* * *
KAI WAS WAITING on the porch when he parked the SUV in front of the garage, and Luca couldn’t help thinking how this arrival compared to the first time he’d come to the farm. Then she’d merely been the woman who’d taken his dog and had balked at giving him back. All he’d seen was an obstinate, irritating person.
Now he knew so much about her and this place, the farm where she grew up. He couldn’t risk losing any of it. When he got out of the car, he stood by the door a moment, uncertain of her greeting after he’d taken off so abruptly. But she waved and her face lit up. Relief flowed through him as he walked toward her.
She met him halfway. “I’m glad you came back,” she said, reaching for his hand.
He wrapped his other arm around her, bringing her close to him, and bent his head to hers, kissing her. “I’m sorry for rushing off. I don’t know why I did, but guess it had something to do with that part of me that wants to escape those hard moments. You know...when you just want it all to go away without having to deal with it. I was still hurting from this morning.”
Kai pulled back. “I’m the one who needs to apologize, Luca. I should have listened to what you were telling me instead of jumping to such awful conclusions.” She paused, biting her lip. “That old bad habit of mine, making—”
“Assumptions?”
“Do you think we’ll ever grow out of these habits? Get past all the—”
“Misunderstandings?”
That brought a small laugh. Luca folded her back into his arms. “We will. Let’s give ourselves time. We have lots.” He stroked her cheek, running his thumb down to her mouth, outlining her lips, then bent to kiss her again, losing himself for a moment. She leaned into him and he held her tight, feeling a lightness so wonderful he couldn’t speak.
Eventually she ducked out of his embrace, taking him by the hand. “Shall we go inside? I think dinner might be ready.” She led him into the kitchen, and they were all sitting there—the Westfield family—smiling at him. There were no questions asked and he was grateful for that, telling them he’d driven Isabel to the airport.
After dinner, Thomas showed him the bed he’d been making for Amigo’s return. “It’s more comfy than the rug, and he’ll need something soft.”
Margaret and Harry said an early good-night and while Thomas was upstairs, Luca took the opportunity to take Kai into his arms again.
“I had lots of time to think about our situation after I dropped Mother off at the airport. I think she’s right. This whole business can be a win-win situation. Your parents don’t lose the farm, and Thomas can still look forward to his legacy one day. We can make our own plans, too. There’s no rush. The farm will be here waiting for us if we want. Maybe we can even rent it out.”
“I like the idea of being able to take our time, Luca. And I’ve been thinking, too. I have some ideas about where I want my career to go. I’m tired of my old nomadic lifestyle. Being here on the farm with you made me see how precious this place is...but I still need to get back to work.” She paused a beat. “In the city.”
“Wherever,” he murmured. “As long as our plans focus on two words.”
“What are they?”
“Being together.”
Thomas interrupted, running into the kitchen. “Can I stay up late tonight? Please? I don’t think I can go to sleep anyway, thinking about Amigo.”
Kai stepped away from Luca’s arms, laughing.
“It’s such a beautiful clear night,” Luca put in. “How about some stargazing?”
Thomas jumped up and down. “Yes, yes! Please, Auntie Kai?”
“Auntie Kai?” She laughed again. “You two set up some chairs out there while I stick a bag of popcorn in the microwave.”
“Yay!” Thomas shouted, pushing through the screen door.
Luca looked at Kai and shrugged. “Later?” he asked.
“Later,” she promised, smiling.
By the time she joined them with the bowl of popcorn, they were huddled in the two Adirondack chairs. She sat in the extra wicker chair Luca had retrieved from the bungalow porch and passed the popcorn. They leaned back to stare up into the black, starry sky.
Suddenly, Luca straightened. “There! See that really bright star?”
Kai and Thomas followed his finger’s direction.
“I see it!” Thomas cried.
“Know what it’s called?”
“What?” Thomas asked.
“It’s Sirius. Brightest star in the heavens.”
“So you’re an astronomer, too, on top of everything else,” Kai teased.
“All those expensive summer camps. They had to give me some skills.” Then he added, “Know what Sirius is commonly called? The Dog Star.”
Thomas hooted. “I wish Amigo could see that.”
Luca looked at them, loving their rapt and happy faces and feeling he really was home.
* * * * *
If you loved this story, don’t miss this month’s other animal-themed romances from Harlequin Heartwarming:
A FATHER’S PLEDGE by Eleanor Jones
SOLDIER’S RESCUE by Betina Krahn
and
DEAL OF A LIFETIME by T. R. McClure
Keep reading for an excerpt from SOLDIER’S RESCUE by Betina Krahn.
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Soldier's Rescue
by Betina Krahn
CHAPTER ONE
TO HELL WITH speed limits.
He was driving on a dry, sunlit back road without another vehicle in sight, the perfect place to open it up and make time. And he was already late.
Florida trooper Nicholas Stanton put his foot down hard on the gas and felt his senses make a corresponding shift into overdrive. He registered the wire fences along the sides of the county road, hummocks of scrub palmetto and stubborn live oaks, cattle grazing and smatterings of cowbirds and egrets around farm ponds. Heat radiated visibly off the worn macadam, and of habit, he touched the air-conditioner controls—which were already set on high. Barely five minutes went by before he spotted something in the road ahead.
/> “Sh—crap.” He was trying to work on expletives. He was a single dad with a kid who was all eyes and ears. And who was playing in his first ever soccer game in exactly—he glanced at his watch—fifteen f—frickin minutes. As he crested a small rise, he could see far enough to know he had to take his foot off the gas. The big engine of the cruiser whined as it slowed, and when he topped the final rise, there they were.
Dogs. One lying smack in the middle of the road with the other standing over it.
“Aw, hell.” Nick slammed on the brakes and came to a jarring stop twenty feet from where they blocked the center of the narrow two-lane road. He paused for a minute, breathing hard and taking in the situation. He could probably slide around them on the berm, but he could see a drop-off into a concrete culvert just ahead—and those dogs would still be here when some local came shooting down the road at breakneck speed. With a growl, he pulled his front wheels over the centerline and flipped on his light bar.
It was his job to make sure accidents like that didn’t happen.
He stepped out into the heat, his shirt sticking to his back, and donned his Florida Highway Patrol hat against the still-fierce evening sun. He stood for a moment with his legs spread and his hands on his belt.
Dogs. It would be dogs.
He took two steps toward them, and the standing dog—a black-and-tan German shepherd, thin and rangy—sprang in front of its companion. Its ears were up, nostrils flared, and a low growl reverberated deep in its chest. In full protection mode. The downed dog had long reddish-gold hair and a pretty face...golden retriever for sure.
Nick watched the shepherd’s eyes, sensing he was being sized up even as he was assessing the dogs. He’d seen that wary body language dozens of times in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muscles weren’t tensed to launch—yet—but every nerve in that lean body was firing in preparation. Closer now, he could see scars on the shepherd’s face.
“Tough guy, huh.” He took a deep breath, determined to get it over with. “Well, I’ve seen my share of action, too. You got a buddy down, and if you want me to take a look, you’re going to have to back off. Now.”
When he moved in, a full-blown snarl came from the shepherd. But as Nick hoped, the dog backed up a step, then two, still growling, glancing fiercely between Nick and his wounded friend. They were both thin and looked like they had been on their own for a while, but the shepherd, at least, seemed to know something about humans. Not entirely feral.
Nick kept one eye on the shepherd as he knelt cautiously beside the golden and surveyed the damage. Female. There was blood on her hindquarters, and a rear leg was canted at an odd angle. A glance across the worn pavement showed spatters of blood, some not fully dried; the accident had happened here and not long ago.
Aw, damn. She didn’t even have the energy to drag herself off the road.
He ran his hands gently over the golden’s side, avoiding the shepherd’s gaze and the blood on the injured dog’s rear quarters. Her ribs were prominent but seemed intact. The dog lifted her head and opened her eyes.
“It’s all right, girl. It’s all right. Just checking you out.” He held out his hand for her to sniff, and she gave a couple of feeble thumps with her tail before dropping her head and falling back into a half-conscious state.
She’d be dead before long unless he did something. There was a new shelter in the east part of the next county...
If he thought about it too much, he’d make himself crazy.
“Just do it,” he muttered irritably.
Instinct took over. He stalked back to his cruiser, retrieved a thick wool blanket from the trunk and opened the cruiser’s back door. He covered the bloody rear of the golden with the blanket and lifted her carefully into his arms. She was fifty pounds of deadweight, but didn’t protest at being moved, though it had to be painful as hell. He managed to slide both her and enough of his shoulders into the back of the vehicle to position her on the seat so that her hindquarters would be supported.
As he withdrew from the car, the shepherd shoved past him into the footwell of the back seat.
“Hey!”
The shepherd gave him only a glance before sniffing and nosing his injured companion. Nick stood braced across the door frame, watching. God knew what would happen to the dog if he was left here alone. Big, alert brown eyes searched him. The trust Nick saw—or imagined—in those eyes caused an unwelcome tightness in his chest.
Dogs. Why the hell did it have to be dogs?
“All right,” he snapped, rationalizing the only course his troubled feelings would allow. “You go, too. The public will probably be safer with you off the streets.”
He closed the back door, slid behind the wheel of the cruiser and took off. He was halfway to the county line when he remembered why he’d been flying low earlier and felt his stomach clench.
“Sorry about the game, Ben.”
* * *
ALL IT TOOK was a touch.
The little balls of fur sensed something warm and good and migrated toward her, climbing sightlessly over each other, tumbling, mewling.
“It’s okay, little Mama,” Kate Everly, DVM, said as the dirty, matted schnauzer sat up anxiously to watch the calm, soft-spoken stranger kneeling beside her. Even if Kate hadn’t had a special knack for reassuring animals, the mother dog was too depleted from whelping to do much more than worry. “I’m just going to check your babies.”
With a sniff of the back of Kate’s hand, the mother looked up at the humans standing around the old cardboard box and sank back with resignation. Kate picked up the puppies, one by one, and gave each a thorough examination.
She felt the pudgy little legs and soft pink pads of the feet of each of the four puppies, then she turned them over and checked their abdomens and listened to their hearts. Afterward she settled them against their mother, who sighed and lay back in the newspaper bedding as the last pup recognized her scent and began rooting for milk.
“They’re in pretty good shape, actually,” Kate said, rising from the floor of the makeshift surgery she and her partner, Jess Preston, had created in the kitchen of the old farmhouse that had become the headquarters of Harbor Animal Rescue. She swiped her shoulder-length hair back with her wrist as she headed for the old porcelain sink to wash her hands.
“For puppy mill escapees, you mean.” Nance Everly, one of the shelter’s founders and not-so-coincidentally Kate’s grandmother, stood over the box with crossed arms and a scowl. Nance was a tall, straight-backed woman of seventy with silky white hair and a faced tanned and lined by years of outdoor life in Florida. “Look at the mother. She’s a mess. Filthy, undernourished—it’s a miracle she survived their birth.”
“But she with us now. We feed ’em good,” volunteer Hines Jackson said, bending stiffly beside the box and letting the mother sniff his hand before running it down her back and side. “She gonna be okay. She got good bones.”
Kate finished drying her hands and leaned a hip against the worn laminate countertop stacked with jars and tins of first-aid supplies. “Who dropped them off? Anybody see this time?”
“Nope. Just opened the office door and there they were. A box full of scared-and-needy.” Nance’s face darkened. “Damned criminals. Breeding these dogs dry of health and hope, keeping them caged and forcing them to bear litter after litter—”
“Preachin’ to the choir, Everly,” Hines said with a knowing glance at Kate, who gave a rueful smile. This was one of Nance’s hot buttons.
“There you are.” Janice Winters, a uniformed officer from Sarasota Animal Control, stuck her head in the doorway, wearing a look of disbelief. “Got a real beaut this time.” She led them out of the surgery and into the main reception room, where a russet brown heap of fur sat on an old blanket. The creature turned its head to them, and with the reference point of two dark eyes Kate was able to make out the
head of a dachshund. On steroids.
Or carbs. Lots and lots of carbs.
“Good Lord,” Nance said, walking around the beast. “I’ve seen a lot of stuff in my time, but this—”
Silence fell as they took stock individually. The dog peered anxiously from one to another of them, looking like it was trying to move, but couldn’t.
“Where on earth did you find it?” Kate asked, sinking to her knees and letting the dog nose her hand before running it over the bulbous shape. The fat was appalling; it distorted every aspect of the doxie’s body and all but prevented the animal from walking. The poor thing’s stomach scraped the ground and, from what she could see, was scoured raw from its attempts to move.
“In an alley across from the Westfield Mall,” Officer Winters said, shaking her head. “We got a call from a woman driving by and went out to investigate. I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, how long would it take to feed a dog that much? He must weigh—fifty, sixty pounds?”
Kate helped Hines drag the blanket and the dachshund into the surgery and then slide him onto the scale.
“Fifty-two, actually.” She shook her head. “Enough for three dachshunds. What kind of human being would do this to a dog? Let’s get him up on the table and see about that belly.” She motioned for Hines to help, and together they lifted the dog onto the exam table. He struggled when they rolled him, but fat-bound as he was, he was as helpless as an overturned turtle. He was indeed a male, and Hines chuckled and christened him “Moose.”
“We have to put you on a diet, Moose,” Kate said, cleaning and then spreading salve over his abraded belly. “And when we get you nice and healthy, we’ll find you a forever home.” When she finished listening to his heart and lungs, they turned him over and she took blood samples and checked his joints, which were, amazingly, intact. “He’s in surprisingly good shape,” she told her grandmother and the animal control officer standing in the surgery’s doorway. “Except for the thirty pounds of extra lard he’s hauling around.” She stroked his head to reassure him, then took his head between her hands and looked him in the eye.
For Love of a Dog Page 24