Page 47 of Puppy Love

Sophie had known her for just about forever. In fact, Paulette was the one who taught her how to knit in the first place.You can either knit or sit around this hospital room feeling sorry for yourself, Ducky. And I, for one, am getting sick of all the moping.

“I don’t think I care for the way this young man was talking to you,” Paulette said. “Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll see both you and your sister safely home?”

“There’s really no need—” Sophie began, but Paulette cut her short.

“I’m sure it’s what your mother would want me to do. We won’t take no for an answer, will we, Hilda?”

Sophie cast a silent plea in Dawn’s direction, but all her sister could do was mouth an apology and shrug. Sophie was just as powerless in this situation. If there was a way to oust a well-meaning family friend who had held and rocked her during her worst moments, then it was a way Sophie had yet to discover.

She was hemmed in on all sides and had been for as long as she could remember. Had there been a villain in her story, a malicious being she could stand up to once and for all, she would have banished him years ago.

But she didn’t have a bad guy. She had good guys. Dozens of them. She had people like Paulette and Hilda, Lila and Dawn, her parents, even, to some extent, Oscar. Each and every one of them would put their life on the line to keep her safe, and they had no qualms about making sure everyone knew it.

What they couldn’t understand, however, was that Sophie didn’t want to be safe.

She wanted to beset alight.

“She’s right,” Harrison said, his voice quiet but determined. “It’s not a good idea to leave you here with me.”

Sophie whirled on him. The overwhelming solicitude from family and friends she could bear—she didn’t like it, but she could bear it.

But not from Harrison.NeverHarrison.That was what made him so incredible. He didn’t look at her and see a hundred-and-ten-pound weakling who needed to be shielded from the world. He saw a strong, confident woman who had the power to seduce him. He saw someone to fear, to fight, and maybe even to fuck.

And, oh, how she wanted tobethat strong, confident woman bringing him to his knees. She wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice dangerous.

He didn’t flinch. “Go with your friends and family. We’ve done enough work here for one day.”

“So help me, if you take their side in this—”

“You’ll what, Sophie?” he asked. This time, his voice carried only kindness, his eyes touched with a smile. “Tell Oscar on me? Take my puppy away again?”

It was impossible not to answer that smile with one of her own. “Don’t think I won’t,” she warned. There were a dozen other things she longed to say—a dozen other things that needed to be addressed between them—but this was neither the time nor the place. And Harrison, for all his self-professed inability to understand people, knew it.

That’s because hedoesunderstand me.

“You and Bubbles should take a long weekend,” she eventually said. “Relax. Unwind. Have fun. We’ll pick up where we left off on Monday.”

Paulette’sharrumphsignaled her displeasure with this plan, but Sophie wasn’t moved.

“Iwillbe there,” she said, just in case he thought this was the last of the conversation. “And wewillfigure out what to do next about all this.”

To the bystanders in the room,all thiscould have easily meant Bubbles and the fire, the fact that Sophie was training a dog for a job that it appeared to have no qualifications to hold. To Harrison, however, her meaning was clear. She knew it the moment he caught her eye and nodded his consent.

“Sure thing, Soph,” he said. “We’ll take care of it first thing on Monday.”

Chapter 11

“Surprise, my darling!” Sophie’s mom stood on the front porch, her arms flung out and a beaming smile on her face. Those two signs were ominous enough on their own, but they were accompanied by a stack of suitcases more suitable to a lengthy cruise than a brief visit. Her next words confirmed it. “I’ve come to batten myself on you and the girls for a few weeks. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mom!” Sophie cried, and then, because it was the only thing shecouldsay, “Of course I don’t mind. But I don’t understand. I thought you were going with Dad on his sabbatical to Greece.”

Her mom engulfed her in a warm hug, the lavish scent of her floral perfume blanketing them both. “I know, and I was so looking forward to it, but I’ve had this dratted tickle in the back of my throat I can’t seem to shake. You know how hard your father goes when he’s out in the field. My immune system would never be able to catch up.”

While it was true that Victor Vasquez had a tendency to lose himself in his antiquity studies whenever he slipped off the collegiate leash, her mother had never looked in better health. Not even the fake cough she remembered to emit a few seconds later was enough to convince Sophie that this was anything but a ploy.

“Lila called you, didn’t she?” Sophie asked.