I couldn’t do that. My head was too full of her to think of anyone else. “And you’re wearing them because?”
“I found them in the way back of my underwear drawer. They were the last clean pair. It was either them or nothing.”
My mind came to a screaming halt. I suddenly hated these underwear with the fiery wrath of a dying star about to turn supernova. If not for them…
“I really don’t like doing laundry,” she continued, unaware of my internal struggle. “You should know that about me. Like, if we stay friends for long enough, I will eventually try to lure you over to my house with the promise of tasty treats and then withhold them until I can convince you to wash my clothes for me.”
“Tasty treats?” I asked, my gaze roaming over her. My mind was stuck in the gutter. All I could think of is what could have been if not for these allegedly hideous undies. “Are we talking food, or something else?”
She looked up at me, eyes wide. “Food?”
“You sure about that?” I asked, taking a step closer.
The dogs barreled back into the floodlight and squeezed between us, doing their damnedest to ruin the mood with their whining and panting.
“We better go in,” Ella said, breaking eye contact. “I swear I heard howling at Jane’s when I left.”
I gave up on my attempted flirting and led them toward the porch. “Really?”
“Yeah. One of Dave’s friends is a ranger, and he says the wolves are back.”
I stopped at the door and looked down at her. She was close, really close, like she was trying to hide behind me. Her gaze shifted from right to left, searching the darkness beyond the safety of the porch. “Not a fan of wolves?”
She shook her head. “They’re right up there with bears when it comes to predators I’d least like to meet in person.”
“I saw a grizzly from a car once. Damn thing was nearly as big as the vehicle.”
“We don’t have them here. Ours are smaller. But they’re even better at climbing trees because of their size, and they can run faster than a human could ever hope to.” Her expression turned grim. “Plus, razor claws of doom and machete teeth.”
“Thanks so much for the nightmare ammunition.”
“Just trying to share the misery.”
“Right. We need puppies.”
She nodded. “Only baby floofs can help us now.”
We stepped inside, toweled off the dogs, shed our winter layers, and headed toward the sitting room, where I’d corralled the puppies before she arrived. The sound of their muffled cries echoed from inside. Fred and Sam took off toward the door and started frantically sniffing the crack beneath it. Every few seconds, Fred straightened and looked back at Ella like, “Mom! Puppies, Mom!”
“I know, bud.” She stepped next to him and took him by the collar. “But we have to be gentle because they’re little.”
I did the same to Sam, and when they calmed down, Ella opened the door a crack, just enough so that we could all see each other. Fred and Sam lost it, pulling against their collars and whining like I’d never heard before. They worked each other up until they started howling.
Boots, on the other side of the door, plopped his butt down, tipped his head back, and let out a prolonged, answering squeak.
Fred and Sam stopped to stare at him.
“Is he…is he trying to howl?” Ella asked.
“Uh, yeah, I think he is.”
Come on, little dude. You can do it.
Sam howled again, and Boots threw back his head and squeaked some more in response. Beside him, Doodle seemed to concentrate,really hard, and then uttered a little whine-growl as if he was testing it out before he lifted his muzzle skyward and let forth a high-pitched, “A-roo-roo-roo-roo-roo.”Boots did his best to mimic him, and soon all four dogs were howling together like their own little wolf pack.
Ella and I managed to live through it, proving that no, you cannot be killed by cuteness.
We let the dogs greet each other in stages from there. Ella told me this wasn’t Fred and Sam’s first time meeting puppies, and while they’d been good with them before, you never knew how the puppies would behave, whether or not they’d be aggressive and cause a reaction in the older dogs you didn’t expect.
