Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
I stop and look at him, recognizing the look in his eyes. It’s fear, but with way more than just a tinge of sadness hooked up with it. “I’m sorry, Cross, but you can’t train Mercy no more.”
Then I start walking again.
He doesn’t follow me. So when I get to the door of the kennel and look over my shoulder I find him standing in the grass under the moonlight. But in my mind’s eye I see myself too. The last day I was in the marines as a legitimate soldier.
I had a dog. She was called Angel. She was an all-black German shepherd, just like Mercy, and she was the first dog I ever worked with. That dog didn’t belong to me—not legally, at least—but in my heart, she and I were partners.
So, when I left the marines, I left her too and it just about killed me.
“Come on,” I tell Cross. “Hurry up.”
“Hurry up for what? You said I can’t train Mercy no more.”
“Ya can’t.” I pause to shoot him a smile. “Because she’s not yours, Cross. And you never wanna give your heart to something that’s not yours, because it hurts real bad when that something gets taken away, doesn’t it?”
I’m talking about dogs here, of course. But I’m talking about daddies too.
Cross lets out a long breath that I can hear even from fifty feet away. But he nods his head. “Yeah. I guess.”
“So that means you gotta have your own dog then, right?”
His eyes go big. “What?”
“Ya need your own dog, right?”
I think he’s afraid to really hear what I’m saying because he gets this look on his face like he might cry.
“Come on, then. Let’s go choose you a dog.” I open the door and hold it open for him.
“What dog? We don’t have any extra dogs.”
“We didn’t have any extras… until about an hour ago.”
Now he gets it and his smile is so big, he laughs out loud as he runs towards me. “The puppies were born!” He doesn’t even pause when he gets to me, just flies past and turns left in the kennel, back to where the whelping room is.
By the time I get back there with him, he’s down on his knees, leaning into the box where the puppies are squirming and whining as they fight for position.
Cross looks up at me. “I thought you said they were all taken? I thought you said there weren’t enough for me to get one?”
“Well, that was true. The vet said there were twelve puppies coming, but it looks like we got ourselves a lucky thirteen.”
Now Cross really does start crying. But it’s the happy kind. The kind when you just can’t believe that something this good just happened to you.
So I kneel down next to him and I say, “Which one is yours?”
Then I watch, and listen, and be there for him as he points to each puppy and starts trying to figure them out. It takes him hours to choose. It’s well past daylight by the time he points to the big sable male—the literal pick of the litter in my eyes—and says, “That one. That one right there is mine.”
So I get up, and cut off a piece of red satin ribbon, and hand it to Cross so he can put it on his puppy.
I leave the kennel alone. Cross stays behind. And this was the plan.
Because that boy is mine now too. And there ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna take any chances with this kid. When he turns eighteen this little puppy of his will have had six years of professional training and it will be something very, very special.
This puppy will grow up to be his partner. His first love.
He’s never gonna join the marines now because if he joins the marines, he’s gotta walk away from the dog.
And he’s never gonna walk away from this dog.
Having ticked Cross off my list, my attention returns to the love of my life, who I find in the kitchen. She’s making coffee, looking a little sleepy—which is more than a little sexy—and sighing as she does this.
But when she turns and sees me, her face lights up.
I make her happy. I know this. She likes it here, I know this too.
But my woman is not quite satisfied with her life at the moment. Every weekend since she made her decision to step away from Disciple she gets up and doesn’t know what to do with herself. It’s even worse during the week because she has quit her part-time lives as well as her full-time one.
She packed up the entire print shop and she packed up all those dresses in the cottage and she’s got both those places up for sale on the private Trinity County market.
I tried to talk her into easing into a new life. She should take it slow. It’s a lot of change, after all.