Page 39 of Ruff and Tumble

“What can I do to help?” Cole asked.

It was the same thing he’d asked that day in her office, when he’d shown up uninvited and unannounced. There was the same matter-of-fact quality to it, but also the same authenticity. Unlike so many people, when Cole offered his help, he meant it. The fact that he was standing outside her kitchen, gently massaging Philip’s ears, was clear proof of that.

“How are you at bottle feeding?” Hailey asked.

“Phenomenal,” Cole said. When he saw her wide-eyed look of surprise, he laughed. “I mean it. I used to feed Mia all the time.”

“You did?”

He gave Philip a command to sit—which the animal ignored in favor of whimpering anxiously—and stepped over the gate to join her in the kitchen. “Of course. I changed diapers, too, so you can stop looking at me like that. All evidence to the contrary, I’m not acompletewaste of space.”

Hailey doubted that anyone could accuse Cole Bennett of wasting space. Everything he touched and everything he did was extraordinary. Even this, pulling open her cupboards and searching for the puppy milk replacement and bottles she kept on hand, was like something out of a movie.

“I assume this stuff is similar to the human variety?” Cole read the label on the can of milk replacement and nodded. “Huh. It looks identical to baby formula, actually. Don’t tell Reggie. She used to spend a fortune on the name-brand stuff.”

Hailey watched as if in a dream as Cole efficiently and cheerfully went to work. He hadn’t been kidding about being an old hand at this. There was something about the deft way he handled the bottle’s nipple that indicated long experience.

“You never answered my question, by the way,” Cole said as he tested the temperature on his wrist. He must have found it satisfactory, because he lifted the puppy from Hailey’s arms and cradled him in his own.

“Which question?” she asked, the words on autopilot. She thought she’d already experienced every kind of physical and emotional reaction possible to having this man in her kitchen and in her life, but she was wrong.

So. Very. Wrong.

Cole Bennett was holding Rufus like a baby. He was holding Rufus like a baby and coaxing a bottle into his mouth. Every part of her body gave one heaving, yearning pang—for all the things she would never be and for all the things she could never have.

It’s not fair.She might have been able to stand up to Cole’s charms if he’d been a jerk or if his confidence was accompanied by cockiness, but it wasn’t. His confidence had been ingrained in him since birth and was as much a part of him as his dimples. He was an exceptional athlete. He was genuinely kind to people. He had a large family who cared about him and who showed up whenever he needed them to.

Of course he acted like a man who had it all. Hewasa man who had it all.

While she, on the other hand, was a woman with nothing except a house full of football paraphernalia and far more puppies than she knew what to do with.

“About whether or not you ever want to adopt one.” He gave the puppy in his arms a gentle shake. Rufus had found the nipple and was greedily gulping at it, his eyes closed and his body undulating with the in-and-out movements of his sucking. The animal looked so comfortable—so natural, sohappy—that Hailey found that her throat had constricted to half its size.

“No,” she snapped.

Cole shifted his gaze from the puppy to Hailey, an inquiring lift to one brow. “You sound awfully sure of that. Why not?”

There were several different answers to that question. Her yard was too small. She spent too many hours at work. She was just one woman living all by herself. She could have defended any one of those responses and come out sounding perfectly rational, but they weren’t the truth.

I can’t risk getting attached.

It was difficult enough to say goodbye to the puppies after a few weeks—a sort of ripping-the-bandage pain that stung for a few days before settling to a more comfortable numbness. She relished that feeling, enjoyed it, even, because it was predictable. Reliable.

The other sort of pain was the kind she couldn’t bear. Permanent loss. Death. Saying goodbye to the only person who’d ever loved her and knowing that she’d never find that kind of acceptance again. If she let herself fall in love with Bess or Rufus or Philip or any of the dozens of puppies who came through her home each year, that would be the end of it for her.

She wasn’t strong enough to recover from that kind of thing again. She’d barely made it through the last time.

“I can help more of them this way,” she said. It was only a part of the truth, but at least it was a large part. “Adoption is the best outcome, obviously, and the goal is for every animal to have somewhere safe and stable to live. But fostering somewhere safe and stable is important, too. It gives the dogs a place to go when their whole world feels dark and out of control. It helps them recognize what home looks like when they finally find their own.”

She’d said too much, as usual, but at least she’d had the sense to stop there. She could tell Cole all kinds of horror stories about the damages done by foster homes that were too crowded or poorly run, by people who let the dogs wrangle by themselves outside instead of providing the order and comfort the animals so desperately needed.

When Cole didn’t say anything—just kept watching her with a strangely intent look in his eyes—she nodded down at Philip and added, “We’ll never know what Philip went through before he was abandoned, but we do know that it wasn’t good. He’s too skinny and too unsure of himself, too fearful of new situations. Although we can fix the skinny part, those other qualities may never leave him.”

Unable to help herself, she reached out and ran a finger along the side of Rufus’s contentedly suckling mouth. “These guys, however, will know nothing but love. That’s six puppies that will have a good start in life, six puppies that will be able to attach to their future families with no baggage. Would I like to keep this little guy forever? Of course. But I can do a lot more good by passing him on and opening my house to the next litter of puppies that no one else wants to take care of.”

Cole was still looking at her as though she were some kind of freak specimen at a child’s science fair, so she forced herself to step back and take a deep breath.

“Sorry,” she said, opening the refrigerator and welcoming the blast of cool air. “I sometimes get a little soapboxy when I start talking about dogs. It’s why they usually keep me on animal duty at work. Everyone is tired of listening to my speeches.”