Page 8 of Puppy Christmas

“He doesn’t tell jokes to Principal Brown, though.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

“Or Mrs. Bates. She lives next door.”

“A model of restraint.”

“Or Grandma Louise.”

Lila’s lips twitched in what he suspected was the beginning of a smile. She vanquished it, though, causing a tiny indentation to appear at the corner of her mouth.A dimple.The princess-schoolmarm had a dimple—a tiny crack in an otherwise uncrackable exterior.

“How old is your principal, Emily?” she asked.

Ford straightened. He could guess where this was going, and it wouldn’t end well for him. “Oh, well, that’s not really—”

“Ninety? A hundred? I don’t know. She has gray hairs—lots of ’em.”

“So he doesn’t tell jokes to older ladies?” Lila asked.

“Nope.” His little traitor shook her head gravely. “Or ladies with husbands.”

There was no way to save himself now. Emily, that sweet little soul of discretion, a child who couldn’t look most adults in the face, let alone divulge his greatest sins to them, had betrayed all.

“Oh, look at that. My phone’s ringing.” He made a show of grabbing his cell phone out of his back pocket and holding it to his ear. “Yes, hello? It’s an emergency? You don’t say. What terrible timing. I guess I’ll have to drop everything and come running.”

Emily, well versed in his tactics, giggled obligingly. The sound was followed by a low, throaty chuckle that almost caused him to drop the phone.

That laugh, composed of equal parts phone-sex operator and chain-smoking screen goddess, was the final seal in a devastating turn of events.

This whole thing should have been a gift from heaven—in fact, itwasa gift from heaven—this opportunity to match Emily with a service dog hand-selected and trained specifically for her. Pendred syndrome, the inner-ear disorder she’d been born with, not only impacted her balance and thyroid, but it also placed her in the moderate-to-severe hearing loss range. Cochlear implants helped quite a bit, as did lip reading and the occasional use of sign language, but there was a limit to what science could do for her.

Ford had done his best to teach his daughter to navigate a world where sound wasn’t always a reliable source of information, but his best had a tendency to fall short of its goal. Emily was bright, hilarious, and everything he had in this world. She was also terrified of anything even a little bit outside her comfort zone.

So, yes. A service dog was the ideal next step in helping her build her confidence. That was why he’d been prepared for six weeks of hard work. He was ready for the late nights of puppy training and cleanup. He’d even been willing to don a suit and tie and smile at the appropriate benefactors who made all this possible.

But no one had told him about Lila Vasquez.

Not about how gracefully she moved or how perfectly she’d be able to match his steps in the waltz. Not that she was a woman of perfect proportions, the slender line of her waist leading to enticing curves above and below.Definitelynot that the sound of her laughter would cause him to wish, for the first time in his life, that he had more to offer a woman than a charming smile and the ability to braid the shit out of a little girl’s hair.

His equilibrium was offset enough that he committed to the lie, taking his fake phone call into the next room. He paused at the threshold to what looked like a bathroom, waiting to see what Lila would do next.

“Where are the puppies?” Emily asked.

“In the kennel attached to the back of the house. Do you want to meet them?”

Even though his back was to the pair, he could practically feel Emily’s jaw drop. “Allof them?”

“You canmeetall of them, but you can’t take all of them home. Other people need them, too, which means you can only choose one.”

As before, there was no need for him to watch to gauge Emily’s reaction. Nothing in the world would delight his daughter more than to be thrown into a pit of puppies and told to pick whichever one she wanted. It was like the world’s largest candy store and theme park wrapped into one.

Which was why he tucked the phone away with a sinking heart.

Lila’s obvious lack of experience with children might have been amusing to start out with, but she clearly didn’t know how attached a six-year-old could become within the space of a few minutes. He liked dogs, he really did, but if Emily got her heart set on something like a greyhound or a Saint Bernard, which required more care than he had time to give, he was going to have to pull out his full bad-cop routine.

And he didn’t mean that in the fun way.

“Actually, before we go in, I was hoping we could—”