by Emmy Eugene
“Have you thought about other ways to have a family?”
“Adoption,” she said. “Sure.”
“Fostering,” he added, shrugging. “And there’s always the dogs.”
Jenna giggled, because Seth knew exactly what to say to make her feel better. “Where are they tonight?”
“I loaned them to Russ,” he said. “He wanted to impress this woman he met at the speed dating last weekend, and he somehow thinks the dogs will help him do that.” He threw up his hands as if he’d given up. “I told him the dogs don’t help that much.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jenna said. “A sexy man in a cowboy hat who has loyal canine friends. It’s pretty impressive.”
“Is it?” Seth asked, immediately following that with, “Sexy?”
She tucked her hair and looked away. “I’ve always thought you were good-looking, Seth. But it’s really your heart that makes you attractive.”
“Thank you,” he murmured. He cleared his throat and looked at his new truck. “My wife—ex-wife—Wendy. She left me because I wasn’t exciting enough for her. I didn’t have the right job. I didn’t want to be anything but a rancher. I just wasn’t…enough.”
Horror struck Jenna right behind her lungs. “That’s terrible.”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “And I think I could get married again, to the right person, of course.” He flicked a glance at her and looked away again. She watched as an adorable blush crawled up his neck and into his face. At the same time, her pulse started flopping like a fish out of water.
“Have you thought about it at all?” he asked.
“Getting married again?”
“Yeah.”
Jenna wasn’t sure how to answer, because she hadn’t really been thinking about getting married for a second time. The first time had been such a disaster, and she’d lost eight years of her life.
“Your silence has answered,” he said. “It’s fine. Honest. We’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks.”
“You said we could go slow,” she said.
“I did say that, absolutely.” Seth studied her. “And we can. I was just…thinking.”
And Jenna liked that about him too. “You haven’t told me what you did after you left Chestnut Springs.”
“I did too.”
“No, you glossed over twenty-two years in one sentence.” She gave him her best tell me everything, cowboy look, and he simply glared back at her.
“Okay, well, I think I said I tried college. That didn’t really stick. I wanted to see what else was out there besides ranching, and I did the dog certification program. Once I finished that, I worked for a few training programs.”
“You and your pooches.” She stood up. “My bones are old, cowboy. Let’s go inside to a softer chair.” And she wanted to change her clothes. “And you can tell me the rest.”
He took her hand, left the bottles of apple cider on the steps, and went inside with her. “New truck?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said. “That’s how I spent my day.”
“What happened to the old truck?” Which hadn’t even been that old, in Jenna’s opinion.
“It’s a work truck now,” he said. “A ranch vehicle.”
“Can you give me five minutes to change? I swear I won’t be long. And I want to hear more about the dogs, I swear.” What she needed was to collapse into bed and sleep for a very long time.
“Sure, go change,” he said. She smiled at him and went upstairs. A long sigh accompanied her as she changed out of her work clothes and into something more comfortable. Her yoga pants and vacation T-shirt from SeaWorld in San Antonio wasn’t necessarily sexy, but she wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
And in that moment, she knew she was in a very deep relationship with Seth Johnson. “Could you marry him?” she asked herself. He had said they could go slow, and she had no doubt that he absolutely meant it. Her mind wandered down that path, and she imagined herself taking her Sunday afternoon walks down to the duck pond from the other side of the river. She hadn’t been in the homestead much, but she saw herself making coffee in that enormous kitchen and finding a way to build a screened-in back porch just like the one she had here.
“Jenna?” Seth called, and she startled. She had no idea how long she’d been upstairs, and she hurried out of her room and scampered down the steps.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I have to go. Russ called and said he found a litter of abandoned puppies.” He truly looked sorry too.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Go. We can talk on our Friday-night date.”
He grinned at her, pressed a kiss to her lips, and asked, “Are you sure? You were up there a lot longer than five minutes.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Isaac should be home soon.” He should’ve been home hours ago, and he hadn’t texted. But he wouldn’t stay at the hospital without letting her know, and he was probably out with Luisa anyway.
“Okay,” Seth said. “Call me. Anytime. Okay?”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around herself as he headed for the front door. Watching him go, she envisioned him ducking out the door that led to his garage, where his brand-new truck was parked. Rushing off to rescue a litter of puppies while she stayed in their home and took care of the fur babies she already had.
She wondered if the homestead at Chestnut Ranch had room for her piano studio, and then she reasoned that she could simply make the five-minute drive back here for lessons.
“Nothing you’re thinking about is reasonable,” she chastised herself. “You couldn’t even tell the man you’d thought about getting married a second time.”
But she sure was thinking about it now.
Chapter Nineteen
Seth approached the address Russ had given him, finding two figures on the sidewalk. One of them was definitely his brother, and the other feminine. Janelle Stokes, then. His date.
Seth didn’t find anything about abandoned puppies funny, but he still smiled. “Good for you, Russ,” he muttered to himself as he eased his truck over to the curb.
His brother opened the passenger door almost before Seth had come to a complete stop. “Hey,” Russ said. “Thanks for coming. Sorry to pull you away from Jenna.”
“It’s fine,” Seth said. He wasn’t sure Jenna was fit for company anyway, but he didn’t tell Russ that. He got out of the truck and went back to the tailgate.
“My brother, Seth,” Russ said. “Seth, Janelle Stokes.”
“Yeah, of course. Good to see you Janelle.” He shook her hand, somewhat cowed by her strong presence. She wore jeans and a black blouse with bright flowers on it.
“Good to see you too, Seth.” She tucked her hands in her back pockets and looked at Russ, definitely not the take-control lawyer when she wasn’t wearing her heels and pencil skirts.
“So what do we have?” Seth asked, glancing at the house down the street. The porch lights glinted in the gathering darkness, but they didn’t reach this far.
“This is a building lot,” Russ said, as if Seth couldn’t see that. “That house is a model.” He pointed to the one with lights on. “No one lives on this street.”
Seth cocked his head when he heard the high-pitched cries of an animal. “Oh, I hear them.”
“That’s how we discovered them too,” Janelle said, stepping up closer to the foundation that had been built.
“And you were walking out here?” Seth asked, surprised by that. He didn’t see any cars anywhere, and they were leagues away from Chestnut Ranch.
“I live on the block over,” Janelle said. “We’d come out to the backyard and then, yes. I wanted to show Russ the model home. So we walked over here.”
“They closed at seven, though,” Russ said. “That’s when we heard the puppies.”
“Are you house shopping?” Seth asked, realizing a moment later that he shouldn’t have said anything.
“No.” Russ practically yelled the word before glancing at Janelle. “Just…someth
ing to do,” he mumbled.
“They’re back here,” Janelle said, walking away from the brothers.
“Sorry,” Seth hissed as he followed her. Russ just looked at him, his eyes catching some of the light from next door.
The box of puppies had been pushed right up against the cement of the foundation, and Seth peered down at them. “Holy cow,” he said. “There are a lot.” The pups wiggled and wagged, and Seth couldn’t quite get a count on them in the darkness.
“Can you take them?” Russ asked. “You just did all those adoptions.”
“Yeah,” Seth said. “We’ll take ‘em. They won’t be able to live out in the enclosure anyway.” Seth didn’t want an undetermined number of puppies who didn’t have a mother. That meant milk and midnight feedings, and he saw his sleep slipping away from him.
He sighed, and Russ said, “I’ll help feed them.”
“That would be great,” Seth said, bending to pick up the box. The alphas in the pack yipped and yapped and licked his face. He laughed at them as he carried them back to the truck. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been out here, so he put them in the front passenger seat so none of them would die on the drive home.
“I’ll stop on the way home and get formula,” Russ said.
“I’ll get out the incubators,” Seth said. Keeping the puppies warm and fed would be their top priority—at least until he figured out how old they were. Disgust reared up inside him when he thought about who could drive out here, unloaded a box full of live animals, and then leave them without a way for them to survive.
Anger boiled in his stomach, but he pushed it down, got behind the wheel, and headed back to the ranch.
Travis sat at the kitchen counter, dirty dishes in front of him as he texted. Seth plunked the box of dogs on the counter while Winner whined and barked. “Can you get some washcloths and start cleaning these guys up while I go get the heat lamps?” He shoved Winner back to the floor when she put her front paws on the counter, trying to get a good look at her new friends.
“What in the world?” Travis simply gaped at the box of wiggling dogs.
“Russ found them abandoned in a construction site.” Seth headed for the back door. “I’ll be right back. He’s coming with food.” He looked at his dogs. “Come on, guys.” He waited for the dogs to go outside ahead of him, then he followed them. The screen door slammed behind him, and Seth made the quick walk over to the nearby barn. They hatched dozens of chicks every spring, and Seth loved having families out to the ranch to pick up their chickens.
Griffin taught a class at the hardware store about building chicken coops, and a lot of people in Chestnut Springs had them.
They kept incubators and heat lamps in the barn for the chicks, but they’d work to keep the pups warm too. He found one in good repair and headed back toward the house.
Russ pulled up at the same time Seth stepped onto the back lawn, and he lifted the grocery bags as a way to say hello.
“Sorry your date got cut short,” Seth said.
“Well, yours did too.” Russ opened the back door and held it for Seth. Inside, they found Travis with a wet cloth, wiping down the puppies and setting them on the floor in the corner, which he’d sectioned off from the rest of the kitchen with two dining room chairs placed perpendicularly on the floor.
“How many?” Seth asked, setting up the heat lamp over the spot Travis had chosen for them. “We’ll need more than dining room chairs for them.”
“I can go grab some fencing from the barn,” Russ said, not waiting before he left the house again.
Winner sniffed and whined, and even Thunder was inspecting their new charges.
“I put down some cardboard boxes from the garage,” Travis said, putting another puppy in the makeshift enclosure. “There are nine of them.”
“Nine.” Seth shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
“I think we could sell them,” Travis said. “They look healthy enough. They must not have been out there very long.”
Seth bent over and picked up one of the loudest puppies. He quieted in Seth’s arms and licked his neck and chin. Seth chuckled and took the puppy with him to make him a bottle. He rummaged in the bags Russ had brought in, pulling out the bottles and nipples, the formula.
“Let’s make a bunch,” he said. “They all need to be fed.”
Travis got out a big pitcher and filled it with water. While it whirred in the microwave, getting hot, Seth read the back of the formula can. “So they need five ounces each. He feels to be about a five pounds.” He had no idea how big the puppy was, but Travis was right. They seemed to be in good health, probably about four weeks old.
“Maybe something happened to their mother,” Travis said. “They’ve obviously been taken care of. Check out this blanket in the bottom of the box.”
There were three blankets in the box, and they didn’t look cheap. Seth still hated that someone had thought the solution was to bundle them up and drop them off. Everyone in Chestnut Springs knew he took in stray dogs. Why hadn’t they brought them to him?
He shook his head, telling himself it didn’t matter. He had them now, and he’d make sure they grew up to be healthy, productive, kind, amazing dogs.
“What do you think the breed is?” Seth handed the puppy to Travis and turned to take care of the formula.
“I don’t know,” Travis said. “Maybe Weimaraner? He feels like velvet.”
“Yeah, maybe.” The puppies were light gray or beige, and they did have that keen look of a Weimaraner. Seth didn’t usually deal with dogs that weren’t mutts or castaways, but these dogs looked like purebreds.
And Weimaraner’s grew up to be big dogs, he knew that. He mixed up the formula with a big whisk and started pouring it into bottles. Russ returned with plywood, not fencing, and Seth wondered what in the world was going on.
He’d just adopted nine puppies, that was what.
“Let’s make a box by the patio doors,” he said. “Then we can start getting them outside.” He moved the plywood scraps over to the patio doors, two doors that opened out onto a cement slab that the brothers hardly ever used.
“And we can open the doors and air out the house,” Travis added, taking the pup with him and putting it back in the corner for now. He went to help Russ, and Seth experienced a flash of love and appreciation for his brothers.
They created a large area with the plywood scraps while Seth took as many bottles as he could carry over to the small area crawling with puppies. “All right, guys,” he said. “Time to eat.”
The pups were definitely hungry, and he managed to hold bottles for five of them while the others backed a bottle into a corner and sucked hungrily at the nipples on their own. “I’m going to get horse blankets,” Russ said, and he disappeared out into the night again.
“I’ll go round up some of Winner’s toys,” Travis said.
“Good luck with that,” Seth said, watching as Winner trotted after Travis. Seth would like Winner to get in the puppy box with them and let them interact with her. He also needed people to come handle the puppies so they’d learn to have a lot of hands on them, looking in their ears and pulling at their teeth.
He needed kids.
And Jenna knew a lot of children. He finished feeding the pups just as Russ came in, his arms laden with blankets. He spread them all out in the puppy box and Seth washed out the bottles. “If they’re four weeks or so, we can feed them puppy food,” he said. “I’ll call the vet in the morning.”
“I can bring the Scouts out to play with them tomorrow night,” Russ said.
“That would be awesome,” Seth said, bracing his hands against the counter. “Okay, what else?”
Travis returned with a few toys, and he tossed them over the plywood walls. Winner barked at him, her way of telling him she wasn’t pleased with how he’d raided her toy closet.
“Go on,” Seth said. “Get in there.”
Winner looked at him and back to Travis. Seth walked over to her and
picked her up and put her in the puppy box. “All right, guys. Let’s move ‘em into their new home.” He, Russ, and Travis moved all nine puppies to the new box, and they started sniffing around.
Winner stood there, her nose going nuts while Thunder put his paw up on the plywood.
“Get in, boy,” Seth said, but Thunder dropped back to all fours. He looked worried, and Seth reached down and scratched behind his ears, a yawn starting low in his stomach and coming out quickly.
“I’ll sleep down here,” he said. “Can you guys stay with them while I go change and grab a pillow?”
“I’ll stay with them,” Russ said. “I found them.” He bent over and picked up two puppies. They wiggled and licked, and he laughed.
“We can rotate,” Travis said.
“I’ll go first,” Russ said, looking at Seth. “Honest. I want to.”
“All right.” Seth went into the kitchen and cleaned up the leftover formula, putting it in the fridge and closing the can. “I’ll go get you a blanket and pillow. Be right back.”
Russ cooed at the puppies, and Seth was glad he wasn’t the only one infatuated with dogs. Once everyone was settled, and Russ had put colored collars on all of the pups, Seth went around the corner to the master suite and closed the door.
A sigh passed through his whole body, and he was surprised to see it was almost ten o’clock at night. Getting nine puppies warm and fed and ready for bed had taken hours. His phone showed two missed calls from Jenna, and he took a chance that it wouldn’t be too late to return her calls.
“Hey,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if she’d been sleeping or not. “How are the puppies?”
“Good,” he said, collapsing onto his bed. “Could’ve been so much worse. We’ve got nine of them, and I’m going to have the vet come look at them tomorrow.”
“Cloudy can stay here tomorrow,” she said.
“Oh, no, bring her in the morning like usual,” he said. “She can make herself at home with the pups. We built them a big bed.”
“Of course you did,” she teased. “They’re probably sleeping on something softer than you are.” She giggled, and Seth sure did like the sound of it.