Local All-Star Anthology 2013--5 Book Box Set by Yvonne Lindsay

Author:Yvonne Lindsay [Morey, Trish; Marinelli, Carol; Lennox, Marion; Lane, Soraya; Lindsay, Yvonne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460890370
Publisher: Mills & Boon Special Release
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

She didn’t choose a Jake. She chose a female and she chose a runt. Or Rusty chose a runt and Tori agreed.

He might have known. There were six pups as big as one another, as energetic as one another, as healthy as one another. There was one bigger than the rest, a male who obviously spent his life trying to round up his litter mates, growing more and more exasperated as his siblings didn’t do what he wanted. And then there was a tiny female who tried gamely to join into the family romp and got knocked over every time. Rusty went straight to her, nose to tail, tail to nose, and they started, tentatively, to play.

‘We nearly put her down,’ the breeder told them, as Tori scooped up the pup in one hand and Rusty in another. ‘My husband wanted to—she’s such a runt—only she kept on fighting for her place at a teat and she has such courage that I couldn’t bear to. But she’s not right,’ she confessed as Tori snuggled her under her chin. ‘Her left ear is weird. It sort of sticks up when it’s supposed to flop. And her tail’s supposed to be long and feathery and I can tell already that it’s not. The older she’s getting the worse it’s looking. If you want her, she’s cheap.’

Neither of them was thinking of money. Jake watched Tori snuggle the little girl to her; he watched her with two dogs in her arms, and he felt great. This was going to work.

Then he got distracted. The biggest pup had been tearing round in circles. He had his litter mates rounded up, but then one of his sisters made a break for it. He darted after her, the others scattered and he had to start the whole process again. He practically beamed as he proceeded to bounce around the circle again.

He didn’t know dogs. His mother had hated them, and now he spent his life at work. A dog was out of the question. But he watched Tori cuddle her two and he thought… He thought…

‘Would you like two pups?’ he asked her. ‘I think the round-up guy’s great.’

Tori’s arms were full of wriggly dog. For a runt the little one had plenty of bounce, and Rusty was wriggling, too. They were practically turning inside out to reach each other.

‘Two,’ Tori gasped. ‘Are you trying to drown me?’ She sank onto the floor and was pounced on by a sea of pups. ‘Oh, Jake, I shouldn’t even think about one.’

She was half laughing, half crying. This was a huge thing for her, Jake thought, as he watched her hug armloads of pups. She’d lost three dogs in the most dreadful of circumstances, and she’d lost so much more. For her now to move on… To learn to love again…

‘It feels like a betrayal,’ she whispered but she hugged her runt closer.

‘Grief has to let you go sometime,’ Jake said softly. ‘What did Auden say? Stop all the clocks? They did stop for you, Tori, but now they need to start again.

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