers. “The kennel.”
“It’s a heck of a walk, but she could make it,” Dawn said. “She’d do it for Harrison. That puppy of Sophie’s is nothing if not determined.”
“I know,” Harrison said as he reached for his keys. He wasn’t wasting another second. “It’s the thing I love about both of them.”
Chapter 22
They found Bubbles straggling along the side of the highway a few miles outside of Spokane.
From the look of her, all matted fur and lolling tongue, the journey hadn’t been an easy one. Those short, stubby legs required constant motion in order to gain any ground at all, and anxiety at being away from Harrison made her more frantic than usual.
Still, Sophie had never seen such a beautiful creature.
“Bubbles, you precious little monster!” she cried as she jumped out of Harrison’s truck before it had come to a complete halt. The momentum of her leap threw her to the ground, but she brushed herself off and ran to the puppy’s side. “Do you have any idea how worried we were? Do you know how many people are crawling over the fields right now in search of your tiny puppy remains?”
From the feeble wag of the animal’s tail as she realized who was accosting her on the dirty side of a highway, Sophie was guessing she knew. She was also guessing she didn’t care.
“Harrison, do you have the—?”
She didn’t have to finish the question, as Harrison was already scooping up his puppy with a water bottle in one hand. He poured a cascade in front of the animal’s mouth, allowing her to lap greedily until the initial pangs of her thirst wore away.
“You are never going to do that to me again, do you understand, young lady? I’ve been out of my mind since I woke up this morning.” He glanced anxiously over at Sophie. “She’s okay. Is she okay? She looks okay.”
“Everything looks intact, anyway,” she replied. When that answer won her nothing but a sharp look of rebuke, she added, “I’m not a vet, Harrison. I’m just a dog trainer. And a pretty good one, if I do say so myself.”
“The devil you are.” Harrison’s oath carried zero malice—a thing that was obvious while he continued to allow Bubbles to wriggle and lick rapturously at his face. “You trained this animal to believe I can’t live without you. I always knew there was something wrong with the way you conducted your business.”
“I beg your pardon. Puppy Promise is a one-of-a-kind organization that you were lucky to find. You think we find last-minute placements and training programs for just anyone?”
He took a step closer. “Oscar made you do it.”
She took a step closer too. “No way. Oscar might be the boss of you, but he isn’t in charge of me. No one is.”
“Well, obviously. I’ve known that since day one. The only thing I can’t understand is why you let anyone tell you otherwise.” He drew a long breath. “I
’m really sorry, Sophie—for what I said the other day about you not being strong, about you not knowing what it’s like to struggle. I was… Well, shit. I was hurting, and I was scared of losing you. I still am, to be honest. I can’t think of anything worse.”
A sob caught in her throat, preventing her from speech.
“I know why the people in your life are overprotective, and it’s not because they think you’re weak.” He lifted a hand toward her, but when she still couldn’t move to return the gesture, he dropped it. “It’s because they can’t imagine a world without you in it.”
“Oh, Harrison,” she said feebly. It was everything and nothing—and for some reason, her inability to put her feelings into words only caused Harrison to open up even more.
“You saved this dog today,” he said. “You saved me. You called on the power of every godforsaken person under the sun and made them come to my aid. Believe me when I say that they wouldn’t have bothered for anyone else.”
That got Sophie to set her jaw. “Bullshit.”
He almost dropped the puppy in his surprise. He also almost dropped the puppy when a logging truck whisked past, stirring up cold air and a whirl of dust.
But he didn’t drop her. From the looks of it, he wasn’t going to let that poor animal out of his sight for months.
“What did you just say?”
“Bullshit,” she echoed, louder this time. “Every single person out there today would have come for your sake. Derek and Jessica and all the DNR crew. Oscar and that weird, skinny kid with his pants on backward. My sisters. My mother. Your mother.”
He paused at the mention of his long-lost parent, but Sophie wasn’t buying it. Not now. Not after he’d reluctantly, begrudgingly, oh-so-wholeheartedly professed his love for her in front of his sisters. He might like to pretend that he was a closed book and that no one was allowed to touch the pain he buried deep inside, but she knew better.