A Heartfelt Christmas Promise

by Nancy Naigle

  She picked up her phone and dialed Bill. “Hey. It’s Vanessa. Can you provide me with an update on how things went over the weekend, and see if we have any unexpected hurdles to clear on the project?”

  “No, ma’am. The guys are making quick work of this. All of the scrap equipment is gone. We’ve got a few guys blowing out the dirt and cobwebs, general cleanup, and a couple repainting some areas that were in bad shape. We had the paint. We were going to paint earlier this year and then it got pushed as not a priority. Anyway, that’ll be done. I’m doing an inspection now to see if there are any building repairs that need attention.”

  “Good job. Were those offices part of the repainting plan?”

  “Sure are.”

  “Good. They were a mess. I think we can get rid of those old desks too.”

  “Buddy down the street has a shop where he repurposes old furniture and stuff and turns it into other things. Rather than dump it, do you mind if we give it to him?”

  “Of course not. I’m adding that to the plan right now.”

  “He’s going to be your biggest fan.”

  “I could use a few of those right now.”

  “You’re gonna be okay,” Bill said. “Anything else, boss lady?”

  “No, thank you. Call me if anything pops up that I need to allocate time for.”

  “You got it.”

  The line went dead, and she put her phone on the table. At this rate she could be out of here by Christmas. She and Anna could fly somewhere else to finish celebrating. Maybe Paris?

  “How are you doing over there, Misty?”

  “Great. I like this tool. It makes things so much easier. I found a few other things that needed to be simplified and one that there was no way to know when it was complete. I think I have that fixed.”

  “Go ahead and find a stopping point, and print out what you have and we’ll go over it together.”

  The printer chugged out a copy of the project plan as Vanessa walked over to the window to look outside. The town looked pretty all covered in white.

  “I’ve got the reports.” Misty sat back down at the table. Vanessa joined her and they went through each line, double-checking resource and capacity along with timelines.

  “This looks really good.” Vanessa tapped the pile of pages back into one neat stack. “Why don’t you call it a day?”

  “You sure? I don’t mind staying longer.”

  “I’m sure.” The last thing she needed to do was lay her own bad habits on Misty. Maybe she could help her have life balance from the beginning of her career, because it sure felt near impossible to do it once you were already in the unbalanced side of the equation.

  Lilene’s and Misty’s voices carried down the hall as they left together.

  She reviewed all of the entries and made sure there were no overlapping steps between the two projects she had going here. The warehouse prep, and the upgrades and reduction of footprint for Porter’s. From her calculation, the changes would result in more than a 30 percent lift in revenue with the smaller number of employees. The rest of the employees would be the ones that would be re-skilled to the warehouse team at Outdoor Sports Pro.

  She texted Anna to let her know she was still going to work late tonight, but she’d see her tomorrow.

  At nine o’clock the retail store closed and the holiday music that had played all day suddenly fell quiet. Silence whispered in her ears.

  Vanessa stood and stretched. Her body cracked and popped with each movement. With her hands clasped behind her back, she slowly leaned forward, thankful she’d taken the time to learn yoga last year after dealing with backaches that no amount of pain reliever soothed. A few stretches each morning had changed her life, but tonight she needed a double dose.

  She gathered her things to leave. She locked the front door of Porter’s behind her and began to walk toward the corporate apartment. The exercise would do her good.

  A horn tooted twice from across the street.

  She recognized Jimmy’s car and walked over. “Did Lilene call you? I’m sorry, I had no idea—”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t have anything else to do and it’s cold out. I thought I’d just hang out here and wait to see if you needed a ride. Did some studying.” He lifted a hefty college book. “I’m trying to finally finish my degree.”

  “That’s not easy when you’re working full-time too.”

  “You’re telling me, but I can do it.” He looked pleased with himself. “Hop in.”

  She climbed into the backseat, and Jimmy pulled away from the curb. The tires slid a little beneath them when they turned.

  He dropped her off at the door, and then pulled away.

  As she fumbled with the key in the dark, something shuffled behind her. Please don’t let it be a skunk.

  She fumbled with her phone to get the light on the lock so she could hurry inside, but as she did, something bumped against her leg.

  Her breath caught. She stood as still as the wind right before disaster strikes. With her eyes squeezed shut, another prod hit her about midcalf. She inhaled, but the air was fine.

  She slowly tilted forward to look down.

  Still half expecting a skunk, she let out one long breath as she realized it was nothing but that little puppy again.

  Sitting with his chin straight up in the air, he lifted one paw and pushed on her leg.

  “What are you doing?”

  He cowered and backed up a few steps with his tail between his legs.

  “It’s okay. Come here.”

  He flopped to his belly, putting his chin on the ground with eyes squinted closed.

  She opened the door to the warehouse, then leaned down and scooped that little puddle of a pup into her arms. “What are you doing here? Where’d you come from?”

  He commenced a serious flurry of kisses, his soft little paws patting her face as he did.

  “What is all that for? Do you want to come upstairs with me?”

  He answered with a high-pitched yelp, then licked her ear. His sharp little nails grazed her neck.

  “You are just a baby. Don’t scratch me, buddy.”

  He laid his head on her shoulder.

  “Do you want to come in with me? You do seem quite content, but someone has to be looking for you.”

  Vanessa stepped outside. “Here doggy, dog. Are you missing a puppy?” She whistled a couple of times, but didn’t hear even a skitter.

  She walked inside and locked the door behind her.

  The puppy didn’t squirm as she climbed the stairs to the corporate apartment. “Hopefully, you won’t pee on the floor. At least it’s for the most part hardwood flooring, and there are a ton of paper towels stored in that closet. Welcome to my house.”

  She put him on the ground.

  He sat there looking more like a stuffed animal than a dog, the way he was sitting on his butt with his paws forward.

  “Let me find something for you to eat. You’ve got to be hungry.” She opened the cabinets. “Let’s see. How about saltines?” She took a couple out of the sleeve and sat on the floor in front of him. He jumped up and spun in a circle. “Here you go.” She broke one of the crackers into a few bite-size morsels, and held them out in her flat hand.

  He gobbled them as if they were steak.

  “You make those look pretty tasty.” She got the jar of peanut butter out of the cabinet and fixed a couple of peanut butter crackers for herself. He climbed into her lap trying to get her cracker. “Hang on.” She scooped some peanut butter onto her finger. The puppy lapped it up. “Oh, you really like that.”

  Long after he stopped licking the peanut butter from her finger, he licked the air with his sticky tongue, his tail going a mile a minute.

  “Now that our bellies are full, we can relax.” She filled a bowl with water and put it on the floor for him, then turned on the television and sprawled out on the couch.

  Just as she’d kind of hoped, the puppy ran back across the room, coming to a sliding
stop by her on the slippery hardwood floor, then tried to climb up on her.

  “You’re still a little too small for that.” She reached down and gave him a lift of the butt. He walked on top of her, then licked her chin before wrapping himself into a tight little ball right in front of her stomach.

  “Oh my gosh. Now I really want a house so I can have a puppy. You are the sweetest thing.”

  She stroked her fingers along his shiny coat. “We’ll find your family tomorrow.”

  With the puppy asleep on the couch, she had to slip out from behind him to go get some work done. At the desk by the window, she saw that the snowy skies had finally cleared up enough that there were stars out tonight.

  She worked quietly, happy with her progress.

  The puppy had slept nearly an hour before he woke up and yapped for attention.

  “I thought you might sleep all night. I bet you want to go outside.” She put her shoes back on and grabbed a jacket. “Come on.” She patted her leg and he ran right over to her. He bravely ran for the staircase, taking one step at a time. His fat belly skimmed the stair tread as he stretched to the next one.

  She passed him and waited for him at the bottom, encouraging him along the way.

  Two steps from the bottom he went rolling tail over nose to the bottom.

  “Oh no.” She raced to the bottom of the stairs.

  He sat there looking around.

  She could almost picture the tweety birds circling his head after that fall. “Are you okay, little guy?”

  She opened the door and he walked outside, yawned, and then sat down. Vanessa walked out toward the tree line and whistled, wondering if the mother wasn’t bedded down in the thick woods with a whole litter of these little guys, but there were no barks. No whimpers from pups.

  Vanessa lifted the puppy into her arms. “Look at all those stars. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  He seemed to look to make his own decision, then squirmed. She placed him on the ground, and he ran off to the grass and did his business, then ran back over to the door.

  “I guess that means you’re staying the night.”

  She opened the door and he started bounding up the stairs, but he was dangerously wobbly. She picked him up and carried him the rest of the way.

  Back in the apartment he was full of energy, jumping and playing, but his teeth were like little needles. “Okay, I need you to play with something besides my hands. I definitely do not have enough bandages for all these bites.”

  She’d packed a pair of casual socks in her bag in case her feet got wet in the snow. She pulled them out. They were pretty expensive to turn into a puppy toy, but they’d been in her bag forever and she’d never worn them, so what was the waste in that? She tied the heavy woolen socks together, then swung them in front of her.

  The puppy leapt into the air like a crocodile after a bird. She played tug-of-war, and that little puppy was strong. He was going to win this game.

  He barked, the socks still in his mouth.

  She wrestled them away and threw them across the room.

  He went flying after them, then stalked them and pounced on them. Fearless. Barking again, he stomped his feet as if daring the socks to attack.

  Vanessa couldn’t resist grabbing them and throwing them again.

  “Maybe I’ll become a little fearless in Fraser Hills too. What do you think, little guy?”

  He crawled into her lap and started licking her face again.

  She screamed playfully. “You’re a suck-up. But adorable.” She put the sock in his mouth and scooted him off. “I need to get some more work done.” She fluffed a towel on the floor next to her feet. “Why don’t you play or settle in there?”

  He sat down at her feet and cocked his head.

  How could anyone deny puppy eyes?

  Without a whimper, he crawled onto the towel and curled up with his chin on her feet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The next morning that little puppy was lying face-to-face with Vanessa when she opened her eyes. She backed up with a start, and the puppy woke up ready to play. “Oh my gosh, what am I supposed to do with you today?”

  She pulled on her robe and shoes and took the puppy outside. It was freezing and the snow held a shiny glaze on top now. “Go on.” Vapor formed billows of white with each word. He made quick work of it, and then ran inside and up the stairs ahead of her. “Well, you’re doing stairs a lot better today.”

  Once she got dressed, she found the puppy lying on her shoes by the door. Her heart skipped. “You better not have chewed on those.”

  Eyebrows rose on his face.

  She grabbed the shoes; thankfully, they were still intact. She’d heard horror stories of women with dogs that ate one of each pair of her good shoes.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you. You’re going to need real puppy food, but until then Lilene left me some oatmeal. Does that sound good?” She did her best to get the water hot, but not too hot, in the microwave and mix everything together. “One for me and one for you.”

  They ate and then he disappeared into the bedroom for a moment and then came racing back in dragging her curling iron behind him. “No, sir. Drop it.”

  He stopped, staring at her for a long moment with the white cord hanging from his mouth like a long mustache. Then, he dropped it and came running to her.

  “Good boy.”

  She gave him praise, then went and put the curling iron back on the counter where he couldn’t reach it.

  “I’m going to have to call you something if you’re going to be hanging around a little while. What should we call you?”

  He barked.

  “How about … Henry.”

  He pulled his chin back.

  “You don’t seem to like that one. How about Porter?”

  He jumped up and started running around. “Come here, Porter.”

  He ran in front of her, then raised his hiney in the air and barked. “I think you like that.” She picked him up and held him to her face. “Do you like that name?”

  He put his chin on her shoulder.

  “Porter it is.” She was pretty certain that even in a town the size of Fraser Hills a puppy and sanitation for baked goods was not a good mix. She couldn’t very well walk into the office with a puppy in her arms.

  She texted Jimmy to see if he could take her to the office.

  Jimmy: Right around the corner. Be there in five.

  “How lucky is that? We’ll get there before anyone else. You can stay under my desk.” She shuffled through the cabinets in the kitchen until she found a large paper bag. She tucked the towel and the sock into the bag, then wrapped Porter up in her coat and went downstairs.

  Jimmy never noticed the puppy, and she was able to get into the building and upstairs before anyone else arrived.

  “We’re here,” she said to Porter. “How do you like your home for the day? Someone around here has to know who you belong to. But if they don’t … you could stay with me. I’m getting ready to buy a house with a yard and it needs a cute puppy like you.”

  She worked while the puppy slept and played in intervals.

  “Good morning,” Lilene said as she walked into Vanessa’s office. “I brought homemade eggnog. You do like eggnog, right?”

  “I love it. Can’t say I’ve ever had homemade, though.”

  “Nothing like it.”

  Porter woke up and barked. Vanessa flushed.

  “What was that?”

  “I had a visitor last night.”

  She took a step backward. “And he’s under your desk?”

  “He is.” She scooted her chair back and grabbed Porter and sat him on the blotter on her desk. “Meet Porter.”

  “Ohhhhh. Isn’t he adorable? Is this one of Mike’s puppies?”

  “Mike?” Just how much coincidence was there going to be on this job? “Are you serious?”

  “I think he’s the only one that raises Labs around here. He’s awfully cute. Rein, that’s his female,
the one that was on the wagon that night. She had a litter a month or two ago.”

  “I don’t know. He came out of the woods next to the corporate apartment.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Must be one of Rein’s pups. Mike’s farm backs right up to the other warehouse. Y’all are practically neighbors.”

  “He never mentioned that.”

  “No secret really. His horses are usually right out there in that pasture. Then again, it’s a big pasture. I guess if you’re not looking for them you might not see them.”

  She remembered the horses running in the field while she was jogging last week. This town seemed to get smaller every day.

  “I’ll give Mike a call, and let him know I have the puppy.” She should be relieved to know who the owner was, but part of her wasn’t really ready to let go of the little guy.

  “You have his number?”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  “Okay, let me know if you need anything.”

  Vanessa had almost finished aligning every resource from the current Porter’s staffing records to the new warehouse project or to their current position in Porter’s until they adjusted the processes when Misty walked in an hour later.

  “Hi, Vanessa. I brought the old mail-order catalogs that Porter’s used to use, along with the mockups and social media plan for an online platform to revive that but on a more current level.”

  “Great. Come on in.”

  Porter scooted out from under the front of the desk and ran to Misty.

  “Oh my gosh. How did you get here?” Misty looked confused, but she lifted the puppy in the air, then tucked him under her arm. “I’m so sorry. He runs away all the time. He doesn’t know he’s a dog.”

  “He showed up at the apartment. I didn’t know what to do with him. He’s so sweet.”

  “He is. We call him Scooter. When he was born, he was so little, and all of the other puppies bullied him. They wouldn’t let him eat. He was so weak. He just scooted around on his belly. It was so sad. Even Rein, she’s his mom, had pretty much pushed him out of the litter.” Misty cuddled Scooter. “We really didn’t think he was going to make it for a while there, but I started bottle-feeding him and working his legs and he got up on his feet one day and he’s gotten stronger and stronger.”