Blair could protest, Libby had already taken off toward the Double Arrow, giving Blair no choice but to follow. Her feet pummeling the dirt, Libby looked over as they ran. “Your aunt know you cuss?”
“Are you kidding?” Blair said, Libby’s breathless giggles mingling with the puppy’s rapidly fading squeals of pain and fear.
Jenna had just sat down with her laptop when the girls burst into the cottage, both babbling about a puppy caught in some blackberry bushes and they couldn’t get him out and she needed to come right away and did they have anything they could cut the branches with?
Refusing to let the girls’ panic infect her, Jenna ditched her reading glasses and got up from the table, shoving her feet into her abandoned espadrilles. “I bet Mr. Logan’ll have something we can use—”
“No! Don’t ask him!”
Already at the door, Jenna frowned at Blair. Not that she didn’t see Blair’s point—she could just imagine Hank’s reaction at being asked to rescue a puppy. Still— “I don’t think we have any choice, honey. I don’t even have a pair of gardening gloves, and toenail clippers are no match for blackberry bushes.”
Several minutes later, they found Hank at one of the other cottages, replacing some rotten floorboards in the porch. This time, the girls hung back and let Jenna do the talking. Not surprisingly, Hank frowned. But not for the reasons Jenna would have expected.
“Where is it?” he asked the girls.
“Just down the road a ways,” Libby said, dancing from foot to foot. “You know, where all those bushes are?”
“Yep, sure do.” He hoisted himself to his feet, clunking his hammer back into his toolbox. “Go on back to where he is. I’ll met you there.” Then he stopped, looking directly into first one set of frightened eyes, then the other. “Hey,” he said softly, then reached out and tugged on Libby’s ponytail. “It’s gonna be all right, you hear?”
Libby nodded, then grabbed Blair’s hand—Blair was standing gawking at Hank as if he’d just admitted his Martian citizenship—and yanked her after her.
“You…rescue puppies?” Jenna said, afraid she was gawking nearly as badly as Blair had been.
“From time to time.” Hank grabbed his toolbox and lumbered down the steps. As he passed her, his mouth twitched. “They’re real tasty this time of year.”
By the time Hank got there, Jenna wasn’t sure who was more frantic, the girls or the puppy. Her knees screamed from all the little stones and things embedded in them from kneeling in front of the bushes, as she yammered in baby talk in the vain hope of keeping the poor little thing from wriggling and getting himself even more tangled up. She’d also tried prying apart the branches with a pair of sticks, but they were hopelessly entwined.
“Move over,” grunted a low voice from behind her.
Between the girl’s moans and the pup’s squeals, she hadn’t heard the truck pull up. “Be my guest.”
“Hey, little guy,” Hank said gently, pulling on a pair of thick leather workgloves, then picking up a pair of rose clippers. “How on earth did you manage to get yourself stuck in there?”
All the while he clipped, he prattled to the little dog, who finally quieted down, transfixed by the sound of Hank’s voice. At one point, Jenna glanced over at the girls, on whom that voice seemed to be having a similar effect. Blair, especially, her arms wound over her middle, shot a look at Jenna that was equal parts wonder and confusion. The last branch snipped, Hank reached in for the puppy, cradling the shaking thing in his large, gloved hand, carefully inspecting the tiny black body for injuries. And just as his harsh features softened, as his perpetual frown gave way to a genuine smile when the pup eagerly licked his scruffy chin, so did something inside Jenna.
The girls, naturally, were right there, both cooing and oohing over the little thing. “Is…he okay?” Blair asked, her voice tense with caution, her gaze flicking to Hank’s for only an instant.
“Far as I can tell. A few scratches, maybe, but nothing major. My guess is he’s been abandoned, though. There’s no collar, and he’s pretty skinny.” Cupping the dog’s butt, Hank twisted him around in his hands and looked him in the eye. “You out on your own, Bubba?”
The dog started wagging his tail so hard, he nearly wriggled right out of Hank’s hands. He laughed, then glanced over at Libby, scratching the pup’s ears. “Your daddy’s got some antiseptic we could put on him, doesn’t he?”
“Uh-huh,” Libby said. “But then what?”
Hank looked at the pup, then at the girls, before lifting up the dog and looking him straight in his big, brown eyes. A tiny pink tongue darted out, desperate to make contact with Hank’s nose. This time, Hank’s laughter sent a tingle straight through Jenna, one that settled right at the base of her heart.
“I can’t take him,” Blair said, a little wistfully. “Meringue would have a fit.”
“Not to mention I would,” Jenna thought it prudent to add.
Libby giggled as the pup tried to nibble on her finger. “I can’t take him, either. Daddy says we already have too many pets.”
After a long moment, Hank said, “Well, then. I guess that makes him mine.” He pretended to glower at the girls. “But y’all have to name him. I’m terrible at naming things.”
The girls thought that was a good idea. Then Libby remembered their lunch—apparently that’s what was in the Wal-Mart bag by the side of the road—and thought the pup might like part of her ham sandwich, which he did. Then, of course, they had to take the pup back to Libby’s to show him off and get the antiseptic put on him, even though he was going to be Hank’s dog. After they’d left, Hank offered to drive Jenna back to her cottage, since he said it seemed stupid for her to walk back when he had the truck right here.
The ride took all of two minutes, which wasn’t nearly enough time for Jenna to process even half of her thoughts about what had just happened, let alone all of them. But she did think to ask him why he’d taken the dog.
“Why not?” He scrubbed a hand across his hair, which didn’t do a thing for his coiffure. “Maybe it’s time I had something else to talk to at night besides myself, y’know?”
His words echoed painfully in her own sparsely furnished heart as they pulled up in front of the cottage. Jenna got out of the truck, then turned, her arms tightly tucked over her stomach as she peered back inside through the passenger-side window.
“Thanks,” she said.
Slouched in his seat, his right hand still loosely gripping the steering wheel, Hank looked at her, his brows knotted for a second or two. Then, with a sigh, they relaxed. “I might prefer keeping to myself most of the time, Ms. Stanton, but I’m not an ogre.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”
After a moment, unable to think of a single, even minimally intelligent thing to say, she nodded, then ran up the porch steps to the relative safety of the cottage, away from the yearning in those dark eyes she doubted he even knew was there. But once back inside, as she stood at the front window, watching him one-handedly steer the truck back down the drive and replaying the past half hour
