Page 78 of Puppy Kisses

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “You can’t stake the puppy I gave you literally last week.”

“Yes, I can. She’s mine, which means I can do anything I want with her. You didn’t say I had to keep her forever.”

“Dawn.” Adam set his cards down, accidentally tipping over the one on the end in the process. It was, she noted, a two of spades—hardly the card necessary to beat her straight flush. “You absolutely cannot stake a living, breathing creature—especially not a living, breathing creature you’ve spent the past month trying to wrest out of my hands. Are you drunk?”

Her laugh came out a little breathless. “No, not drunk. This butterscotch schnapps only has like fifteen percent alcohol. I’d have to drink two bottles of it to even make a dent in my determination. I stake Gigi against everything you have in your pot. You and Charlie both. Winner takes all.”

“You can’t!” Adam protested, pushing his chair back from the table. The jostling movement had the effect of waking both puppies from their naps. Uncle lifted a weary head while Gigi gave a long, endearing yawn. “Marcia—will you please put a stop to this nonsense? I thought this was supposed to be a clean, fair game.”

Marcia took a long look at Adam before transferring her gaze to Dawn. Dawn was careful not to give anything away, but the veterinarian paused only a moment before speaking. “I don’t see why not, provided Charlie agrees.”

“Yeah, um, I don’t think—” Charlie began before his chair gave a lurch. Dawn glanced over to find that Phoebe had given it a healthy kick. “What the hell? What’s the matter with you, Phoebe?”

Phoebe gave him a look of such blandly sweet innocence that Dawn knew it to be a fake. “I must have tripped. I’m so sorry. You were saying?”

Charlie didn’t look fully convinced by Phoebe’s excuse, but he ran a hand along the back of his neck and tried again. “I was saying that as nice as I’m sure that dog is, I don’t think I’m willing to stake my entire chance at—”

This time, it was Zeke who kicked his chair, and he was much more violent about it. The chair tipped sideways on two legs. Charlie had to catch himself by gripping the table with both hands. There was no way Adam didn’t feel it—either the table shaking or the reverberations of Charlie’s chair—but he gave no sign of noticing.

Charlie did, though. As soon as his chair was righted again, he leapt up from the table and turned to face Zeke. They were of a level height and build, but Zeke bore the same look of determination that had been on his face the entire time he’d been competing in the triathlon.

“Sorry,” Zeke said as he crossed his arms. “I tripped too. There must be a loose board right here.”

“There is something seriously wrong with your family, you know that?” Charlie replied. He looked around at the three Dearborns—Adam coloring up with anger, Phoebe smiling sweetly, Zeke scowling at him—and threw up his hands. “I don’t know why I came over here today. I should have known this was a trap. You guys can’t do anything honorably.”

“It’s no trap,” Dawn replied. She cast a pointed look down at the chair until he took the hint and lowered himself into it. “In fact, I’m doing you a favor. You and I can either sit here for a few more hours while Adam eventually demolishes you, or we can end things right here and now. What do you say? You have anything in that hand that’s better than my straight flush?”

“She doesn’t have a straight flush,” Adam said with a stubborn jut of his chin. “She’s only saying that to get to me.”

Dawn ignored him. “If you win this hand, you get bragging rights, the opportunity to buy Bea’s property, and a beautiful golden retriever puppy,” she said to Charlie. “What’s there to lose?”

“You arenotstaking my dog,” Adam said.

“She’s my dog, and I can stake whatever I want.” Dawn turned to Charlie with a smile. “Well? What do you say? Just think how much fun you can have if you win. You can take Gigi for long walks along the edge of your new property every day.”

The underhanded side of this plan must have made its way through to Charlie, because he stopped long enough to consider what Dawn was offering him—not a plot of land, and not a puppy, but a chance to annoy Adam in ways that would rankle him for the rest of his life.

“What the hell,” he said and picked up his cards again. “I’m in. But you’d better not actually have a straight flush, because what I’m holding doesn’t even come close.”

Dawn turned to Adam. Her smile was still fixed in place, so she allowed it to drip into her voice. “That just leaves you, Adam. What do you say? How sure are you that I’m bluffing? How much do you really know about me?”

There were two people—maybe three, if you counted Zeke—in that room who could tell Adam exactly what to do. Her sisters knew her well enough to realize that Dawn would never stake something or someone she cared about unless she was absolutely sure of her win. No matter how much she wanted to shake Adam out of his apathy and his obstinacy, she loved that little puppy far too much to let her go without a fight.

She loved Adam far too much to let him go without a fight, too. She wouldn’t be here—pushing him, poking him, prodding him—otherwise.

“How much do I know about you?” Adam echoed. He tilted his head her direction. “Are you sure you want to ask me that? Right now? In front of all these people?”

She nodded. It was a silly thing to do, but it was all she could manage. Her throat had suddenly gone thick and dry, blocking off everything except the rush of blood through her veins. Since she had to saysomething, she fortified herself with a sip of his disgusting liquor. It was far too sweet and much too cloying, but it had the effect of loosening her tongue enough to say, “Go ahead, Adam. Do your worst.”

Dawn had no way of knowing when everyone else in the room disappeared, but she suspected it was only a few seconds after Adam opened his mouth to speak. After months of hiding their relationship, of pretending that their feelings didn’t factor into things as long as they maintained a cloak of invisibility, it was the height of irony that they’d do this in front of an audience.

And that the audience didn’t matter to them one tiny bit.

“You are, without a doubt, the most difficult woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to know,” Adam said. He spoke without anger but with plenty of heat, as though the words burned on his tongue but he’d say them even if it pained him. “Which is funny, because when I first met you, you made it seem like everything was going to be easy. You laugh easily. You live easily. Youloveeasily.”

She wanted to point out that there was nothing easy about loving Adam Dearborn, but he wasn’t done speaking. In fact, from the way his voice had taken on a rhythmic quality, it seemed as though he planned to keep going for hours.

“You sweep into people’s lives and take over without being aware of how much havoc you wreak,” he said, still with his head tilted toward her. “And why would you? No one ever stops you. They’re either too hesitant to step up or, as is more often the case, have no idea how to do it. They just let you in to do your worst, and you do it every time. To Zeke. To Bea. To poor Charlie here. And Lord knows Murphy Jones would have something to say about all the pain you’ve caused him.”