Page 89 of Puppy Christmas

“Yes,” Ford said, though his mind seemed elsewhere. “They were, weren’t they?”

“Did you see what happened?”

He wrenched his glance back toward her. “No, unfortunately. I was checking my work email, so I didn’t see anything. Do you think…?”

She paused, waiting for him to finish his question, but he shook his head and sighed. “Never mind. It’s not important. If you need to get home, you can hand her over to me.”

He held his arms out to take his daughter, but she only clung tighter. Even if Lila could have found a way to physically detach the child, she wouldn’t have had the heart to give her up. No one had ever shown such a fierce determination to hold her fast, such a reluctance to let her go. Not even her sisters.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I couldn’t leave now. Not when she’s so upset and when Jeeves is so…”

She paused again, unsure what came next. Jeeves was curious, yes. He was concerned, sure. But that curiosity and concern was to be expected of a service dog facing an unknown situation. Especially a well-trained service dog like that one.

“What should I do with him?”

It was on the tip of Lila’s tongue to have Ford call Dawn or Sophie to come pick up the animal so she could reassess his training in a neutral environment, but she held off. “Let him stay where he is. You don’t mind, do you, sweetie?”

Emily’s head was still buried against her neck, so Lila wasn’t sure if she’d heard her or not. She doubted the girl would mind, anyway. She seemed to have forgotten just about everything except that snuggling embrace.

“Is her thumb in her mouth?” Ford asked in a voice low enough that Emily couldn’t hear him. Lila peeked over her shoulder and nodded.

“Does that mean something?”

He heaved a sigh. “Yes.Dammit.”

At the sound of that mild profanity, uttered in such despairing accents and not spelled out in the slightest, it took all of Lila’s resolution not to draw Ford close to nestle him against her other shoulder. Call it a maternal instinct, but if it had been at all possible to absorb the whole of this pair’s woes, she’d have done it in an instant.

“I’ll stay as long as you need,” she promised instead. “One of my sisters can always bring a bag over for me later.”

Ford nodded, but with such a despondent air that Lila didn’t feel much better. Nor did her mood improve as he picked the puppy up and sat petting him with a distracted air.

“She always sucks her thumb when she’s feeling out of her element,” he explained in a low voice. “It’s how she copes with stress. I thought… Oh, I’m not sure what I thought. For the past few weeks, she seemed to have been getting over it. Ever since Jeeves came into her life, she’s been gaining so much in the way of confidence. But I guess it was silly of me to think it’d be that easy.”

“I’m sure this is temporary,” Lila said, even though she was sure of no such thing. In fact, if she was going to stay true to her children-are-just-like-puppies theory, she believed the exact opposite. A dog could overcome great challenges in its life, but some nervous tics never went away.

“Maybe,” Ford agreed. His eyes met hers, his anxiety causing extra lines to branch toward his temples. “I don’t know. It’s times like this I really wish Janine hadn’t left the way she did.”

“How did she leave?” Lila found herself asking.And why?Relationships didn’t work out sometimes, obviously, and you couldn’t force affection you didn’t feel. If nothing else, Patrick had taught her that much. But to abandon a daughter? To say goodbye to this sweet girl and never look back?

“I told you already. She went to the North Pole.” Ford glanced at clock on the wall and swore again. That made twice in as many minutes. Lila was starting to worry for his sanity, especially since people didn’t actually go to the North Pole.

“Speaking of, we have a video chat with her in five minutes. Emily, honey?” Ford put a finger under his daughter’s chin and lifted her gaze to his. “Your mom should be calling pretty soon. Do you think you’ll be okay to talk to her, or do you need me to reschedule?”

Emily’s eyes still glittered with tears, but the mention of her mother had her perking up in an instant.

“Today is her phone day?” She wriggled and squirmed until Lila put her down. “Oh, goody! Can I show her Jeeves? He’ll be a good boy, I promise.”

“I don’t know,” Ford said with a wary look at the curly bundle in his arms. Emily, however, had no such qualms. All fears and tears forgotten, she took the puppy from her father and planted a kiss on the top of his head.

“You get to meet Mommy today, Jeeves. It’s very ’portant to sit still so she can see you. Sometimes the picture comes in all fuzzy. It’s a’cos she’s so far away.” To Lila, and with an importance she carried well, she said, “My mommy lives at the North Pole, but not Santa’s North Pole. She’s at the other one. There are two.”

Lila could only blink—first, at how quickly the child had seemed to get over her fear of the puppy, and second, at the fact that Ford’s nonsense was starting to sound a little less nonsensical.

A lotless, actually.

“One is for the elves, and the other is for the scientists. My mommy is not an elf.”

Next to her, Ford chuckled. “It took a long time for that one to sink in, unfortunately. Come on, moppet. Let’s get you set up. When you’re done chatting, make sure you stay on the line for me, okay? There are a few things I need to talk to your mother about.”