The Glass Butterfly by Louise Marley

Author:Louise Marley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780758265685
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Tory woke, shivering this time instead of perspiring. She sat up, finding her blanket gone and the sheet pulled down to her waist. Blinking in the predawn darkness, she reached for the bedspread. She tugged at it, but it didn’t move. She flicked on the bedside lamp.

The dog, though she had made a bed of towels for him on the floor, now lay next to her on the bed, a skinny length of brown-and-white fur stretched across the foot in a tangled fold of beige chenille. His eyes slid sideways when the light came on, but his big paws didn’t move. Only the plume of his tail moved, silently beating against the blanket.

Dogs. There had been dogs in her dream, scratching and whining at a closed door.

She lay down again, frowning into the vague dawn light, searching for meaning in the strange succession of her dreams. She didn’t find it.

She reached toward the dog, and curled her fingers into his long fur. The gesture felt familiar somehow, natural. It must be instinctive, this link between canines and humans, bred into them both by centuries of cooperation. The dog’s long pink tongue lolled, and the corners of his mouth curled upward as he panted.

“Are you smiling at me?” she demanded softly. “And who raised you to think you belong on the bed?”

His tongue disappeared, and his eyes closed again. Once his fur had dried, it proved to be silky and long, matted in places under his forelegs and along his ribs. She had spent a good part of the evening brushing him, an operation he was clearly accustomed to, lifting his paws when she wanted him to, submitting to scissors when some of the mats wouldn’t give way to her hairbrush.

Gently, Tory tugged the bedspread out from under the dog, and smoothed it up again over her side of the bed. She was about to pull on her sweatshirt and go out to make a cup of tea to watch the light rise over the water, but on an impulse she slipped back under the blanket, and turned out the light. The quilt was warm from the dog’s body, and having him there—calm, accepting, another breathing, living being—soothed her restiveness.

She snuggled deeper under the covers, washed by a comforting tide of drowsiness. Just as she fell asleep again, she felt a weight on her ankles, and heard the slight, contented groan as the dog settled his head across her legs. Tory, her dream forgotten for the moment, slept again.

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