Page 28 of Puppy Kisses

He laughed again, the sound coming much more naturally now. “Oh, I did. Twice.”

“Well, shit.” It was all too easy to picture Adam in the shower, all the hard, lean lines of him swirled with steam as he did his valiant best to work her out of his system. He was so strong, his hands so rough, that she imagined he could manage it in a few seconds flat.Or, she thought, barely biting back an unladylike moan,maybe he took his time with it. “I guess I’m the one who’s going to need a few minutes alone.”

“Too bad,” he said and grinned. It was his lopsided grin, the natural one that only seemed to appear when he managed to get the better of her—in bed, in puppy ownership, in anything, really. “You’re on the clock now. We’ve got two hours to whip these puppies into shape, and I don’t intend to waste a moment. Don’t you agree?”

“The only thing I think is that you shouldn’t say words like ‘whip’ around me right now,” Dawn warned.

The grin deepened. “Whatever you say, Ms. Vasquez. If it helps, we can stroke them into shape instead.”

Chapter 7

“Lila, I know it’s a huge imposition, but would you mind doing the evening feeding and exercise run for the puppies tonight?”

Adam halted midstep, careful not to make a sound as he rounded the cow barn. He’d been on his way to tell Dawn that she could come meet the newborn calf now, but she was obviously on the phone. It was equally obvious that she hadn’t expected the birth to go that quickly. First timers rarely did. The movies liked to make it seem like every calf had to be pulled out by force, with heifer Lamaze and an anxious bull waiting in the wings, but nature usually handled everything just fine. Ninety percent of the time, all he did was catch.

“If I said I’m still at the ranch because I’m helping to birth calves, would you believe me?” Dawn asked. The steady rustle of her footsteps over straw made him think she might be pacing the length of the holding room. “Fine. How about if I said I have a hot date with a ranch hand and it’s half-price whiskey night at the local saloon?”

Adam had to fight to keep a laugh from escaping and giving his position away. Their local saloon had recently been updated as a martini bar, and they wouldn’t offer fifty-percent discounts even if it was the last day of life on earth. He’d once had something called a Sazerac there that had cost him twenty-five bucks.

“Um, he’s tall and wiry and walks with a limp, but his Clint Eastwood impression is spot on. Theold, decrepit Clint Eastwood, in case you were wondering. Not the young, hot one. Life is rough on men out here.”

Adam had to muffle his laugh again, but this time he did it with a twinge of conscience. The right thing to do in this situation was either to make enough noise to announce his presence or to slip quietly back the way he’d come. Eavesdropping on other people’s phone conversations wasn’t something he did in the general way of things.

But Dawn spoke again, this time with a touch of impatience. “Of course I’m not dating an aged cowboy. I really am helping with the calving. Well, not helping so much as witnessing, but it amounts to the same thing.” She paused. “Yes, Zeke is here. Where else would he be? This is his ranch.”

The mention of his brother gave Adam a start, but not enough to force him out of his hiding place.

“I’m fine, Lil. I promise. Don’t listen to anything Sophie tells you. Ever since she met Harrison, she’s got romance where her common sense should be.” An exasperated grunt escaped her. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. I am not in love with Zeke. He would be the worst boyfriend in the world. The only things he cares about are triathlons and his own mirror image. And not even in that order.”

Adam held back a snort. Whatever else could be said about this woman, Dawn wasn’t afraid to call things as she saw them. Her next words proved it.

“If you must know, I’m sleeping with his older brother, Adam—the one I’m training Uncle for. I have been for months.” Any idea of retreat was now banished forever, especially when Dawn ended the call with “And before you ask, Adam reallyislike Clint Eastwood. The young, hot one.”

He didn’t have a chance to do anything but register that remark before Dawn stalked around the corner. She was obviously roiling with emotion—no woman walked with that kind of tread unless there wassomethinggoing on beneath the surface—but he had no idea how much of it he was supposed to ask about. Hewantedto know more, but that wasn’t the kind of relationship they had. She’d made that clear from the start.

As she usually did, Dawn took the guesswork out of it. She came to a halt a few steps in front of him, her presence registering on a purely visceral level. “You sneak,” she said, half-laughing, half-outraged. “How much of my call did you overhear?”

“Uh. Most of it?” Adam drove a hand deep in one pocket. It felt good to give one of his hands a purpose, but he wasn’t sure what to do with the other one. He ran it over the back of his neck. “I came to tell you that the calf has been born. You can see her now, if you want.”

“I missed it?” she asked. Her disappointment sounded genuine. “Damn. I always love watching mama dogs give birth.”

“You do?”

“Of course. I mean, it’s a little gross the first time, but that goes away pretty quickly. It’s amazing how animals are born knowing what to do, isn’t it? When to push, when to relax, how to take care of that baby the moment it’s here. Humans too, really.”

Adam wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He and Dawn had spent plenty of time in the act of propagation, but the biological outcome wasn’t something they discussed very often.

Dawn sighed. “No one trusts their instincts anymore. We spend so much time thinking and overthinking that we forget how simple some things are. Birth and death. How to do the right thing. The fact that baby animals are the best.” She nudged his toe with her own. “Well, Eavesdrop McEavesdropson, are you going to take me to this calf or what?”

“You don’t have to stick around,” he said by way of answer. “If you have to go take care of the puppies back at your house, I mean. I don’t think I realized how much of a burden it was for you to be spending this much time out here.”

“That’s the part of the phone call you want to discuss?”

A wave of heat moved over him. “It’s the part I’mgoingto discuss.”

She laughed and took his hand in hers. It was more of a friendly hand squeeze than an overtly sexual maneuver, but there was no denying the way his body flared to life at her touch. “Clint Eastwood was one hell of a dish in his day,” she said. “I meant to be nothing but complimentary.”

He tried somewhat feebly to take his hand back, but the lacing of her fingers through his felt too good for him to put in much of an effort.