For Keeps

by Rachel Lacey

  “Well, here’s an idea.” David reached into a wire crate to check the IV port on a chocolate-colored cocker spaniel. “Merry Atwater, the lady who just left? She runs a boxer rescue, and I happen to remember one of her dogs is a certified therapy dog. Maybe she could help you out.”

  “Really?” T.J. thought back on the pretty brunette. He couldn’t quite picture her getting her perfectly manicured hands dirty out on his farm.

  David nodded. “She’s good people. And between you and me, her rescue’s in some financial trouble right now. If you offered her a donation in return for her help, I’m sure she’d be more than happy to be part of your camp.”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t really look like the farm type to me.” The last thing he needed was some girly-girl running around on his farm, complaining about getting her expensive shoes dirty or breaking a fingernail.

  But camp started next week, and at the moment, he had no other leads.

  “She’s tougher than she looks.” David led the way back to the waiting room, where he pulled a business card from a pile in a drawer behind the reception desk. “Give her a call. See what she says.”

  * * *

  Merry pursed her lips and tried to ignore the dog sulking in the crate at the far end of the kitchen. She’d called every shelter in the area to report her found, but so far, no owner had come forward. From the looks of her, the mutt probably hadn’t had an owner in some time. Her fur was matted with burs and mud, her nails untrimmed, ribs protruding beneath her thick coat.

  Merry couldn’t bring herself to take her to the shelter, but she couldn’t keep her either. She wasn’t a boxer, for one thing. Not to mention, her tiny house was already at capacity with Ralph, Chip, and Salsa. And she was broke.

  Couldn’t forget that part.

  Which led her back to the email on her screen. A woman named Tracy Jameson had emailed her, said she’d gotten Merry’s name from her vet, David Johnson. She was looking for someone to help out with canine-assisted therapy at a summer camp she was running for local kids. In exchange, she’d write a check for a thousand dollars to Triangle Boxer Rescue.

  Tempting. Very tempting.

  Ralph was a therapy dog. Merry took him in once a week to visit the kids on the pediatric floor of Dogwood Hospital. He’d be great for the summer camp.

  In fact, he’d love it a lot more than she would. To Merry, summer camp sounded dirty, sweaty, and exhausting. And while she did have some vacation time saved up at the hospital, she’d planned to spend it fund-raising for Triangle Boxer Rescue, not wilting in the summer heat on this woman’s farm.

  Still, a thousand dollars sounded pretty irresistible right now.

  First things first, she had to figure out what to do with the stray dog in her kitchen. Merry approached the crate and eyed the nameless, hopeless dog. “So, I was thinking about putting up some flyers around the neighborhood. Want to come with me?”

  The dog looked up, her brown eyes so sad, so empty, that Merry’s heart broke. No matter what, this dog couldn’t go to the shelter. She wouldn’t last a week.

  Merry opened the crate and coaxed the frightened dog out. She reached into the cabinet and pulled out a bag of training treats, then sat on the floor and praised and rewarded her for every shy wag of her tail.

  Once No-Name had received a much-needed boost to her self-esteem, Merry clipped a leash onto her collar. She grabbed the pile of flyers she’d printed earlier, along with a stapler, and she was ready to go.

  “You need a name,” Merry told her. She named new fosters all the time, and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to name this one.

  The dog stood patiently beside her while she stapled flyers to lampposts up and down her street and around the neighborhood. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible there was a family out there somewhere, looking for her and wanting her back.

  No-Name stared straight ahead as they walked, making no eye contact with Merry, showing no emotion at all. Her tail hung limply behind her, which was a step up from tucked between her legs, but no amount of sweet talk from Merry could get it to wag again.

  A high-pitched shriek was their only warning before a toddler barreled onto the sidewalk, arms outstretched. “Doggy! Doggy!”

  Merry tightened her grip on No-Name’s leash and tried to put herself between the dog and the runaway child, but it was too late. The little girl flung her arms around No-Name’s neck with a squeal of glee.

  “Violet!” A woman ran down the driveway after the wayward child. “Oh, my gosh.”

  Merry tensed, ready to intervene if necessary, but No-Name’s tail wagged steadily. She looked calm. Happy even.

  “Thank goodness your dog likes kids,” the girl’s mother said.

  That was an understatement. Merry wouldn’t have intentionally introduced such a new dog to anyone’s child just yet, but now that it had happened, No-Name did indeed seem thrilled.

  The little girl patted her roughly on the head, then ran off toward a pink tricycle outside the garage. Her mom waved and followed her up the driveway. No-Name gazed after the toddler, tail still wagging.

  Merry hustled her home. As they walked in the front door, her cell phone rang. She glanced at the display. “Hey, Liv.”

  “Hi,” Olivia said. “I got your message, and no, I can’t take another dog right now. I nearly got evicted from my apartment when I was fostering those damn puppies.”

  “Oh, come on, please? This one’s full grown. She’s housebroken, and I haven’t even heard her bark. She’d be easy.”

  “Nope, sorry.” Olivia Bennett had never formally agreed to foster for Triangle Boxer Rescue. She was a friend of Cara Medlen, who’d moved to Massachusetts a few months ago, leaving Merry short a good foster home and a best friend, both of which roles Olivia had temporarily stepped in to fill.

  “Know anyone looking for a dog? She’s some kind of Lab mix, very shy, but well behaved.”

  “I’ll ask around, but offhand… no.”

  “Okay, well, thanks anyway.” Merry led the dog back into her kitchen. Since she’d received a clean bill of health at the vet, Merry had allowed her to make introductions with Ralph this morning, and it had gone well. No-Name had tucked her tail and bowed her head submissively when Ralph greeted her. It was a good start, but she wasn’t ready to throw her somewhat less predictable foster puppies into the mix just yet.

  Currently, they were asleep upstairs in her bedroom. If No-Name stayed much longer, she’d think about introducing them all, but hopefully she’d be passing her along before that became necessary.

  She opened her laptop to see if any of the Lab or all-breed rescues had responded. They hadn’t, but the email from Tracy Jameson still waited in her in-box.

  She didn’t want to get involved in a summer camp, but maybe…

  Maybe she could make it work to her advantage. She sent Tracy a quick reply, asking to meet with her to discuss things further, then closed her laptop to start preparing dinner for herself and the dogs.

  The next day, she worked her usual twelve-hour shift at Dogwood Hospital. Exhausted, she grabbed a Cajun filet biscuit from the Bojangles drive-through and headed for Tracy’s farm.

  Like many towns in the area, Dogwood had experienced a burst of growth in the past decade due to its proximity to the Research Triangle Park, where many large pharmaceutical and other high-tech companies were located. Modern neighborhoods gradually gave way to rolling country roads that hadn’t changed in generations.

  She drove down one of these country roads past the rusted-out shell of a barn, a cornfield, and several miles of open farmland. Merry rolled her window down and breathed in the fresh air. She loved to drive through the country, see the horses and cows, smell the wheat and fresh earth. Actually rolling up her sleeves and getting dirty didn’t sound as appealing, but if it would help the rescue, she’d take one for the team.

  Tracy’s farm was at the end of the road, a modest two-story, brick-front ranch house. Tracy had texted her a few minutes
ago to say she was running late, so Merry pulled past the house and parked by the barn to finish her chicken biscuit. It melted in her mouth in buttery perfection. She washed it down with sweet tea and a sigh of contentment.

  Behind the barn, two horses grazed in a lush green field, while a third lounged nearby beneath a shade tree. Merry’s knowledge of horses was pretty much confined to the pages of Black Beauty (which had earned her a childhood nickname of Merrylegs), but these were obviously well cared for and absolutely gorgeous. Their brown coats glistened in the setting sun over sleek, well-muscled haunches.

  She leaned back in her seat and settled in to watch them. The larger horse, a male, swooshed his tail to and fro, fly swatting for himself and the female beside him. Equine chivalry. Aww.

  A few minutes later, a black Ford F350 pickup truck pulled into the driveway with a roar of its diesel engine and parked next to Merry’s CR-V. She looked up, impressed. That was a badass truck for a chick.

  Merry stepped out of her SUV, making sure she wasn’t wearing any crumbs on her scrubs, and rounded the rear bumper just as the driver’s door opened on the truck.

  She saw the cowboy boots first, brown-stitched leather at least a man’s size twelve. Her gaze traveled up a pair of jeans filled out by very muscular, very masculine legs. The man wearing them swung out of the cab and tipped his cowboy hat at her.

  Well, well. It was her would-be hero from Dr. Johnson’s office. What in the world was he doing here?

  She’d never been a big fan of cowboys, but this guy was seriously sexy. His dark hair was mostly hidden by the hat, which shadowed his face, hiding the exact shade of the brown eyes currently locked on hers. He wore a crisp, blue T-shirt tucked into his jeans, filled to perfection by strong, muscled man.

  He looked like he belonged on the cover of a magazine for western wear. Good gracious, he was gorgeous. And clearly not Tracy Jameson.

  “Merry Atwater?” His voice matched his image perfectly, deep and smooth.

  “That’s me. And you are?”

  He extended a hand. “T. J. Jameson. Thanks for driving all the way out here. I figured you’d like to see the place before you made up your mind.”

  She took his hand and shook. “Uh, where’s Tracy?”

  His lips curved in amusement. “Tracy Allan Jameson III, in the flesh. My granddaddy was Tracy, Dad calls himself Trace, I go by T.J.”

  She almost swallowed her tongue. “You’re Tracy.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but please call me T.J.”

  Merry sucked in a breath. So Tracy Jameson was a guy. And not just any guy, but a strappingly handsome cowboy oozing testosterone from every pore.

  Summer camp had just gotten much hotter, in a completely new way.

  CHAPTER TWO

  T.J. rested his elbows on the top rung of the fence and gazed at his horses. He pointed to the handsome sorrel by the gate. “That’s Tango, and the bay mare next to him is Twilight. They were both born and raised on my parents’ farm. The palomino in back is Peaches. My nephew rides her.”

  He watched Merry for her reaction. His horses came from some of the finest stock in North Carolina. They were exquisite creatures, and if she was going to work here with him for the next month, he needed her to respect that. Her curly brown hair stirred with the breeze as she eyed Tango and Twilight. She wasn’t dressed to impress today, in pink scrubs decorated with brightly colored unicorns and regulation rubber-soled shoes, but somehow she still managed to look classy.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said.

  So was she. He didn’t go for the girly type, but he could admire a pretty lady. Merry’s scrubs hid a delicate, yet curvy, frame, if the jean shorts she’d worn the other day were any indication. But her eyes really captured him, wide pools swimming with green and gold flecks, so warm, so full of life and emotion, that he lost his train of thought every time he looked into their hazel depths.

  “You work with horses for a living?” she asked.

  “I’m a large animal vet. I work with horses, cows, goats, all kinds of livestock.”

  “Well, I know nothing about livestock, but your horses are gorgeous.”

  “You ride?”

  She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and shook her head. “No. So what do you plan to do with them, for the kids? And where do I fit in?”

  “A buddy of mine does some work with equine therapy, having the kids interact with the horses, guide them, ride them. Great for self-confidence and motor skills. We want them to leave their troubles at home for a few hours a day.”

  “So these are kids with developmental problems? Or physical disabilities?”

  “A little of each. I’ve got four kids signed up. My eight-year-old nephew, Noah. He’s autistic. We’ve got a boy with sensory processing disorder, a girl with cerebral palsy, and one with Down syndrome. They’re all second and third graders.”

  “That’s wonderful, and I’m guessing your nephew is the reason you’re doing it. But it sounds like you’ve got your equine therapy camp. Why me? Why dogs?”

  “Well, I only have two horses, for one.” He looked out at the pasture. “Tango there’s too feisty for the kids. That leaves Twilight and Peaches. But the dogs are a crucial part of the camp, for Noah especially. I’ve seen him come out of his shell with dogs the way he doesn’t with people, or even horses.”

  She nodded. “Okay, I’ll bite. You said you were interested in therapy dogs. I have one, Ralph, he’s a six-year-old boxer. Absolutely fantastic. I take him to Dogwood Hospital with me once a week to work with the kids there.”

  “And you’re certified in canine therapy?”

  “I’m certified as Ralph’s handler. I also run an animal rescue, and what I’d like to do is put together a group of foster dogs that are trustworthy with kids and let the kids help train them. Each child gets his or her own dog to train, teach basic obedience, bond with, and help get their dog ready for adoption.”

  T.J. shook his head. “That’s not really what I had in mind. You mean, put the kids with shelter dogs?”

  Merry raised her chin. “Shelter dogs that have been admitted into my rescue and passed a full behavioral assessment to make sure they’re safe to work with kids. They’d be supervised by me at all times.”

  “I don’t think…”

  She cut him off. “I have two in my own home that would be perfect. They’re five-month-old puppies, harmless but in need of plenty of obedience training. I have a couple of other dogs in mind too that might be great for the program. Ideally, you could foster one or two of them for me here at your farm during camp.”

  “What?” Somehow this conversation had run completely off course.

  “You’re asking me for a big-time commitment. I’ll have to take time off from my job at the hospital. Surely you can help me out in return? It would be great if you could increase your donation to Triangle Boxer Rescue too.”

  “Whoa.” He held his hands out in front of him. “I think we’ve got ourselves a misunderstanding. I’m looking for therapy dogs, not shelter dogs. And I don’t have any kennels here to keep them.”

  She drummed her fingers against the fence and gazed at his horses. “I could get you crates, if you need them. The rescue pays for all medical care. You just provide food and water.”

  “Crates? You just put them in one of those wire cages in the backyard?”

  Her nostrils flared. “Of course not. The dogs stay in your house. The crates are a training tool.”

  “In my house?” T.J. lifted his hat to run a hand through his hair. He’d grown up around dogs. They’d roamed the farm, been spoiled with scraps from the dinner table, and they’d slept in kennels behind the house. Dogs did not come inside.

  And this conversation had gotten out of hand. He wasn’t keeping Merry’s shelter dogs for her, in or out of his house. The incident in David’s waiting room yesterday had proven yet again how unpredictable that type of dog could be.

  “Look, I’m not interested in keeping dogs here. A
nd I’m really looking for a couple of therapy dogs to work with the kids, not shelter dogs. If you know someone who has another certified therapy dog that could come with you and Ralph, that would be perfect.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Sorry, but one is all I’ve got.”

  They stared at each other for a beat of silence.

  “Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come out here, but I think I’ll keep looking and see if I can’t find someone better suited for the camp.”

  She raised those hazel eyes to his, now flashing with anger. “You do that. Good luck with your summer camp.”

  And with that, she stalked off to her car, leaving him standing in a cloud of her dust.

  * * *

  Merry felt the steam pouring out of her ears. What an arrogant asshole. She’d liked Tracy Jameson a whole lot better when he’d been a girl. The nerve, turning his nose up at her foster dogs like she’d suggested his camp kids serve as bait in a dogfighting ring instead of sitting around petting a bunch of certified therapy dogs. Jerk. And she’d really needed his money too. Not to mention, she’d been counting on him to foster one of the camp dogs for her, freeing up a spot for No-Name in one of her other foster homes.

  She punched the steering wheel and cranked the radio, tuned to her favorite Top Forty radio station. No country music in her car, thank you very much.

  She fumed all the way to her little house at the end of Peachtree Lane. She’d given up the last precious hour of daylight with her dogs for that jerk. On the days she worked, she paid her neighbor’s teenage daughter to let the dogs out for her, so at least they hadn’t suffered for her wasted trip to T.J.’s farm.

  Now she trudged into the house, exhausted and fired up at the same time. Ralph, Chip, and Salsa waited in the kitchen, squealing and dancing with glee. Their toenails clicked across the linoleum in a hectic tap dance until she sank down in their midst and let them cover her with slobbery kisses. When they’d finished, she put them out back, then went into the den where No-Name lay quietly in her crate.