by Amy Woods
“Oh,” she said, looking down at her food. It did look good, but she knew that when she put a forkful into her mouth, it would taste like nothing. “I’m not really hungry.”
He pulled a face that told her he wasn’t buying the excuse. “All right, Abbott. Let’s make a deal.”
The twinkle in his eyes sent an arrow through that surge of bravery she’d felt only a moment before, but she wouldn’t let him see. Over three tours, she’d had plenty of practice pretending to possess courage when in fact she did not. “Fine.”
“Good,” Isaac said, folding his hands in his lap. “Eat at least half of those waffles, and instead of telling you more about my training, I’ll do you one better.”
“How’s that?” she asked, eyeing her food, deciding if she was really up for the challenge.
“You can come in to the office with me tomorrow.”
“You’ve got work tomorrow?” she asked, and he nodded. “It’s Saturday. I thought only us farm folks and emergency professionals had to report for duty so early on the weekend.”
Isaac smiled and his eyes crinkled at the corners, lending sweetness to his sharp features.
“Yes, well, running a small business means there’s always work to be done, and even when I do take a day off, it’s hard not to think about all the things I could be doing.”
“Sounds like a lot to handle,” said Avery.
He nodded but his eyes held only satisfied joy, and she found she wanted to learn more about something that brought such contentment to his life.
“It is that, but I absolutely love the work. I opened the training center a couple of years back when my grandmother left me her house and land here. And, after having worked a corporate desk job since college, I’ll never go back. Being my own boss and setting my own schedule is the best thing in the world.”
“Even when you have to work weekends?” Avery asked, grinning.
“Even then,” he said, returning her grin.
Isaac’s eyes lit up when he talked about his work, and his enthusiasm got her excited about the opportunity to see where he spent his days. But, behind all of that, a little bit of sadness stung inside her chest. She missed her own work. She missed her patients at the hospital, her daily rounds and having the chance to give back to her community by caring for people. For Avery, being a nurse was more than just a job—it was a calling, something that filled her soul. And, even more simply, she felt lost without the daily routine of getting up and driving into town.
She’d tried to build a new life for herself on the farm after the incident she’d had at work. It still made her face burn to remember her boss finding her huddled up in the corner of a patient’s room, having mistaken the sound of a dropped food tray for an explosion. The resulting mandatory vacation leave her boss had ordered was justified, but it wasn’t easy adjusting to time away from work. Despite pushing herself for long hours in the Texas sun to help her brother, she felt useless there. It would never be enough to replace nursing.
“Did I say something wrong?” Isaac asked, worry lines etching the dark skin of his forehead.
“No, no,” she answered, surprising them both when she reached out and gently lay a hand across one of his. Even more startling was the absence of need to pull it away.
Isaac looked at their hands, then back at Avery, before winding his fingers through hers. The motion pulled all of the air from her lungs for just a second, but she didn’t flinch.
Be brave, she told herself. It’s just a friendly gesture. It’s just ordinary human contact.
And, much to her pleased relief, it worked. As she allowed him to hold her hand, ignoring everything else in the room, her fear trickled away drop by drop. It was, after all, just a hand—but it belonged to Isaac, which made it okay somehow. Safe, steady Isaac.
She thought suddenly of the towering stack of historical romance paperbacks on her night table, of all the ways the authors described the heroes therein. In those books that she loved so much, the rakes and Vikings were always full of adventure and the promise of pulse-pounding, high-stakes danger, and though Avery could lose herself in those stories for hours, she’d always had difficulty relating to heroines who would want all of those things, when she herself craved just the opposite.
To Avery, the most romantic thing in the world was also the simplest: a partner who provided a safe home, gentle hands, stability and unconditional love.
She’d had enough adventure to last a lifetime, and all she really wanted now was a soft place to land.
She hadn’t spent much time before, considering what that might look like in her own life, but seeing Isaac’s hand wrapped around her own and the warm affection swimming in his dark eyes, she was starting to get a pretty good idea.
Avery cleared her throat and shook her head. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong.” She gave his hand a little squeeze. “I was just thinking about my own job, hearing you talk about how much you enjoy yours.”
He was silent for a moment, just looking at her, no judgment discernible in his expression. When he spoke, his voice was kind but determined. “Listen, Abbott,” he said, “whatever happened to you over there, whatever made you stop doing something you love, you can’t let that make you quit for good. If you want to go back to nursing, or even train for a different career, you absolutely can. And I think I can help.”
No hesitation, no “Let’s take things slow,” no “Maybe someday in the future”—none of the platitudes she was so used to hearing—just pure confidence in her ability to help herself get better.
It must have been exactly what she needed to hear, because in just a short time with Isaac Meyer, she felt better than she had in months. And to think he’d been there all along, just a short walk up the road.
She was tired of taking baby steps and getting nowhere, tired of carefully stepping on stones across a deep abyss only to fall over and over again, then to face the challenge of climbing back out over slippery walls. Her therapists at the VA were wonderful, and she knew she needed their help to find balance again. But it wasn’t enough to commit to doing the mental work; she needed some actionable steps to take in order to feel more than passive in her own journey.
She’d read about service dogs for vets with PTSD, and most of the research was positive. Besides, she had nothing to lose. Everything she’d known before—the life she’d left with when she joined the military—was gone, and she knew it would probably never return. So, if Isaac wanted to help her with this new one, and if the way to do so was by working with a dog, it was worth one hell of a try. She wanted to be whole again, whatever that meant, and she was willing to try something innovative to get there, even if being whole now wouldn’t look the same as it had before she’d left.
In fact, she was beginning to hope it didn’t, because before, Isaac hadn’t been a part of her world, and she’d decided this morning that she very much liked him in it.
Chapter Six
Friends with Fur had started out as just a business for Isaac—a way to earn a living and to get out from behind the desk that he’d sworn at the time would eventually kill him—but in the years since its opening, it had become so much more.
Even looking back on those before days from a safe distance made him cringe, and caused a trapped feeling to rise up like a scream from his chest to his throat. He’d been thirty when Nana passed and surprised the hell out of Isaac by leaving him her farm and savings. Inheriting Nana’s property shouldn’t have come as a shock because his mom hadn’t survived her last heart failure, and of course his brother, Stephen, was gone long before that, but it had nonetheless. Suddenly, he’d been given a chance at a new life, and he didn’t take that lightly.
After years of working his way up from mail clerk to a corner office at an investment firm in Austin—a relatively reliable job with a steady, respectable paycheck—Isa
ac had begun to feel the claws of suffocation wrapping around him, longing for days that didn’t all look exactly the same as the ones that came before and after. He’d gone to college mostly to please his mother and to get a taste of city life, but everything that followed seemed to rush in as smoothly as though he’d been on autopilot, just following a predetermined set of steps. Internships, job offers and a ladder to climb.
He’d gotten very near the top, but it wasn’t enough. When he’d confided in his friends about his increasing longing to do something else, most had responded in the same way his mom had: they’d told him he was lucky to have a high-paying job, and he could do what he pleased as soon as he retired. He knew there was an element of truth in their statements, but there was also fear. Something inside him burned for change, and he didn’t want to wait thirty more years to feel that his days had real purpose. Surely, he’d begun to dream, there had to be some way to earn a living doing something he loved. And just when he’d worked up the courage to take a leave of absence to try and figure out what to do about his future, Nana had gotten sick.
He’d come back to Peach Leaf to take care of her and to make certain she lived her final days in peaceful comfort. When she breathed her last, she gave him a new beginning. The farmhouse where he’d spent his summers was old, but in decent shape, and with Nana’s life savings, he’d fixed it up and studied to become a certified animal trainer. Then, along the way, he’d bought the building that now housed his facility.
Often, he thought of the irony. Animals—dogs in particular—were his greatest love as a little boy. Had he listened to and followed his passion earlier in life, well... It didn’t do much good to dwell on the past. He was happy in his job now and absolutely loved getting up for work every morning. He had what so many people wished for but never obtained: a beloved career that brought satisfaction and joy, and that also made it possible to pay the bills.
Isaac had started small, with just a website and cheap business cards, training pets in clients’ homes, and eventually word of mouth spread and he’d hired on Hannah and Mike. Now they offered training at all levels from basic to specialized service, along with pet sitting and customized curricula for owners with individual needs.
At first he’d been reluctant to train dogs as companions for veterans with psychological struggles. The pain of Stephen’s death was still too raw. But when a friend of his had returned home from war and requested Isaac’s help to keep from drowning at the bottom of a bottle, he couldn’t say no, and that aspect of his training programs had grown. Now, vets from all over Texas came to Friends with Fur to meet and train with dogs to take home and make their lives infinitely better.
Isaac’s heart lifted each morning when he drove into the parking lot, but it rose a little higher as he did that Saturday with the beautiful Avery Abbott by his side.
He hadn’t specifically planned on convincing her to spend the day with him when he’d visited her home the morning before. But when he’d walked into Macy Abbott’s kitchen, he was a goner. Avery’s blond hair was wet from a shower and her skin glowed dewy fresh. He loved that she didn’t need to fuss or put on a bunch of makeup; she was naturally beautiful, dressed in a fitted blue T-shirt, faded jeans and bright green flip-flops. When he’d sat down next to her at the table, the scent of apple shampoo from her freshly washed hair had filled his nostrils and made it damn hard not to draw closer to her as he’d focused on getting her to eat her breakfast.
He wasn’t one to fall quick. Hell, he wasn’t one to fall at all if the past was any indication. Aside from a couple of short-term college girlfriends and the nice-but-not-for-him dates the women in town set him up with, Isaac didn’t have much of a romantic past to speak of. It wasn’t that he didn’t want love, no, it was more that he wasn’t sure it was even possible to find what he wanted.
His mom and dad had been the perfect bad example of the kind of relationship he was looking for. He had to thank them for that. They’d taught him exactly what he did not want. What he did want was something simple, but right. Someone he could trust with every fiber of his being, someone who wasn’t intimidated by the fact that he loved his work and that it was more than just a job and he’d have to put in long hours sometimes to make sure he got things done well. Someone who wanted to be a mom to his kids, and to help him raise them with good old-fashioned manners and sense.
Yet again, he thought, Avery brought all of this to the surface when he usually just ignored it and plugged along, happy to be single, but wishing for more. But what did he know about her, really? How could he even think of her that way when clearly all she wanted or needed was his help? It would be wrong to hope for more from her, wrong to show interest at a time when she was at her most vulnerable...wouldn’t it?
“I’ve been by this place so many times,” she said softly as he stopped the truck they’d borrowed from Tommy for the day, “but I always thought it was just a doggy day care or something. I didn’t realize you were doing such important work in there.”
Isaac smiled at the sound of her voice. As she unbuckled her seat belt, he snuck another good look at Avery over Jane’s furry head between them. She looked refreshed after eating the blueberry muffin Macy had pushed on her as she’d left the house that morning, which he’d then insisted she finish, but he knew she’d probably done so more to prove that she could meet his challenge than to add weight to her thin figure. Oh well, he would take it, and if he had to spend every meal by her side that day to get her to eat, then so be it. She was his to take care of, at least for the day, and he meant to do just that.
He let Jane out and then opened Avery’s door for her. She took his offered hand and he found great pleasure in the pink clouds that floated across her cheeks when their palms touched. Her beauty was quiet, like a landscape painting of a bright summer day. Makeup-free, it didn’t demand attention, but once he’d laid eyes on her, he’d known he would miss her face if a day passed when he couldn’t see it.
Isaac didn’t want to think about what that meant.
For now, all he wanted was to spend time getting to know her better, helping her if he could.
“Oh, wow,” Avery said as he unlocked the back door and led her into the building, Jane trotting happily along at their feet. “It’s like doggy heaven.”
She faced him with sparkling eyes and he laughed.
“Well, I’m glad you think so,” he said. “That’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.”
Showing the training facility to Avery gave Isaac the opportunity to view it with new eyes. He led her down a long hallway, showing her inside each of the different classrooms, stocked with supplies for all sorts of training exercises. There was a puppy room featuring long leads for recall training, toys and, of course, paper pads in case tiny bladders needed sudden relief, a large arena floored in Astroturf for agility training, and—Avery’s favorite—the search-and-rescue classroom with its boxes labeled for different scents that would be filled and closed for dogs to identify. Finally, he took her past his office and up to the storefront, where his staff sold good pet supplies at discount prices, so clients could pick up what they needed on their way out after classes.
Seeing Avery’s enjoyment of her personal tour gave him a burst of pride in the business he’d started.
“I love it,” she said. “Very cool.” She reached down to pet Jane who, Isaac noticed with a grin, had helped herself to a tennis ball from one of the classroom bins along the way.
“She has a mild rebellious streak in her, doesn’t she?” Avery asked, teasing.
“Doesn’t get it from me,” Isaac said, thrilled when Avery let go a small rush of musical laughter. “But it’s one of the things I love about Janie. She’s loyal and reliable and obedient about ninety-nine percent of the time, so it just adds to her charm.”
Avery stroked Jane while she listened to him talk.
“But damn, was she e
ver a mess when she found me. I suppose it was mutual, though,” he said, his tone more serious than he’d planned. “I wasn’t a very happy man at the time, and she’d just come from being a homeless puppy, so we both had some fixing to do before we were on good terms.”
“And are you now?” Avery asked, her light blond eyebrows furrowed.
“Am I what?”
“You know,” she said, as if he held the key to some mystery she didn’t quite dare talk about. “Happy.”
He stopped walking and turned to face her, thinking in silence for a moment, lost in the blue-gray storm clouds in her eyes.
“That’s a complicated question, isn’t it?”
“Not particularly,” she challenged, a twinge of sorrow in her voice.
“Well, then, perhaps it’s the answer that’s complicated.”
“Yes, maybe so, but I still want to know—are you happy, Isaac Meyer?”
In her question, Isaac sensed she was really asking something else—something along the lines of Is it possible that I will ever be happy again?—and he wanted, badly, for her to believe that, yes, she could be. Yes, despite everything that had happened to her, despite all the evil he could assume she’d witnessed, she could indeed find happiness again.
And, more important, she deserved to.
So he thought very carefully before responding, “Yes, most of the time, I am.”
“And the others?”
He nodded. “Other times, I cling to the times that I am, and trust that if I’m patient, I’ll find my way back to that place.”
He looked down at Jane’s happy dog face, remembering the days just after Stephen’s death when he could barely breathe, let alone find the strength to drag his body out of bed to help his mother with her own grief.
“Sometimes happiness takes work,” he said, ignoring the tension that came over Avery’s body at his words. “Hear me out,” he said, his voice firm. “We don’t always want to do the work, the hard stuff, to put ourselves back together after something awful knocks us to pieces. But that’s when it’s most important to try, to keep doing the things we love and being with the people we love, until it meets us halfway. Some days, Avery, showing up and doing the work is enough.”
