by Annie Jones
“I can’t believe I fell for that,” he muttered quietly, realizing now that Max had never even asked where Polly lived.
He chuckled softly at the ingenuity of the foursome, even if their matchmaking mission was doomed to failure. He was making a delivery. That was all. He focused on the task at hand, getting these things to a customer, to Caroline’s teacher. No distractions, no complications.
“No problem.” Sam couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth not ten seconds after he had knocked on the door and Polly had asked him to come around to the back of the house, go down through the basement door and up into the house because she didn’t want the little dog to run out the door again. He should have just hollered back through the closed door that he’d leave the things on the front porch, have a nice day, see you around, something like that. Instead he took the long way around, into the basement, up the stairs and through the door that let him into the small, sunny kitchen.
The impact of what he had just done hit him. Kitchens were generally considered the heart of the home, weren’t they? He was in the heart of Polly territory. And he liked it.
Of course, the same neighbors who had seen him on his belly in Polly’s driveway might just have taken notice of his going around the back way and letting himself into the new schoolteacher’s…make that the pretty, single, new schoolteacher’s…house. He wasn’t just standing on the porch as he usually would do for a delivery. He wasn’t even standing in the front room where the two of them could be seen through the big front window, not that the people of Baconburg were prone to spying on one another. But new-to-town pretty ladies and widowers whom everyone thought should have started dating again made for pretty interesting viewing, especially in late summer when there was nothing good on TV.
He took a breath to holler out a hello when his gaze fell on his cowboy hat. He couldn’t count the times he debated if it was time to put the hat away for good but something always stopped him.
His stomach coiled like a fist twisting in his gut. He stared at it for a moment. Another deep breath. “Miss Bennett? I just brought over the things on your list. I’m going to leave them on the kitchen table, if that’s…”
The kitchen door swung inward and there stood Polly.
“…okay with you,” he finished quietly as he settled the bag on the old oak table without taking his eyes off her once.
Her hair looked as if she’d just stepped out of a whirlwind, and her cheeks were pink. She was barefoot, had a muddy paw print on her neck, dirt on her nose and was wearing a big black garbage sack as a kind of poncho that didn’t quite hide her rolled-up pink sweatpants and tie-dyed T-shirt.
Sam wouldn’t have been more impressed, or surprised, if she had walked into the room in a sparkling ball gown. He grinned. He hadn’t wanted to grin, or intended to grin, but one look at her and his mouth just sort of had a mind of its own.
“Sorry it took so long.” She patted a wild strand of her hair down against her forehead, then heaved a sigh and sent that same wayward lock sailing upward again. “I’ve been wrestling with the native wildlife.”
“Lucky wildlife.” Yes, his mouth most definitely had a mind of its own around Polly Bennett. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I hope you won.”
“Not yet I haven’t. I did manage to get Homer in the bathroom, though.” She went over to the sack he had just set down and began rummaging around. “I’m calling the little dog Homer for now because everything needs a name, don’t you think? Anyway, then your brother called—”
“My brother? Max? Called you?”
“Yeah.” She gave a nod, then turned and motioned for Sam to follow her. She hit the swinging door with her hip and paused long enough for him to shuffle by her, not seeming one bit slowed by his hesitant confusion. “Got my cell number from the principal, which in Atlanta would have made me uncomfortable, but here? That’s like half a dozen kinds of small-town fabulous in a bucket, don’t you think?”
“I might have to see that bucket first,” he muttered as she hustled around in front of him and headed down a dimly lit hallway.
“Anyway, like I was saying, I had just wrangled him into the tub when your brother called.” She opened the door to a small bathroom.
There in a big claw-foot bathtub sat the saddest-eyed, soaking-wet little puppy Sam had ever seen. It peered over the tub’s edge at him and whined softly.
“Ta-da!” Polly threw her arms open wide in a triumphant flourish. “He’s all yours.”
“Ta-what?” Sam frowned, trying to make sense of things, a task made more difficult with Polly standing so near beaming up at him. “He’s all…mine?”
“Not to keep. To bathe. Or help bathe. Max said you’d be happy to help.” She had to squeeze to one side to get herself fully into the small, tiled room. “Said you knew all about this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
She turned and cocked her head at him as if he was silly to have to ask. “Flea baths.”
“Well, I…” How could he claim otherwise? He’d grown up on a farm, after all. He did know about tending to animals of all sorts. “Look, I just came over to drop off those things. Whatever Max promised, he did it without my knowledge or—”
“Please help me,” she said softly. “I’ve never had a dog and I’m scared I’ll get soap in his eyes or the special shampoo will burn and he’ll think I’m being mean to him and not trust me anymore.”
“—approval,” he concluded, because he was the kind of man who followed through on what he started, even if it was concluding that he wasn’t going to start anything.
“Please, Sam.” Her voice caught in her throat.
She paused to compose herself and he couldn’t help noticing the tremble of her lower lip, the white- knuckled grip on the shampoo bottle and the threat of tears in those big eyes. He warned himself to resist the urge to rush to Polly’s rescue. What good could come of it after all?
“He’s kinda my only pal in town right now.” Polly glanced over her shoulder at the dog, then turned and tipped her face up to settle her gaze directly in his. “Other than, well, you. I really don’t want him to turn on me.”
He looked into Polly’s eyes. She and her puppy needed him. Sam simply could not say no. He pushed up his shirtsleeves and headed into the small space, chiding himself under his breath as he did, “So much for no complications.”
Polly shut the door behind her in the tiny white-and-yellow bathroom and became instantly aware of how much of the small space was suddenly taken up by broad, masculine shoulders, long legs and cowboy boots.
Sam didn’t seem to notice. He simply squatted down by the tub and ran his hand down the wriggling puppy’s back. “You didn’t use hot water for the little guy, did you?”
“No, of course not. I just had an idea. Would you excuse me a second?”
Polly slipped out the door, and when it closed, she hurried off to the kitchen where she snatched up the hat she had run over and still hoped to make right. As she turned, her plastic makeshift apron crinkled and she thought to grab another trash bag for Sam, to protect him from any splashes or shaking by the dog. Her bare feet pounded down the hallway. Just outside the room she took a deep breath, then eased open the door, pausing when she heard Sam speaking in a quietly compelling tone.
“Look, it’s nothing personal, little guy. If it were just me I’d offer to have you live on our farm, but I have these three girls, you see, and they already are crazy about another dog, a dog you could never be, a dog their mom told them about.”
Polly sank her teeth into her lower lip to hold back a tiny gasp of surprise at that news. Her gaze dropped down to the hat and she stroked it once, feeling all the worse at this glimpse into how staunchly Sam protected the things that still connected his family to his late wife.
“It’s just that my girls need to move forward. It’s not good to have someone like you around…to fall in love with…to remind me that there are some things you can’t hold on to… I mean to remind them.” He cleared his throat.
So now Polly knew. It wasn’t his girls he was protecting but his own heart with those hard-and-fast rules. She drew in a deep breath and rapped her knuckles on the door. “Hey, back with your hat and a little something to help you keep…dry.”
“Too late!” He looked up at her from where he sat, cross-legged on the shaggy pink bathroom throw rug, with the little dog in a sopping-wet towel in his lap. The animal lifted his head to nuzzle against the man’s soaked shoulder.
The sight didn’t just melt her heart; it made her knees weak and her chin quiver. She slipped inside the room, shut the door and sank to the floor beside the pair. “Aw. I missed it.”
“Just round one.” Sam held up one finger and the puppy licked it. Sam laughed. He twisted around and pulled the plug from the drain and the water began to swirl away. “The mixture has to set on him for two minutes, then a really thorough rinse.”
Two minutes to sit here and watch Sam coddle her sweet canine charge. Two minutes so close to the man she could see his chest rise and fall slowly with each intake of moist, steamy air. Two minutes before they finished up, he walked away and Polly would have to honor his rules and honor her own commitment to do what was right for the girls, find her lost friend a home.
“So, what’s his name?” Polly’s plastic covering crinkled as she settled on the floor on her knees and stroked the dog’s head.
“You’re the one calling him—”
“The dog your late wife told the triplets about,” she said softly. “I only ask because, well, I heard you talking to him about it and I thought, well, because I have this dog for now and Caroline will be in my class…”
“Donut.”
The dog looked up when Sam spoke.
Polly understood the response as the man’s quiet intensity made her unable to look away as well.
“Marie came up with these stories, see, after she got the news that her illness was terminal.” Despite the warm, damp air around them, Sam’s coloring grew pale. He kept his gaze cast downward. “This mixed-breed dog, called Donut, causes havoc for three little girls on a ranch and their dad, who was a cowboy.”
“Ah.” She reached for the hat she’d brought with her, but he began talking again before she could produce it.
“In the first story, they learn a lesson about the power of love and God’s forgiveness. She didn’t have time to write a second one.” His jaw went tight. “It was Marie’s way of leaving a little bit of herself behind for the girls. They have every word memorized.”
“She must have been an incredible mom,” Polly said in hushed awe.
Sam jerked his head up and at last their eyes met. He studied her, his mouth set in a grim line for a moment before the tension in his face eased and he nodded. “Yeah, she was. Thank you for saying so.”
One last gurgle from the tub, a glug, then all went silent.
“Anyway, the triplets all agree this—” he pointed to the dog, who had almost fallen asleep in his lap “—is what the dog looks like.”
If two minutes was all God granted her, then she would be grateful. Wasn’t that the very lesson she had come to Baconburg to learn? That life was about enjoying what you had while you had it, not always chasing after something better, something more?
“A cowboy, huh?” She shifted her weight and became aware of the hat on the floor beside her. “That reminds me. Let’s wash the tub out with really hot water, get some really good steam going and…voilà!”
She produced the hat.
“Voilà?” He squinted at the object in her hands with the hint of a smile playing over his lips. “Pretty fancy word for a doggy chew toy, don’t you think?”
“It’s not that bad.” She brushed her thumbs along a rough patch in the felt. “It just needs a little TLC. Like someone else I know.”
“You talking about me?” He pointed to his chest, his tone teasing.
The tension in the small space eased and she gave Sam a sidelong glance, a you-know-better tsk and a shake of her head before she leaned toward the dog she had been calling Homer. “I’m talking about him.”
Homer lurched forward.
Polly took a cold, wet nose to the cheek and squealed in a mix of surprise and delight.
Sam burst out laughing. “Looks like he thinks you’re the one who needs the tender loving care.”
“Smart doggy.” Polly laughed and swiped a wrist over her nose. When she looked up, she found two pairs of soft brown eyes studying her.
Warmth rose in her cheeks. She’d have blamed the hot water from cleaning the tub, but she hadn’t started it yet. She scrambled to reach the faucets and turned the hot water on full blast. “I say we stuff the crown of the hat with a small towel and shape the brim a little like so, apply a little heat…” She held it over the cloud of steam and it went limp as a noodle.
She glanced back over her shoulder at Sam, wondering how to apologize for actually making things worse.
Only, Sam didn’t look as if he expected an apology. In fact, he seemed to have completely moved on from the whole hat debacle and was getting the dog ready for that final rinse.
Something about his reaction didn’t sit right with Polly, but she honestly couldn’t say if it was because she distrusted the ease with which he dismissed the keepsake or because he didn’t seem to notice how helpful she was trying to be. Was it so wrong that she wanted Sam to notice her in this one slice of time they would probably have together?
For all her big talk about not rushing or pushing or competing, Polly just couldn’t let that slide. “You know, you look good in this hat. I’d be glad to replace it if you—”
“Not necessary.” He ran his hand along the dog’s back and peered into his fur. “The boots I need because I do pitch in around the farm, but the hat?”
“Maybe something else? Something that suits you? Let’s see…” She pretended to analyze him, savoring every last moment of their time together. “A gray fedora?”
He frowned and shook his head.
“No. How about a white ship captain’s hat?”
“If she tries to order me one of those, you have my permission to drag her keyboard into the yard and bury it,” he instructed the yawning dog.
Polly giggled, then gave him one last look and confessed, honestly, “I think you’d look great in a brown trilby. You know, kind of like those dads on old black-and-white TV shows who came home from work to the house with the white picket fence?”
As soon as she’d said it, she wished she’d kept her thoughts, and her visions of Sam as the kind of man she hoped to one day have in her own life, to herself. “I’m sorry, that sounded silly, I know.”
“Naw. I…I kinda like that image. All-American small-town dad. There are worse things people could see me as, I’m sure.” He grinned, just a fleeting one, then ruffled the dog’s fur and cleared his throat. “There is supposed to be a fine-tooth comb to get the fleas out of his coat. Would you go see if it’s in the bag I brought?”
“Um, oh, sure.” She jumped at the chance to put some space between them. It was time to get her priorities in order. She and Sam were a no-go. And if she hoped to make a home here in Baconburg, the sooner she accepted that and, as Sam had put it, “moved on”—
The chime of the doorbell cut through her thoughts and startled her. She glanced toward the bathroom, then the kitchen where she’d been headed, and decided to get the door, explain the situation if needed and then get back to her mission.
“Hey there, neighbor!” A perky woman with chestnut-colored hair in a long bob stood on Polly’s doorstep holding a pla
te of brownies, which she thrust over the threshold about two beats before she surged into the house herself. The woman didn’t even seem to take a breath as she launched into her one-sided conversation, looking around the place and edging farther inside all the while. “I’m Deb Martin. I live across the way. Hope you like sweets. I bake a lot. Sorry to just drop in like this. Hope it’s not a bad…time?”
Sam strode out from the darkened hallway, tugging at the huge wet spot on his blue shirt.
“Well, well, well, Sam Goodacre.” The woman crossed her arms and gave him a sly smile. “I thought I saw your minivan out on the street.”
“He was just helping me give a flea bath to a little dog I found.” Polly’s words rushed out so fast that they all but tumbled over each other. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“Wrong idea?” She pinched the plastic trash bag over Polly’s grubby clothes and gave it a waggle that all but said it was clear they weren’t up to anything too wild. “That Sam is finally associating with a girl besides his sister and children again? Nothing wrong with that in my book.”
“It’s not like that,” Polly hurried to say. “We’re just…”
“Friends,” Sam supplied. “I’m just here helping out a friend, Deb.”
“Yeah, I heard. Washing a dog.” She made a show of tapping her chin with one finger as though thinking it over. “You know, you and I have been friends since high school, Sam, and I don’t think you ever…”
“It’ll never happen again.” Polly rushed forward so fast that she nearly spilled brownies everywhere. From the cheerful teasing of Deb’s tone, Polly truly believed she was just having fun…and maybe indulging in a little of the already-deemed-pointless matchmaking Sam abhorred.