Page 65 of Puppy Christmas

“Rope?” Lila echoed blankly. “I don’t think that’s how pirates killed people. They mostly used swords. And poor hygiene, most likely.”

“Oh, um. Emily—” Ford stopped and glanced anxiously around the dressing room, which was more like a storage closet in the back of the store than anything else. To Lila’s well-trained eye, he looked an awful lot like a man desperately searching for the nearest exit. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“O’ course I do, Daddy,” Emily blinked up at her father. “It’s the pictures you were drawing yesterday. The ones with Princess Lila and the monster.”

“The monster?” Lila asked. She dropped her skirts and turned to stare back at Ford. She didn’t linger on his bosomy parts, focusing instead on the pink-tipped ears that were a dead giveaway he was hiding something. “Pictures?”

“They’re real good, Princess Lila,” Emily said. “He drawed me, too, but I don’t have a rope. I only have Jeeves. I wasn’t a’sposed to see the pictures, but I did.”

“She’s confused, obviously,” Ford said, putting up his hands in a gesture of belated innocence. “Your beauty has staggered her beyond comprehension. She may never recover.”

Emily wasn’t looking at her father and didn’t hear him. “There’s a big monster, too,” she confided to Lila. “In a Santa hat. He has lots of teeth.”

“Would you look at that?” Ford reached for his back pocket. “What terrible timing. My phone’s ringing. I’d better—”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Lila dived for the phone and had it in her hand before he managed to pull it up to his ear. “I’m not falling for that one again. You’d better put this somewhere safe, Emily.”

Emily giggled and took the phone, tucking it carefully into one of Jeeves’s service vest pockets, but a grave expression settled over her not too long after. “You’re not mad, Princess Lila, are you?”

“Mad?” She shook her head, surprised to find that of all the possible emotions she might be feeling right now, anger wasn’t even remotely close. She felt ridiculous in this pirate costume, there was no doubt about that. She felt besotted by the admiration shining so clearly in Ford’s eyes. She also felt a profound curiosity to see these pictures of his.

And happy.Happy most of all. Like Emily, Lila had never played dress-up with friends before, but she could see the appeal. She might look silly in this getup, but Emily and Ford seemed to be enjoying themselves, and that was enough for her. More than enough, actually. Sometime in the past few weeks, their joy had become synonymous with her own.

“Of course I’m not mad,” Lila said, speaking primarily to Emily. Despite the danger of making any sudden movements in an outfit as precarious as this one, she squatted down to the girl’s level. “I’m mostly curious. How long has your dad been working on these pictures?”

“Forever,” Emily said. “It’s a whole book.”

“Does he stop working whenever you walk into the room?”

She nodded.

“Does he try to hide his pages so you can’t see what he’s drawing?”

She nodded again.

“So that’s it,” Lila said, remembering Ford’s repeated attempts to hide his work from her. She’d assumed he didn’t like an audience while he sketched, but that had been her first mistake. Ford wasn’t lacking in modesty—he was a rogue, through and through. She should have known he was doing something devious and inappropriate. She rose to a standing position and pointed at him. “You have some serious explaining to do, young man. And I want to see this book.”

“It’s not really a book,” he admitted, the pink tips of his ears flaming anew. “It’s just doodles.”

“Then I want to see these doodles. I’m deeply interested in doodles. Especially ones that feature me dressed up like a pirate.”

“Technically, you’re not a pirate in them.”

She cast a look down at her ridiculous outfit and blanched. “A tavern wench?”

Ford’s laugh was mostly silent, but there was no mistaking the quirk of his lips. “Don’t worry. I didn’t take things quite that far. You can see for yourself, if you want. I’ll show them to you as soon as we get home.”

Lila halted at the sound of that word—home. Naturally, he was talking about his own home, that cute little house where he and Emily created so many happy memories together, but she couldn’t help envisioning what it might look like if it were her home, too. There’d be no space for her, of course, and she’d be an intruder in a world that wasn’t hers, but she felt a pang all the same.

I want that.The mess and the chaos, the joy and the noise. And above all else, the life.

Her sisters had those things—had been born with them, radiating warmth and light everywhere they went. Helen had those things, too. In fact, Lila was starting to realize that Patrick hadn’t been wrong when he’d broken up with her. Who could blame him for wanting more than a block of ice?Shecertainly did.

Ford must have misread her sudden stillness, because he reached for her. It broke their agreement for him to grab her hand like that, to press his palm against hers and give it a squeeze, but she couldn’t find it in her to care.

“They don’t show anything bad,” he promised. “It’s just a little side project I’ve been working on. For fun. To blow off steam. In case you couldn’t tell, there’s been a lot of that building up lately.”

Oh, she could tell. Her own reservoirs had become downright scorching.