Page 41 of Rescued By the Dog Trainer

Sitting in the middle of town, with Ruth pouring coffee and Eleanor watching, the wall goes up behind Maren's eyes again. The sixty-day clock on her phone and the exit path tucked in her pocket occupy her mind.

Eleanor is at our booth before the coffee stops steaming, with her red notebook pinned for battle. Maren takes the full welcome-committee broadside—the spring fundraiser, the career day at the school, and whether a flight nurse would talk to the seniors about service.

"Eleanor." Ruth shakes her head from behind the counter. "Let them eat."

"I am." Eleanor makes no move toward the counter.

Danny's name is already all over the valley. Half the room finds a reason to walk past our booth and ask after him like family. Maren answers every one of them by name. Seven days in this town and she has their names. It took me a year to learn half of them. I learned the dogs' names first.

The special is elk sausage, eggs, and biscuits the size of a fist. Maren eats like it's her first hot meal in a week and argues with me about the jam.

She's wrong about the jam.

Huckleberry beats chokecherry on a biscuit, and every soul in this county knows it, but I let her have the point because she grins the whole time she argues. Gradually, the tension eases, and her boot comes back to rest against mine under the table.

This is what I quit believing in.

Not her.

The town.

This town keeps track of its people, and I stayed away for three winters on purpose because I owed more than I could ever repay.

Although most of that debt belongs to Jesse Marsh, who's no longer with us.

Though it wasn't just him. It was Wyatt, and Bella when she came along. And I suppose it's Ruth, Mabel, and Eleanor in their way.

Looking at Maren across the laminate table, I reject the distance. I want her sitting across from me at breakfast. Her boots belong by the hearth and her dog in my barn. The town should see us together and understand that the NCO on the ridge isn't alone anymore.

We load the truck at the hardware store with wire and posts for the east fence plus dog food and a case of motor oil. Brody and Nadia stop by the tailgate carrying their packed duffels. They're grabbing lunch at the PickAxe before driving Brody's truck back up the mountain later this afternoon.

That leaves just Maren and me in the Dodge cab when we head back up the mountain at two in the afternoon.

The shelter comes into view at the last switchback with the peak standing over it, new snow blazing in the sun. The dogs hear the chains, and the whole row starts barking us home. Barnaby comes out of the lodge to meet us with his tail wagging in slow arcs.

Maren helps me unload the kibble sacks, carrying fifty pounds of dog food on her shoulder with the ease of someone used to lifting cargo crates. Or litters.

She utters no complaint about her right knee, although she favors her left leg when she steps down from the tailgate.

Once the last sack is stacked in the feed room, she stands by the open barn door to look out over the empty snowfield behind the main kennels.

"The snow will be gone by April." Maren breaks the silence.

"May." I lean my shoulder against the doorframe beside her. "Spring comes late up here. Mud season lasts three weeks before the grass comes back."

Maren stays quiet. She stares out at the white expanse with her dark braid hanging over her shoulder.

I look at the empty meadow beyond the fence line. For the first time since I broke ground on this shelter, I look past the current runs into what comes next.

An expanded kennel block belongs along the east timber line. A covered physical therapy track with rubber mats will run where handlers work their dogs out of the wind. A second desk will sit in the lodge office, with her name listed alongside mine on the intake schedule. She belongs here through the mud season and through the summer until the mountain becomes her home instead of a temporary landing strip.

The vision settles in my mind, solid and clear, as if I could wish it into existence.

Her profile stays clear—the line of her jaw alongside her dark lashes and the quiet strength in her posture.

She holds a secret she hasn't shared with me. The tension pulls between us like a taut lead. But as long as she stands in my barn, looking at my snowfield, I won't let go of the line.

"Come on." I reach down to take her gloved hand in mine.