Dev burst out in surprised laughter, then shook his head. “Jesus, that sounds so… incredibly hot.”
“I know!” Leaf laughed with him, still remembering the rush of pure sexual heat he’d felt at the assertiveness his normally easygoing partner had demonstrated. “It was so surprising. I knew he had it in him to be like that. He’s not the shy professor everyone thinks he is, you know? But I’d never seen him up in arms like that.”
“Yet he did, for her.” Dev sounded awed, then tugged Leaf’s hand to get them moving again, because Husky peeked at him from around a bend in the path. “We’re making the kids worry. Let’s go. What happened next?”
“The guy went to start the paperwork and we were left in that room with the puppy. Seth opened the crate and talked to her. At first she zoned out like we’d been told, but for some reason, Seth says he saw her kind of come online again. Like she looked at him from the corner of the crate and tried to decide whether he was worth it. It took us that fifteen minutes and then another fifteen to just get her to interact with us at all. As soon as she did, Seth took her out of the crate and carried her into the car.”
They were finally coming to the river and were greeted by the sight of the dogs wading in a shallow spot, drinking and—in Missy’s case—bouncing and splashing the other dogs.
Dev laughed at her antics, making her bound to them instead. He let go of Leaf’s hand and put the cooler down, then just cuddled the wet dog, seemingly not caring about his clothes getting soaked.
“You’re such a goofball, aren’t ya?” he cooed at her and roughhoused with her for a moment before sending her back to her pack.
“Wouldn’t believe she had that sort of a start, right?” Leaf looked at her play with Husky, smiling at the picture the happy dogs made in the stream.
“Did they have any thoughts on where she’d come from? And how did you get her to, you know, becomethis?” Dev asked as he picked up the cooler and pointed at the bridge in the distance. “It looks shallow enough here, but let’s go over that instead of getting our shoes wet?”
“Sure.” Leaf nodded and took the cooler from Dev. “My turn. Anyway, she’d been dumped at their door. Tied to the handle one night. They’d thought she was seriously injured because she seemed catatonic when they got to her, you know?”
“The shutting-herself-off thing?”
“Right. It was funny, almost, how quickly she became herself again. We decided to call her Missy, because we didn’t want to forget her roots and it seemed a good name in any case. By the time we were home, she actually ate some and walked around, glued to Seth’s foot. That lasted for a few days, and then she started to play with the others a bit.”
“Was she scared of them at first?”
“Not at all. We think she was just a neglect case and hadn’t been properly socialized or had at least been scared a lot by people. She doesn’t have any of the normal beaten-dog triggers either. She’s not afraid of sudden movements or gestures, and as I said, totally okay with other dogs. Grace took her under her wing and just showed her that she was safe. She turned into her goofy self in a few months, I think,” Leaf reminisced and smiled when the dogs came to them when they reached the bridge. “Go on, then, over the bridge. There’s a bit of a current around the bridges here with the water this high, so safer this way.”
“I like this river,” Dev said thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s really shallow at parts, but then deep enough for currents in others. It’s pretty neat. Gives a lot of options for stuff to do.”
“Yeah, there’s this spot upstream where they go swimming with the horses a lot. It’s more like a small lake that gets deep gradually and has a surprisingly firm bed.”
They crossed the bridge and walked a bit on the path leading away from the river.
“This one goes around those boulders on that small hill there. It comes back to the river then, closer to a bridge you can’t see from here.”
“A good picnic place somewhere around?” Dev looked at their surroundings, scanning the landscape thoughtfully.
“Yeah, we can sit on the smaller rocks on the hill. Around that tree, actually.” Leaf pointed at the large oak in the distance.
“Sound good!” Dev smiled at him, and off they went again.
They weren’t talking much on the way to the rest spot, mostly just taking in the scenery. Everything was so green and beautiful, and the partially cloudy sky gave some respite from the sun, which Leaf appreciated.
Soon they rounded the little hill and the boulders on top of it.
“Oh, that’s nice!” Dev walked around the bigger rocks, while Leaf went to the picnic spot by the tree.
Once upon a time, someone had moved a flat rock closer to the tree to serve as a table and made couple of benches out of what looked like very old yet sturdy wood. Leaf loved the spot and felt happy that Dev had chosen to go this way.
“So, I never asked, but how do you spell your name? Like the things plants have or like the Scandinavian name?”
“Leaf,” he said, smiling as he sat down on one of the benches. “As in the plant. My full name is Leaf Oakley DeWitt.”
“Very hippie, that,” Dev mused out loud, walking to him and rounding the bench even though he didn’t have to. It just seemed like he wanted to touch Leaf in passing, which he did by running one long-fingered hand up Leaf’s right arm, across his shoulders, and down his left arm. It felt nice.
Dev opened the cooler and took out some Tupperware, gesturing at Leaf to open them. The contents varied from cut-up fruit and cheese cubes, to what looked like homemade cinnamon-sugar cookies.
Dev unwrapped a couple of large sandwiches. “They’re both made with turkey. I hope that’s fine?”
