“Mom and Chet are so in love, it’s fun to watch them together. They’re like lovesick teenagers. He’s a private pilot and they’re always flying off to somewhere exciting. She got the travel bug the same way you did. After spending much of her life on a ranch, she’s loving seeing the world, although most of the trips they take are in the US.”
Ava kept one eye on the dogs, who were watching them with open curiosity. “Does your mom miss Kringle?”
Caleb stopped walking and crouched on the same level as the dogs, making himself less threatening. Following his lead, she hunkered beside him.
“She does,” he said. “But she loves her more footloose life and says the only thing that will settle her down again is having grandchildren to fuss over.”
The two dogs came closer, wagging their tails. Soon enough, their curiosity got the better of them and they inched closer to Caleb and Ava. Quick as a wink, they snapped the leashes to the dogs’ collars.
Four down, one to go.
But Caleb’s comment about his mother wanting grandchildren shook Ava. If she and Caleb had gotten married right out of high school, most likely they would be parents by now. Unexpected feelings stirred inside her—loss, remorse, and a bone-deep yearning.
Oh, she didn’t regret spreading her wings and leaving Kringle to explore the world. What she did regret was hurting Caleb in the process. But she was no longer the headstrong teen she’d once been, and she needed him to forgive her.
Because what she wanted more than anything in the world was a solid friendship with the man she’d left behind.
“Let’s go get that last dog,” Caleb said once they had Felix and Oscar in the truck alongside Minnie Pearl. The nippy December weather was cold enough so the animals would be okay in the vehicle while they looked for the remaining dog, but not too cold to cause problems.
“On the ATV?” Ava asked.
“Sure. The ATV gets around the pastures better than the truck.”
“But how do we get the dog back if we find her?”
“One of us can walk back with her.”
“Um,” she said. “Okay.”
The idea sounded solid until Ava climbed on the ATV behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
Immediately, his body hardened, and his heart somersaulted. He tightened his grip on the handlebars and forced his attention on the pasture ahead and not the sexy woman behind him. Except he could smell her gentle scent of soap and sunshine, and a deep longing caught him in the gut and twisted.
Why did she have to smell so darn good?
He drove slowly, scanning the pasture for any sign of the last missing dog. To his dismay and maybe yeah, secretly, to his delight, Ava rested her head against his back.
“Remember when you scored the winning touchdown during the homecoming game our junior year?” she asked.
That was a strange thing to bring up. He turned his head toward her, glancing over his shoulder to see the top of the helmet he’d given her to wear. “Yes. Why?”
“Because I think you may need to use some of that fancy footwork to capture Cinderella.”
“Huh?”
She pointed.
There, running around in circles underneath a two-hundred-year-old oak tree, a dog barked at a chattering squirrel. The mutt was brown, yellow, black, and white. Cinderella looked to weigh about sixty pounds.
“That’s some kind of focused attention,” Caleb said, slowing the ATV. “She hasn’t even glanced in our direction.”
“Exactly. She will not surrender easily. She’s fired up and could bolt on us. Something tells me she’s the instigator of this whole escape. Cinderella’s got the look of a runner.”
Although tempted to growl, “takes one to know one,” he didn’t comment. The past was the past. Time to build a bridge and get over that water.
“Let the games begin,” he said, stopping the ATV.
For the next ten minutes, they chased the dog around the trees. Cinderella thought it was a great game, even more interesting than treeing a squirrel, and gave them a run for their money. When Caleb came at the dog from one direction and Ava from another, Cinderella barked wildly and zigzagged between them.
She really was a wily thing, and if Caleb hadn’t been trying to catch her, he would have admired the dog’s agility. Seriously, Marjorie should enter her in agility training and teach her to come when called. Finally, out of breath, he stopped, racking his brain for a unique approach.
Ava jogged over to stand beside him and panted. “Cindy’s a doozy.” She was smiling and her face flushed prettily. She looked happy, radiant, and downright irresistible.
He nodded. They’d tried most every trick they could think of, but the dog still eluded them.
“What was it that Mr. Finster used to say in algebra class? The hardest problems to solve in life are the ones worth the most,” Caleb said.
“I’m not sure about that, but Cinderella is a challenge.”
“Should we warn Prince Charming?” he teased.
She laughed and murmured, “Gosh, I’ve missed you.”
He’d missed her too. He almost told her, but before he could say a word, the dog darted straight toward him.
Now!
Instinctively, Caleb held his arms wide. If the dog got close enough, he was taking her down.
Cinderella leaped into the air and directly hit Caleb in the chest.
Oof.
Knocked to the ground, Caleb lay stunned. But somehow, he grabbed Cinderella’s collar. He grunted, curled his fingers around the collar, and held on for all he was worth. The dog wriggled her hair and licked his face.
Ava ran over with the leash, clipped it to the dog’s collar, and pulled Cinderella off Caleb. “Are you okay?”
For a few moments, Caleb worked on getting air back into his lungs. It wasn’t the first time he’d suffered a tackle, but man, he was older now, and it hurt more.
Finally, he sucked in a lungful of air and said, “F-fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” He scrambled to his feet.
Ava continued to fuss over him, brushing straw from his clothes and inspecting him, while keeping a firm grip on Cinderella’s leash. “Is anything hurt?”
“Other than my pride? No.”
“You wouldn’t keep the truth from me, would you?”
“I’m fine,” he assured her.
“It really was just like that homecoming game,” she said. “You got walloped hard.”
“Yeah. It was like that.”
He knew the game she meant. He’d been running down the field, his mind only half on what he was doing. Mostly he’d been thinking about Ava. She’d been flirting with him right before the game, waving her pom-poms in the air, the motion lifting her breasts beneath her cheerleader costume, and he was still playing her comments over in his mind when suddenly another player slammed into him.
The hit had knocked him flat. He’d redeemed himself later in the game by scoring two touchdowns, helping the team win the game. Ava had run onto the field despite being told to stand back. She took hold of his hand and refused to leave his side. Then she’d done something he hadn’t expected.
She’d kissed him.
That night and her kiss were still in his mind as he took the dog from her and looped the leash around his hand. “Let me show you how to drive the ATV and I’ll walk back with Cinderella.”