Puppy Kisses

by Lucy Gilmore

  Yes. No. Not even a little bit.

  Adam found it impossible to express the roiling conflict of emotions he was feeling at that exact moment—or, if he was being honest, that he’d been feeling since the moment Dawn entered his life. More than six months had passed since he’d had the dubious honor of making her acquaintance, and he still wasn’t sure how it had ended up like this.

  Zeke often dated women like her—beautiful women, lively women, women who knew exactly how to appreciate a twentysomething ranch hand who spent most of his free time training for triathlons. From the outset, Dawn had been different. For starters, she’d been the one to pick up Zeke for a date, presenting him with a bundle of flowers and a giant, heart-shaped box of chocolates at the front door. She’d also sat herself down on the couch and chatted with Adam for a full half-hour while Zeke finished getting ready, sharing stories about a life that, if they came from anyone else, Adam would have found difficult to believe.

  But not Dawn. When she’d told him about running away from home to join the circus instead of going to college, he’d thought, Yeah. That makes sense. When she’d admitted she’d once dated a cult leader, he’d chuckled and wished he’d been there to witness it. And when she’d taken his hand in hers and shook it, laughingly promising to have his brother home by eleven, he’d pretty much been lost. More than anything else, he’d felt a strong compulsion to clasp that hand, to beg her not to go out for a night on the town with Zeke, but to stay and keep him company instead.

  He’d almost done it, too, which was the worst thing. He’d have trotted out the braille playing cards, challenged her to a game of poker with Zeke and Phoebe, pulled out a bottle of his favorite butterscotch schnapps, and lit a few cigars for ambiance. An evening spent that way was his idea of heaven, even if it seemed tame to everyone else.

  Instead, Dawn had murmured something about how attractive the Dearborn brothers were and commented on her good luck in stumbling across such a hidden treasure. And then she and Zeke had gone dancing until three in the morning. Adam knew because he’d lain awake the entire time, counting the chimes on the grandfather clock as each hour went by.

  It would have been fine if Zeke had taken the relationship no further than that, treating Dawn like the casual acquaintance she was at the outset. But although his brother had admitted that there was no spark between them, they continued to hang out as friends. A lot. So much, in fact, that Adam had been eventually forced to admit that he and Dawn didn’t just have sparks.

  They were on fire.

  It was on the tip of his tongue to take Dawn up on the offer to bundle Methuselah home and to bundle herself home with her, never to return. There was no denying that his life would be so much easier if Dawn wasn’t in it.

  But it would be a hell of a lot less interesting, too.

  That was the explanation he told himself, anyway, as he wrapped a protective arm around Methuselah and lifted his chin. “You heard Marcia. The puppy needs a few weeks of good Dearborn Ranch air.”

  “I’m sure the air in Spokane will do just as well. I’ve been breathing it for years and have yet to keel over.”

  “Yes, but you aren’t a vulnerable animal who was left to fend for herself on the side of a highway. The last thing she needs is to be dragged around in the back seat of your car.”

  “Or to be forced into training before she’s ready?” Dawn suggested.

  “That too.”

  Dawn gave a frustrated grunt. “I swear, talking to you is like talking to a troll who lives under a bridge. Everything is a riddle. Do you or do you not want a service puppy?”

  “I mean, I don’t not want one…”

  Adam did his best not to laugh as Dawn released another grunt of frustration, this one accompanied by an unladylike oath. “Let’s try that again. Do you or do you not intend to let me take the puppy that I rescued home with me?”

  “That one I can answer. No.”

  “Because Marcia said so?”

  “Sure. That seems as reasonable an excuse as any.”

  He couldn’t say for a certainty that Dawn threw up her hands, but it sure sounded like that. She sighed and leaned so close that her lips were only a few inches from his own. He could practically taste the waxy lipstick she always wore.

  “You’re a real pain in my ass. You know that, Adam Dearborn?”

  He did. He also knew that being a pain in Dawn’s ass was one of the only ways to keep her coming back. A woman who’d traveled with the circus and dated cult leaders wasn’t likely to find much else to entertain her in a place where cows outnumbered humans fifty to one.

  “The feeling is mutual, Dawn Vasquez,” he replied. And because he couldn’t help himself: “Are you going to kiss me now?”

  She laughed and pulled away. “I was thinking about it, but you don’t deserve to be rewarded for your behavior. That’s how good puppies get ruined.”

  “What about good men?” he asked. “Is that also how you ruin them?”

  For the longest moment, Adam was afraid he’d said something wrong, misjudged the situation. It wouldn’t be the first time in his life that had happened, since he could only rely on verbal cues to read a room, but it would be the first time it had happened with Dawn. Most of the time, she was refreshingly honest about what she wanted and expected out of their not-relationship.

  This time was no different.

  With a laugh that he was more relieved to hear than he was willing to admit, she said, “If I ever find a good man, I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter 3

  “Dawn, you can’t go around stealing people’s dogs—even if they have been severely maltreated. There are protocols for these things, rules. We could lose our license if you got caught.”

  Dawn’s older sister, Lila, stood shaking her head at the top of the kennel stairs. Her hands were on her hips and a look of concern furrowed her brow, but Dawn didn’t let either of those things bother her. She never did. Lila was the best of big sisters, and there was no one Dawn would rather turn to in a pinch, but there was no denying that Lila loved rules more than was good for her.

  “But I won’t get caught,” Dawn promised. The first thing she’d done when she got home was head out to the kennel to find Adam a more suitable puppy. She was still deciding between the boxer to her right and the stately Great Dane to her left. Her instinct said Great Dane, since he’d already started the training to become a visual support dog, but the boxer had a weirdly oversized tongue that lolled out at the least provocation. Surely even impenetrable Adam Dearborn wouldn’t be able to resist that? “I mean, I had a police escort as I fled the scene of the crime. It doesn’t get much more official than that.”

  “Dawn…”

  With a decisive nod, Dawn decided on the Great Dane. Every other human being on the planet might be resistless against a wet, sloppy puppy tongue, but not Adam. If he could have been won over with one of those, she’d have subdued him a long time ago. Alas, neither tongue nor lips nor any other body part had power over that man.

  Not any real power, anyway.

  “I think I’ll take Uncle,” she said and reached down to clip a leash on the Great Dane. Even though the puppy was only six months old, he was already shaping up to be a mammoth of a dog. She didn’t trust her ability to lift him out of the half-walled pen he called home, opting instead to lead him out on his long, sturdy legs. “He’s practically a cow anyway. He’ll feel right at home on the ranch.”

  “Dawn.”

  She turned to her sister with a sunny smile, pushing back a wayward lock of dark-brown hair from her face. She’d pulled it into a short ponytail, but wisps kept springing free around her cheeks. “Lila,” she said, her tone matching her sister’s.

  “Dog theft.”

  “Dog rescue.”

  “Criminal charges.”

  “Criminal abuse.”

  Lila si
ghed. Her own hair was pulled back in an intricate coil of braids that met at the nape of her neck, nary a strand out of place. It was as good of an indication of their differences as anything. Dawn could have made a list of all the ways her older sister was smarter, better, and more organized than her, but that would have defeated the whole purpose of the exercise. Lila was the list-maker in the family. She had hordes of them on her person at any given time. If Dawn were to snatch her sister’s purse right now, she was sure she’d find at least half a dozen, all of them clipped together and stored in a manila envelope.

  “I don’t know why I bother,” Lila said and dropped her hands from her hips. “The least you could have done after stealing the poor thing was take her to our own vet. It wasn’t very nice of you to leave her to become someone else’s problem.”

  Dawn paused long enough to praise Uncle for his obedience before heaving a sigh of her own. Although Lila had met Zeke several times before and knew Adam by reputation, she clearly underestimated the force of the latter.

  “If I could have gotten her out the door without creating more trouble, I would have,” Dawn said. “But Adam wouldn’t hear of it. Believe me, when that man gets an idea into his head, it’s impossible to move him from it.”

  Lila’s slightly arched brow captured her disbelief, but Dawn didn’t respond to it. Her sister had no idea just how far back her relationship with Adam Dearborn went, and she wasn’t about to enlighten her. There would be questions. And concerns. And utter disbelief. When it came to Dawn and men, six months was a world record.

  “To be fair, I’m kind of glad the puppy stayed there,” Dawn added. “Marcia said that the less we move her around until those rocks pass, the better. Besides, Dearborn Ranch is the best place to store stolen goods. No one would think to confront Adam on his own turf. He’s intimidating.”

  “Intimidating?” Lila echoed, blinking. “But you’re not intimidated by anyone.”

  “Well, no,” Dawn admitted. “I’m not, but I’ll bet No-Pants Shotgun would take one look at him and reform his way of life. He’d probably even start paying his taxes.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t pay his taxes?”

  Dawn laughed as she pictured all those coils of razor wire and the speed with which the man had threatened to shoot. “Call it an educated guess,” she said. “My highly developed intellect also tells me that Uncle will be a much better fit for Adam in the long run. Won’t you, Uncle?”

  The enormous gray puppy sitting at her feet gave an obliging wag of his tail.

  “That’s right,” Dawn cooed and dropped to the animal’s level. “We’ll woo him with your admirable work ethic, since that’s the only thing he cares about. Then Gigi can come with me where she belongs.”

  “Gigi?”

  Dawn peeked up at her sister to find that she was being carefully watched. “Yes. That’s what I’m naming the golden retriever.”

  “And you want to keep her? As…a pet?”

  Dawn nodded and buried her face in the nape of Uncle’s neck. His fur carried that distinct puppy smell—a mixture of the organic shampoo they used to bathe the animals every week and the grass that he loved to roll around in whenever the opportunity afforded itself. “I could use the company,” she said, her voice muffled.

  “Because the eight puppies out here in the kennel aren’t company enough?” Lila asked.

  Dawn knew what her sister was thinking. There was already more than enough to do around this place without adding recreational puppies into the mix, and Dawn was hardly the ideal candidate for long-term pet ownership. Of all the Vasquez sisters, she was the most unpredictable, the least reliable, and, yes, the one who would probably die at the barrel end of a shotgun.

  But it wasn’t as if she’d asked for any of this.

  When she and Lila and Sophie had first purchased this house, it had been with the vision of the three of them enjoying a long spinsterhood together with the service puppies they trained and placed with those in need. Having the animals living in the kennel behind the house had been an ideal way to combine work and play, leaving them with plenty of time to see to the animals’ needs without infringing on their social lives.

  It had been a great plan, but Dawn’s sisters had been a little more aggressive in the social life department than any of them had anticipated. Both Sophie, the baby of the family, and Lila had moved out to be with their One True Loves, leaving Dawn behind to do most of the work around the kennel. Dawn didn’t begrudge them their happiness, of course, but there was no denying the underlying message.

  Sisters fell in love. Service puppies found homes. All around her, people and animals were pairing off like they were boarding the Ark, leaving her alone to face the floodwaters.

  Which would have been fine and all, except no one had thought to ask if she wanted to go for a swim.

  “It might be nice to come home to a friendly face sometimes, is all I’m saying.” Dawn kept her arms around Uncle, drawing comfort from his solid, massive form. “Someone who’ll be here longer than a few months at a time.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Dawn didn’t wait to hear it. “I’m doing the best I can, Lil,” she said, a hand up to stop her sister from saying something they’d both regret. “I know you think I can’t handle this place on my own, but everyone is still alive and accounted for. I think I should get some credit for that.”

  “I’m here every afternoon,” Lila said, somewhat defensively.

  “I know.”

  “And Sophie takes the weekends.”

  “Which I appreciate.”

  Silence held for a moment before Lila sighed, her long limbs relaxing at her sides. “You’re right, of course. It’s not fair that you’ve had to take on the lion’s share of work around here. Especially since…”

  Dawn’s smile held tight. There were countless ways to end that sentence, but all of them held to one common theme: You’re untrustworthy. You’re chaotic. You’ll run off with the first handsome face to offer something better.

  “I just think you adopting a pet isn’t a good idea right now,” Lila said in a neat side step of the actual issue. “Give me a few more weeks, okay? I’m working on a few things to take some of the pressure off you, but I can’t make any promises yet.”

  “Of course,” Dawn replied, the words rising automatically to her lips. Her sisters were so content—so happy—that it would only be cruel to get in their way. “And you’re right. I’m sure the mood will pass. You know how I get when I’m planted in one place for too long. I’m probably restless.”

  “Restless?” Lila echoed.

  “I’m a free spirit, remember?” Dawn gave an airy wave of her hand. “I go where the wind takes me. I can’t be tied to one place—or one person—for too long, or I start to get twitchy.”

  Dawn had no way of knowing if Lila bought her lie or not, since Uncle chose that moment to signal for a potty break. Latching on to the opportunity, Dawn promised to close up the kennel for the night so her sister could get home to her family.

  As soon as Lila bore herself away, Dawn clipped a leash to the puppy’s collar and led him outside, talking to him all the while. Since she didn’t want to dwell on the unsatisfying conversation with her sister, most of what she said was a running dialogue of nonsense about what the dog could expect out of life on the Dearborn Ranch.

  “Adam won’t be cruel to you or anything,” she said as Uncle circled his favorite spot to relieve himself. “In fact, he’s inordinately kind to everyone and everything he considers to be under his care. But don’t expect him to show you affection or, God forbid, a glimpse of what goes on inside his head. It’s all business with him.”

  In reply, Uncle released a long stream from beneath his leg.

  “You’re all business, too, it seems. You two should be very happy together. You can spend long evenings discussing rural politics and steer p
oundage.”

  Uncle twitched his nose.

  “It’s better than it sounds,” Dawn promised. “There’s something very soothing about his voice. Now, come on back into the kennel. It’s off to bed with you. We have to get an early start in the morning if we’re going to rescue Gigi before she makes the mistake of growing attached to him.”

  She thought of the way she’d left the golden retriever—all curled up in the corner of Adam’s couch, her head burrowed into the fold of his strong arms—and added, “Believe me when I say that there will be no saving her after that.”

  * * *

  “No.”

  “His name is Uncle, and he has the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a dog. I tried putting mascara on him once, but Lila yelled at me before I got the cap off the wand.” Dawn paused. “You have awfully long eyelashes, too. Would you let me put some on you?”

  Adam ignored the sultry, teasing note in Dawn’s voice and shoved his pitchfork into the bale of hay at his feet. The satisfactory rustle of straw against metal was matched by the heavy weight that pulled at his arms as he lifted, heaved, and tossed the bale down from the truck. It might have seemed careless of him, to hoist seventy-five pounds onto the ground near where Dawn and her long-lashed companion stood, but Adam had long ago learned how to perfect his aim.

  Granted, it had taken him about three years and a hell of a lot of missed landings, but Adam was nothing if not determined. He’d found that for most chores around the ranch, he was perfectly capable of doing things without assistance. It was like that with everything, really. For as long as he could remember, being blind had just been a way of life. He could go almost anywhere he wanted and perform almost any task he set his mind to. He needed a little more time to get the process down, that was all.

  Fortunately, time was the one thing he had in abundance. Hours of it, in fact, long stretches of big, empty—