At least her good sense hadn’t gone on hiatus. A tantalizing picture of her backside flashed behind his eyes again, and every thought in his brain crisscrossed. He wanted her. The masculine side of him wasn’t exactly pleased that she’d decided to hide those gorgeous legs.
Coffee. He’d think more clearly—not to mention more rationally—once he got some wake-me-up pumping through his veins. He hurried to the kitchen. Laura stood at the sink, frowning intently as she mixed the formula. He poured a cup of java and took a huge sip, then another. The liquid was so hot that it seared his tongue.
Laura turned toward him with a bottle held aloft. He knew he was a goner when he found himself studying the delicate angles and planes of her face instead of sneaking a peak at her unfettered breasts.
“Is this the right amount of water?” she asked.
Isaiah forced himself to check the water level. “Perfect,” he assured her, only he wasn’t thinking about formula ratios. She was perfect. Almost from the start he’d been hooked. All those times when he’d wondered at himself for finding ways to be with her. His panic when she’d almost been fired. His anger with Tucker for implying that she was a liar. He’d loved her all along and just hadn’t had the good sense to realize it.
Okay. Fine. Being in love wasn’t a death sentence. As recently as Thanksgiving he’d toyed with the thought of settling down in two or three years. It was just happening sooner than he’d expected. No big deal. Granted, he was busy, and carving out blocks of time to spend with Laura wouldn’t be easy. But that wasn’t an insurmountable problem. He and Tucker had been talking for months about bringing in a couple of partners so they could each take more time off. If they followed through on that, they’d each have a lot more time for a personal life. Aside from the fact that his mother would gloat, he could think of no good reason why he shouldn’t act on his feelings. It wasn’t as if he fell in love every day of the week.
Problem. This was Laura’s first night in his home. If he made a move on her—hell, if he even looked at her wrong—she’d probably think he was a lecherous creep who had maneuvered her into this situation, hoping to get her in the sack.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.
He jerked back to the moment. “I’m great. The coffee helped.”
And it had. He could think more clearly now, and being in love with her no longer seemed quite so alarming. His main concern, now that his brain was firing on all cylinders, was how he should proceed. Slowly, he decided. If he suddenly blurted out that he was in love with her, he might scare her off.
He couldn’t have that.
Chapter Twelve
Two more feedings occurred during the night, and by six o’clock the next morning, when Isaiah faced the wading pool, romantic musings were the farthest thing from his mind. Thirteen puppies, tiny though they were, had a way of making a lot of messes when they were being fed every two hours. After contemplating the soiled towels through sleepy, narrowed eyes, he decided a cup of coffee should precede the unpleasant reality of cleanup.
Isaiah helped Laura feed the puppies while the coffeemaker went through its brewing cycle. Hapless squirmed and wiggled his way in between the beanbags, sniffed at the puppy in the crook of Isaiah’s arm, and then let loose with a mournful growl.
“I think he’s jealous,” Laura said.
Isaiah chuckled and held the bottle with his chin while he petted Hapless. “I love you, blockhead. No other dog will ever take your place in my affection.”
Hapless moaned again, which made Laura laugh. “He’s heard that pickup line before.”
Isaiah smiled thoughtfully as he resumed feeding the puppy. Pickup line? He had no idea how much actual experience Laura had had with men before her accident, but she was clearly well versed in their treacherous wiles. He’d made a wise decision last night. This situation definitely needed some time.
When the last pup had been returned to its bed, Isaiah made a beeline for the kitchen, thinking that Laura would follow him. He was well into his first mug of wake-me-up when he realized she didn’t mean to join him and went to find her. She was in the laundry room, humming the tune to “Frosty the Snowman” while she rinsed puppy poop from bedding towels before putting them in the washer. Unlike him, she hadn’t yet indulged in a cup of coffee. Nor had she gotten dressed. Like a little soldier on a mission, she was taking care of her duties before she tended to her personal needs.
“What are you doing?”
Eyes still blurred from sleep, her hair going every which way with a rooster tail on top, she looked too beautiful to be legal when she turned to meet his gaze. “Taking care of the puppies,” she said, her voice still husky with drowsiness. “What are you doing?”
Isaiah wanted to hide his mug behind his back. Instead he set it on the counter and said, “Taking over. Go have a cup of coffee and grab a shower.”
“But this is my job.”
“Our job,” he corrected. “I never meant for you to do all of it, Laura.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He held up a staying hand. “I wanted to save the puppies as much as you did. There was just no way I could manage alone. Working together, neither of us will be overloaded.”
She gave a towel a final swish under the faucet. “If you’re going to help, then I insist that we split the profits when the puppies are sold.”
Isaiah couldn’t have cared less about the damned profits. But then, he knew that Laura didn’t either. “Deal,” he agreed. “You’ve done half the towels. I’ll do the other half.”
She nodded, scrubbed her hands, and reached for the towel on a hook above the sink. “I relined the wading pool with clean towels. The puppies are all sound asleep.”
“Good. That’ll give us time to have showers and fix some breakfast.”
Thirty minutes later Isaiah was stepping from the shower when a delicious smell wafted to him. He quickly got dressed and shaved. Then he followed his nose through the house and found Laura standing before his new Viking range top. She wore a dishtowel apron over a fresh pair of jeans and a Christmas-green sweater. Isaiah didn’t know if it was the enticing aromas that filled the kitchen or the woman herself, but she looked good enough to eat. Hapless lay at her feet, gazing adoringly up at her.
“You’re not feeding him, are you?”
She gave him an innocent look. “Heavens, no!” Even as she denied the charge, she tossed the mottled, loose-skinned pup a morsel of sausage. “He might become a beggar.”
And Isaiah wouldn’t blame him. Food had never smelled so good. “Yum.” He lifted the lids from two of the skillets and saw hash browns in one, link sausage in the other. “What’s in the oven?”
“Biscuits.”
“Homemade?” Dumb question. He had no tube biscuits in the fridge. “I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“They’re just drop biscuits.” She grabbed a whisk to whip some eggs with milk. “Nothing fancy.”
This was the first real breakfast—the first actual meal, for that matter—that had ever been cooked in his state-of-the-art kitchen. “Any kind of biscuit is fancy in my book. What can I do to help?”
Seconds later Isaiah was putting paper-towel place mats on the bar and gathering condiments from the cupboard and fridge. His mouth was watering by the time Laura served the meal, homemade biscuits drizzled with butter and honey, hash browns, sausage done to a turn, and fluffy scrambled eggs with orange juice on the side.
Isaiah ate like a horse. Afterward he and Hapless helped clean the kitchen. Hapless’s job was to stand on his hind legs, front feet planted on the open dishwasher door, to lick up dribbles of egg yolk and sausage grease the moment they hit the stainless steel.
“That is so gross,” Isaiah complained.
“He’s not hurting anything,” Laura retorted. “The washer will kill any germs.”
Hapless gave Isaiah a smug look and started licking the tines of a fork. When the dishwasher was humming industriously, it was time to
feed the puppies again. Laura giggled as she collected a tiny rottweiler and poked a bottle nipple into its mouth. “He is so sweet!”
Isaiah was pleased to note that she had the gender right this time. “They are pretty sweet,” he agreed.
In actuality, though, Isaiah thought Laura was the sweet one. She’d been up every two hours all night long, a schedule that would make anyone cranky. Instead she sat cross-legged on a beanbag, looking fresh, well scrubbed, and ready for any-thing. No one would ever guess that she’d slept in stops and starts for a total of six hours.
“We need to go grocery shopping,” he said as they returned the last of the puppies to their clean bed.
“You don’t have to go to the clinic at all today?”
“It’s Tucker’s weekend to work Saturday. I’m off unless there’s an emergency after hours. We share anything that comes in on Sundays.”
“Safeway?” she asked brightly.
Isaiah wasn’t married to any particular store. “Sure, Safeway will be fine.”
“Good. I know all the aisles. That’s import-ant for someone like me.”
Forty minutes later Isaiah was tapping his foot. Laura shopped like a snail, removing things from the shelves to stare at them, but only rarely putting an item in the cart. He finally determined that she had trouble reading the labels, and expedited matters by helping her find what she needed. They were soon moving through the store at a faster pace, and the cart was brimming with groceries.
As they checked out, Isaiah caught her ogling the cover of a new mystery novel. When he asked if she wanted to buy it, she shook her head. “I have to wait until they come out on tape,” she said wistfully.
Isaiah waited until her head was turned and then tossed several novels into the cart. While Laura was staying at his place, there was no reason he couldn’t read to her in the evenings.
As they exited the supermarket, Laura gazed longingly at the Christmas trees that were lined up along the front of the building. Normally Isaiah didn’t decorate for the holiday. When he wanted to see Christmas lights, he went to visit his parents or one of his married brothers. No fuss, no bother. When the holiday was over, he didn’t have to mess with taking down a tree or storing heaps of decorations.
Problem. He had someone else in his life now—a very sweet someone who yearned for a Christmas tree. After stowing their groceries in the back of the Hummer, Isaiah led Laura back to the store. Her eyes went wide with delight when she realized that he meant to get a tree.
“Take your pick,” he told her.
Five minutes later they were at a tree lot on the opposite side of town. Choosing a Christmas tree was a serious business to Laura. She circled. She eyed every branch critically. That tree had a thin spot. Another had a spindly top. Isaiah had begun to fear that they’d never find a tree to suit her when she finally came upon a spruce that pleased her.
“What do you think?” she asked him.
“It’s a beautiful tree,” he agreed, so glad she’d found something that he was tempted to kiss the boughs. “Let’s get it.”
She frowned in indecision. “Maybe we should look some more.”
Isaiah glanced at his watch. “We have to feed puppies, remember.”
Pressed for time, Laura settled on the spruce. While Isaiah was strapping the evergreen to the roof rack of the Hummer, he realized that he had nothing to hang on it. After racing home to put away their groceries and feed the puppies, they returned to town for lights and decorations. Isaiah had always hated to shop and planned to simply grab some things—a few strings of lights, several boxes of balls, and maybe some garland. But again, Laura took the business of buying Christmas decorations to a whole new level. Because Isaiah had a log home, nothing less than a country theme would do.
She took him to a shop that specialized in Christmas décor. Instead of ordinary lights, Isaiah got old-fashioned bubble lights. Instead of the usual shiny glass balls, he got handcrafted ornaments—Santa Clauses, cute little mice in people clothes, dogs, cats, horses, cows, angels in all shapes and sizes, and only God knew what else, with garland that looked like the popcorn he and his siblings had strung for the tree many years ago.
To Isaiah’s surprise he enjoyed himself. There were about twenty decorated Christmas trees in the place, and all the ornaments were for sale. He spent almost twenty minutes at the dog tree, looking for a miniature Hapless. Unfortunately the mixed-breed pup was one of a kind. He settled for a dalmatian, a shar-pei, and a rottweiler to represent Hapless’s boiling-pot ancestry.
The final tab was over three hundred dollars.
“Oh, that’s too much,” Laura cried when the clerk gave them the tally. “We’ll put some things back.”
“No, we won’t.” Isaiah handed over his credit card. “I like all the stuff. And it’ll last for years. Right?”
“Yes, but—”
“We’ll take it,” Isaiah told the clerk.
When they got back home, they fed the puppies again and then carried in their purchases. Isaiah set up the tree in front of the living room windows while Laura went to the kitchen.
“We can’t trim a tree without some of my grandpa Jim’s mulled wine,” she called over her shoulder.
When Isaiah joined her minutes later, she had already commandeered a seventy-dollar bottle of merlot from his wine rack and had the contents simmering in a pot. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that she’d just uncorked a prize-winning wine from Oregon’s famous Willamette Valley that he’d been saving for a special occasion. Just watching her in his kitchen made the occasion special enough for him. She had added some orange juice, cinnamon sticks, and other spices to the merlot. The concoction smelled divine.
“When can I have a taste?” he asked.
“It needs to simmer awhile longer,” she informed him.
While the wine mulled, they strung the lights on the tree. Then they returned to the kitchen for cups of warm, spiced wine. “Mm,” Isaiah said when he took a taste. “This is fabulous, Laura.”
She dimpled a cheek and nodded. “Now we’re ready to trim the tree.”
Isaiah was a quick study. No haphazard placement of ornaments was allowed. Every decoration had to be hung in just the right spot.
Late that night, when they stood back to admire the finished project, both of them were just a little tipsy. Isaiah felt contented and happy as he hadn’t in a very long time. The Christmas lights joined with the firelight to fill the living room with cheerful warmth, making it seem more like a home than it had since he’d moved there.
“It’s the pretti-est tree I’ve ever seen,” Laura murmured.
“Beautiful,” he agreed, only he was no longer admiring the tree. In the flickering light Laura looked so lovely, her hair shimmering like molten gold, her eyes luminous, her skin flawless and glowing. He’d never wanted to kiss anyone so much in all his life. Unfortunately he didn’t think it would be wise to act on the urge just yet. With a woman—in this case, the woman—timing was everything. Instead he said, “Now all I need is some furniture.”
She glanced around at the empty room. “You’ll get some in time.”
“I want some now.” He forced his thoughts to safer channels by turning to regard the room. “Will you help me pick it out, Laura?”
“Me?”
He couldn’t help but be amused by the incredulity in her tone. “Yes, you. I really like your apartment. It reminds me of my parents’ house. You took a small rectangle of living area and turned it into a home.”
“Thank you.”
He met her gaze. “Help me turn this place into a home.”
Her expression still incredulous, she shook her head.
“Please?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start. This is your house. It should reflect who you are.”
“You know me pretty well.” He gestured at the emptiness around them. “Now that the tree is up, it looks so bare in here.” He grinned slowly. “It’d be fun. Say yes.”
She
chafed her arms and turned in a slow half circle. “How much do you want to spend?”
“Whatever it costs. I make damned good money, and as you can see, I don’t spend much of it. Help me blow a few grand.”
She laughed and executed another turn to survey the room. “Leather,” she said softly. “You want a rustic ranch feeling in this house. You like the outdoors. An-imals are a big part of your life. You won’t feel at home if the rooms are fussy.”
Isaiah totally agreed. He just hoped that she pleased her own taste as well as his, because someday, if he had his way, the home she created would be for both of them.
The following week Laura was scheduled to work nights again, starting Monday. Isaiah volunteered to watch the puppies so she wouldn’t have to take them with her to the clinic, but she refused the offer. He worked much longer hours than she did and needed eight hours of uninterrupted rest, whereas she could sleep in if need be. She bought a large wicker basket in which to carry the puppies back and forth, and once at work she divided her time between her regular duties and puppy feedings. That made her shift not only more stressful but also longer. With the puppies to care for, she found it impossible to complete all her usual duties in the same amount of time.
When she got back to the house, usually at about four in the morning, Isaiah was asleep. Sometimes Hapless bounded from the bedroom to greet her, but otherwise Laura spent thirty minutes alone while she tried to wind down enough to sleep. When she got up around noon, Isaiah had long since left for work, and she didn’t see him until he came home in the afternoon, some days earlier than others so they could shop together for furniture.
With the shopping trips to complicate the evening hours, Laura made good use of Isaiah’s slow cooker, preparing their dinners ahead and leaving them to simmer until they got home. Isaiah didn’t seem to mind. He praised her beef roast and vegetables and had three helpings of the chicken and dumplings she made.
The hectic pace should have made it easy for Laura to keep her head out of the clouds, but just the reverse occurred. When furniture began to arrive, she found herself feeling proprietary toward the rooms as they began to take shape. Foolish Laura, spinning impossible dreams. This wasn’t her home, and it never would be, just as Isaiah wasn’t her man and never would be. But she couldn’t help but wish.
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