Puppy Kisses

by Lucy Gilmore

  “Shame on you!” Phoebe laughed. “I thought she was your friend.”

  “She is, but you wouldn’t believe how good that collection is. Valuable, too. She likes the really porny ones.”

  Phoebe choked on another laugh, but all Adam could manage was a sigh. Only Dawn could turn her last will and testament into a sexual escapade. “Of course she does,” he said, resigned. “What time is it now?”

  “A little after eight.”

  He reached for one of the pastries. They were sticky and sweet and not at all the kind of food necessary to fuel a morning of hard labor.

  And, he hardly needed to add, delicious.

  “Then we’re fine,” he said around a mouthful of apple-flavored goo. “She can’t possibly be dead yet.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He licked one of his fingers. “Because these are still warm. She must not have left here too long ago, and it’ll take Bea at least an hour to do her in. Possibly two. Dawn seems like the type who won’t go down without a fight.”

  “See, Phoebe?” Zeke said, triumphant. “Adam doesn’t seem too worried about her untimely demise, either.”

  “That’s because I’m not. Dawn’s death would solve a lot of our problems.”

  There was a short, shuffling sound before Zeke spoke up. His voice was more subdued than before, a hesitation in the way he chose his words. “You don’t like her, do you?” he asked.

  Adam noted his error at once. Where Dawn was concerned, his best route—no, his only route—was to have no emotional response. Too little enthusiasm was as dangerous as too much enthusiasm, too little interest worse than no interest at all.

  “Oh, she’s fine,” he said as neutrally as possible. “A little high maintenance for my tastes, but she seems to know what she’s talking about when it comes to dogs. I was just thinking that if Bea murdered someone and we could prove it, she might finally be willing to sell us her land. And at a discount.”

  Zeke chuckled obligingly, but he wasn’t finished with the topic. “Dawn’s not a bad person, Adam, when all is said and done. I mean, I’d never date the woman, but you have to admit that she’s generous with her time.”

  Adam’s only response was a grunt. She was generous with her time, all right. Her time, her laughter, and her body. The only problem was, he had no idea what he was supposed to give her in return.

  “Why don’t you date her?” Phoebe asked. “I’ve always wondered that. She’s super fun and drop-dead gorgeous—and she seems to like you, which is pretty rare in someone with a functioning nervous system.”

  Phoebe cried out as Zeke either punched her playfully in the arm or flicked her ear—his go-to ways of antagonizing his twin. “Because I value my sanity too much, that’s why,” he replied. “The man who ends up with that woman will be called upon to lie, cheat, and steal every day for the rest of his life—when he’s not already busy trying to keep up with all her other demands. Between the ranch and my training, I’m exhausted enough as it is.”

  Adam felt a twinge of guilt. Zeke did do a lot around here, especially considering how many other things he had going on his life. Maybe he should look into giving his brother a few extra days off in the near future—Phoebe, too. Grandpa Dearborn had worked hard. His father had worked hard. Adam would spend the rest of his life working hard.

  But that didn’t mean they had to suffer the same fate.

  “Dawn doesn’t lie!” Phoebe protested. “She’s one of the most honest people I know.”

  Zeke snorted. “If you mean, does she tell the truth, then yeah—I guess you could call her honest. But if you want to avoid someday finding yourself stranded in a third-world prison or explaining why you had to go ninety miles an hour down Highway 395 in the full light of day, then lying becomes a necessity.”

  There was something about that second example that caught Adam’s attention. “You were doing ninety down the highway?”

  Zeke quickly changed the subject. “One of us should probably head over to Bea’s house to make sure she’s all right. I’d volunteer, but I was just about to check on the new calf and then move that huge pile of fertilizer. Unless you’d rather switch, Adam? Personally, I find piles of shit much less daunting than trying to tackle Bea and Dawn at the same time.”

  It was on the tip of Adam’s tongue to point out that there was a good chance Dawn had already tackled Bea, hog-tied her, and turned her house into a bed-and-breakfast, but he refrained. He wasn’t supposed to know about how much energy and enthusiasm that woman had, how easily she transformed people and made their lives better simply by being near. Even this—standing in the kitchen eating breakfast pastries with his siblings before their shared day’s work—was almost unheard of.

  Yet here they were. Laughing. Talking. Enjoying one another’s company. Dawn wasn’t even in the house, but she’d somehow managed to make that happen.

  “Don’t worry—I’ll go after I make my morning rounds,” Adam said. He did an admirable job of making it sound like a chore, too. “I’d like to stop by, if only to make sure that Dawn hasn’t run off with my dog.”

  “Which one is your dog, again?” Phoebe asked. There was enough irony in her voice that Adam didn’t miss her real meaning. “The one that’s actually fit for work out here, or the cute one you want for no real reason?”

  It’s not “no real reason,” Adam wanted to tell her. Okay, so an undernourished puppy who was rapidly developing a taste for footwear wasn’t the ideal guide dog. And, yes, he’d been doing some research into early canine trauma, and there was a chance the golden retriever would never fully overcome whatever had led to her abandonment.

  But he liked her, dammit. He liked how affectionate she was, how playful. He liked how she made him feel—not like a hard taskmaster, the way Phoebe and Zeke saw him, and not like some staid and boring ranch owner, the way the rest of the world saw him.

  To Methuselah, he was just someone to love.

  “As of right now, I consider them both mine.”

  “If you want to keep both dogs, she’ll make you pay for both dogs,” Zeke warned.

  Adam shrugged and popped another bite of pastry into his mouth. “I’m not worried about the money.”

  “Money isn’t what I meant,” Zeke said with a knowing chuckle. “When it comes to Dawn, you can expect to pay in blood.”

  * * *

  “Oh God. She is dead.” Phoebe pulled her Jeep to a sudden stop, propelling Adam against the seat belt. “Bea probably forgot all about their agreement and shot her on arrival. She has about fifty guns in her bedroom, you know. She told me she likes to keep them in case of invasion.”

  Adam didn’t find that hard to believe. Bea also regularly stopped by the town hall meetings to warn the community about chemtrails and unidentified lights in the night sky. She had some strange theories.

  “Unless you’re looking at an actual body lying in the driveway, I’ll thank you not to exaggerate,” he said. Then, more sharply, “Please tell me there isn’t an actual body lying in the driveway.”

  Phoebe giggled. “No, but there’s no sign of anyone doing any yardwork out back. In fact, it looks as though the garden is an even bigger mess now than it was last week.”

  Adam held back a sigh and pushed the car door open, reaching for the telescoping cane he kept under the seat before swinging his legs out. He didn’t spend enough time at his neighbor’s house that he was willing to tackle it without aid. “Define ‘bigger mess.’ How can anything be worse than the disaster Dawn leaves wherever she goes?”

  “Don’t forget to mention that you mean Dawn the cow,” a voice called from the front porch. “Otherwise, Phoebe’s going to think you’re being rude.”

  Adam felt a disproportionate amount of relief to hear the musical laugh in Dawn’s voice. It wasn’t that he actually feared Bea would do away with another human being, but there was
no denying she had a tendency to rub people the wrong way. And by rub the wrong way, he meant she usually grated them down until they were nothing but a blubbering mess of their former selves.

  Call him sentimental, but he didn’t care to see that happen to the woman he was sleeping with.

  “You’re just in time,” Dawn added as a screen door creaked in the distance. “Bea and I were about to have some lemonade and pie out on the back porch. Fair warning—her lemonade is like ninety percent vodka. Sip slowly.”

  Phoebe laughed and said that nothing sounded better, but Adam wasn’t so easily fooled. He came up the steps carefully. “You and Bea are having alfresco cocktails?”

  “And pie,” Dawn pointed out. “I bought it from the diner near my house. But don’t worry—I told her that you made it, since you did promise her and all. It seems that in addition to vodka, Bea likes a man who delivers.”

  “I was going to make one. I haven’t had a chance yet, that’s all.”

  “Yes, well.” Dawn’s hand touched his arm to indicate that the door was open and he had a clear path inside. “Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time in the shower, you’d have more time for things like baking.”

  “What’s that you’re saying?” Bea demanded as Adam walked through the door. He’d only been inside Bea’s house a few times before—usually to beg her to consider his continually rising offer for her land—but it always had a damp, musty smell, like a sock forgotten in the bottom of the washing machine for too long.

  The sock scent was still there today, but in much less concentrated amounts. A cross breeze hinted at several open windows, at least one of which was near the back garden, if the loamy tang of upturned soil was any indication.

  “It’s about damn time you got here,” Bea added without waiting to hear their answer. Which was just as well, since there was no telling if Dawn might follow up on that shower comment. In the right mood, she had every likelihood of making life uncomfortable for him.

  Hell, who was he kidding? She always made life uncomfortable for him. Morally, emotionally, physically…

  “Do you still own that backhoe?” Bea asked.

  Adam halted. “Uh, backhoe?”

  “The patio door’s about four feet to your right and ten feet back.” Dawn brushed past him lightly, allowing her hip to touch his. Her voice lowered to a near-whisper as she added, “You don’t have a backhoe. You don’t know where to rent one, either. In fact, you read an article about how backhoes have been contributing to higher rates of certain kinds of cancer.”

  Phoebe must have overheard that last part, because she giggled and answered for him. “Sorry, Mrs. Benson, but we got rid of that old thing years ago.”

  “What’d you do that for?” Bea demanded. “I need one.”

  Phoebe and her ever-fertile imagination had a response for that, too. “Unfortunately, it went rogue and ran over Zeke’s foot. He’s lucky to still have it. You should have seen how many stitches he got.”

  Adam was almost certain Bea wouldn’t buy such a ridiculous story as that, but she gave a harrumph and moved in the direction of the back porch. “It’s just like a Dearborn to go wasting a valuable piece of machinery because it’s got a minor hitch. You people think nothing of money, do you? There’s always more where that came from.”

  There was no response that would allow Adam to maintain both his dignity and the respect necessary to keep him on Bea’s good side, so he didn’t say anything. He also regretted the impulse that had allowed him to send Dawn here to help Bea with the garden repairs. No one deserved to be subjected to this woman’s company for hours on end. She took bad manners to a whole new level.

  “Well, you know your way around a cherry pie, at any rate,” Bea said as Adam found a seat at the table and settled into it. He was almost immediately greeted by twin canine noses, one in each palm. Uncle’s felt as warm and friendly as it always did, but Methuselah’s appeared to be covered in mud.

  “What the—” he asked, running his fingers up Methuselah’s muzzle to find that the mud continued well into her upper body. “What have you done to my poor dogs?”

  “You mean, other than feed them and train them and otherwise do the job I’m being paid for?” The question must have been a rhetorical one. Dawn paused only long enough to draw a breath before adding, “Uncle spent the morning learning useful farm words, so he’ll know how to recognize things like fences and roads and where to find people out here in the middle of nowhere. Gigi, however, preferred to chase butterflies.”

  Phoebe muffled her laugh. “I can’t say I blame her. I’d rather be chasing butterflies, too. But, uh, I thought you were coming over here to help Bea fix the garden. No offense, but it looks a little…discombobulated.”

  Bea released a laugh that could only be described as a cackle. “Yes, well, I decided not to bother with that whole mess. I’m going to take a backhoe to the whole thing instead.” Her pause held all the power of a menacing glare. “Or rather, I was until you decided to throw yours away.”

  “You’re not going to bother?” Adam echoed. “But what about your butter beans?”

  “Fuck the butter beans. Dawn helped me see reason.”

  The words Dawn and reason had no place in the same conversation, let alone the same sentence. “I’m almost afraid to ask,” Adam said.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be. This girl has more sense than the entire lot of your family put together. Why should I put this garden to rights if all I’m going to do is sell this place by the summer’s end? It’s not as if any of you will appreciate my hard work and keep it up.”

  “Your hard work?” Phoebe murmured.

  If Bea heard Phoebe’s remark, she let it pass. Adam, however, wasn’t about to allow any of this to slip past him. He sat up straighter, wiping his muddied hand on his jeans. “You’ve finally decided to sell? To us?”

  Finally, it was here. Finally, he was going to get the land needed for the expansion. If Dawn had somehow managed to convince Bea to do this in a single afternoon, he was going to kiss her. With tongue. And in front of everyone here, too.

  “I didn’t say that now, did I?” Bea smacked her lips. “Next time, you’ll want to add a little more cinnamon to this pie, Adam. It could use a kick of something.”

  His excitement began its slow and inevitable deflation. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. Dawn might be capable of making him act contrary to everything he knew and believed in this world, but her magic obviously didn’t extend to a woman like Bea Benson.

  “Cinnamon,” he agreed flatly. “Sure thing.”

  “Bea hasn’t yet decided who she wants to sell to,” Dawn supplied. “It’s a delicate situation because of the promise she made to Peter Smithwood.”

  Adam didn’t care for the sound of that. “Promise? What promise?”

  Bea gave that cackling laugh again. She also paused to take a long sip of her vodka lemonade, which would explain why she was in such a conciliatory mood. “You obviously never got the full story from your grandfather.”

  That got Adam’s attention. Phoebe’s too. Neither of them had known their grandfather very well—he’d passed away not long after Phoebe and Zeke had been born—but he was something of a legend around these parts. He’d started their ranch with nothing more than a hundred dollars and the deed to the land in his pocket. And, as Adam knew from his own experiences, a hell of a lot of hard work. All those rumors of his infamy, of having cheated the Smithwoods at cards, were just that—rumors. In a community the size of theirs, that sort of thing was inevitable when something as large as a three hundred acres was involved.

  And when the Smithwoods were involved, but that part went without saying.

  “What story?” Phoebe asked. “No one ever said a word about a promise to me.”

  “Well, of course they didn’t,” Bea said. “It’s none of your damn business. It all happen
ed long before you and that swoopy-haired twin of yours were a twinkle in your parents’ eyes.”

  Methuselah gave a whimper at Adam’s feet, so he reached down and wordlessly plucked the puppy from the ground. He could hear Dawn’s cluck of disapproval at how quickly he’d given in to her demands, but it wasn’t as though he had a choice. Methuselah needed him. In fact, as soon as he started running his fingers over the silken threads of her ears, she settled down, her head resting contentedly on one knee.

  Since he knew he was in the wrong—and because offense was always the best defense—he pointed an accusing finger in the direction of Dawn’s chair. “I thought you came over here to be helpful.”

  “Training your guide dog to recognize fences is helpful,” she replied, laughing. It perfectly matched the tinkle of ice against her glass. “Besides, Bea had more interesting things to tell me than where to put the tomatoes. You never told me she knew so many things about your family.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “Like about how your grandfather was a con man and a philanderer.”

  “He was not a con man and philanderer.”

  “And about how he used to make his living fleecing people at cards until he settled down on the ranch.”

  “There’s nothing illegal about a friendly game of poker.”

  “Or about how after Peter Smithwood lost half his ranch to your grandfather, he sold Bea this piece of land for the sole reason that he didn’t want any part of his property touching yours.”

  Adam paused. “I didn’t know that one.”

  There was something self-satisfied about the way Dawn settled back into her chair, a puff of air rising from the seat cushions. “Then I’m guessing you also don’t know that he made Bea and her husband promise never to let you guys get your hands on it. Apparently, it was part of the original purchase contract. She literally can’t sell it to you.”

  Adam let out a long breath. All of his hopes and dreams for the future seemed to vanish with the air in his chest. It caused him a pang of regret, but not nearly as much as the realization that Zeke’s and Phoebe’s futures were vanishing along with it. Oh, the ranch was fine right now, with the three of them sharing the responsibilities and the income, but he didn’t know how long it could stay that way. If one of them got married, one of them had kids… A ranch the size of theirs could support a single family, but it couldn’t support three separate ones. Expansion was the only way to keep the holdings intact.