LITMIR.BIZ

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throat tightened to hold back the sob as she checked her watch. It was past four thirty, and she had to pick her mom up at five. There wasn’t time to go back to the house and get the car, pick up the dogs and take them to the house. If she called, Miss Gertie probably wouldn’t mind her mom staying a little while longer. Crap! What was she thinking? She couldn’t take on a mother dog and three puppies. Mom. Tess. Work. She had too much on her plate now.

      “Hey.”

      Audrey’s head jerked up at the voice and saw Mark headed toward them from the direction of Beecher’s. His bike rolled to a smooth stop beside them. “What’s going on?”

      “A mommy dog and three puppies!” Tess pointed to the hungry mass.

      “I see.” Mark shot Audrey a questioning look. “Think somebody dropped them?”

      She nodded, her stomach turning at the thought. She’s starving, she mouthed.

      He nodded that he understood. “She’s friendly.” Unclipping from the pedals, he got off and laid his bike in the grass.

      “Yeah, she seems very sweet-natured.” Audrey’s voice broke on the last word.

      Mark crouched beside the mother dog and held his hand to her nose. “Hey, mom dog. Those are some good-looking babies you have there.” The dog’s tail thumped at his gentle tone, and he ran a soothing hand across her head.

      Tess had picked up the smallest one and cradled it in her arms. “This one’s littler. I don’t think he’s getting enough to eat.”

      “I don’t think any of them are getting enough to eat.” Audrey looked at her watch again. “I thought about getting the car and coming back for them, but I don’t have time to do that and still pick Mom up at five.” She swiped a hand down her face. “And I really don’t need anything else to deal with right now, either.”

      “But, Mama.” Tess’s tone was an exasperated whine. “We can’t leave them here. They’ll get runned over by cars.”

      “Run over,” Audrey and Mark said at the same time.

      “She’s right.” Mark shook his head. “We can’t just leave them here.” Out of the side of his mouth he whispered, “As weak as the mom’s getting, coyotes will probably do them all in tonight.”

      Audrey shuddered and fought back the tears. “You could...” She waited to catch Mark’s eye. “You could take them home with you.”

      “Whoa.” He stood and raised his hands palms out. “I work full-time away from home.”

      Audrey’s heart took on a hopeful beat and she stood, locking her gaze with his. “I could help. Mom and I could walk down and check on them and feed them a couple of times during the day, if you could keep an eye on them at night.” She touched his arm, and his eyes widened. “They’re probably what? Two weeks old? So it would only be for about a month. Then we could find homes for them. Meanwhile, they could stay in your dad’s garage.”

      Mark looked aghast. “I live in my dad’s garage. He made half of it into an apartment.”

      What was she thinking? A project that would put her and Mark in even more contact? “Yeah, of course. Bad idea.” She looked at her watch again. Four forty. She’d have to leave soon.

      “Please, Mr. Dublin,” Tess begged. “Mama and Grandma and I can help.”

      “Tess, it’s not fair to put this responsibility on Mr. Dublin.” Especially if it means more time together.

      Tess’s gray eyes filled like storm clouds. “But Mr. Dublin says animals are our ’sponsibilty.”

      Poor Mark looked like he was facing the enemy army. “Yeah, I do say that.” He shut his eyes in a grimace, took a deep breath.

      Audrey felt both gestures as if they were her own.

      “Oh—” he exhaled in surrender “—all right.”

      “Yay!” Tess hugged him around the waist.

      Audrey repeated the word but with much less exuberance.

      He laid a hand on Tess’s head, and she leaned back to smile up at him adoringly. He touched the end of his finger to her nose. “You’re so much like your mama, it’s scary.” She giggled and let him go, so he could get back on his bike. “I’ll be back in three minutes with my truck.”

      Audrey mustered a smile for her daughter as Mark rode away. “This is going to be a lot of work, punkin.”

      “Mr. Dublin says if we work together, it makes work easier.”

      Her daughter was certainly full of Mr. Dublin’s sage advice this afternoon.

      Audrey didn’t want to contradict, but nothing about the arrangement they’d made was going to be easy.

      * * *

      HE WAS A dead man.

      When his mom and dad returned from visiting his brother in Seattle, his dad would surely kill him. Mark patted the mother dog’s head and she sighed contentedly. “Totally worth it, though,” he assured her and her tail thumped at the sound of his voice. She was such a sweet dog. It was hard to imagine how anyone could be cruel enough to drop her and her babies. But the vet he’d called said he’d seen it happen time and again—mostly to pregnant females.

      She was an odd mixture with a lineage he couldn’t quite make out. The shape of her face and ears reminded him of the hyenas he used to hear at night in Kenya. And, while she was colored like a chocolate Lab, her body looked more like a beagle. The puppies were even harder to discern since they weren’t old enough yet to distinguish much about snout or shape of their ears. One was solid black, one was brown and white and the little one was black and white and looked like a border collie, with a stripe down his nose.

      Mutts, one and all.

      “I’m headed to get you some real food now. I’ll be back soon,” he promised.

      All he’d had to feed her was a couple of leftover hamburger patties that were supposed to be his supper tonight, and she’d gobbled those down in seconds. It wasn’t enough. The vet couldn’t see them until Saturday, but he’d stressed she needed proper nourishment and so did the puppies.

      And that meant Mark would have to make the drive to Benton for some shopping.

      So much for the fifty-mile bike ride he’d been looking forward to all day.

      Such was parenthood, he supposed.

      A knock at the garage door brought him to his feet, and when he opened it, his heart leaped at the sight of Audrey and Tess, arms laden with grocery bags. “What’s this?”

      “Supplies.” Audrey held her bags out to him. “Take these. There’s more.”

      “And I’ve got puppy food.” Tess held up the bag in her arms.

      “They’ll be needing that soon.” He set his armload on the workbench and took the bag from Tess. Glancing through the sacks, he saw they were full of canned dog food. “Y’all shouldn’t have done this,” he admonished gently as Audrey came through the door lugging a large, plush doggy bed with a gigantic bag of dry dog food nestled in it.

      She plopped it on the floor with a grunt. “It’s the least we could do. You provide shelter and we’ll provide food.” She dusted her hands and glanced around, and he watched her swallow hard when her eyes landed on the Ping-Pong table, folded and pushed against the back wall.

      He’d won his first real kiss from her after a strategic slam had returned the ball to her side of that table with enough velocity to bounce over her head and against the wall, where it had ricocheted off various objects and eventually rolled under the large freezer.

      Her eyes shifted back to him and then awkwardly away. She shoved her hands into her back pockets and shrugged. “C’mon,

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