Page 85 of Puppy Christmas

Chapter 16

“Hello, Ford.” A seductive, sleepy voice sounded on the other end of the phone, sending a thrill down Ford’s spine. “I don’t recall asking you to set any alarms tonight.”

Despite the fact that there was nothing fun about this phone call, he felt a strong urge to answer in kind. It wasn’t his fault—the sound of Lila’s low laugh awakened a Pavlovian response in him, heating his body and thickening his blood.

“You didn’t,” he said, wrenching his thoughts away from the image of her curled in bed, her body soft with sleep. “This isn’t a social call.”

“Business, then? How efficient of you. Let me make it easy. I’m not wearing a single, solitary scrap of fabric. There’s something so indulgent about being naked when you slip between the sheets, don’t you think? All that squirming and sliding…”

He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. It didn’t do much to draw attention away from the interested twitch of his cock, but he had to dosomething. “Whatever you plan to say next, do me a favor and record it for later. Something is wrong with Jeeves.”

It said a lot about Lila that she dropped the pretense of seduction in an instant. It would take much longer for his own body to recover, but he supposed that was the price of dating the most gorgeous woman in the world.

“Jeeves?” she echoed. “What happened? Is he hurt? Is he gone?”

“The puppy is fine. It’s Emily I’m worried about. He, uh… I don’t know how it happened, but he bit her.”

“Hebither?”

Ford glanced over to where his daughter lay sleeping on her bed, her hand wrapped up in a white bandage. She’d fallen asleep just a few minutes after he’d administered first aid, exhausted from both her tears and the lateness of the hour.

“I bandaged her up and shut the puppy in the bathroom, but I don’t know what to do next. Is this normal? I can’t think what could have caused it. She woke up screaming.”

“Of course it’s not normal.” The distress in Lila’s voice was easy to hear. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming over.”

Don’t go anywhere?He almost laughed. It was midnight on a cold winter night, and he’d just spent a terrible half hour trying to calm a child who’d been betrayed by the best friend she’d ever had. He hadn’t slept a full night through since Lila and Jeeves had entered his life, and he owed an answer to Giles in less than a week. He was exhausted just thinking about putting on shoes.

“Please hurry,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt. “I need you, Lila.”

She hesitated before answering in an even more clipped tone than before. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in ten.”

True to her word, Lila appeared on his doorstep in exactly nine and a half minutes, looking as though she routinely answered late-night calls from gentlemen in distress. She was fully dressed and had pulled her hair back in a long braid, a workbag carried under her arm. In fact, the only indication that she’d been sleeping less than fifteen minutes ago was a pair of glasses perched on her nose—and even those were cute, the chunky black frames that made her look like a librarian begging to be ruffled in the stacks.

“Do we need to take her to the hospital?” she asked by way of greeting.

Ford was more grateful for her calm acceptance of the matter than he cared to admit. “No, it wasn’t a bad bite. It only broke the skin in two places. I think she was more scared than anything else.”

“And you say it happened while she was sleeping?”

“I assume so.” He made a move to take Lila’s coat and bag, but she was so used to his house by now that she came right in, fully at home in these surroundings. He felt a pang at how easily she’d slipped into his life, how neatly she fit, how much he’d wished that she’d been here when Emily had woken him up in a panic.

Hedidneed her—and for much more than one emergency puppy house call.

“She was sitting up in her bed, crying and holding her hand.”

“And Jeeves?”

“Jeeves?” he echoed blankly.

“Yes. When you went to her aid, what was he doing? Was he still in the room? Was he aggressive toward you?”

To be honest, he hadn’t given much thought to the puppy. His concern had been mostly for Emily. “Uh, yeah. He was in the room. In her bed, now that I think about it. He was curled up under her other arm—her uninjured arm. I remember now that he didn’t want to move. He bristled when I lifted him out of the way.”

Lila nodded once. “That was his support position. He was protecting her from you.”

“Fromme?” He released a shaky laugh. “But I’m not the one who bit her.”

Ford had no idea what he said or did to cause Lila to pull him into a crushing embrace, but he was never more grateful for a woman’s touch—and that was saying a lot considering a hug was all it was. And agoodhug, too, hard and fierce and long. Lila didn’t say a single word or make a single demand. She only held him against her until his feeling of shakiness started to subside and his heartbeat slowed to match hers.