Other than Chummy, the dogs had mostly ignored her.
“Oh, no,” Simon said, raising his free hand palm out. “You misunderstand me. I’m not pulling some sneaky stunt on you to try to get you to adopt a dog. It’s just that—well, maybe it would be easier to show you than to try to explain.”
“Zig! Zag! Come here, boys.”
Immediately after Simon called, two identical small white dogs dashed to Simon’s side, their full attention on him.
“Down,” Simon said, and both of the dogs instantly obeyed.
Miranda looked from one dog to the other and a lightbulb went off in her head. She understood exactly what Simon was getting at, why she wanted Harper and Hudson to see these particular dogs.
“Twins!” she exclaimed.
Simon laughed.
“Not exactly. They’re littermates. Someone dumped them off at the side of the highway, tied in a bag. A Good Samaritan happened to see the bag moving as she drove by and she turned her car around to investigate. Once she realized the bag contained puppies, she contacted the town vet, Aaron Grimes, and he called me.”
He helped an overexcited Harper pet one of the dogs, and taking Simon’s lead, Miranda helped Hudson scratch the ears of the other.
“Soft fur, see, Harper?” Simon said in the high-pitched tone of voice men tended to use with babies. “This is a doggie.”
“Gentle, gentle,” Miranda added when Hudson tried to grab a handful of the white dog’s fur.
“Zig and Zag are Westies—West Highland white terriers.”
“They’re very obedient.”
He grinned. “We’re working on it. Terriers tend to have a mind of their own, kind of like cats. They are one of the harder breeds to train.”
Zig licked Hudson’s fist and he giggled. Both dogs seemed to like the babies, and the twins were clearly taken with the dogs.
But she’d meant what she’d said earlier. No matter how cute Zig and Zag were, or how much the kids liked them—no dogs allowed. At the moment, suffering cuteness overload, she even had to give herself a stern mental reminder.
She cast her eyes up to make sure Simon understood her very emphatic message, but he was busy helping Harper interact with Zag.
When he finally looked up, their eyes met and locked. A slow smile spread across his lips and appreciation filled his gaze. For a moment, Miranda experienced something she hadn’t felt this strongly since, well, since high school—the reel of her stomach in time with a quickened pulse and a shortness of breath.
Either she was having an asthma attack, or else—
She was absolutely not going to go there.
Back in the barn, the strain that had occurred between Simon and Miranda in the house—because he refused to analyze and recognize it as any more than that—appeared to have dissipated as their thoughts returned to Shadow and her puppies. She was still scratching around in her whelping box and the puppies hadn’t arrived yet. The twins, worn out from their excitement with the Westies, were both sound asleep on the quilt.
“I usually exercise the dogs by riding around my acreage with them,” Simon explained, gesturing to his sorrel quarter horse gelding Dash, who was set up in a nearby stall.
“Some of my rescues like to run more than others. I’ve got a few couch potatoes who don’t want to leave the house, but they all need fresh air and exercise. There’s a small lake on the northwest corner of my property that my Labs can’t get enough of. They’d stay in the water forever if I let them, and I could toss tennis balls all day and they wouldn’t tire of it. I also keep a few head of cattle for the herding dogs to practice on.
“But ever since my first run-in with Blanche, I’ve been avoiding the land to the south, for the most part. My dogs generally don’t go anywhere near the south fences, although from time to time they slip away from me. But I’ve been more aware of it. No sense stirring up trouble if I can help it. That’s why I was so surprised to see her today.”
“You don’t think she’ll really follow through with her threat to call the cops on you, do you? She sounded pretty serious about it.”
He shrugged. “She hasn’t yet, and she’s been making that same threat since the first time she confronted me about my dogs. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she did call this time. She was certainly in a tizzy today.”
“Yes, but what does she really have to complain about? Everything you do is on the up-and-up, and in my opinion, is a ministry to the animals. There’s nothing for an animal control officer to find.”
Simon’s gaze widened on her and he suddenly had a hard time swallowing around the emotions that had clogged in his throat.
Miranda thought he was doing something special—something she even qualified as worthy of the Lord to bless.
“I do it for the dogs,” he insisted, his voice gravelly. It hadn’t occurred to him until this moment to give his work to the Lord to bless.
He crouched in front of the whelping box to see how Shadow was faring.
“Exactly,” Miranda agreed pleasantly. “For the dogs. That’s what makes what you do so wonderful. Plus, I don’t know how Blanche can possibly go to the police about this. The woman was trespassing on your proper—”
She cut off her sentence in the middle of a word.
Simon grinned. She must have seen the roly-poly bundle of fur that had arrived when they were otherwise engaged.
“A puppy is here.”
Indeed, there was one tiny, squirming puppy being groomed by its attentive mother.
Simon picked up a warm towel from a stack that he had at the ready, heated by a nearby warming lamp.
Gently, he scooped the puppy into his hands.
“Here,” he said, handing the pup to Miranda.
“It’s white,” she exclaimed. “Is that normal?”
“All Australian cattle dogs are born white, but their true colors come on fairly quickly. Back when the breed was first started, Dalmatians were bred into the stock. Hence the white coat.”
He put his hands over hers and showed her what to do. Her skin was soft against the calluses of his, and suddenly it felt as if his fingers had thousands of tiny nerve endings crackling.
“Dry him off a bit. Give him a gentle rubdown to help his circulation and breathing. Then we’ll put him back in with mom.”
“Is he sick?” she asked in dismay.
“What?
