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Bree couldn’t even imagine what that cross would look like. A hairless husky? Yikes. “Oh my God. Yes, please, go get her.” As he hopped over the fence, she added, “We’ll need to get her spayed.”
“First thing on my to-do list.” He glanced back with a wicked smile. “Well. Maybe not thefirstthing.”
“Go!” Bree shooed him away, then leaned on the fence and laughed as Peanut evaded his every attempt to catch her. The huskies thought it was all great fun and joined in the chase. Even Aleu, who seemed to be on Peanut’s side in this war because she kept tripping Ellis.
Poor guy.
He didn’t stand a chance. At least, not by himself.
Alone wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Bree reached for the latch on the gate, but Nate was suddenly there, his hand on her arm, stopping her. “No. Don’t even think about it. You’re supposed to be on bedrest.” He glanced into the dog yard and sucked in a breath like he was fortifying himself. “I’ll help him.”
She smothered a laugh behind her hand as Nate waded into the fray and was immediately besieged by the puppies. Peanut zoomed by. He lunged for her, missed, and landed face-first in a pile of snow.
Ellis’s laugh boomed across the yard.
Scowling, Nate sat up, packed a snowball, and threw it at him. Bullseye. Direct hit on the forehead.
And, suddenly, it wasn’t about catching Peanut anymore. The brothers threw snowballs at each other, the dogs tried to catch them mid-flight, and it devolved into chaos.
Beautiful, perfect chaos.
But it was too much for Peanut, who squeezed out between the fence posts.
Bree scooped her up and grinned at the tiny dog in the pink snowsuit. “Are you proud of yourself, princess?”
Peanut licked her nose.
She laughed and kissed Peanut’s tuft of hair. She couldn’t help but adore this strange little dog. “You’re a monster. Chaos on four paws.”
In the yard, her huskies started howling with delight and she suddenly understood why they did it. All that excitement and happiness bubbling inside had to go somewhere, so they released it in song.
She used to do that, too. When she was up on stage and it was just her and the music, she used to sing all of her emotions. She hated that she ever allowed anyone to convince her to stop. Hated that she allowed other people’s opinions to mean more to her than her own. Hated that she had listened to them, and had convinced herself that she was worthless because she was different.
Peanut was different and everyone adored that animal.
And Ellis loved her because she wasn’t like everyone else.
No more hiding.
This thing with Dr. Will wasn’t over. There were still so many unanswered questions. He was still missing, but she no longer had to unravel the mystery of his disappearance alone. She had a team now, comprised of both dogs and people— one person in particular who loved her just as she was. She’d never been happier, and all that happiness had to go somewhere.
Bree raised her face to the sky, savored the feel of the big, soft snowflakes landing on her scars.
And she sang along with her dogs.
Epilogue
None of it made sense.
With a frustrated growl, Nate shoved away from his father’s desk in the back room of Northern Rescue Animal Hospital. He hadn’t been able to sleep, so once again, he found himself sitting here, pouring over Dad’s papers.
And nothing there added up.
Dad was drowning in debt, so he sold this place to Damian. But when Nate found his dad’s password book and logged into his bank account, he discovered William Hunter had been flush with cash up until a day before he disappeared. The deposits were all small enough not to draw any unwanted attention, but there were a lot of them. They couldn’t have been from the sale of the hospital because it was way more than what Northern Rescue was worth and the deposits started more than a year ago.
The math wasn’t adding up.
