Her channel fluttered around me, her little muscles squeezing as her body shook and her lips brushed against mine and just as she started to come down, I followed her over the edge.
She bracketed my jaw with her hands as my legs shook, and I emptied inside her. “Brody. I love you so much.”
We exchanged heavy breaths and mischievous smirks, a tender kiss before she stood and started to dress while I tucked myself in my jeans. It was a miracle we didn’t get caught out here in broad daylight. “CC will be happy to see Mack.”
“Mmm. Laila will be happy to see you. She comes home next week.”
“You adopted Laila?” Sheer joy filled me.
“I adopted Laila.”
Swinging my arm around Lil’s waist, we headed for my truck as I thought about my little family. All my girls and Mack under one roof. That was my happily ever after.
Then it dawned on me. Mack and I were outnumbered.
“Lil, I think we need another male.”
She pushed out a sigh. “No more dogs, Brody.”
Eh, she’d come around.
There were always dogs out there that needed good homes and a second chance.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Happily Ever After
Lily
I dried the Boxer pup with a towel to stimulate its breathing and settled it back in the whelping box where its mother and siblings waited. The smallest of the litter, he had been sluggish to breathe and I was checking on him often. Soft cries and grunts danced over the air in the small room dedicated to mothers whelping their pups.
Iris nosed her baby as it wrestled with the other four to find a nipple. She’d be a good mama.
She’d been a handful when she came in.
Skinny, hungry, with wounds on her shoulders and sides I was sure were cigarette burns. She’d been dumped, likely because she was pregnant, and she’d attacked her male rescuer but had gone to a female rescuer with relative ease.
It wasn’t hard to figure out her abuser was a man.
The whelping room had a temporary sign on it that said Women Only. We’d start Iris’s socialization once her pups were older. For now, she’d hang with the girls.
Shutting off the light, I closed the door behind me, and regarded the shelter I’d named the Unlovabulls Canine Rescue Center. It was smaller than I’d originally hoped. We were set up for thirty-five dogs at a time, but we never turned one away. Somehow, we always found room for the dogs that needed us most. There wasn’t a fancy ribbon cutting or a glitzy celebration, either.
No, the money went where it was needed most—the dogs.
I walked over to the fold-up cot that would be my bed and prepared myself for a long night. I needed to stay close to Iris tonight to make sure she didn’t have any complications. She wasn’t a spring chicken. Dr. Avalos—Regina or Gina, as most of us called her—thought she was at least eight, and this definitely hadn’t been her first litter.
Our shelter didn’t adopt many dogs out directly. They came here to get the care and skills they needed to be companion animals, and when I was sure they posed no more risk, they went back to the rescue organization that brought them to us to be adopted out. We’d adopted out only forty-three dogs directly. Dogs from the mill that weren’t suitable for other rescues.
I scanned over the Original Unlovabulls wall. Each survivor we’d rescued from the mill had a framed picture up there. The ones that hadn’t made it out with their lives had a plaque in my office with their breed type and a name we’d given them. The top of the plaque read You Were Loved. It was the truth.
Brody’s picture had yielded results.
Officer Johnson was able to identify who the pickup truck was registered to.
The red and black Ford F-150 Raptor belonged to Devon Taylor.
I scrunched my pillow under my head, trying to get comfortable, when the soft padding of doggie feet and tennis shoes down the hall made me smile. I glanced up to see Brody toting an air mattress.
“What are you doing here? You don’t have to sleep down here with me. Go upstairs with the dogs, Shaw.” I started to sit up. “You’ve got an agility trial tomorrow.”
Discovering Devon was one of the guys behind the mill had come as a shock, but after a little digging, it all made sense. Brody had never told him we slept together. Devon knew because they’d been keeping tabs on me since they got spooked at the rental house. It wasn’t only the sticker on Everett’s car that had spooked him that night, either.
He’d recognized Brody’s truck.
Devon had flipped on his cousin in exchange for a reduced sentence. They’d moved the dogs to a rural warehouse a couple of towns over. Mrs. Davis turned out to be their grandmother, and the farm manager. He took a cut in exchange for letting Devon and his cousin, Colton Andrews, use the barn.
The letters in the brand finally made sense. DA. Devon Taylor and Colton Andrews. The ASPCA, SPCA of Dallas and Collin County Sheriff’s department had joined forces once we had a location. We rescued 104 breeding dogs, most of the females pregnant or nursing. That number didn’t include the pups.
“We’re not sleeping upstairs when their mom”—he pointed to the dogs—“and my fiancée is down here on a cot. Now, come on down on this mattress. It’s a lot more comfortable than that cot. I’ll be back, I’ve got to get a dog bed.”
Fiancée. It wasn’t a title I’d ever thought I’d wear again. I admired my modest engagement ring for the millionth time. This time, I had the right man. The only man. The wedding would be small. Out on our ranch outside the city, nothing fancy. Picnic tables and straw bales. A band in the barn and an open bar. Dogs welcome, people tolerated.
It’d be fun to watch Hayes and Olive dance around each other all night, given their history and their statuses as best man and maid of honor.
That man was relentless when it came to her.
Laila’s happy little face made me smile as she tried and failed to jump up on my cot. She was full grown, but she was still a bulldog, with short little bulldog legs and a chubby bulldog butt. Smiling, I slipped down to the air mattress, where she buried her big wrinkly head under my arm.
Hearing Brody’s steps and more doggie feet coming down the hall, I kissed her snout. “Your daddy spoils you rotten, little girl.”
“Damn straight. My princess deserves it. All my girls do.” He put the dog bed down at the head of our makeshift bed. Jet crawled in, and CC snuggled in half on top of her, half in our bed, with her butt in my face.
Such is life with dogs. I reached up and patted my girls.
Brody kicked his shoes off and got situated on the other side of the mattress, and Mack jumped on top of him, rolling on to his back and pushing my fiancé to the edge.