by Lucy Gilmore
Phoebe assented to the plan. Her smile was strained and flat around the edges, but at least it was a smile.
“I don’t know how much help I’m going to be at the kennel” was Zeke’s contribution. “My arms won’t lift all the way.”
“They’re puppies, Zeke, not half-ton cows,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Are there any wine requests, or should I just grab my favorites?”
“Dawn, we really don’t need you to—” Adam began again, but she cut him short. It wasn’t necessary to hear the end of that sentence. They really didn’t need her to patch things up. They really didn’t need her to feed them. They really didn’t need her to direct their lives and overstay her welcome.
Well, it was too late for that. As was usually the case, she’d already invested both her time and her emotions into this family before any of them had asked her to. They might assume she was doing this because it was in her nature to throw a party at the least provocation, but not even she could spend every minute of every day in celebration mode.
“If I agree to this, can we at least stop and grab some Gatorade on the way?” Zeke asked. He hoisted his athletic bag over his shoulder. “Wine might kill me if I don’t build up a base layer of electrolytes first.”
From the looks the three of them were wearing, a quick, painless wine death was preferable to continuing this conversation a minute longer.
“You know, you guys could at least pretend I haven’t just ordered you to attend your own funeral,” she said. “None of my parties have ever ended in death before.”
Zeke was opening his mouth to argue this point, so Dawn forestalled him before he could make her feel any worse about herself. “And no, Zeke. There’s no need to remind me that it’s come close a few times. How was it my fault that the stripper cake we ordered for Raul’s birthday two months ago wasn’t gluten-free? I didn’t actually expect anyone to eat it.”
“What else are you supposed to do with a stripper cake?” he asked, laughing. It was a real laugh, and it was accompanied by real smiles from Phoebe and Adam.
There. Balance was restored, the universe set right again.
“If you can’t think of a few seedy alternatives, then I have no use for you,” she said, pressing both her hands on Zeke’s sweaty back and giving him a shove in the direction of the parking lot.
* * *
“Their food amounts are listed on the clipboard. Don’t overfeed them, and make sure you initial after each one. Lila likes us to keep records of each feeding.”
“I still don’t know how I got roped into doing your job for you,” Zeke grumbled as he scanned Lila’s clipboard. “It’s my first real day off in months, and I’m ankle deep in kibble.”
“That is a very fine blend of roasted chicken, rice, and high-nutrient puppy chow, thank you very much,” Dawn said primly. “Nothing but the best for the residents of Puppy Promise. You can try a bite if you want. It’s not bad, especially after a hangover.”
Zeke relaxed enough to laugh. “I’m not going to ask.”
“That’s probably for the best. And I wouldn’t recommend trying the same technique at home. I doubt hay and grass would have the same effect.”
Mentioning cows and their dietary habits was a mistake. Zeke’s easy air dissipated in a flash. Damn. And after she’d been making such painstaking efforts to elicit and maintain it, too.
“Thank you for today,” he said, his pencil poised above the clipboard. He made no move to either mark the page or to feed the black Lab at his feet, who was rapidly working herself up into a frenzy of anticipation. “Adam has never come to one of my races before.”
“He really enjoyed it.”
“Adam has never come to one of my races before.”
“Yes, I heard you the first time. It was fun for all of us, although I’m still trying to figure out how you got in and out of that wet suit so quickly. Is it Vaseline? Or just regular lube? Adam seemed to think it was Vaseline, but I’m holding out for Astroglide. The kind you buy in bulk.”
“I don’t think you understand. Adam has never come to one of my races before.”
Dawn bit back a sigh. This wasn’t a conversation she was either prepared to have or looking forward to right now. It was an important conversation, obviously, but all she really wanted was to get the puppies settled and get her hands on that chocolate cake.
“Speaking of, we’d better get moving if we plan to pick up that food while it’s still hot.” Dawn settled the Chihuahua she’d been cuddling back in his pen, making sure to slip him a chew toy before she moved on to the next puppy. Gunner was in a fierce chewing phase and already making headway on his dog bed. By morning, there’d be nothing but fluff and fabric as far as the eye could see. “I wonder if I should just bring this guy with us. How many puppies are too many puppies as far as Adam is concerned? Six? Seven?”
When Zeke didn’t answer, his brow furrowed in a way that made him look as though he was working out a particularly difficult calculus equation, she added, “No, you’re right. Chances are he’d fall in love with Gunner and decide to keep him, too. It’s better not to risk it.”
“It’s weird,” Zeke said as though she hadn’t spoken. He did start feeding the Lab, though, so that was good. “He’s been doing a lot of unusual things lately—making dinner and visiting with Bea and showing an interest in my well-being. Phoebe’s too. He’s been talking about giving her a week off to take a trip to the Yucatán with her friends. All he has to do is announce his plans to run off with his secret girlfriend, and I’ll know he’s been taken over by body snatchers.”
It took every ounce of willpower Dawn had not to balk at that last bit, but she managed it by moving on to the next puppy, an adorable beagle with eyes like liquid amber.
“Adam has a secret girlfriend?” she asked in a tone of what she hoped was only mild interest.
Zeke snorted. “Of course not. A regular girlfriend would require him to take a few evenings off. I can’t imagine how much more work a secret one would be. But not only did he offer to do my chores last night, but he sang show tunes while he did it. Show tunes. I can’t think of anything else to account for that kind of behavior. Can you?”
Dawn saw a chance of salvation and reached for it. “Um, hello?”
“Hi?”
She waved a hand over herself. She was looking particularly good today, with a pair of stretch jean overalls layered over a white crop top. It was the kind of outfit one wore to pretend to work on a farm, as it was more suited for low-key clubbing at a country-western bar than actual hard labor, but that had been the whole point. Nothing drove Adam crazier than her showing up to work in the least ranch-appropriate attire possible.
“He’s obviously in a good mood because he has me in his life now,” she said.
Her ruse worked. Zeke took the bait. She might even have felt relieved at such an easy success if he hadn’t laughed quite so hard and long over it.
“Dawn, you know I love you, but no man who has to put up with you for eight hours a day is going to be happy about it,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked. Even though she’d spoken in jest, the mockery in Zeke’s voice caused annoyance to pluck at her nerves. “People love me. I’m nice. I’m fun.”
“The word you’re looking for is ‘exhausting.’”
“Excuse you. I’m not the one who just ran and biked like a zillion miles today. You’re much more exhausting than I am.”
“I don’t mean physically exhausting,” he said, and with so much condescension that it took all her resolve not to step on his foot. Hard. “I mean emotionally exhausting.”
She didn’t respond, just crossed her arms and stared at Zeke until he sighed and added, “You know what I mean, so don’t look at me like that. Adam obviously didn’t want to celebrate with us tonight, but you kept pushing until he had no choice but to give in. Tha
t’s what you do. You push and you intrude and you make a man so fed up that he’ll get behind the wheel of a getaway car and help you steal a puppy just to get you to leave him alone. Couldn’t you, like, scale it back a little? Just for once?”
It was the final straw, the tipping point, the place where common sense departed and her impulses took over.
Okay, yes. Dawn knew she was exhausting. She knew people got tired of her after a few months, always telling her to step back, step down, be less. She’d heard it so many times before—from teachers, from employers, from relatives, from friends—that she could practically recite a list of her sins in her sleep.
What she didn’t understand, however, was why these particular sins were so off-putting. There were people out there who lied, who cheated, who wrote long, painstaking checks in the express lane at the grocery store. When was it universally decided that the one unforgivable offense was for a woman to be herself? Why did her desire to be accepted for who she was turn her into some kind of unlovable monster?
“Well, I think you’re a chickenshit, so there.” She tightened her arms across her chest. “We’re even.”
Zeke almost dropped the clipboard on the black Lab’s head. “I’m what?”
“A chickenshit,” she repeated. If they were going to throw out painful truths, he needed to see his as well as hers. At least she’d always been able to own who she was, even if it made other people view her as a nuisance. “I’ve been at your ranch for almost a month now, and I have yet to hear you mention to your brother even once how much it chafes you—how badly you want to leave. Adam is so deep in his expansion plans that he’s sending me to Bea’s house to uncover some kind of long-lost legal document, but I have yet to hear you raise one word of protest.”
“Dawn.”
“Ezekiel.”
“You know it’s not like that.”
“I know you think it’s not like that.”
Zeke tucked the clipboard under one arm and glared down at her, but Dawn wasn’t put off. He’d already done the worst he could—said the words that always made her feel like someone was trying to cut out the best pieces of her and replace them with something else. Something, well, less.
“I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with him lately, and I think he’ll understand better than you realize,” Dawn added, softer this time. “Look, my older sister is the same way. Supersmart and always on top of things. Keeps everything running without a word of complaint. Kind of makes you feel like she has more value in the tip of her pinkie finger than you have in your whole body.”
Zeke continued holding himself tense, but Dawn could tell that he was listening. For a change.
“Tell him what you want,” she urged. “Feel him out. Who knows? Maybe he’ll be relieved not to have to worry about all that stuff with Bea. He can just go back to focusing on his cows.”
Zeke’s laugh carried no mirth. “Your sister might understand you, but I promise Adam doesn’t understand anything but the ranch.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that Zeke was totally wrong. Adam was dedicated to his work, yes, but he was also warm. Funny. Caring. He drank like a sorority girl at a bar for the first time, couldn’t resist a dare once it had been laid before him, and had fallen so much in love with a golden retriever puppy that he literally carried her around like a baby. He was goal-driven to the point of being obsessed, but she hadn’t been lying about how much he’d enjoyed Zeke’s race. The look of pride on his face as the announcer gave a play-by-play of the final moments had been nothing short of breathtaking.
He’d been so happy for Zeke. So glad to be there sharing it with him.
“I can’t take it away from him, Dawn,” Zeke said. His voice was softer—pleading. “The ranch is literally all he has. It’s all he is. How could he manage it without me there to help?”
An anger unlike any Dawn had ever felt took over. The idea that a person could be boiled down to one thing—a job, a passion, a condition—wasn’t just stupid; it was cruel.
“I don’t know,” she retorted. “What does everyone else out there do when someone leaves? Buy them out? Hire a few ranch hands? Work a little bit harder until a more practical solution presents itself? Jesus, Zeke—it’s not prison. It’s a family business.”
“That shows how little you know,” Zeke muttered.
Dawn opened her mouth to say more, but Zeke lifted a hand and shook his head. “Don’t. I know you mean well. You always mean well. But you have no idea what you do, whirling in and taking over like this without thinking things through. In the past month, you’ve committed larceny, been chased by a man with a gun—not just once, but multiple times—and turned the entire fucking neighborhood upside down. You convinced Adam to come to my race, yes, but to what end? He’ll feel guilty about the time away from the ranch for at least a week, which means I’ll have to suffer through twelve-hour days to make up for it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, I know it. I’ve lived with the man for twenty-eight years, and you’ve known him—what—all of five minutes? Yet here you stand, dressed like Old MacDonald, pretending like you know what’s best for us. Well, surprise. You don’t.” Zeke tightened his jaw. “And don’t you dare mention anything to him about this, or I’ll tell him where Gigi really came from.”
She held herself perfectly still, not trusting herself to move or speak or even breathe. Nothing Zeke had just said wasn’t true—or wasn’t something she’d heard dozens of times before—but he was supposed to be her ally, her friend.
“Don’t look at me like that, Dawn. I’m only telling the truth.” He crooked a smile. “And you’re a cute Old MacDonald, if that helps.”
She managed to start breathing again, but only because it was obvious that was what Zeke expected.
He slung an arm over her shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked. “Me being honest? I wouldn’t say it to anyone else, but you’re not like other girls. You don’t mind hearing the truth with no sugar added.”
Everything Zeke just said rankled, but Dawn knew what was expected of her. “I mean, I could use a little sugar.”
He laughed, taking this remark as the joke she’d intended. It was obvious what he wanted—for everything to be nice and clean and easy again—but she wasn’t sure it was possible after this. Zeke obviously enjoyed her company because she introduced no deep, troubling thoughts into his life. She was always happy, always fun, and never expected anything of him that he wasn’t willing to give.
In other words, she was like one of the puppies currently scampering about in anticipation of dinner. Simple and adorable—and, yes, exasperating sometimes, but that was all part of the package.
“I think we’d better get these puppies fed and hit the road soon,” Zeke said. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was over, the waters settled flat again. “I can feel the Gatorade starting to wear off. I need carbohydrates—and fast—or I’m going to start getting mean.”
“Start?” Dawn echoed.
Zeke took this as a joke, too. With a hearty laugh, he pulled the clipboard out from under his arm and resumed his feeding duties. “Either that or I’m going to eat your miracle canine hangover cure. I’m not going to lie—the longer we stand here talking, the better it’s starting to smell. You might be onto something with this after all.”
Chapter 12
“Three hours.” Dawn walked through the front door to the ranch without knocking or ringing the doorbell or announcing her presence in any way. Despite the lack of ceremony, not one of the Dearborn siblings expressed the mildest surprise to find her there.
Since it was late in the afternoon and there was no puppy training on the schedule for the day, Adam should have been surprised. He had no right to expect her to stop by on her day off.
But she had, and he was glad.
Too glad, if the sudden spike of his heartbeat was any indication. His fingers fumbled over the fluted edge of the piecrust he was attempting.
“Three hours,” she repeated when no one offered an immediate response. “That’s how long it took to clear the door to Bea’s basement today. Not—I tell you—to clear the basement. To literally move all the boxes and broken furniture piles that were in front of it. Did you know that wicker will disintegrate on touch if it’s been sitting and rotting for twenty years?”
“Interesting,” Adam murmured.
“Gross,” Phoebe said from somewhere in the living room.
“I warned you not to do it” came Zeke’s contribution.
Dawn released a long sigh. “Gee, thanks. I’m so glad I came here for moral support.” A brief pause and an onslaught of happy puppy noises ensued. “At least a few of you are glad to see me. Hello, Uncle. Gigi, love—down. When you greet a person, you do it on all four legs.”
Adam released a low whistle. It worked in getting Uncle to come to him, but Gigi had no intention of following orders. Ever since the day of Zeke’s race, she’d been getting worse and worse at behaving herself the way a well-trained service animal should. He’d brought it up to Marcia that morning only to have the veterinarian laugh at him.
“It’s a good sign, all things considered,” she’d said. “It means she feels safe with you. She knows she can misbehave and not get beaten for it. Don’t you, beautiful girl? You know just how to wind this man around your paw.”
The conversation had driven home the truth that Adam was finally willing to admit—Gigi would never be a service dog. To force the kind of discipline necessary to get her to become one would be to crush her spirit, to change who she was at a fundamental level.
He loved her far too much to want to change her.
“There’s a box of chew toys by the back door,” he said as he returned his attention to the pie in front of him. He’d opted for peach, since Marcia had brought a huge box from her orchard, with extra cinnamon and a dash of bourbon to win Bea over. “See if you can redirect her to one of those.”