tail and leaned against him. “You’re okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Her cage is a mess. She knocked over her water and spilled her food.” He scratched behind her ears. “Never has an accident, though, do you, girl?”
Kayla felt her shoulders loosen just a fraction. If Finn was that kind and gentle with a little dog, maybe he was a safe person to be around.
“Could you hold her leash while I clean up her cage?” he asked, looking over at Kayla. “In fact, if you wouldn’t mind, she needs to go outside.”
“No problem.” She moved to take the leash and knelt down, Leo hurrying to her side.
“Careful,” Finn warned. “She’s blind and mostly deaf. You have to guide her or she’ll run into things.”
“How can she walk?” Leo asked, squatting down beside Kayla and petting the dog’s back as Finn had done. “Mom, feel her! She’s soft!”
Kayla put her hand in the dog’s fur, shiny and luxuriant. “She is soft.”
“She still has a good sense of smell,” Finn explained to Leo. “And the sun and grass feel good to her. You’ll see.” He gestured toward the door at the opposite end of the barn. “There’s a nice meadow out there where the dogs can run.”
She and Leo walked toward the barn’s door, guiding the dog around an ancient tractor and bins of dog food. In the bright meadow outside, Kayla inhaled the sweet, pungent scents of pine and wildflowers.
“Look, Mom, she’s on her back!” Leo said. “She likes it out here!”
Kayla nodded, kneeling beside Leo to watch the little black dog’s ecstatic rolling and arching. “She sure does. No matter that she has some problems—nobody likes to be in a cage.”
A few minutes later, Finn came out, leading another dog. “I see you’ve figured out her favorite activity,” he said. “Thanks for helping.”
The dog he was leading, some kind of a beagle-basset mix, nudged the blind dog, and they sniffed each other. Then the hound jumped up and bumped her to the ground.
“He’s hurting her!” Leo cried and stepped toward the pair.
“Let them be.” Finn’s hands came down on Leo’s shoulders, gently stopping him.
Leo edged away and stood close to Kayla.
Finn lifted an eyebrow and then smiled reassuringly at Leo. “She’s a real friendly dog and likes to play. Wish I could find someone to adopt her, but with her disabilities, it’s hard. Willie and Long John can only handle one dog each. I have one of our problem dogs at my place—” He waved off toward a small house next to a bigger one, in the direction of the lodge. “And Penny—she owns the ranch—has another at hers. So for now, this girl stays in the kennel.”
If she and Leo stayed here, maybe they could take the black dog in. That would certainly make Leo happy. He’d sunk down to roll on the ground with the dogs, laughing as they licked his face, acting like a puppy himself. He hadn’t smiled so much in weeks.
And Kayla, who always weighed her choices carefully, who’d spent a year planning how to divorce Mitch, made a snap decision.
This place was safe. It was remote. Mitch would never find them. And maybe Leo could have a decent childhood for a while. Not forever, she didn’t expect that, but a little bit of a safe haven.
She looked over at Finn. He was smiling, too, watching Leo. It softened his hard-planed, square face, made him almost handsome. But as he watched, his mouth twisted a little, and his sea-blue eyes got distant.
She didn’t want him to sink into a bad mood. That was never good. “If I can arrange for the summer camp for Leo,” she said, “I’d be very interested in the job.”
He looked at her, then at Leo, and then at the distant mountains. “There’s paperwork, a reference check, drug tests. All that would have to be taken care of before we could offer you anything permanent.”
“Not a problem.” Not only did she have good references, but they were sworn to secrecy as to her whereabouts.
“I’ll have to talk to our owner, too.” His voice held reluctance.
Time to be blunt. “Is there some kind of problem you see in hiring me?”
“I’m withholding judgment,” he said. “But we do need someone soon, since our last assistant quit. Until everything’s finalized, how about a one-week trial?”
“That works.” Even if the job didn’t come together, she and Leo would get a week off the road.
With dogs.
Meanwhile, Finn’s extreme caution made her curious. “You never did mention what branch of the military you served in,” she said as he bent over to put leashes back on the two tired-out dogs.
“Eighty-second Airborne.”
Kayla sat down abruptly beside Leo, pulling her knees to herself on the grassy ground. She knew God was good and had a plan, but sometimes it seemed like He was toying with her.
Because this perfect new job meant involvement with a man from the same small, intensely loyal division of the US Army as her abusive ex.
“You sure you’re not making a big mistake?” Penny Jordan asked Finn two days later.
It was Saturday afternoon, and they were sitting in Penny’s office, watching out the window as Kayla’s subcompact sputtered up the dirt road to cabin six, leaving a trail of black exhaust in its wake.
“No.” Finn watched as Kayla exited the car and opened the back door. Leo climbed out, and they opened the hatch and stood, surveying its contents. Leo looked up at her, listening seriously, like an adult. “I think it probably is a mistake, but I couldn’t talk her out of wanting the job. So I went with the one-week trial.”
“But she’s moving in.” Penny, ten years older than Finn but at least twenty times wiser, took a gulp of black coffee from her oversize cup. “That doesn’t seem like a trial thing to do.”
“They were staying at the campground up toward Harmony.” He eased his leg off the chair where he’d been resting it, grimacing. “Afternoon thunderstorms are getting bad. At least they’ll have a roof over their heads.”
“You’re skirting the issue.” Penny leaned forward, elbows on the table. “She has a young son.”
“I know, and even though she says she’s got a plan for childcare, I don’t know that it’s safe for him—”
“Finn.” Penny put a hand on his arm. “You know what I’m talking about.”
He wasn’t going there. “Guess I’d better get up there and help ’em move in.”
“You’re
