Page 98 of Puppy Love

“Answer the question, please. It’s important for finding Bubbles.”

He swiveled toward Sophie. “Did you put her up to this?” he asked. He hadn’t finished the question before he already knew the answer. That look of wide-eyed alarm couldn’t belong to anyone else.

“Of course she didn’t,” Dawn said. She shook the back of the chair in a pointed effort to get him to sit. As it appeared he was trapped anyway, he sat. He might as well be comfortable. “If you haven’t figured out by now that Sophie is the sweetest and most thoughtful person on the face of the planet, then you never will.”

“Um, guys? Maybe now’s not the best ti—”

Dawn waved her sister off. “The sweetest,” she echoed firmly. “And the most thoughtful, and everyone who meets her falls instantly in love.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, watching the woman in question. Memorizing her. “I know.”

“That includes humansandcanines,” Lila added. “It’s uncanny, to be honest.”

“I know that too,” he said, his voice gaining strength. A few months ago, this was the exact kind of conversation that would have had him shutting down and running away. These were hisfeelingsthey were talking about—he and these three women, he and the woman he loved. A Parks man didn’t just loosen his tongue and say what he felt. He was supposed to hide these things, bury these things, pretend that he didn’t need these things as much as he needed the air he breathed.

“Of course I love her,” he said. “I’minlove with her. What kind of a fool would I have to be not to? She’s beautiful and capable and strong. She sees good things growing in terrible places. She’s the best person I know, and I’ve been hers since the moment she yelled at me for giving Bubbles table scraps.”

“I didn’t yell at you!” Sophie squeaked. Her cheeks were suffused with pink, her whole body motionless.

“You did, and you meant it,” he replied, strangely relaxed now that he’d gotten over that first hurdle.

Dawn cast a wide smile over them all. “There now. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Are you going to stand there glaring the whole time, Sophie, or are you going sit down too?”

She gulped. “I’ll stand, thanks. I feel like I should be on my feet for this.”

To be perfectly honest, Harrison would have preferred her in hisarmsfor this, but he wasn’t going to push Sophie into any kind of declaration she wasn’t ready for. It was enough that she knew what was in his heart.

Lila cleared her throat. Of the three sisters, she was the most naturally authoritative—and it was a skill she obviously had no qualms pulling out whenever she felt the impulse. “Now, Harrison. Would you say that Sophie’s presence in your life is integral to your happiness?”

“Yes, of course it is. She’s everything to me.”

An indistinguishable sound escaped from between Sophie’s lips.

“Excellent.” Despite her sister’s growing discomfort, Lila continued her interrogation without so much as a blink. “Would you say that you’ve been particularly adept at hiding these emotions? Particularly from your puppy?”

“From Bubbles?” His chest squeezed at the thought of that tiny bit of fluff—the one creature in his life he thought hehadn’tdriven away. “Unfortunately, no. I’ve been miserable since the moment I said those awful things to Sophie, and the puppy knew it. I told you, Sophie, remember? I begged you to fix her.”

“I remember,” Sophie said, her voice low.

“Then, yesterday after we left the DNR, she kept licking my face and hands over and over again. She wouldn’t leave my side even to go to the bathroom. I tested my blood sugar eight extra times yesterday, thinking she was trying to alert me, but it was always normal.”

“And what were you doing last night that might have set her off?” Lila asked. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

He thought back to the evening before, trying to remember everything he’d said and done that Bubbles could have misconstrued as his determination to give up on life. He’d spent several hours digging his never-ending ditches, yes, and had eaten his sad, plain chicken breast for one while standing over the sink, but those were hardly signs of a man on the brink. A man who desperately wanted his woman back, yes, but that part went without saying.

“I don’t think so. It was pretty routine, as far as life goes.”

“His pillow,” Sophie offered.

Lila cocked her head. “What’s that?”

“Ask him about his pillow.”

“What?” Harrison turned to the woman standing next to him—the light in his heart, the joy of his life, the missing piece of his soul. She looked the picture of innocence, but Harrison wasn’t fooled for a second. Behind those wide, gorgeous eyes lurked the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

And the best.

“Don’t you dare,” he warned.