Diamond in the Ruff (Matchmaking Mamas Book 13)

by Marie Ferrarella

  * * *

  This particular story turned out to have a good ending some ninety minutes later.

  With Christopher urging her on, she had managed to get the Labrador puppy to stay in place for a total of ten seconds as she backed away from him. This happened several times, building up her confidence both in herself and in her relationship with the eager Labrador. She’d still had to maintain eye contact with Jonathan, but Christopher promised her that that would change and the next time they got together, they’d work on her just turning her back on the Labrador and still getting the animal to remain in place.

  “Next time?” Lily repeated. It wasn’t exactly a question so much as she wanted to make sure that she’d heard him correctly.

  “Yes, next weekend,” Christopher answered.

  He slanted a glance at her, wondering if he’d pushed a little too hard too fast. Normally, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but this woman needed a little more delicate care in his estimation. He also felt certain she was worth it. Something about her aroused both his protective nature as well as an inherent response from him as a man. Though a little soured on the idea of relationships, he still genuinely liked this woman.

  “I thought since you were having such success at this, you might want to push on, get a few more commands under your belt, so to speak. Unless you don’t want to,” Christopher said, giving her a way out if she really wanted one.

  “Oh, I want to.” She’d said that a little too eagerly, Lily realized and dialed back her enthusiasm a notch as she continued. “But what I’m really interested in is getting him housebroken,” she confessed, wondering if she was putting the veterinarian out too much, taking advantage of his generosity.

  “For that to get underway, we can’t be out here,” he told her. “We’d have to work with him at your home. Jonny can’t be taught to observe his boundaries if one of those boundaries is missing,” he pointed out.

  “Can’t argue with that,” she agreed. And then she glanced at her watch.

  Christopher saw something that resembled an apologetic expression on her face. Had he missed something? “What’s the matter?”

  “I feel guilty that you’re spending all this time helping me train Jonathan when you could be doing something else with your time. I wouldn’t feel so bad if you were letting me pay you for your time, but you’re not.”

  “I’m not about to charge you for something I volunteered to do.” He could see that wasn’t going to assuage her guilt. He thought of the other day—and went with that. “However, if you feel compelled to make some more pastries anytime soon, well, I couldn’t very well refuse those, now could I?”

  “How about dinner?” She was as surprised as he was to hear her make the suggestion. It seemed to have come out all on its own. For a second, she lapsed into stunned silence.

  The sentence was just hanging there between them, so he took a guess at what she was saying. “You mean like going out to dinner first?”

  You put it out there, now follow up on it before the man thinks he’s spending time with a crazy woman.

  “No, I mean how about if I make you dinner before the dessert? Like a package deal,” she concluded with a bright, albeit somewhat nervous smile.

  For just a heartbeat, he found himself mesmerized by her smile. Some people had smiles that seemed to radiate sunshine and make a person feel the better for being in its presence. Lily had such a smile.

  “I wouldn’t want you to go to all that trouble,” he finally said when he recovered his ability to make coherent sentences. But he uttered it without very much conviction.

  “Not that it’s any actual trouble,” she countered, “but why not? It seems to me like you’re going through a lot of trouble helping me train Jonathan.”

  There were two people running around the perimeter of the park with their whippets. Moving out of their way, Christopher waited until they were out of earshot before continuing their verbal dueling match.

  “I don’t consider working with a dog as any sort of ‘trouble.’ To be honest, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a veterinarian,” he told her. “My dad died when I was very young and my mother thought that having a dog—or two—around the house would somehow help fill the void in my life that his death left. Without knowing it, she inadvertently set me on a career path that shaped the rest of my life. I really appreciated what she tried to do, but to be honest, you can’t miss what you don’t remember ever having, can you?”

  “Actually, you could miss it if you find yourself imagining what it would have been like to have a father and then realize that no matter what you do, it was never going to be that way.”

  There was a sadness in her voice that caught his attention. “You sound like someone who’s had firsthand experience with that.”

  Ordinarily, she would have just glossed over his observation, shrugging it off and simply saying no, she didn’t. But lying—which was what it amounted to from her point of view—just didn’t seem to be right in this situation. Even a little white one would have troubled her.

  “I do,” she admitted. For a moment, as she brought her childhood into focus, she avoided his eyes. “I never knew my dad. He took off before I was born. The story went that he told my mother he wasn’t cut out to be a father and that then he proved it by just taking off,” she concluded with a shrug that was way too careless to be what it portrayed.

  He wanted to put his arms around her, to not just comfort her but to silently offer her protection against the world, as well. Until this moment, those reactions in him had been strictly confined to dealing with creatures in the animal kingdom. This was a whole new turn of events. But even so, he kept his hands at his sides, sensing that he might just scare her off if he did something so personal so early in their acquaintance.

  So he restricted his response to a verbal one. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, I was, too—for my mother.” Her father had abandoned the person she had loved the most in life—her mother. And for that, she could never forgive the man. “She could have used a little help juggling raising me and paying the bills. Life was a constant struggle for her.”

  “That’s the way I felt, too,” he admitted. “But my mother never complained. I don’t think I ever heard her even say a cross word against anyone. She just plowed through life, doing what she had to do.”

  “Mine held down two jobs trying to do the same thing.” It felt almost eerie the way their lives seemed to mirror each other when it came to family life. She didn’t normally seek details, but she did this time. “You have any siblings?”

  Christopher shook his head. It was the one area that he wished had been different. “None. You?”

  “Same,” she answered. “None.”

  It should have felt eerie to her—but it didn’t. Instead, she realized that it made her feel closer to this outgoing man. She knew the danger in that, but for now, she just allowed it to be, taking comfort in the warm feeling that was being generated inside of her.

  Chapter Seven

  He walked Lily to her car, which was parked not that far from his own.

  As he stood to the side and waited for her to coax the Labrador into the backseat, Christopher realized that he wasn’t quite ready for their afternoon to come to an end.

  His reaction surprised him. He hadn’t felt any real interest in maintaining any sort of female companionship since his less-than-amicable breakup with Irene a few months ago. Maybe he was finally ready to move on with his life in every sense.

  Watching Lily now, Christopher decided he had nothing to lose by suggesting that perhaps they could just continue with Jonathan’s training session in a different setting.

  As she turned away from the dog and closed the rear passenger door, Christopher pretended to glance at his watch.

  Looking up again, he sai
d to her, “Listen, I have nothing scheduled for the rest of the day. Why don’t I just follow you to your place and we’ll get a head start in housebreaking your houseguest?”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Christopher answered. He didn’t, however, want her having any unrealistic expectations about what they were going to accomplish this afternoon. “Remember, though, I did say ‘get a head start.’ This isn’t a relatively quick process, like getting Jonny to come or stay. Or even getting him to do something trickier like rolling over or sitting up and begging. This,” he warned her, “is going to take a while. With some luck and a lot of vigilance, best-case scenario, you might be able to get him completely housebroken in two weeks.”

  “But I work and the hours aren’t always regular,” she told Christopher. Looking at Jonathan in the backseat, she lamented, “How can I keep up a regular schedule with him?”

  “That is a problem,” Christopher conceded. “But it’s not impossible.”

  She found herself clinging to those words like a drowning woman to a life preserver. If she was going to wind up actually keeping Jonathan, she would be eternally grateful that Theresa had sent her to this veterinarian. He was a godsend.

  “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “You take him out every hour on the hour when you are home. When you’re not, you can leave him in a puppy crate.”

  “A puppy crate?” she repeated, not knowing if she was just stunned or actually horrified by the suggestion. She had to have misunderstood him. “You’re telling me to stick Jonathan in a crate?” she asked in disbelief. “That’s cruel.”

  “No, actually, it’s not cruel at all. Puppy crates come in different sizes to accommodate the different breeds. They’re airy and specifically designed to make the puppy feel safe. Puppies are placed in puppy crates for the same reason that they tightly bundle up newborn babies in a hospital. They actually like small spaces. An added bonus is if they only spend part of their time there each day—such as when you’re away at work—they won’t mess the crate up because they won’t go to the bathroom where they sleep.”

  “What about in the pet stores?” she countered. She’d seen more than one employee in a pet store having to clean out the cages that the animals were kept in.

  “That’s because the animals are kept in their cages all the time. They have no choice but to relieve themselves in the same place that they sleep. Those conditions make it harder to train an animal, but not in the case I’m suggesting,” he pointed out.

  She could tell by his tone when he described conditions in a pet store that the veterinarian didn’t really approve of them. Still, the idea of forcing Jonathan to spend part of his time in a crate didn’t exactly sit well with her.

  “Not that I’m doubting what you just said about puppy crates, but isn’t there any other way to housebreak him? I really don’t like the idea of sticking Jonathan in a cage—or crate—unless I have no other choice.” She looked at the dog, sympathy welling up inside of her. “It just seems too much like making him spend time in prison to me,” she confessed.

  He liked the fact that despite her attempts at projecting bravado, Lily was a pushover when it came to animals. “Well, there is one other alternative,” he told her.

  Lily second-guessed him. “Taking him to work with me, the way I did the first day.”

  “Or you could drop him off at my animal hospital when you go to work and then I could drop him off with you in the evening. Unless you were leaving earlier than I was, and then you could just come and get Jonny. And in between, I can have one of the animal techs make sure our boy here doesn’t have any embarrassing ‘accidents.’”

  That really sounded as if it was the far better choice in her opinion, but again, she felt as if it would definitely be putting him out.

  “Wouldn’t they mind?” she asked, adding, “Wouldn’t you mind?”

  “No and no,” Christopher answered. He leaned against the side of her vehicle as he laid out his new plan for her. “I passed around those pastries you dropped off the other day and if you’re willing to supply the staff with them, say once a week or so, I know that they’d be more than happy to pitch in and get Jonny here potty trained,” he guaranteed.

  Since they were still talking, he opened the front passenger door to allow air to circulate through the vehicle for the Labrador. At the same time, he placed his body in the way so that the puppy couldn’t come bounding out and escape.

  “You’re serious?” Lily asked.

  She could feel herself growing hopeful again. This last idea was infinitely appealing—and it meant she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about putting the puppy into a cage just to keep her house from turning into one giant puppy latrine.

  “Completely,” Christopher replied with no reservations.

  “Then it’s a deal,” she declared.

  “Great. I’ll alert the staff to start looking for new clothes one size larger than they’re wearing right now,” he said with a straight face. Only his eyes gave him away.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Lily told him, waving away the suggestion.

  To which he asked, “You’ve changed your mind about baking?”

  There was no way that was about to happen. She absolutely loved baking, especially for an appreciative audience.

  “Oh, no, it’s not that,” she said, dismissing his suggestion. “But I can duplicate the recipe and make a low-fat version—they’ll never notice the difference—and nobody will need bigger clothing.”

  He appreciated what she was trying to do, but in his opinion, “lighter” was never “better.” For that matter, it wasn’t even as good as what it was supposed to be substituting.

  “You say that now, but I can always tell the ‘light’ version of anything,” he told her. “It never tastes the same.”

  Lily studied him for a long moment. Her expression was unreadable. And then he saw humor overtaking the corners of her mouth, curving it. “Are you challenging me?”

  Christopher took measure of her. She meant well, but as an opponent, she was a lightweight.

  “Not in so many words but, well, yes, maybe I am,” he conceded.

  Lily squared her shoulders. For the first time since she had come into his animal hospital, she looked formidable. It surprised him.

  “Okay,” Lily said with a nod of her head, “you’re on. I’ll bake my usual way, and then arbitrarily I’ll make a batch of substitutes, and I defy you to definitively say which is which.”

  “You have a deal,” he readily agreed, confident he’d win. He took her hand and shook it.

  It was done as a matter of course, without any sort of separate, independent thought devoted to it. But the moment his strong fingers enveloped hers, she could have sworn she felt some sort of current registering, a shot akin to electricity suddenly coursing through her veins from the point of contact.

  Her breath caught in her throat for the second time that day.

  Out of nowhere, she suddenly caught herself wondering if he was going to kiss her.

  The next second, she hastily dismissed the thought, silently asking herself if she was crazy. People didn’t kiss after making what amounted to day boarding arrangements for their pet. That wasn’t how these situations played themselves out.

  Was it?

  Clearing her throat, as if that somehow helped her shake off the thoughts swarming through her brain and turning up her body temperature to an almost alarming degree, Lily dropped the veterinarian’s hand. She took a step back. She would have taken a few more, but her car was at her back, blocking any further retreat on her part.

  “Do you still want to come over?” she heard herself asking in an almost stilted voice. “To start housebreaking him?”

  Her mouth had gone completely dry by the end of the sentence.

  �
�Unless you’ve changed your mind,” Christopher qualified. He’d felt it, too, felt the crackle of electricity between them, felt a sudden longing in its wake that had left him a little shaken and unsteady. He was definitely attracted to this woman, but it was more than that. Just what, he wasn’t sure.

  Yet.

  “No, I haven’t,” Lily heard herself saying.

  Her own voice echoed in her head as if it belonged to someone else. Part of her, the part that feared what might be ahead of her, wanted to run and hide, to quickly thank him for his trouble and then jump into her car in order to make a hasty retreat.

  But again, that would be the coward’s way out.

  What was she afraid of? Lily demanded silently. She was a grown woman who had been on her own for a while now, a grown woman who knew how to take care of herself. There was no one else to step up, no one else to take up her cause or fight any of her battles for her, so she had to stick up for herself. She was all she had to rely on and so far, she’d managed just fine—with a little help from Theresa.

  Making up her mind, she decided that yes, she did want him to come over. She wanted his help—and if anything else developed along the way, well, she’d face it then and handle it.

  “Let me give you my address in case we get separated,” Lily said to him, taking a very small notepad out of her purse. Finding a pen took a couple of minutes longer, but she did and then she began to write down her address.

  “Separated?” he questioned. “How fast do you intend to be driving?” he couldn’t help asking.

  “Not that fast,” Lily assured him. “But there are always traffic lights turning red at the most inopportune time, impeding progress. I might make it through a light, but you might not, that sort of thing.” Finished, she handed the small piece of paper to him. “Can you read it?” she asked. “My handwriting is pretty awful.”

  He looked down at the paper—and laughed. “You think this is bad? You should see the way some of my friends write—it’s enough to make a pharmacist weep,” Christopher told her with another laugh.