Conrad met Kenzie’s gaze, about to tell her that he wasn’t the man for this job, but the pleading look in those blue eyes stopped him. “Okay, but don’t hold it against me if she flunks out of rescue school.”
Kenzie jumped up, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek. “Thanks so much, Harrison! You’re a life-saver.”
No. No, he wasn’t. But he could at least help Kenzie with this.
“Can you help me carry her stuff inside?”
“Yeah, okay.” How much stuff could a little puppy have?
Chapter 3
Kenzie hated lying to Harrison.Not that this was a bad lie. She was trying to help him. Still, what she’d told him wasn’t true.
She carried a box of puppy toys and the bag of puppy food inside and set them down in the kitchen. Then she went out to grab the bag of groceries she’d bought for him and put the salad veggies, meat, seafood, cheese, milk, and eggs in the prehistoric mint-green fridge. “Does this thing even work?”
Harrison saw what she was doing. He glanced into the bag from Food Mart, a frown on his face. “What’s all this?”
“It’s called ‘food.’ Most people keep it around.”
“You didn’t need to do that.”
“I can’t have you eating Gabby’s kibble.”
“Funny.” Harrison glanced around, the sight of him without a shirt almost enough to make Kenzie drool. “I had no idea a puppy needed so many things.”
Those hairless pecs. That six-pack. His shoulders and biceps. Silky, tanned skin.
She swallowed. “You think that’s a lot?”
There wasn’t that much—just Gabby’s crate, her car carrier, her training harnesses and leads, her grooming supplies, her food and water bowls, her toys, her treats, her puppy food, her favorite blanket.
He grinned. “You don’t?”
It was the first real smile she’d gotten from him since he’d come back, and it put a flutter in her belly. “I guess I’m used to it.”
She’d written down instructions for Gabby’s care to make things easier for him. She pulled the pages out of the bag of puppy food and was about to go over them with Harrison when he decided it was time to gather up the pizza boxes and take them out to his recycling bin. He disappeared outside, a stack of pizza boxes in his arms, returning a minute later.
“That’s better.” He scooped Gabby up and sat at the table with her in his lap. “Okay, go ahead.”
But Kenzie was in the middle of a hormonal meltdown, the sight of little Gabby against Harrison’s bare chest making her ovaries squeal.
How was she supposed to get through this?
She forced her gaze onto the page and read the sections about feeding and crate training first, fighting to stay focused. “Give her a treat every time she goes into the crate. She’ll sleep there at night. She might cry a bit, but she’s okay. Don’t take her out and put her in your bed. That will only make the problem worse.”
“Got it.”
“When you let her out of her crate, always take her straight outside to go potty. That way, she’ll come to associate leaving the crate with going outside to do her thing.”
“Won’t she just go potty in the crate?”
Kenzie shook her head. “She’ll try very hard not to. That’s why you have to pay attention. Little puppies can’t hold it very long. I’ve been taking her out right before I go to bed at night and then putting her in her crate with a treat and her toy afterward. She usually wakes me up at about four in the morning needing to go out again, and then she lets me sleep until about six or seven.”
“Six or seven? So, she’s your alarm clock.”
Kenzie laughed. “A furry clock that doesn’t come with a snooze button.”
Harrison gave a slight frown, clearly not certain how to feel about the fact that he’d be getting up early for the foreseeable future.
