The Twelve Dogs of Christmas

by Lizzie Shane

  Ally squirmed in the passenger seat, his calm unnerving her, the silence working on her like a master interrogator. “She told you about the email. About the funding.”

  “She mentioned it.” He flicked his turning signal.

  The hatchback glided slowly along the streets of Pine Hollow. With the one-way streets, school zones, and overabundance of stop signs, she probably could have walked home faster—especially since her grandfather always drove ten miles per hour below the speed limit. Most days it made Ally a little crazy, but today was worse than most. His lack of panic, the methodical, unhurried pace of it all was making her want to shake him and scream Don’t you see we have a problem here? But she forced her voice to remain calm. “Apparently they need the money for the roof of the community center.”

  He nodded, not taking his eyes off the road. “Heard it caved in. That big snow we had.”

  “So we have four weeks to find another source of funding or find homes for all the dogs.”

  Her grandfather grunted, not responding right away, but then he never did. Hal Gilmore was notorious for thinking before he spoke, even when she might wish he would hurry up and say something.

  “It’s not ideal,” he admitted finally. “But that funding from the town was always a casual agreement, not a guarantee.”

  Frustration flashed through her. “Why aren’t you upset?”

  “Would it help?”

  Maybe not, but the fact that her grandparents never seemed to worry about anything only made her feel like she needed to worry more.

  “We could try for some grants,” Gramps suggested. “In my experience you get approved for one for every fifteen requests you fill out, but that doesn’t mean you don’t fill ’em out. Seems I heard something about some online funding thingy—”

  “GoFundMe. It’s charity crowdsourcing.”

  “There you go.”

  She watched him, trying to absorb his calm. “You aren’t worried at all?”

  Gramps shrugged, scratching Copper’s head. “Your generation is always in such a hurry—demanding solutions as soon as problems pop up. Maybe it’s the city in you or the internet streaming stuff at you the second you ask for it. I don’t know. I just know that when you take a breath and let things unfold, sometimes the problems work themselves out.”

  Ally resisted the urge to grind her teeth. Her grandmother rushed into things with no thought to the consequences, and her grandfather just waited for the universe to solve everything. How had they survived in the world for eighty-plus years?

  “You don’t need to be worrying about this. The funding—it’ll come or it won’t, and we’ll deal with it. All you need to worry about is enjoying being home for the holidays.”

  Her grandmother had said the same thing. Enjoy being home. Except it didn’t feel like home. Nowhere did.

  Pine Hollow wasn’t where she’d grown up, but she didn’t have any family left in New Jersey, and she’d long since drifted away from her childhood friends. She’d changed when her parents died, in ways none of them had quite understood. There wasn’t anything there for her anymore. She didn’t really belong anywhere, but coming to Pine Hollow was a chance to spend time with people who really mattered and figure out her next step. Start fresh.

  She’d grown tired of how temporary everything in her life felt—the freelance work, always scrambling. She’d applied for a couple of more stable jobs in the city, but if those didn’t come through, she didn’t know where her future would be. And yes, maybe on some level she’d fantasized that everything would magically fall into place and she would find a home in Pine Hollow, looking after the shelter and her grandparents. But now…

  Gramps pulled into the driveway for the shelter and the farmhouse next to it, where her grandparents had lived for fifty years. They’d built a life here, built this shelter out of an old barn and desire to help. This was their legacy, and Ally wasn’t going to let anything threaten that.

  “We’ll get funding,” she assured her grandfather, though she had no idea where that money was going to come from. “We’ll make it work.”

  “Mm-hmm.” He set the parking brake but didn’t shut off the engine, warm air continuing to blast through the vents.

  “And we’ll find homes for the dogs. Even if—when we get the funding to stay open, the dogs still need families.”

  “And they’ll get ’em. You’ll see. Dogs have a way of finding their people.” He scratched Copper’s chin. “It’s love—you can’t force love. Just wait. When you see an animal wiggle their way into someone’s heart, there’s nothing like it.”

  Love was nice and all, but Ally wasn’t going to wait around for lightning to strike. They had a deadline now. For the funding and for the dogs.

  Four weeks.

  She needed to make that website shine.

  “Did you leave your game to come find me?” she asked.

  Gramps glanced over at her, his bushy eyebrows arched. “I figured you could use an ear.”

  Ally unbuckled her seat belt and leaned across the gearshift to hug him. “You’re the best, you know that?” Copper, excited by the movement, scrambled between them to lick her chin.

  Gramps coughed gruffly. “I didn’t do much of anything.”

  “You came,” she said softly. And that was worth a lot. It had been too long since she’d had someone to share the victories with or talk her down when things went wrong.

  She wouldn’t fail her grandparents. She was going to find all the dogs homes and save the shelter. And no Councilman Scrooge was going to stop her.

  Chapter Seven

  Guilt, it turned out, was a powerful motivator.

  There was no other explanation for why Ben was crunching up the long gravel driveway toward the Furry Friends Animal Rescue on his lunch hour. He didn’t have time for this, but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the shelter. Or the woman who ran it.

  He hadn’t gotten her first name yesterday. Rita and Hal’s granddaughter. She hadn’t exactly been focused on pleasantries when they met. But he couldn’t get the memory of her dejection out of his head.

  It didn’t help that the Keurig was still out of commission, so he’d had to swing by the Cup for coffee this morning. He’d thought avoiding the bakery would dodge the guilt over the way he’d snapped at her yesterday morning, but he’d failed to take into account how gossip spread in Pine Hollow. At least four people had approached him with helpful comments like “So I hear you’re closing the shelter,” and “Is it true you attacked Hal and Rita’s granddaughter in the square yesterday?” Just another stop on his lifelong guilt trip.

  Astrid had nagged him for a dog nonstop during dinner last night. She’d even suggested volunteering at the shelter as a way to prove how capable and responsible she was—which only made him feel that much worse because he’d been the deciding vote to close it. He didn’t dare tell Astrid the shelter was closing, or she’d probably try to get him to adopt every dog in the place.

  He couldn’t do that. But he could help find them homes before the shelter had to close its doors.

  He’d gone on their website this morning to find a couple of dogs to feature in the newsletter and had gotten more than he bargained for. The homepage was covered in dog photos, each one cuter than the last. It was visual emotional blackmail—but he couldn’t feature all of them in the newsletter. He needed to focus on one or two. So he’d come out here to talk to the shelter lady about which ones needed the most help.

  He could have sent an email. He probably should have sent an email. But he still felt like he owed her. Like her entire situation was his fault rather than the unfortunate side effect of a roof caving in.

  “Hello?” Ben called, setting off a chorus of barks from the barn.

  The big barn with the Furry Friends sign sat to one side of the driveway, and a farmhouse with a wraparound porch squatted on the other. There wasn’t any human movement from either of them, so he took a chance and headed toward the barn. “Ms. Gilmo
re?”

  She probably couldn’t hear him over the barking. He didn’t know exactly how many dogs the shelter housed, but it sounded like dozens. The niggling guilt spiked even more with the realization that he hadn’t even looked at what the shelter did before voting to cut their funding. He’d never been a dog person. All he’d been thinking of was being done with town council business for the rest of the year.

  He tried the door to the barn, and a bell jangled over his head as it opened, setting off another chorus of barks and a frantic scrabble of paws on the worn hardwood floor. He let the door slam shut behind him—a fraction of a second before half a dozen dogs raced around the corner, rushing toward him in a pack.

  He’d expected cages. He hadn’t expected the dogs to be running around loose and unsupervised.

  Ben did the manly thing. He screamed.

  * * *

  Ally’s head jerked up at the strangled yelp on the other side of the office door.

  When her grandparents had left to take Dolce to her vet appointment, she’d closed herself in the office to fill out grant applications, squinting at the computer until her eyes burned. She’d googled last night until the wee hours, looking for grants and tips on how to keep a shelter afloat.

  She’d set up a GoFundMe page, but there were so many important causes vying for attention that she didn’t have a lot of faith that the fund drive alone was going to save them. So she’d tackled the grants, so focused on her task that she barely registered the increased barking on the other side of the door until that yelp. Even Colby lifted his head, stirring himself to investigate.

  “Gram?” Ally glanced at the clock, but it was still too early for her grandparents to be back with Dolce, unless they’d teleported to Burlington.

  The barking was frantic now, the kind of frenzied enthusiasm that usually happened during mealtimes or when they had a visitor. Ally rushed for the door and yanked it open—and her jaw dropped at the sight that greeted her.

  Ebenezer West stood with his back pressed against the exterior door, half the dogs in the shelter crowding around him in a squirming, barking mass.

  “What did you do?” she cried. All the pen doors she could see hung open.

  Ben’s gaze snapped toward her—and for the first time she registered the panic on his face. “Get them off!”

  The dogs rushed toward Ally en masse, and she snapped the office door shut before they could make it past her. “Why did you let them out?” she demanded, hurrying forward to take stock of the damage.

  “I didn’t!” Ben protested.

  “Well, someone did!”

  The section of the barn that housed the dog runs was L-shaped, with the rest of the space taken up by two storage rooms and the tiny front office. Ally rushed to the corner so she could see down the long stretch of pens with Colby right at her heels.

  Partridge waddled into view—and Ally came to the L-bend in the corridor.

  The inmates were running the asylum.

  Half a dozen more pens were open. Jelly, a boisterous yellow Lab–pit bull mix, bounded nearby, while black-and-tan mutt Biscuit trotted around the corner, dragging a dog bed as big as he was with him as an offering. JoJo, a papillon with more moxie than sense, yapped at the paws of Maximus, who peered down at the baffling little furball.

  Their newest arrival, an energetic Aussie somewhat strangely called Harry, given she was female, darted down the hall to one of the few pens that was still closed. She bounced up on her hind legs, her front paws landing against the latch. She pawed at it, and as Ally watched the latch flipped up.

  Little Harry was staging a jailbreak.

  “Are they supposed to be able to do that?” a deep voice asked beside her. Ben stood at her side, looking decidedly out of his depth.

  The newly freed golden retriever bounded past them, eager to join the fun. Harry and Jelly gave chase—right through Ben’s legs. That high-pitched yelp came again as he tried to dance out of the way, ricocheting off one of the pens and tumbling to the ground, and Ally couldn’t help it.

  She started to laugh.

  * * *

  It took nearly an hour and a lot of patience to get all the dogs back into their pens.

  Ally quickly realized they needed to catch Harry first, or she’d just keep freeing more of the others, but an Australian shepherd who thought chase was a super-fun game was incredibly difficult to catch. Especially when her other favorite game appeared to be herding the other dogs up and down the corridor of the shelter.

  Ben was visibly uncomfortable with the dogs, and she expected him to run for the hills in under sixty seconds, but he surprised her by sticking around—and even using his body to herd Harry, though he seemed convinced the friendly little Aussie was going to leap on him at any moment.

  When they had Harry securely padlocked back in her run, the task of rounding up the other dogs was much easier—especially with both of them armed with treats. She chucked a bag of liver snacks at Ben, forcing him to catch it reflexively against his chest.

  “You go for the little ones,” she instructed, making a beeline for Jelly, who crouched with his front end low and his rear high in the air. When she’d wrangled Biscuit, Jelly, and Captain America back into their runs, Fred and Ginger retreated to their pen on their own, curling up together, so all she had to do was shut the gate. She shut Colby in the office and manhandled the giant doofus Maximus back into his run, scanning to see who else was still roaming.

  “Come on, Drooly Dog. Come on…”

  Ally turned to find Ben coaxing Partridge toward his pen, wagging a liver snack at the bulldog, who gazed at the treat adoringly.

  “His name is Partridge, actually,” she corrected, coming up behind him.

  Ben looked over his shoulder at her, still looking shell-shocked, the treat bag clutched in one large hand.

  “You haven’t been around dogs much, have you?”

  “Does it show?”

  She couldn’t help her smile as he slipped out of Partridge’s pen and she latched the gate. “A little. You okay? That sound you made right before I came out was…interesting.”

  His cheeks flushed above his beard. “You heard that, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She was exhausted. Thankfully, so were the dogs, all sprawled in their beds after their adventure. Ben faced her in the suddenly peaceful shelter corridor, and she studied him, trying to figure out why he was still here—or why he was here at all. It didn’t fit with the idea she’d built of him. “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re looking to adopt.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Okay…”

  He practically squirmed where he stood, the big strong man visibly uncomfortable. “I told you I’d help.”

  She blinked. “I didn’t think you actually meant that.”

  He drew himself up, swelling before her eyes. “I’m not in the habit of making promises I don’t intend to keep.”

  Great. Now she’d offended him. “Look, I’m not trying to insult you. We didn’t exactly get off to the best start. I figured you’d say anything to get me to leave.”

  He grimaced. “Can we start over? Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not the Grinch.” He thrust his hand at her. “Ben West.”

  “Ally Gilmore.” She took his hand, briefly noting the sheer size of it, how completely it enveloped hers, before she flushed and dropped it.

  Two hours ago she would have declared he was the enemy, but it was hard to hate someone after she’d seen him leap away from a nine-pound papillon like it was a feral wolf but still help out until every single dog was back in its designated pen.

  He might not actually be the bad guy—but she didn’t want to get her hopes up about his offer of help. She somehow doubted he was offering funding.

  “So you’re here to volunteer? I can always use help walking the dogs, practicing basic training—even playing with them is good. We want them to be able to move out of the shelter and into forever homes as seamlessl
y as possible, which means giving them as much socialization as we can—”

  “Actually I’m here about the newsletter.”

  “Right.” Definitely not as good as funding.

  “You have too many dogs to feature them all—it would just overwhelm people,” he explained, looking plenty overwhelmed himself. “So I thought we’d pick a few and spread them out in emails over the next couple of weeks so people can focus on each one instead of being bombarded by the magnitude of the problem.” He glanced at the pens around them as if they contained fire-breathing dragons rather than snoring mutts. “How many are there?”

  “A dozen. Plus the one my grandparents took to the vet today, but until we know she’s healthy we can’t advertise her.” She cocked her head. “How many did you expect?”

  “I don’t know. Three or four? We’re a small town. How many stray dogs could there be?”

  “Twelve apparently. Or thirteen, if we count Dolce.”

  “Twelve…” He rubbed his eyebrow, glancing toward Partridge’s pen, where the bulldog was still watching him devotedly—living in hope of another treat. “We could call it the Twelve Dogs of Christmas.”

  A startled laugh popped out of Ally’s mouth. “That’s actually kind of cute.”

  Ben frowned at the dog, who was still staring fixedly at him. “Why is he called Partridge?”

  “He first came to the shelter at Christmas, and my gram had that song stuck in her head.”

  Ben frowned. “He’s been here a year?”

  “Three years, actually. That’s not as uncommon as you might think. Some dogs get rescued right away—in the door and out the same day—but a lot of the others…” She shook her head. “Some dogs are harder to place. Too old, too excited when they meet someone new, too shy when they meet someone new. Every dog has a good dog inside them, but they don’t always put their best foot forward when they’re competing for love in a place like this. A bunch of the ones that end up here have already been bounced from shelter to shelter, looking for the right person to love them. My grandfather seems to think it’s all about finding the right fit, but it’s hard to know what people are looking for when you don’t know the people, you know?”