by Shirley Jump
“Pretty much. Even when I was younger, my parents were never there. My dad worked all the time and my mom…” Ellie sighed and pushed the rest of her breakfast to the side. “She had her own life. In college I did the dorm thing, but after that, I had an apartment on my own. I used to love it in my twenties, you know, no one to answer to, no one to worry about, but as I’ve gotten older…”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” He wondered what had made him admit all this in a coffee shop on a bright spring day. He’d never considered himself to be a sharing kind of man. Yet with Ellie, it seemed only natural to open up. “Though it was nice to share your space for a couple of days.”
Her face brightened. “Was it? Really?”
“Yeah. Really.” The kind of nice he could get used to.
He ignored the warning bells ringing in his head, the alarms reminding him that the last time he’d allowed a woman to get this close, it had cost him dearly. He couldn’t live the rest of his life worried that someone was going to steal his business. Riley and Brody were right. It was time for him to stop taking care of everyone else and focus on himself for a little while. Just for today.
“I agree.” She toyed with the bagel. “I guess my priorities
have shifted, too. I built all these houses for other people and after a while, I realized I wanted that, too.”
“What?”
“You were right the other day.” She lifted her gaze to his and in her eyes, he saw a craving for those intangible things other people had. “As scared as I am of falling in love, of having the kind of bad marriage my parents had, I really do want the two-point-five kids. The block parties. The fenced-in yard. Even the dog.”
His coffee grew cold beside him. He didn’t care. People came and went in the busy coffee shop. He didn’t care. Time ticked by on his watch. He didn’t care. All he cared about was the next thing Ellie Winston was going to say. “What…what kind of dog?”
“This is going to sound silly and so clichéd.” She dipped her head and that blush he’d come to love filled her cheeks again.
“Let me guess. A Golden retriever?”
She gave him an embarrassed nod. “Yeah.”
He shook his head and chuckled.
“What?”
“When I was a kid, I asked Santa for a dog. My mother was allergic, so it was never going to happen, but I kept asking. Every Christmas. Every birthday. And the answer was always the same. No.” He shrugged. “They got me a goldfish. But it wasn’t the same.”
“What kind of dog did you want?” Then her eyes met his and she smiled. “Oh, let me guess. A Golden retriever.”
The thread between them tied another knot. What was it Ellie had said about a real marriage? That it was one where the two people knew each other so well, they could name their dreams and desires?
Were they turning into that?
Finn brushed the thought away. It was a coincidence, nothing more. “Billy Daniels had a Golden,” he said. “It was the biggest, goofiest dog you ever saw, but it was loyal as hell to him. Every day when we got out of school, that dog would be waiting on the playground for Billy and walk home with him. Maybe because Billy always saved a little something from his lunch for a treat. He loved that dog. Heck, we all did.”
“Sounds like the perfect dog.”
“It seemed like it to me. Though, as my mother reminded me all the time, I wasn’t the one dealing with pet hair on the sofa or dog messes in the backyard.”
“True.” She laughed. “So why didn’t you get a dog when you grew up?”
“They’re a lot of responsibility. And I work a lot. It just didn’t seem fair to the dog.”
“But every boy should get his dream sometime, shouldn’t he?”
She’d said it so softly, her green eyes shimmering in sympathy, that he could do nothing but nod. A lump sprang in his throat. He chastised himself—they were talking about a dog, for Pete’s sake. A gift he’d asked for when he was a kid. He was a grown man now, and he didn’t believe in Santa anymore. Nor did he have room in his life for a dog.
What do you have room for? Riley had asked. And right now, Finn didn’t know. He’d thought he had it all ordered out in neat little columns, but every time he was near Ellie, those columns got blurred.
“You know what I do sometimes?” Ellie said, leaning in so close he could catch the enticing notes of her perfume. “I go to the pet store and I just look. It gives me that dog fix for a little while.”
“Maybe if I’d done that more often when I was a kid, I wouldn’t have kept bothering Santa.”
She got to her feet and put out her hand. “Come on, Finn. Let’s go see what Santa’s got in the workshop.”
“What? Now? I thought you had a meeting to get to.”
“It can wait a bit.” To prove it, she pulled her cell phone out of her purse and sent a quick email. “There. I have an hour until they start sending out the search party.”
He had a pile of work on his desk that would rival Mount Everest. Calls to return, emails to answer, bills to pay. He should get back to work and stop living in this fantasy world with Ellie. Instead he took out his phone and shot an email to his assistant. “There. I have an hour, too,” he said.
“Good.” She smiled. “Really good.”
Finn took Ellie’s hand, and decided that for sixty minutes, he could believe in the impossible.
CHAPTER TEN
ELLIE had been prepared to walk out of the diner the second she saw Finn this morning. To refuse the bagel, the offer of coffee, to just ignore him as he’d done to her for the last few days. Then Riley had leaned over and whispered, “Give him a chance. He’s more of a softie than you know.”
And so she’d sat down at the table, and wondered what Riley had meant. Was Finn the competitor her father had cautioned her against, or was he the man she had seen in snippets over the past days?
Today, he’d been the man she’d met in the lobby—complex and nuanced and a little bit sentimental. And she found herself liking that side of him.
Very much. Falling for it, all over again, even as her head screamed caution.
Then he’d gone and surprised her with their destination and she realized she didn’t just like him a little. She liked him a lot. Finn McKenna, with his gruff exterior, was winning her over. Maybe doing a lot more than that. Even as she told herself to pull back, not to get her heart involved, she knew one thing—
Her heart was already involved with him. Ellie was falling for her husband.
The problem was, she wasn’t sure he wanted to be her husband anymore, nor was she positive she could trust him. Her father’s words kept ringing in her head. He’s backed into a corner, and a dog that’s in a corner will do anything to get out.
Did Finn have a secret agenda to take over her company? Was that why he kept retreating to the impersonal? Or was he struggling like she was, with the concept of a marriage that wasn’t really a marriage?
A contract, he had called it. The word still stung.
If that was all he wanted, then why was he here? What did he truly want?
“Are you two looking to add a dog to your family?”
The woman’s question drew Ellie out of her thoughts. “No. Not yet. We’re just looking.”
Beside her, Finn concurred. He had a brochure from the animal shelter in his hand, and had deposited a generous check into the donation jar on the counter. The director of the shelter, a man named Walter, had come out to thank Finn, and engaged him in a fifteen-minute conversation about the shelter’s mission. When Ellie had asked him to go to the pet store, she’d been sure he’d drive to one of the chain stores in the city. But instead he’d pulled into the parking lot of the animal shelter, and her heart had melted. Finn McKenna. A softie indeed.
Every time she told
herself not to get close to him, not to take a risk on a relationship that could be over before it began, he did something like that.
“Well, we have plenty of wonderful dogs here to look at.” The woman opened a steel door and waved them inside. “Take your time. I’ll be right back. We’re a little short-staffed today, so I need to get someone to man the phones, then I’ll join you.” She left the room, and as soon as the door clicked shut, the dogs took that as their cue.
A cacophony of barking erupted like a long-overdue volcano. Down the long corridor of kennels, Ellie could see dogs of every size and breed. They pressed themselves to the kennel gates, tails wagging, tongues lolling, hope in their big brown eyes.
“Everyone wants to go home with us,” Finn said as they started to walk down the row and the barking got louder. “We could be the people in 101 Dalmatians.”
We. Had that been a slip of the tongue? Or was she reading too much into a simple pronoun?
“I don’t think so.” Ellie laughed. “One dog would be plenty.”
Finn bent down, wiggled a couple fingers into the hole of the fenced entrance and stroked a dachshund under the chin. The dog’s long brown body squirmed and wriggled with joy. “Hey there, buddy.”
Ellie lowered herself beside Finn and gave the little dog a scratch behind the ears. “He’s a cutie.”
“He is. Though…not exactly a manly dog.”
“You never know. He could be a tiger at the front door.”
Finn chuckled, then rose. They headed down the hall, passing a Doberman, some Chow mixes and a shaggy white dog that could have been a mix of almost every breed. Finn gave nearly every one of them a pat on the head and the dogs responded with enthusiastic instant love. Ellie’s heart softened a little more. She kept trying to remind herself that she didn’t want to fall for this man, didn’t want to end up unhappy and lonely, trapped in a loveless marriage, but it didn’t seem to work.
Finn walked on, then stopped at a cage halfway down on the right side. A middle-aged Golden retriever got to her feet and came to the door, her tail wagging, her eyes bright and interested. “Aw, poor thing,” he said softly. “I bet you hate being here.” The dog wagged in response. “She’s a beautiful dog.”
Ellie wiggled two fingers past the wire cage door and stroked the dog’s ear. The Golden let out a little groan and leaned into the touch. Finn gave her snout a pat, then did the same to the other ear. The dog looked about ready to burst with happiness. Ellie reached up and retrieved the clipboard attached to the outside of the cage. “It says her name is Heidi.”
“Nice name for a dog. Wonder why she’s here?”
Ellie flipped the informational sheet over. It sported bright, happy decorations with lots of “Adopt Me” messages, along with a quick history of Heidi. “The paper says her owner got too old to take care of her.” Ellie put the clipboard back. “That’s so sad.”
“Yeah. Poor thing probably doesn’t understand why she’s here.” He gave Heidi another scratch and she pressed harder against the cage.
“Stuck in limbo, waiting for someone to bring her home.” Ellie sighed. She grasped the wire bars of the cage, the metal cold and hard against her palm. The dogs in the kennel began to calm a little, their barks dropping to a dull roar, but Ellie didn’t hear them. She looked into Heidi’s sad brown eyes and saw another pair of sad eyes, on the other side of the world. “So tragic.”
“You’re not talking about the dog, are you?”
Ellie bit her lip and shook her head. “No.”
Finn shifted to scratch Heidi’s neck. The dog’s tail went into overdrive. “Tell me about her.”
Ellie glanced up at the clipboard again, scanning the information on the top sheet. “She’s six years old, a female, spayed—”
“Not the dog. The little girl in China.”
“You mean Jiao?” Ellie said, her heart catching in her throat. Finn had never asked about Jiao, not once since the moment she had proposed the marriage of convenience. “You really want to know about her?”
Finn nodded. He kept on giving Heidi attention, but his gaze was entirely on Ellie. “Yeah, I do.”
She wanted to smile, but held that in check. Just because Finn asked about Jiao didn’t mean he wanted to be part of Jiao’s life. He could be making conversation. “She’s two. But really bright for her age. She loves to read books, although her version of reading is flipping the pages and making up words for what she sees.” Ellie let out a laugh. “Her favorite animal is a duck, and she has this silly stuffed duck she carries with her everywhere. She’s got the most incredible eyes and—” Ellie cut the sentence off. “I’m rambling. I’m sorry.”
“No, please, tell me more.” He got to his feet. “She’s important to you and I want to know why. How did you meet her?”
Ellie searched Finn’s blue eyes. She saw nothing deceitful there, only genuine interest. Hope took flight in her chest, but she held a tight leash on it. “I went to China for a conference a few years ago. But on the way to the hotel, my cabdriver took a wrong turn, and I ended up in a little village. His car overheated, and while we were waiting for it to cool down, I got out and went into this little café type place. The woman who served me was named Sun, and since I was pretty much the only customer, we got to talking. I ended up spending the entire week in that village.”
“Is Sun Jiao’s mother?”
Ellie nodded. Her gaze went to the window, to the bright sun that shone over the entire world. In China, it was dark right now, but in the morning, Jiao’s world would be brightened by the same sun that had greeted Ellie’s morning. “She was.”
“Was?”
“Sun…died. Three months ago.” Just saying the words brought a rush of grief to her eyes. Such a beautiful, wonderful woman, who had deserved a long and happy life. Fate, however, had other plans and now the world was without one amazing human being.
Finn put a hand on her shoulder. “Aw, Ellie, I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.”
She bit her lip, and forced the tears back. “That’s why Jiao needs me. Over the years, I made several trips back to China and became close friends with Sun. On my last trip, Sun told me about her cancer. Because we were so close, she and I worked out an arrangement for me to adopt Jiao. And I’ve been trying ever since to bring Jiao home.”
He turned back to the dog, and she couldn’t read his face anymore. “That’s really good of you.”
“It’s a risk. I don’t know if Jiao will be happier here with me, or in China with another couple. I don’t know if I’ll be a good mother. I just…don’t know.” She wove her fingers into the fence again, and Heidi rubbed up against her knuckles.
Finn placed his hand beside hers. Not touching, but close enough that she could feel the heat from his body. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. You have a certain quality about you, Ellie, that makes people feel…at home.”
She met his gaze and saw only sincerity there. “Even when I drop muffins on the floor?”
“Even then.” He looked at Heidi again, and gave the dog some more attention. “That’s a valuable quality to have for raising a kid, you know. When your home is uncertain, it makes it hard to just be a kid.”
She sensed that this was coming from someplace deep in Finn. They kept their attention on the dog, as the conversation unwound like thread from a spool. “Did you have a hard time just being a kid, Finn?”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah.” He paused a moment, then went on. “I was the oldest, so I saw the most. My parents loved us, of course, but they should have never married each other. They knew each other for maybe a month before they eloped in Vegas. My mother was pregnant before they came home. My father always said he would have left if not for the kids.”
“Oh, Finn, that had to be so hard on you.”
“I wasn’t bothered so much by that.” Finn turned to
Ellie, his blue eyes full of years of hard lessons. “It was that my father had fallen out of love with my mother, long, long ago, but my mother kept on holding on to this silly romantic notion that if she just tried hard enough, he’d love her again like he used to. If he ever did. So they fought, and fought, and fought, because she wanted the one thing he couldn’t give her.”
“His heart.”
Finn nodded. “He provided money and clothes and shoes, but not the love my mother craved. I watched her cry herself to sleep so many nights. I’ve often wondered if…”
When he didn’t go on, Ellie prodded gently. “If what?”
“If they got into an accident that night because they were fighting again.” He let out a long breath. “I’ll never know.”
She understood so much more now about Finn. No wonder he shied away from relationships. No wonder he kept his emotions in check, and pulled himself back every time they got close. Was that why he buried himself in work? Instead of giving his heart to someone else? “You can’t let that stop you from living, too.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. He held her gaze for a moment, then broke away.
“Did you get a date for the home visit yet?”
He had changed the subject once again, pushing her away whenever she got close. Why? “Yes. I was going to call you today. Friday at eleven.”
He nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“You will? I wasn’t sure…” She bit her lip. “I didn’t think you would. After what you said the other day.”
“I’ll be there. Because—” his fingers slipped into the thick fur on Heidi’s neck again, scratching that one spot that made her groan “—no one should have to be in a place like this. No dog. No person.”
She wanted to kiss him, wanted to grab him right then and there and explode with joy. But she held back, not sure where they stood on their relationship, if they even had one. Doors had been opened between them today, and Ellie was hesitant to do anything that might shut them again. “Thank you.”