Puppy Kisses

by Lucy Gilmore

  “Rogue cows?” Marcia laughed. “If you mean that beast that’s been running all over this county since the day Adam birthed her, the answer is no. My kids would take one look at her and beg her to stay forever.”

  The women’s voices trailed off out the door and onto the front porch, then down the front porch and to the driveway. There the conversation continued for quite a few minutes, the two of them chatting as though they’d been friends for years instead of weeks. Adam used the time to get a grip on himself, marshaling the two puppies into a semblance of order and stationing himself behind the sink in the kitchen. He’d already done the breakfast dishes, but that stainless-steel barrier was better than nothing.

  At least that was what he thought until Dawn walked in.

  “You bastard.”

  Adam picked up the sponge he kept stored at the back of the sink and began randomly scrubbing the counter. “Zeke is still in his room, and Phoebe has been coming and going all morning, so you might want to watch what you say.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You rat-faced bastard.”

  He scrubbed harder. “I think maybe you misunderstood me earlier. I said you win, Dawn. As in, you’re the victor. You get the spoils—or in this case, Gigi.”

  “Yes, I gathered as much, thank you.” She paused. “Would you please stop trying to wear a hole in your kitchen counter? I’m trying to insult you and your underhanded tactics, and it would be a lot more satisfying if you were paying attention to me while I did it.”

  He couldn’t help but chuckle. Only Dawn would continue to do and say exactly what was in her heart at a moment like this one. Tossing the sponge negligently aside—a thing he almost never did—he braced both hands on the edge of the sink, hunched and facing straight ahead.

  “I thought you’d be pleased,” he said, striving for nonchalance. It was difficult when every muscle in his body was tense enough to snap, when he was so close to falling to his knees and begging Dawn and Gigi to stay with him forever, but he managed it. Somehow. “I’m giving you Gigi. No more jumping through hoops, no more searching for mislaid legal documents, no more selling yourself out as a drudge to Bea Benson. She’s yours, free and clear.”

  “Too bad. I don’t want her.”

  Adam felt an absurd urge to take this conversation somewhere else—somewhere the puppy wouldn’t overhear—but the sound of Gigi’s happy chewing indicated that she wasn’t paying them the least bit of attention.

  “Well, I don’t want her either,” he retorted. “I’ve decided to keep Uncle instead.”

  When Dawn didn’t reply right away, he felt a nervous qualm. There was no saying what she was doing right now—what she was thinking. For all he knew, she was getting ready to throw something at him.

  Which, to be fair, he fully deserved.

  “I’m telling you that you’re right, Dawn. You’ve been right since the start of this thing.” He released his death grip on the sink and pushed himself to a standing position. “She’s not suited for life on a ranch. She’ll never be much of a guide dog—not compared to Uncle—and it’s selfish of me to keep her just because it seemed like fun to see how far you’d take it. I’m only sorry it took me this long to admit it.”

  The only sounds in the kitchen were Gigi’s erratic chewing and Uncle’s steady breathing. Well, that and the thump of Adam’s pulse beating in his ears. Every word he was saying was a lie—and also one hundred percent true. He was sorry and he was selfish, but not enough to change his mind.

  He also wanted to reach out and touch Dawn. Not in an intimate or erotic way, but in a reassuring one—to know she was there, to remind himself that they were still very much a part of each other.

  He didn’t though. He wasn’t selfish enough for that.

  “Is that why you wanted her in the first place?” Dawn eventually asked. Her voice sounded small and tight, almost as though she was controlling it through sheer force of will. “Just for fun?”

  No. Never. “Yes.”

  “You never thought you might want to keep her forever?”

  Yes. Always. “No.”

  “You never felt her curl up next to you and wondered what it might be like to have her there every day of your life?”

  Adam had to put a stop to this. He couldn’t keep lying, couldn’t keep standing here pretending like they were talking about a dog and not the woman standing on the opposite side of his kitchen sink—the same kitchen sink that had stood here for generations, the same kitchen sink that would remain exactly like this for as long as Adam lived.

  “Of course I thought about it,” he admitted. “How could I not?”

  Running a hand through his hair, he allowed his natural expression to emerge for the first time. He was sad and tired. He wished there were a way to go back and shut his heart against both Gigi and Dawn. He was also resolute.

  Dawn knew it. And she wasn’t afraid to make him admit it out loud. “But?”

  “But you and I both know that’s not realistic. I like Gigi, yes. She’s fun and playful and turns every day into an adventure.”

  “But?” she prodded again.

  “But fun and playful and adventurous aren’t enough. Not for me, anyway. I’m sure there are some people out there, some men who…” He let his voice trail off, unable to finish the sentence. Not that he needed to. They both knew what he meant. There were some men—thousands of them, probably—who would be able to give Dawn the life she deserved, matching her step for step, accompanying her on every adventure, supporting her through every dream.

  “Some men who’d be willing to overlook her faults? Some men who could look beyond the surface to see what else she has to offer?”

  She was wrong, of course—laughably so. Dawn’s faults weren’t what kept him from jumping in with both feet. His own were.

  But he nodded anyway. There was no other way to end this conversation and remain standing. “She’s not cut out for life on a ranch. It’s better to end things now, while she has a chance at being happy somewhere else. With someone else.”

  The pause that settled over them was heavy and uncomfortable, broken only by the jangle of something that sounded like either a harness or a leash. It was enough to draw the attention of both puppies, who clamored over to Dawn’s side to see what delights were in store for them.

  She murmured something low and soothing as she presumably attached the devices, but Adam didn’t move. He didn’t move, didn’t blink, barely even breathed as he awaited Dawn’s response.

  It was everything he expected…and offered no satisfaction whatsoever.

  “Okay.” She drew a deep breath. “They’re all set. Uncle is in his harness and ready to go on a perimeter walk with you. Ideally, you two should make it all the way around the ranch, but I know this place is like eleven million miles, so only go as far as you’re comfortable today. But you’ll need to finish tomorrow—I’d like him to learn the full extent of his boundaries while I’m on hand to make any necessary corrections.”

  “You aren’t coming?” he asked, surprised.

  “Nope. You’ve made your decision.” There was no rancor in her voice, no accusation. “If you and Uncle are going to make a real go of this, then you need to learn to depend on each other.”

  From a logical standpoint, Adam had known this moment was coming. Six weeks sounded like a long time to spend in the company of just one person, but not when that person was Dawn. He’d have gladly extended the training for another six weeks, six months, six years, but that wasn’t the point. Uncle was here to make him more independent, to reassure his friends and family so they could enjoy their time away from the ranch.

  In other words, Uncle was all he had left.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked gruffly.

  “Head over to Bea’s, probably.”

  “But—” Adam had to shake himself as a reminder that his interest from
here on out needed to be cool and casual. “I’m not sure I follow. Gigi is yours. The bet is canceled. It doesn’t matter whether or not you find those papers of Bea’s anymore. In fact, you can forget that whole arrangement with you buying her house as our intermediary. I’m sure there’s another, less morally questionable way around it.”

  “Oh, I know.” This time there was rancor in her voice. And accusation. “But I promised her I’d help, so that’s what I’m going to do. Contrary to what many people believe, I am capable of sticking around and seeing a project through to its finish, even when it isn’t covered in glitter and lined up with vodka shots.”

  He had to suppress the argument that sprang naturally to his throat. That wasn’t what he believed—it was just what he needed Dawn to believe he believed. “I’m not sure I even want the land anymore,” he lied. “I’m sure I can find other ways to expand the ranch’s holdings. We’ll invent micro-cows or something.”

  “Oh, it’s not you I’m getting it for,” she retorted. “It just so happens that I’m homeless—or, rather, I’m going to be homeless here in the next few weeks. I’m thinking about buying it for myself.”

  Adam’s hand stopped on top of Uncle’s head. It had been his intention to pet the puppy, to reassure him that they’d start their walk soon, but he suddenly needed the large, stately Great Dane to hold him up. “Wait—what? You’re moving? Here? What about the puppies?”

  “We’re moving them to a kennel in the garage of Lila’s new house. I’m free of them forever.” She gave a bitter little laugh. “That’s me, Free Forever Dawn. I have no ties, no responsibilities. I can go wherever I want, and no one will have any reason to miss me. Well, except for Gigi, I guess. Although from the way she’s looking at you right now, it’s obvious I’m not her first choice.”

  That was bullshit. Gigi owed her life to Dawn. Adam couldn’t think of any other person on the planet who would have so unhesitatingly tackled a man like Murphy Jones and lived to tell the tale. If Gigi preferred him now, it was because he’d behaved like an ass. There was no other name for a man who refused to give up a dog he had no right to, who’d gone against all advice and reason because he was too weak to say no.

  He opened his mouth and closed it again, searching in vain for the right thing to say.

  He didn’t make it in time.

  “I’m not your first choice either, but that’s what makes this so deliciously ironic, don’t you think? Who’d have thought that I’d develop a taste for country living at the same time Bea lets go of such a prime piece of real estate? By this time next week, you and I could be neighbors.”

  * * *

  “I understand why a person might want to keep one broken rice cooker, but are you absolutely sure you need all three of these?”

  “Yes.”

  Dawn looked down at the box in her arms and then back at Bea. The older woman sat on the top of the basement steps reading a mystery novel, not even bothering to glance at the rice cookers in question. If she had, she’d have noticed that they were all at least twenty years old and so covered with mouse droppings that it had to be breaking some kind of food safety law to use them.

  “Maybe we can just pick the best one, and then you’ll be able to—”

  “I need them for parts,” Bea explained. She flipped a page of her book and kept reading. “Each one has a different broken component. Put them together, and you get one perfectly working rice cooker. Fresh and fluffy every time.”

  Dawn wrinkled her nose. The idea of mishmashing three broken appliances together to make a single functional one was ridiculous. That wasn’t how things got fixed. It wasn’t how people got fixed either. Or puppies. You could push and shove and show up on a man’s doorstep every day, but there was no way to combine Adam Dearborn, Dawn Vasquez, Uncle, and Gigi to make a cohesive unit.

  She’d tried. She’d given him the option. But that hadn’t stopped him from giving up on Gigi.

  From giving up on her.

  “Do you eat a lot of rice?” Dawn asked.

  “I eat enough.”

  “How many times per year?” she persisted. She needed to start making progress down here, and fast. At this rate, clearing out the basement was going to take the bulk of her youth—the good, fun-filled years that were already starting to feel miles away. “If you had to make an estimate?”

  “What are you, the CIA?”

  Dawn sighed. Clearly, Bea had no intention of making this task easy on her. “Yes, Bea. I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency, and my sole mission is to discover the exact amount of rice you eat per year. The fate of our nation hangs in the balance.”

  That got Bea to look up from her book. She pointed a finger at Dawn. “You’re the one who wanted to do this.”

  Want seemed like an awfully generous term for what she was doing. This basement looked as though Bea had done nothing to it for the past twenty years but stand at the door and toss things down as the mood struck. Even Gigi had taken one long sniff and decided that she’d rather wait with Bea at the top of the steps.

  Although that might have been because she’d been slinking around with her tail between her legs ever since Adam and Uncle had taken themselves off on a grand adventure without her. Dawn had tried to console her with treats and belly rubs and promises of half a dozen puppy friends at home, but to no avail. The golden retriever obviously held Dawn responsible for her broken heart.

  “You can hardly take three rice cookers to Bali,” Dawn pointed out.

  “Bali?”

  “Bora Bora. Cancún. Thailand.” Dawn paused. “You know—the tropical paradise that awaits you? When you move?”

  Bea’s brow lifted a little. “Oh. That. Sure, sure. My tropical paradise. I guess you can put those in the donate pile. There should be three or four bread machines you can toss in there, too.”

  Dawn made a mental note to give everything in the donate pile a thorough disinfecting before she dropped it off. She also was careful to count out a full minute inside her head before speaking again.

  “Have you given any more thought to where you want to go?” she asked in what she hoped was a casual voice. It was helped by the fact that she spied a box of paper-like objects in the far corner. Maybe Bea’s organizational system wasn’t so defunct after all. “If you don’t end up somewhere warm and exotic, I mean?”

  When Bea didn’t respond right away, Dawn added, “Is there a family member you’ve been meaning to visit? Friends nearby?”

  “You know what?” Bea said by way of answer. “I think I will keep those rice cookers.”

  Dawn’s heart sank. It would have been very easy to assume that Bea was just being contradictory, but Dawn had always been a realist. Bea had no more intention of leaving this place than Adam did of changing his mind about Gigi.

  So much for moving into the neighborhood. There was going to be no farmhouse in Dawn’s future, no opportunity to buy this place for the sole purpose of holding it over Adam’s head and gloating about her victory.

  Yet another door was closing right in front of her.

  “You know, I’ve been doing some thinking about this Smithwood-Dearborn feud,” Dawn said as she busied herself clearing a path toward that box in the corner. Her own future might look bleak, but she still had an opportunity to make something good come out of all this.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. It’s strange how something like that can go on for so many years. About sixty? If I did the math correctly?”

  Bea grunted. She was still holding her book open, but she didn’t appear to be reading it anymore. Her free hand rested on Gigi’s neck, her fingers brushing absentmindedly over the puppy’s fur. Gigi accepted this as her due; even Bea had more of a hold over that animal than Dawn did. “That sounds about right.”

  “And you’ve lived here all that time?”

  Bea’s eyes narrowed in a look of s
hrewd suspicion. “If you want to say something, girl, just come out and say it. Don’t use any of your animal-training tricks on me.”

  Candor suited Dawn down to her last freckle. She gave up on the pursuit of the box.

  “Sixty years is a long time to live in a place,” she said, frankly but—hopefully—with kindness. “And from everything I can tell, you don’t have a lot in the way of family. There are no framed photographs, no grandkids’ drawings on the fridge, no personal mementos shoved into any of these boxes. I’ve never even seen a picture of your husband.”

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” Bea spat over her left shoulder.

  “I’m hoping that means he left you, not that I’m going to stumble across his dead and decaying body somewhere in this heap.”

  Bea fell into one of her signature cackles. “I wish I had thought to murder him, the lying bastard.” On a more sober note, she added, “He left not long after we moved in. Didn’t care for the nightlife out here. Or the fact that I was the only one in it.”

  Dawn nodded. She could see how the long, wintry nights out here might wear on a person, how an unhappy marriage could fracture under the strain of so much isolation. She could also see why a woman like Bea Benson—or a man like Adam Dearborn—refused to leave. There was something about the pace of it, like stepping back in time, that soothed the soul. People talked out here. They worked together. They relied on each other.

  Once upon a time, Puppy Promise had been like that. Dawn had never been happier than when she and her sisters had sat chatting about the day over cups of hot chocolate, laughingly breaking down both their training cases and their latest loves, occasionally stepping out to make sure the puppies had everything they needed. Everything she’d needed was under one roof, and it had brought her a measure of peace that she hadn’t known existed.

  She missed that—missed it so much that she suspected that was the true reason she was so upset at losing the last thing tying her down. It wasn’t the puppies or the job or even her sisters that had changed. It was her.