Page 38 of Puppy Christmas

Chapter 8

“Giles! You’re just the man to help me out.” Ford pushed his chair from his drafting desk to his computer desk. As both were crammed in one corner of his kitchen, it wasn’t much of a journey. “I’m going to email you a link, and I need you to tell me exactly what you think about what you see.”

“Hello to you, too,” Giles replied.

His project manager was long accustomed to these kinds of conversations, so he accepted the request with no other comment. He had to. This was what happened when a man spent the majority of his time either with a child or staring at sketches of kitchen appliances by himself. Any overture of adult conversation was grasped at gratefully—especially when it came after Emily was tucked in for the night.

“Be perfectly objective,” Ford said. “What’s the first thing you notice?”

“Um…” Giles paused. “Are you sure you sent me the correct thing?”

“Are you looking at a picture of a ridiculously good-looking man in a surgical cap?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s the right one.” Ford infused his voice with a flippancy he was far from feeling. “One a scale of one to ten, how bright would you say his teeth are?”

“Have you been drinking? I can call back tomorrow morning.”

“They’re weirdly white, right?”

Giles paused again. Although they were separated by about three hundred miles, Ford could practically see the other man’s brow furrowing. The pair of them had been roommates in college, so he’d seen that furrowed brow plenty of times before. It was probably why they were separated by so much more than distance now. While Giles had almost always been found bent over a textbook, Ford had been out enjoying the extracurriculars offered at one of the nation’s top party colleges.

“It’s a nice smile,” Giles hedged.

“Come on, man. Indulge me. This is a matter of life and death.”

“Everything is a matter of life and death with you,” Giles said, but he heaved a sigh and gave in. “It does seem a little unnatural, to be honest. I feel like I’m looking into a spotlight.”

Ford slapped his hand on the desk. “Ha!I knew it. I believe we’ve found our mystery heartbreaker.”

“That’s a strange thing to be excited about.”

Oh, Ford wasn’t excited about his findings. On the contrary, there had been a weight lodged in his chest ever since the tea party had broken up. The tea party itself had been fine—better than fine, actually, if you counted things in terms of Emily’s happiness and Jeeves’s training success. Which, Ford admonished himself,he did. But there was no mistaking the subdued manner that had taken over Lila after that phone call.

That phone call with Dr. Patrick Yarmouth, the eminent otolaryngologist who’d been seeing Emily since she was three years old.

That phone call with Dr. Patrick Yarmouth, a man one small step removed from a god.

That phone call with Dr. Patrick Yarmouth, who looked like he gargled with bleach and regularly caused self-controlled women to go on emotional tirades.

“How much do you think a guy like that earns in a year?” Ford asked.

“More than you,” Giles said. “And me. Combined, probably. Which, if you’ll let me get a word in edgewise, is what I’ve called to talk to you about. You got my email?”

Ford switched the computer off with a stomach that matched the heaviness of his heart. “To answer your earlier question about whether or not I’ve been drinking, the answer is no. Do I need to be for this conversation?”

“We’re not firing you.”

That statement wasn’t as comforting as it should have been, if only because of the unspoken word at the end of it:but.

“In fact, this could be the exact step your career needs,” Giles continued. Ford could envision the other man gesturing with his hands as he followed the script that had been placed in front of him. Giles was a hell of a project manager, but he’d never been great at the personal side of things. Not once, in all the time they’d worked together, had he ever asked about Emily. As far as that man was concerned, children existed in a separate universe where nannies and boarding schools materialized out of thin air. “The truth is, Ford, we’re consolidating the art department.”

“‘Consolidating’ sounds like a fancy word for layoffs.”

“Well…”

Ford bit back a groan. This had to be the worst timing known to mankind—and he didn’t just mean that for his own sake. There were at least a dozen contract artists in situations like his. Working from home, struggling to raise families and pay the bills, facing down a Christmas holiday in a few short weeks… “Give it to me straight. How long do I have?”