Page 74 of Puppy Kisses

“That’swhy we know you’ll be okay,” Sophie added, her eyes crinkling around the edges. “We won’t let you be anything else.”

As if on cue, Wendy swooped back in with the tray and their plates of food. The parsley was a little wilted from the heat, and the cheese on her burger was starting to curdle at the edges, but Dawn didn’t care. She’d never seen anything so wonderful—and not just because she was starving. Those three plates—plus the small breast of chicken for Gigi—represented the Vasquez sisters at their best. Eating food they didn’t cook themselves, chatting over their woes and pleasures, figuring out what was next in the life they all shared.

Laughing. Crying. Sometimes both at once.

“Now.” Lila leaned across the table and stole one of Dawn’s fries. “Tell us about this plan. I don’t know about Sophie, but I’m ready to meet this cowboy of yours.”

Sophie—small and petite and looking more ferocious than Dawn had ever seen her—added, “And if he doesn’t know how good he’s got it, I’ll personally kick his ass.”

Chapter 16

“Adam, we’re not asking you to join us on a trip around the world. It’s one night, for crying out loud.” Phoebe’s voice was filled with impatience, the tap of her foot keeping a steady beat from the hallway. Adam had hoped, with his door shut and a pair of headphones on, that his siblings would take the hint and go away.

They hadn’t.

“I can’t,” he said as he pressed Pause on the audiobook he was listening to. It was a thriller—dark and twisty and perfectly suited to his mood—but he’d already figured out who the bad guy was.

The older brother, naturally. The one who’d spent his whole life taking care of an ungrateful family.

“Why not?”

He racked his brains trying to think of a reasonable excuse. For the first time, he regretted that he didn’t have more of a social life. It was impossible to pretend he had a prior engagement. No one knew better than Phoebe and Zeke what a lie that was.

“Uncle is sick” was the best he could come up with. It had the benefit of being a believable lie, considering how heavy and morose the puppy felt on top of his feet. It was the exact location where Gigi used to sleep. Uncle had been cruising all her favorite spots over the past few days, holding on to her scent for as long as he could.

“Uncle isn’t sick; he’s sad,” Phoebe countered with alarming accuracy. “You gave away the love of his life. He needs an evening out as much as you do.”

“No one needs an evening out as much as Adam,” Zeke muttered. Adam wasn’t sure if he was supposed to have heard that, because his brother raised his voice and added, “Bea promised to make it worth our while, so you might as well suck it up and come. She hinted that there might be some papers to look over.”

For the first time in days, Adam’s interest perked. He’d been living in daily expectation of hearing the news that Dawn had purchased Bea’s property and planned on installing herself next to him for the rest of her life. The prospect both thrilled and terrified him, and not just because of what it would mean for his expansion plans.

A lifetime of Dawn was everything he wanted—and exactly what he’d been trying to avoid in the first place.

“Papers?” he asked. “But I thought we gave up on that plan.”

Phoebe laughed and pushed open the door, unwilling to leave him to his privacy any longer. “Yougave up on it, not me. There’s still a chance we can beat the Smithwoods at their own game. We might as well take her that coconut cream pie you made yesterday and see if it doesn’t do the final trick.”

“How do I know this isn’t a plot to lure me out of the house?”

Phoebe’s response to this was to yank the phone out of his hand and toss it aside. She grabbed one of his hands and pulled, helped along by Zeke, who took hold of the other one and did the same. Decades of ranch work made them both far too strong to resist.

“You don’t,” Phoebe answered as they hoisted him up off the bed. Uncle went too, leaping up and stationing himself at attention. Despite his morose state, he was too much like Adam to let anything stand in the way of what needed to be done. “But you also don’t know if we’re telling the truth—and the only way you’re going to find out is if you come with us.”

He wanted to ask if Dawn would be there so he could prepare himself, steeling his heart against the pain that would inevitably accompany such a meeting. But he couldn’t. To do so would be to admit out loud just how deeply he’d fallen in love with her.

“Fine,” he said, resigned to his fate and the fact that he was going to eventually have to get used to this new relationship with Dawn. Things might have ended betweenthem, but she was still Zeke’s friend, and there was still technically about a week of puppy training left to do. There would be meetings and chance run-ins, the occasional moment when they were left in a room alone together. The bandage would have to be ripped off and the wound cauterized with burning steel sooner or later. “But I’d better come home with a hundred acres in my pocket, or I’m holding you both accountable.”

* * *

Adam realized something was off the moment he walked through Bea Benson’s front door.

For starters, the air hung heavily with the scent of expensive cigars and Dawn’s nonsmell. If someone had offered him a million dollars to explain how a room could smell like both smoke and nothing, he’d have walked away without a penny more to his name. But there it was—and so was she. It was almost as though Dawn moved through a bubble of her own making, a force field against the things that normal people dealt with on a daily basis.

There was none of the house’s usual mustiness or the stifling feeling of being closed off, either. As Adam walked through the front door, he expected to find the same side table on his right that had been there the last time.

It was gone. As he made further explorations under Uncle’s gentle guidance, he discovered that so were the couch, the overstuffed chair by the fireplace, and the stack of old newspapers that had contributed so strongly to the smell.

She’s done it.