Page 15 of Puppy Love

Excepthomewas hardly the word he would have chosen to describe the decaying heap of wood and concrete that greeted him as he swung open the truck door. Sure, the huge, rambling farmhouse had walls and a roof, and it was filled with childhood memories that no amount of time would be able to erase. But to Harrison, it had never been anything more than a place to rest his head. In fact, he’d have gladly consigned the whole thing to flames if it weren’t for the fact that he spent his life fighting against that very thing.

Some things are meant to burn.

“Well, Bubbles. This is it. Home sweet home.” He lifted the puppy and gently set her on the ground. It was still early enough that he didn’t fear the raccoon under the porch coming out to make friends, so he didn’t bother with a leash. Not that it would have mattered anyway. Bubbles took one look at the unfamiliar surroundings and latched herself onto his leg.

Or his foot, rather. She didn’t reach very high.

“You can’t stand there, or I’ll step on you. Is that what you want? To be crushed underfoot?”

The answer, apparently, was yes. As he moved to the truck bed and hoisted the box of doggie supplies, Bubbles remained stubbornly near his toes. It didn’t bode well for their future together. When Harrison was on the job, he barely had time to remember his own name, let alone worry about his service animal running under the stomping feet of several dozen firefighters.

And what would happen if she got caught in a tangle of fiery underbrush or stuck behind a felled tree? It wouldn’t take more than a twig to knock the poor creature down.

“I’ll bet Sophie didn’t even think aboutthat,” he said, oddly triumphant. “She has no idea what it’s like to be out in the trenches.”

“Who the hell are you talking to?” an irascible voice called from the front porch. “Have you gone and lost your mind on top of everything else?”

“No, Dad.” Harrison scooped Bubbles up and placed her inside the box of supplies. The soothing scent of a twenty-pound bag of puppy chow seemed to bring her commensurate happiness, so she stayed put. “I’m talking to my new dog.”

“Eh? You really went through with that?”

Harrison trudged up the steps to find his father standing in the doorway, looking like an extension of the house in faded overalls and a work-worn shirt. As he also had a red-stained apron tied around his waist, it was an interesting picture. “I don’t have a choice, unfortunately. Oscar won’t let me go back to work unless I play along.”

“What’d you get?” His dad leaned to peer around him, a frown crossing his grizzled face when no frisky Great Dane followed in his wake. “Huh. It must not like you. Damn thing ran away already.”

“No, she didn’t.” He turned the box so the puppy’s tiny head faced his father. “Dad, meet Bubbles. My new lifeline.”

To be fair, his dad’s response was about a hundred times better than his own had been. Hearty, chest-heaving laughter might not be the ideal reaction to a service dog, but at least his dad retained the capability of speech.

“That’s not a dog,” he said between wheezing laughs. “That’s a rat in a Halloween costume.”

Bubbles, unaware that her appearance was being denigrated in the extreme, panted a friendly hello.

“She’s a Pomeranian,” Harrison explained. “They’re very good at scent detection, apparently. And according to my, uh, handler, she’s also very portable.”

“What? Are you going to carry her around in your pocket?”

It wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Except for the part where she’d fall out the first time he bent over to dig a ditch.

“I haven’t worked through the logistics yet.”

Harrison moved the rest of the way into the house and set down the box, taking in the strawberry-scented air with a grateful sigh. Today was a good day, then. Those had been few and far between since his dad’s retirement three months ago. For Harrison, being forced to take a temporary sabbatical from the Department of Natural Resources had been a blow. For his dad, leaving a forty-year stint as a highway patrol officer over a bad back had been nothing short of a tragedy.

“You’ve been busy,” Harrison added in a voice he hoped was nonchalant. “Preserves?”

His dad grunted. “The damn strawberries are taking over the backyard. I had to do something with them. You hungry?”

Harrison was, but he needed to check his blood sugar levels first, and he had to figure out where he was going to put Bubbles for the night. Instinct told him that no matter what he decided, the puppy would have her own ideas about where she wanted to be.

Small and sweet, she was also manipulative as all hell. He blamed the eyes. Raisins were the cesspit of the food pyramid, the shriveled waste that no one wanted anywhere near their cookies, not the windows to some tiny creature’s soul.

“They’re not even real food,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” his dad called.

Since admitting how close he was to losing it wasn’t going to do him any favors in his father’s eyes, he said, “I was just warning you that the dog isn’t allowed to have any table scraps.” His father might not have been as susceptible to this puppy’s charms as Harrison, but he wasn’t going to put anything past the wily creature. “And, um, there’s going to be a woman coming by tomorrow. All the tomorrows, actually. Apparently, most of the training has to take place here.”

“Here?” Although neither Harrison nor his father was what you’d call “house proud,” there was something about inviting another human into the dusty, haphazard mess they lived in that caused an automatic recoil.