Love at First Bark Read online

  Harrison moved the rest of the way into the house and set down the box, taking in the strawberry-scented air with a grateful sigh. Today was a good day, then. Those had been few and far between since his dad’s retirement three months ago. For Harrison, being forced to take a temporary sabbatical from the Department of Natural Resources had been a blow. For his dad, leaving a forty-year stint as a highway patrol officer over a bad back had been nothing short of a tragedy.

  “You’ve been busy,” Harrison added in a voice he hoped was nonchalant. “Preserves?”

  His dad grunted. “The damn strawberries are taking over the backyard. I had to do something with them. You hungry?”

  Harrison was, but he needed to check his blood sugar levels first, and he had to figure out where he was going to put Bubbles for the night. Instinct told him that no matter what he decided, the puppy would have her own ideas about where she wanted to be.

  Small and sweet, she was also manipulative as all hell. He blamed the eyes. Raisins were the cesspit of the food pyramid, the shriveled waste that no one wanted anywhere near their cookies, not the windows to some tiny creature’s soul.

  “They’re not even real food,” he muttered.

  “What’s that?” his dad called.

  Since admitting how close he was to losing it wasn’t going to do him any favors in his father’s eyes, he said, “I was just warning you that the dog isn’t allowed to have any table scraps.” His father might not have been as susceptible to this puppy’s charms as Harrison, but he wasn’t going to put anything past the wily creature. “And, um, there’s going to be a woman coming by tomorrow. All the tomorrows, actually. Apparently, most of the training has to take place here.”

  “Here?” Although neither Harrison nor his father was what you’d call “house proud,” there was something about inviting another human into the dusty, haphazard mess they lived in that caused an automatic recoil.

  One look at the living room alone was enough to reveal why. Stacks of books sat next to his father’s favorite armchair, most of them cracked along the spine and in various states of disrepair. The bookshelves, conversely, held boxes of broken electronics, most of which would never work again and, if they did, would be at least twenty years out-of-date. Even the furniture was old and mismatched, chosen more for comfort than for looks. On its own, the place suited them just fine. Compared to Sophie’s house, however, it was downright deplorable.

  Every few months, Harrison tried to fix it up, but his efforts were usually met with resistance at best and outright hostility at worst. To let in light and air would be to let in the possibility of happiness—a thing no respectable Parks man had done for decades.

  “Are you sure she can do that?” his dad asked. “How is it legal?”

  Harrison had to chuckle. “Because I invited her, Dad. It’s part of the process. She comes highly recommended.”

  Which may not have been true in so many words, but there was no denying that the Oscar seal of approval didn’t come cheap. For whatever reason, his boss trusted Sophie. Therefore, Harrison would trust Sophie too.

  But not too much.

  “And she’s going to train the dog?” his dad asked, eyeing the puppy warily.

  “So I’ve been told. Both Bubbles and I need a lot of work.”

  That, at least, got a crack of laughter. “If there’s one thing I’ve been trying to get through to you for years, it’s that. What happens if I step on it?”

  “Her. And don’t.”

  “What if I can’t help myself?”

  “Help yourself anyway.”

  His dad held his stare, long and careful and full of meaning. His father liked the idea of having a dainty puppy around the house almost as much as Harrison did, which was to say not at all. But if there was one thing the two of them had learned, it was that life rarely worked out the way they wanted it to.

  “Well, I’m not feeding it.”

  Harrison didn’t bother correcting the pronoun this time. “No one is asking you to.”

  “And I’m not cleaning up any dog messes.”

  Harrison refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t cleaned messes of any kind in the past twenty years. “You’ll barely know she’s here. I promise.”

  As if to remind him that she had a will and an agenda of her own, Bubbles let out a yap of protest.

  His dad stared at the puppy, hoping—Harrison was sure—to stare her into submissiveness. It didn’t work. That stare might work to intimidate neighborhood Girl Scouts and door-to-door Bible salesmen, but it had no effect on a puppy who’d just enjoyed an hour of pure bliss in the front seat of his truck. Bubbles stared back with all the innocence of one who knew herself to be adored.

  His dad gave up with a shake of his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Son.”

  “Or what?” Harrison couldn’t help asking. As far as he could tell, they were both being punished enough already. What else could you call two bad-tempered men living alone in the woods without even the promise of their careers to sustain them? “What will happen if I admit that I don’t have a fucking clue?”

  He got no answer. Apparently, his father didn’t have a fucking clue either.

  In other words, they were both screwed.

  * * *

  If Harrison had thought the transportation question was a tricky one, it was nothing compared to the small matter of where Bubbles would sleep.

  And, yes. He meant small in every sense of the word.

  “I already gave you three pillows,” he said, staring down at the puppy over the edge of his bed. “There aren’t any more. I’m literally sleeping on my sweatshirt.”

  Bubbles didn’t offer a single yap of reproach. She didn’t even whimper a protest. She just sat on her throne of pillows and looked at him as though her heart were breaking.

  “Do you want a blanket? Are you cold? Is that it?”

  The last thing Harrison wanted was to wake up his father or have to answer a series of questions as to why he was up half the night catering to a puppy’s wordless demands, so he lifted one of the pillows and shook it out of its case. The floorboards in this house creaked something fierce, so it was in everyone’s best interest that he stayed exactly where he was.

  “There,” he said, arranging the pillowcase so that it wrapped around Bubbles. She looked like a fluffy, brown cherry atop a swirl of ice cream. “Now you can be warm and settle down.”

  All he got in reply was another one of those mournful blinks.

  “Goddammit, Sophie didn’t say anything about you sleeping in the bed!”

  Since the words had been uttered more forcefully than he intended, he reached down and scooped up the puppy—pillows and makeshift blanket and all. Almost immediately, Bubbles emitted a small, contented sigh and tucked her head in the crook of his arm.

  “Ten minutes,” he warned as he lay back on the bed. Bubbles stayed exactly where she was, stuck to his armpit like Velcro. “You can be up here for ten minutes, but then it’s back to the floor where you belong. I can’t have you up here with me all night. If I roll over the wrong way, you’ll die.”

  Apparently, death by his crushing weight held no danger as far as Bubbles was concerned. She’d spent the entire last hour fighting sleep and shivering on the floorboards only to fall asleep within seconds of being cradled against him.

  “Goddammit,” he said again. This time, it came out more like a whisper. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  At least he had his pillows back. Moving carefully so as not to dislodge the sleeping puppy, he arranged things so he was more comfortable. Even then, he only had the flattest pillow of the lot under his head. The other two he set up along the mattress’s edge as a kind of barrier. Babies rolled. Did puppies roll? Hell, for all he knew, he wasn’t supposed to have pillows in here at all. What if she suffocated?

  “I’m
going to give that woman a piece of my mind tomorrow,” he said, careful to keep his voice low. “In fact, I’m going to start making a list of all the things she forgot to tell me. Does she think we’re all born knowing how to take care of dogs? I wasn’t kidding about that goldfish thing. You’ve seen this place—who would willingly bring anything living into it?”

  Bubbles gave a twitch of her small body.

  Harrison tensed, afraid he’d done something to hurt her, but she only sighed and settled into a deeper sleep. Puppies he might not understand, but the heavy, dreamless sleep of the exhausted was a thing he knew well. Some of the men and women on his wildfire team had been known to literally fall asleep on their feet after a particularly grueling day.

  It was what made this whole Pomeranian-service-dog thing so upsetting. It was impossible to explain to anyone who hadn’t been on the edge of a forest fire just how close it was to being at the gates of hell. Those flames moved fast—faster than most humans could run, let alone a small animal—and were as unpredictable as the wind.

  People died out there. Good people, strong people, people who knew what they were getting into and made the decision to fight anyway.

  How could he ask this little nugget—yes, nugget—to tackle that with him?

  “I’m adding that to the list too,” he muttered as he suppressed a yawn. The warm lull of the puppy’s body had him sinking lower into the mattress. With a quick, furtive look around the room—which was ridiculous for a lot of reasons, but most especially the fact that no one else had been inside it for years—he planted a soft kiss on top of Bubbles’s head.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll get everything sorted out,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll make her see reason.” Tomorrow, he’d say a lot of the things that lodged inside his throat and inside his chest.

  It was a thing he could promise with absolute certainty because, tomorrow, he was going to get to see Sophie again.

  Chapter 5

  At first, Sophie wasn’t sure she’d gotten the right house.

  The structure itself was about on par with what she’d expected. A grumpy bachelor who spent most of his time battling the elements should live in a huge, ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere. The sense of isolation with each passing mile, the dirt drive leading in, even the weird metal sculpture rusted over and broken at the hinge all seemed to fit Harrison’s personality to a tee.

  Rough and grizzled. Unwelcoming.

  And, with a little work, probably one of the best things she’d ever seen.

  But as the tires of her sleek, little Fiat crunched over the gravel, it wasn’t a brawny, steely-eyed firefighter who appeared at the door. Instead, there stood an older man, tall but gaunt, slowly lifting a cup of coffee to his lips.

  “Hello,” Sophie called as she rolled down her window. “I’m looking for where Harrison Parks lives. Do you know if I’m on the right road?”

  It took the man a second to absorb her arrival, but he eventually nodded. “You sure are, darling. You found us. Well, most of us, anyway.”

  Most of us?

  She put the car in park and got out, pausing just long enough to grab her canvas work bag. “I’m Sophie Vasquez,” she said.

  She put a hand out too, but the man only stared at her outstretched palm and took another slow sip of his coffee.

  “Um.” She jiggled her hand in an effort to bring it to his attention. “Sophie Vasquez? The service dog trainer? Did Harrison tell you I’d be coming?”

  “He mentioned something along those lines.” The man finally took her hand and shook it. As had been the case with Harrison, it was a surprisingly gentle grip. “You’ll find him upstairs. There’s been an incident.”

  “An incident?” Sophie drew a sharp breath. “Is it Bubbles? Is she okay?”

  The man gave her a long look. “She’ll recover, if that’s what you’re asking. My son, however…”

  “Oh, you’re Harrison’s dad.” That made so much sense. Looking at him, she could see the resemblance. There was a hard wariness to their expressions, a closed-off quality that went deeper than mere grouchiness. “You said upstairs? Do you mind if I head in that direction?”

  “Help yourself. But I’d tread warily if I were you.”

  She paused. “The puppy or the man?”

  He laughed his understanding. The swift change of expression wiped decades from his face, made him almost approachable. “Both. I wouldn’t care to deal with either one right now.”

  The house was built in the traditional farmhouse style, which meant a steep staircase rose almost directly from the foyer. Sophie took the stairs two at a time, barely noting the faded wallpaper with brighter patches where pictures once hung. She half expected canine sounds of distress to assail her, but all she heard as she reached the landing was a low, coaxing male voice.

  “You have to come out, Bubbles. There are monsters. Big, scary, under-the-bed monsters who will snatch you between their hoary jaws.” There was a pause and then, in a more urgent voice, “You’re making us look bad. What will Sophie think if she finds you like this?”

  Sophie was mostly amused, to be honest. Harrison Parks hadn’t struck her as the sort of man who believed in monsters, let alone was scared of them. How could he be? One fierce glare and he’d have the whole lot of them exiled to their dark lairs.

  She walked through the closest door on the right to find Harrison’s lower half protruding from underneath a ruffled bed skirt. It was a strangely appealing sight, his backside tightly encased in faded jeans, his feet bare. A strip of skin appeared below the line of his T-shirt as he twisted and flexed to reach farther under the bed, showcasing a small plastic box clipped to the back of his jeans. His insulin pump, she was guessing.

  “I mean it,” he called to the dog. “This isn’t what heroes do. You want to be a hero, don’t you?”

  As much as she appreciated the sight of a large, well-built man wriggling on the floor, she didn’t appreciate her poor dog being cornered in a dark, scary place.

  “Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, thank you very much,” she said.

  A loud thump and a howl sounded. From the way the bed shook and the grumble that followed, she guessed Harrison had hit his head on the frame.

  He slithered out before she could apologize for taking him by surprise. His movements were quick and agile, allowing her only a brief glimpse of the undulating muscles of his back before he was standing again.

  Standing and glowering.

  “Your dog refuses to come out,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at the bed. “I’ve tried everything to coax her out—everything except table scraps, so don’t look at me like that.”

  “Look at you like what?”

  “Like that,” he repeated. He also didn’t elaborate, so she had no idea how she was supposed to interpret his remark. Was she furrowing her brow? Blinking too much?

  With a sigh, he added, “She’s too damn small. I can’t get hold of her.”

  “Maybe that’s because she doesn’t want to be held,” Sophie said tartly. “What happened to set her off?”

  His grim expression turned even grimmer. “Fire.”

  “What? Where?” She spun, wondering if she’d somehow missed blazing flames. It was only then that she noted the room they were in was distinctly and unmistakably feminine. In addition to the ruffled bed skirt, there was a mirrored vanity in one corner covered with perfume bottles that had long ago been tipped on their sides. The room was also dusty in a way that was normally reserved for haunted houses. Like the faded wallpaper in the hallway, there was something ancient and untouched about it.

  “In the living room,” Harrison said. “It was cold this morning, so I started a fire in the grate. She took one look at the crackling flames, howled, and ran off.”

  “Oh. Um.” Sophie gulped. “That’s not good.”

  “No,” he agreed
grimly. “I think we can safely say it’s not good. Didn’t you test her first or anything?”

  Test her? As in, throw a puppy into a flaming pit and see how she’d react? “Of course I didn’t,” she said. “I mean, I tested her nose, of course, and gauged her reaction to high-stress situations, but I thought we’d introduce her to your actual lifestyle gently. Carefully.”

  “Gently?” he echoed. “Do you have any idea what it is I do for a living?”

  A feeling of heat—not unlike the lick of a flame—came over her. It was accompanied by a sinking sensation that stopped in her stomach and decided to take up residence there. When Oscar had first presented her with this case, he’d said that Harrison’s main duties involved training new firefighters and playing a supportive role on the front lines. Digging ditches, coordinating teams, making sure supplies got where they needed to go—it had sounded an awful lot like a war zone, but that was okay. Sophie could work with a war zone. Bubbles could too. Dogs were often called on to serve in areas of danger—just look at what they were capable of anytime an earthquake hit or someone went missing in the wilderness.

  She’d known from the start that Bubbles was brave and strong and willing to do just about anything. It hadn’t even occurred to her that flames would be where the puppy would draw the line.

  Partially to avoid having to respond to Harrison and partially because she really was worried about Bubbles, she sank to her knees near the bed to peek at the puppy for herself. If the room was grubby, the floor was even more so, with several dust bunnies bigger than Bubbles wafting about underneath. Bubbles hid behind one now, only distinguishable by the dark flash of her wide, terrified eyes.

  “Come on, love.” She waited until her own eyes adjusted before shifting to her stomach. Now that she was officially on the job, she wore her usual dog-training attire of khaki pants and their official company polo shirt. There was no chance she’d give Harrison a free peep show.

  Not that he’d be the least bit interested in one from me anyway.

  “We have lots of work to do today,” she said, adopting the voice of one settling in for a long, comfortable chat. Her ability to hold long, one-sided conversations was a real boon in this line of work. Most dogs, like most people, just wanted to feel as though they weren’t alone. Nothing helped stave off anxiety better than someone chatting away at you as though everything was just fine.