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“I think he was a private,” Dawn supplied.
“Right, a private. ’Cause he put a dollar in a piggy bank every single day to help pay for soldiers’ uniforms ’n stuff.” His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “Musta been a big piggy bank.”
Brian flashed Dawn a grin, quick and potent and totally devastating. She was still feeling its whammy when he broke the code for his son.
“I suspect maybe the piggy bank was a bit of WWII propaganda. A story put out by the media,” he explained, “to get people to buy bonds or otherwise contribute to the war effort.”
Tommy didn’t appear to appreciate this seeming denigration of the heroic terrier. Chin jutting, he conceded the point with obvious reluctance. “Maybe. But Fala was more than just proper...popor...”
“Propaganda.”
“Right. Dawn ’n me...” His dad’s brows lifted, and the boy made a swift midcourse correction. “Dawn ’n I read that soldiers used his name as a code word during some big battle.”
“The Battle of the Bulge,” she confirmed when his cornflower blue eyes turned her way.
“Yeah, that one. ’N if the Germans didn’t know who Fala was, our guys blasted ’em.”
Dawn was a little surprised at how many details the boy had retained of FDR’s beloved pet. Brian, however, appeared to know exactly where this detailed narrative was headed. Setting down his fork, he leaned back in his chair.
“Let me guess,” he said to his son. “You now want a Scottish terrier instead of the English bulldog you campaigned for last month.”
“Well...”
“And what about the beagle you insisted you wanted before the bulldog?”
Tommy’s blue eyes turned turbulent, and Dawn had a sudden sinking sensation. Too late, she understood the motivation behind the boy’s seemingly innocent request for her to check out the grooming requirements for Scottish terriers.
“Beagles ’n bulldogs shed,” he stated, chin jutting again. “Like the spaniel you said we had when I was a baby. The one I was ’lergic to. But Scotties don’t shed. They gotta be clipped. ’N they’re really good with kids. Dawn read that on Google,” he finished triumphantly. “She thinks a Fala dog would be perfect for me.”
Four days, Dawn thought with a silent groan. She and Brian had maintained a civilized facade for four entire days. After her emergency purchase of the blandest shampoo on the market, there’d been no leaning. No sniffing. No near misses. Just a polite nonacknowledgment of the desire that had reared its head for those few, breathless moments.
The glance Brian now shot her suggested the polite facade had developed a serious crack. But his voice was unruffled as he addressed his son’s apparently urgent requirement for a canine companion.
“We talked about this, buddy. Remember? With the trip to Italy this summer and you just about to start school, we decided to wait awhile before bringing home a puppy.”
“You decided, not me.”
“Puppies need a lot of attention. You can’t leave them alone all day and...”
“He wouldn’t be alone. Dawn can watch him while I’m at school ’n clean up his poop ’n stuff.”
The crack yawned deeper and wider.
“Dawn’s already been very generous with her time,” Brian told his son, his tone easy but his eyes cool. “I’m sure she wants to get back to her job and her friends. We can’t ask her to take on puppy training before she goes home to Boston.”
“But I don’t want her to go home to Boston. I want her to stay here, with us.” His belligerence gave way to a look of sly cunning. “She could, if you ’n her got married.”
Neither adult corrected his grammar this time, and he launched into a quick, impassioned argument.
“You told me you like her, Dad. ’N I see the way you stare at her sometimes, when she’s not looking.”
Dawn raised a brow.
“She likes you, too. She told me.”
This time it was Brian who hiked a brow.
“So you should get married,” Tommy concluded. “You’d have to kiss ’n sleep in the same bed ’n take showers together, but you wouldn’t mind that, would you?”
His father parried the awkward question with the skill of long practice. “Where’d you get that bit about taking showers together? You’d better not tell me you’ve been watching TV after lights-out again.”
“No, sir. Cindy told me that’s what her mom and dad do. It sounds pretty yucky but she says they like it.”
Dawn struggled to keep a straight face. “Who’s Cindy?”
“A very precocious young lady who lives on the next block,” Brian answered drily. “She and Tommy went to the same preschool. They’ve gotten together with some of their other friends for play times during the summer. And her big brother Addy—Addison Caruthers the Third—stays with Tommy sometimes when Mrs. Wells needs a break.”
“Addy’s cool,” Tommy announced, “but Cindy’s my best friend, even if she is a girl. You might meet her ’n her mom when you take me to school Monday.” He thought about that for a moment. “Maybe you should ask her mom if you would really hafta do that shower stuff.”
Dawn bit the inside of her lip. “Maybe I should,” she said gravely. “That could certainly be a deal-breaker.”
She glanced across the table, expecting Brian to appreciate this absurd turn in the conversation. His cheeks still carried that hint of red, but she detected no laughter in his expression.
Oops. Message received. Propping her elbows on the table, Dawn tried to deflect Tommy’s latest attempt to fill the void in his life.
“The thing is, kiddo, I’m allergic to marriage.”
“Really? Like I am to dog hair?”
“Pretty much. Every time I think about marching down the aisle, I get all nervous and sweaty and itchy.”
“I get itchy, too. Then my eyes turn red and puffy.”
“There! You know what it’s like. So...” Smiling, she tried to let the boy down gently. “Although I like your dad and he likes me, we’re just friends. And we’ll stay friends. All three of us. I promise.”
“Even after you go back to Boston?”
“Even after I go back to Boston.”
Her smile stayed in place, but the thought of resuming her hectic life left a dusty taste in her mouth. She washed it down with a swish of the extremely excellent Syrah that Brian had uncorked to accompany their braised pork.
With his characteristically quicksilver change in direction, Tommy shifted topics. Dawn contributed little as the conversation switched from Scottish terriers and adult shower habits to the video he had to watch before bed that night. From there it zinged to the laundry list of items he’d crammed into his school backpack.
The question of when his temporary nanny would head north again didn’t come up again until after he’d dashed up to his room to retrieve the overstuffed pack and demonstrated to his father exactly why he needed every item to survive his first full day of elementary school.
“Sorry ’bout that third-person proposal,” Brian said as he and Dawn carried the dishes to the sink. “I did warn you, though.”
“Yes, you did. Good thing I’m ’lergic to marriage, or Tommy might have swept me right off my feet.”