not big—” Kayla held her hand up to indicate height “—big.” This time, she moved her hand in front of her, about chest level, to denote a man whose build had been once compared to that of an overgrown grizzly bear.
“I’ll take my chances,” Alain assured her. “It’s either that or wear something of yours, and I don’t think either one of us wants to go that route.”
It suddenly occurred to him that he was having a conversation with a woman whose name he didn’t know and who didn’t know his. While that was not an entirely unusual situation for him, an introduction was definitely due.
“By the way, I’m Alain Dulac.”
Her smile, he thought, seemed to light up the room far better than the candles did.
“Kayla,” she told him. “Kayla McKenna.” She saw him wince as he tried to sit up to shake her hand. Rather than a handshake, she gently pressed her palms against his shoulders and pushed him back down on the sofa. “I think you should stay there for a while. You gashed your head and cracked a couple of ribs. I sewed your forehead and taped you up,” she added. “Nothing else appears to be damaged. I ran my portable scanner over you.”
Other than running into someone from Star Trek, there was only one conclusion to be drawn. “I take it you’re a doctor?”
Kayla shook her head. “Vet,” she corrected.
“Oh.” Gingerly, Alain touched the bandage around his head again, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to expect. “Does that mean I’m suddenly going to start barking, or have an overwhelming urge to drink out of the toilet anytime soon?”
She laughed, and he caught himself thinking that it was a very sexy sound.
“Only if you want to. The basics of medicine, whether for an animal or a human being, are surprisingly similar,” she assured him. “They don’t even automatically shoot horses anymore when they break their legs these days.” He began to stir, then stopped when she looked at him a tad sternly. “Why don’t you rest while I go see if I can find my dad’s clothes in the attic?”
Without his realizing it, the pack of dogs in the room had closed in on him. They appeared to be eyeing him suspiciously. At least, that was the way it seemed to him. There were seven in all, seven German shepherds of varying heights and coloration: two white, one black and the rest black-and-tan. And none of them, except for the little guy with the cast, looked to be overly friendly.
Alain raised his eyes toward Kayla. “Are you sure it’s safe to leave me with these dogs?”
She smiled and nodded. “You won’t hurt them. I trust you.”
“No offense, but I wasn’t thinking of me hurting them. I was worried about them deciding they haven’t had enough to eat tonight.” He was only half kidding. “Survival of the fittest and all that.”
“Don’t worry.” She patted his shoulder, and realized it was the same gesture she used with the dogs to reassure them. “They haven’t mistaken you for an invading alpha male.” She looked around at them and realized, to an outsider, they might seem a bit intimidating. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll take some of them with me.”
That was a start, he allowed. “How about all of them?”
“You don’t like dogs.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. She felt a bit disappointed in the man, although she wasn’t entirely certain why.
“I like dogs fine,” he countered. “But I prefer to be standing in their company, not lying down like the last item on their menu.”
She supposed, given his present condition, she could understand his frame of mind. “Okay, they’ll come with me. I’ll just leave you Winchester.” She nodded toward the smallest dog.
The shepherd looked friendly enough. But Alain was curious as to her reasoning. “Why? Because he broke his leg?”
“He didn’t break his leg,” she corrected. “Someone shot him. But I thought the two of you might form some sort of bond, because Winchester was the one who found you.” She left the room with the menagerie following her, closer than a shadow.
It came to him about a minute after Kayla walked out of the room with her four-legged entourage that she was wrong. Winchester hadn’t found him; the dog had been responsible for his sudden and unexpected merging with the oak tree.
But it was too late to point that out.
Chapter Three
The door to the attic creaked as she opened it. For a moment, Kayla just stood in the doorway, looking at the shadows her lantern created within the room.
Ariel bumped her head against her thigh, as if to nudge her in.
Taking a deep breath, Kayla raised the lantern higher to illuminate the space, and walked in.
She hadn’t been up here in a very long time. Not because the gathering place for spiders, crickets and all manner of other bugs held any special terror for her. She had no problem with any of God’s creatures, no matter how creepy-crawly the rest of the world might find them. No, what kept her from coming up here was the bittersweet pain of memories.
The attic was filled with furniture, boxes of clothing, knickknacks and assorted personal treasures belonging to people long gone. Yet she couldn’t make herself throw them out or even donate them to charity. To do so, to sweep the place clean and get rid of all the clutter, felt to her like nothing short of a violation of trust. But as much as she couldn’t bring herself to part with her parents’ and grandparents’ possessions, coming up here, remembering people who were no longer part of her everyday life, was still extremely difficult.
Kayla treasured the paths they had walked through her life, and at the same time hated being reminded that they were gone. That the people who had made her childhood and teen years so rich were no longer there to share in her life now.
Maybe if they had been around, she wouldn’t have had that low period in San Francisco….
As if sensing her feelings, the six dogs that had come racing up here now stood quietly in the shadows, waiting for her to do whatever it was she had to do.
Kayla took another long, deep breath, trying not to notice how the dust tickled her nose.
An ancient, dust-laden, black Singer sewing machine that had belonged to her great-grandmother stood like a grande dame in the corner, regally presiding over all the other possessions that had found their way up here. Her grandfather’s fishing rod and lures stood in a corner, near her father’s golf clubs, still brand-new beneath the covers her mother had knit for them.
Next to the clubs was a body-building machine that had belonged not to her father but her mother. Kayla’s mom had been so proud of maintaining her all-but-perfect body. She’d used the machine faithfully, never missing a day. Kayla pressed her lips together to keep back the tears that suddenly filled her eyes. The cancer hadn’t cared what her mother looked like on the outside, it had ravaged her within, leaving Kayla motherless by the time she was sixteen.
By twenty-two, she’d become a veritable orphan.
Now the dogs were her family.
You’re
