those blue eyes, Matt was so good-looking and so...hot that few men in town even came close to resembling him. But apparently her sister had found someone who fit the bill, and had arranged a double date for tonight.
Half of her wanted to cancel. The other half thought she’d better protect herself against Matt’s being back by going out on this date, even if her heart wouldn’t be in it. Claire wanted a relationship—she wanted love and to find the man she’d spend forever with. She wanted a child—children, hopefully—and at thirty-five, she wasn’t exactly a spring chicken.
“How did everything get so topsy-turvy, Demps?” she asked the dog, who’d come over with a half-eaten tennis ball. “I know you know all about that,” she added, throwing the ball. Dempsey, in all her fast, muscular glory, chased after it, leaping through the air like a deer.
There was nothing like watching dogs at play to make Claire feel better and forget about her love life—the old, the nonexistent and the upcoming. She smiled as Dempsey dropped the ball at her feet. She threw it a few more times, then left the dog in the yard to play while she went to help clean the kennels that were now empty due to the lucky pups that had been adopted today.
As she reentered the shelter, she saw Birdie and Bunny Whitaker in their waterproof aprons, hard at work with the disinfectant and hose. Claire adored the sixtysomething sisters—no-nonsense Birdie and dreamer Bunny—who lived together in the lovely farmhouse on Whitaker Acres, the same property the shelter was on. Opening Furever Paws had been a longtime dream of the Whitaker sisters ever since people had begun abandoning animals on Whitaker land, a pocket of rural country in what had become urban sprawl. At first they’d started an animal refuge, but when it became too much for them to handle financially, they filed for nonprofit status and started the Furever Paws Animal Rescue almost twenty years ago. Aside from the shelter with dogs and cats, the sisters kept goats, pigs, geese and even a pair of llamas on the property. They opened up Whitaker Acres to the public a few times a year so that visitors could enjoy the land and animals. Kids loved the place.
As Claire cleaned Snowball’s kennel—the white shepherd-Lab mix had been adopted this morning and immediately renamed Hermione—she was glad the shelter could take in more strays and drop-offs. Furever Paws had room for about a dozen each of dogs and cats, and twice that many were cared for in foster homes, like Dempsey.
“I’ll miss that adorable Snowball,” Birdie said, hosing down the kennel across the way. “For twenty years I’ve been telling myself not to get attached to our animals.” She shook her head. “Old fool.” Tall and strong, her short silver hair gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, Birdie grabbed the mop, dunked it in the cleaning solution and went at the floor of the kennel until it met her satisfaction.
“I already miss Annie Jo,” Bunny said, taking out the bed, blanket and toys in the next kennel and stuffing them in the huge laundry bin. Bunny looked a lot like Birdie but was shorter and plumper, her silver curls soft against her sweet face. “I love what her family renamed her—Peaches. Back in the day, a beau called me that,” she added, wiggling her hips.
Claire smiled. The shelter always named the strays and those left on the doorstep. Every now and then, adopters kept the shelter names—most recently a cat named Princess Leia, who’d been there for months. Birdie and Bunny loved naming the incoming animals, and whenever they couldn’t come up with a name, they held a meeting with the staff—the full-time employees, such as the shelter director, foster director and vet technician—and the volunteers, like Claire.
“Who was that very handsome man here a little while ago?” Bunny asked with a sly smile as she started sweeping out the kennel, reaching over for a stray piece of kibble that Annie Jo—Peaches—had missed. “My, he was nice to look at.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t rush over to ask how you could help him,” Birdie said to her starry-eyed sister, wringing out the mop in the big bucket.
“Well, I would have,” Bunny said, “but I saw Claire come back in with Dempsey and decided to leave him for her. Trust me, if I were even ten years younger...”
Claire laughed as Birdie shook her head again, her trademark move. Neither Whitaker sister had ever married, though Claire did know that Bunny had been engaged in her early twenties until her fiancé had tragically died. Birdie never talked about her love life, and though Claire had tried a time or two to get Bunny to spill about Birdie’s romantic life, the sisters were clearly loyal to each other’s secrets. As they should be.
But no matter how much or how little experience the Whitaker sisters had in the romance department, they were both wise—Birdie in common sense and Bunny in keeping an open mind and heart. Talking to the two always set Claire straight, or at least made her feel better.
Which was why she was going to be honest right now.
“That was the guy who broke my heart into a million pieces after high school graduation,” she said. “Matt Fielding. I cried for six months straight.”
“And then married the first guy who asked you out,” Birdie said with an uh-huh look on her face.
“Yup,” Claire said, spraying disinfectant on the bars of the last kennel and wiping them down with a clean rag. “But there’s hope for me. Guess who has a blind date tonight? My sister and her husband set me up.”
“Ooh,” Bunny said, her blue eyes twinkling. “How exciting. To me, blind dates are synonymous with ‘you never know.’ Could be the man of your dreams.”
Birdie wrinkled up her face. “Blind dates are usually the pits.” She glanced at Claire, instantly contrite, then threw her arms up in the air. “Oh, come on. They are.”
Claire laughed. “Well, if the date takes my mind off the fact that my first love is back in town? Mission accomplished.”
“Oh boy,” Birdie said, pausing the mop. “Someone is still very hung up on her first love.”
“Oh dear,” Bunny agreed.
And before Claire could say that of course she was—you did see him, after all—that cute little springer spaniel she’d shown Matt started howling up a storm.
“Someone wants her dinner now,” Bunny said with a laugh.
“I’m on feeding duty for the dogs,” Claire said, putting the disinfectant back on the supplies shelf and the rag in Bunny’s laundry basket. “If I don’t see you two before I leave for the day, congrats on a great Sunday. Five adult dogs adopted plus the puppies and cats.”
“It was a good day,” Bunny said. “Good luck on that date tonight.”
Claire smiled. “Who knows? Maybe he will be the man of my dreams.”
She was putting on a brave front for the sisters—not that she needed to, since she could always be honest with them. But sometimes Claire reverted to that old need to save face, to not seem like she cared quite so much that she was single, when she wanted to be partnered, to find that special someone to share her life with, to build a life with. She loved Dempsey to pieces, but most nights, unless she had book club or a social event like someone else’s engagement party or birthday, it was her and the boxer mix snuggled on the sofa in her living room, watching Dancing with the Stars or a Netflix movie, a rawhide chew for Dempsey and a single-serve bag of microwave popcorn for her.
There was room on that couch for a man.
But
