Page 25 of Puppy Christmas

Chapter 6

“Uh, Lila? Did you fall down a well or something?”

Lila slid into her favorite booth at her favorite restaurant, where she and her sisters had dinner at least three times a week, with her head held high. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Dawn and Sophie shared what they thought was a secret look. It was a thing they’d been doing for at least two decades, a sort of half side-eye that didn’t require them to move their heads. As was usually the case, Lila did them the honor of pretending not to notice. Their hearts—and their pride—would break to know how obvious they were.

“Is it windy outside?” Sophie asked with another one of those looks at Dawn.

“A little.” Lila hung her purse from the hook supplied under the table and started arranging her silverware in front of her. “The weather report says we should be getting a pretty big snowstorm later. Have you already ordered?”

It was too much to hope that her sisters would take the hint and find something else—anything else—to discuss. Skipping the clandestine look this time, Dawn nudged Sophie on the shoulder. “You ask her. She never yells at you.”

“This is Lila we’re talking about. She never yells at anyone. She just uses that icy voice and changes the subject.”

“My voice is not icy,” she protested. “And I can’t change a subject that neither of you has the nerve to broach outright.”

“It’s just that we’ve never seen you look so…askew.”

Lila stifled a laugh.Askewwas putting it mildly. That was a term used to describe a slight upheaval, a delicate shift from the norm. Her hair looked as though someone had dipped it in one of those cotton-candy machines and set it on high.

“If you must know, I ended today’s training lesson with some client-building rapport.” Lila hid her face behind a menu, even though she knew it by heart. None of the Vasquez sisters were the least adept at cooking, which meant they’d been coming to the Maple Street Grill for so many years that she could have recited its offerings in her sleep. “I think I’ll have the salmon tonight. With a nice chardonnay.”

Her tactful attempt at retreat failed. Before she could feign an interest in the wine list, Dawn plucked the menu out of Lila’s hand and sat on it. Sophie waved away the waitress who was hovering nearby and leaned across the table, her chin propped on her hands. “Define ‘client-building rapport,’” she ordered. “And don’t leave anything out. It must be good. I’ve never seen you turn that shade of red before.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen Ford Ford,” Dawn said knowingly.

There was no mirror handy, but Lila was pretty sure her shade of red deepened. “How do you know I wasn’t building rapport with Emily?”

“BecauseI’veseen Ford Ford. Spill. Did he ravish you? I bet he did.” Dawn sighed. “I haven’t been ravished in forever. I’m starting to fear I’ve forgotten how.”

Sophie, who was being ravished on the regular by her large, incredibly rugged firefighter boyfriend, waved Dawn off. “You’ve had enough ravishing to last a lifetime. It’s Lila’s turn now. Seriously, Lil—it does look as though you spent the better part of the afternoon wrestling in the sheets. What happened to that beautiful crown of braids you had this morning?”

Lila saw no other option than to tell them the truth. Mustering her most respectable air, she said, “Mr. Ford asked me to teach him how to re-create that particular style. Apparently, Emily is fond of elaborate braids.”

Neither the mister in front of Ford’s name nor the fact that she reallyhadused an icy voice this time caused either of her sisters to so much as blink.

“He braided your hair?”

“He touched your head?”

“He threaded his large, nimble fingers through your supple strands?”

“And more to the point, you let him?”

Lila was having a difficult time determining which of her sisters was worse, but she was leaning toward Dawn and hersupple strands.

“Emily wanted to watch, so it made more sense for me to be the model,” she said crisply.Crispwas the only way she could speak for fear her voice might crack otherwise. There was nothing extraordinary about building client rapport—all three of them knew that and practiced it as much as possible. When you spent six full weeks with someone, working days and nights, learning the intricacies of their routines so you could fit a puppy in seamlessly, there was a certain amount of intimacy involved.

There was, however, everything extraordinary about sitting at Ford’s fuzzy-red-stockinged feet while he ran his fingers over her scalp. In Lila’s experience, that level of intimacy existed somewhere been second and third base, a shortstop detour before things started to get hot and heavy. Especially since Dawn was right—Ford’s fingers had been both large and nimble. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure what he did for a living, but she knew it involved drawing of some sort. The strength of his of hands had proved it. He’d twisted and turned and looped her hair with a kind of dexterity that made her flustered to remember even now.

“I’d always considered myself something of a wizard at this,” he’d said, laughing, after the first failed attempt. “I see now that I’ve met my master. Do you mind if we try again?”

She had minded. She’d minded a lot.

But of course she couldn’t say so. It was out of the question to admit that the sensation of his hands working through her long, thick hair led inexorably to ideas about all the other things he might be capable of doing with them. That would only give power to this idea that she was attracted to him, that the same flirtatious routine he pulled on every woman under the age of fifty was capable of knocking her knees together until they were nothing but gelatin.

“This is the third attempt, if it makes you feel any better,” Lila said. “You should have seen what I looked like after the first one.”