Open Your Heart (Kings Grove #4) - Delancey Stewart Page 0,88

had missed the last three because of Johnny. And I hadn’t seen my brother at the holidays in years.

“We’ll see, okay?”

I sighed. “Okay.”

I hung up and forced my thoughts from the darkness that swirled around my family and our problems, and found that my mind naturally went to its happy place—images of a tall blond Australian man who I couldn’t seem to get out of my head, and who I’d basically steamrolled into both dog training and helping with the winter festival.

As ten o’clock neared the following day, I wondered if I’d set myself up to be stood up. Tuck had tried to tell me no, and I’d refused to hear it. What had I been thinking?

Forceful and demanding was definitely not my normal attitude around men. To be honest, I had no normal attitude around men. I was just me, and a place like Kings Grove didn’t offer a lot of opportunity to practice seduction skills.

There were some single men, and I’d dated here and there. But no one had really caught my eye in years, and my job kept me busy and satisfied the part of me that needed to pour affection and love on others—I saw plenty of puppies, foals, kittens and rabbits in my line of work, and no one seemed to mind if you went in for an extra snuggle or two while you were giving shots or checking on something else. Fuzzy snuggles had been enough for me most of the time.

Until Tuck showed up.

I ran my fingers over my own dog’s smooth brown coat, smiling back at her as she turned adoring dark eyes on me. “You’re enough, aren’t you, Hattie?” I crooned. “I don’t need any tall hot Aussies around. We’re good on our own, isn’t that right?”

“If that’s the case, maybe I’ll just take these girls and head back up to my place then.” Tuck’s voice was full of mirth and it wrapped itself around me, warming me even in my complete humiliation.

I bolted to my feet and spun around, realizing I knew better than to sit with my back to the road when I was expecting someone. I dropped my hands on the railing I’d had my back against, and tried to look casual, but Tuck stood no more than two feet away, and his grin told me he heard what I’d said about ‘hot Aussies.’ Perfect. “Hey there, Tuck,” I said, my voice sounding like an operatic squirrel was stuck in my throat. My cheeks were flaming.

“Annie,” he said, still grinning.

“I was just, ah… I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

“Ten a.m.,” he said.

For once his dogs sat obediently and quietly at his feet and I wondered how they’d managed to sneak up on me like that. These dogs were not exactly stealthy most of the time. “Okay then,” I said, finally pulling myself back together. “Let’s tire the girls out a bit and then I’ll tell you about the festival, okay?”

The grin was finally fading and I was thankful that Tuck seemed to be planning to let me off the hook. “Sure.”

“Let’s start with a few basic commands that will be useful at home, then we’ll move to some loose leash training. Why don’t you bring the girls up on the deck?”

The ‘girls’ were exuberant little butt-wagging balls of fur, just beginning to develop the lanky athletic limbs of the typical Australian Shepherd. They were both tricolor varieties, so they had brown, white and black faces with expressive “eyebrows’ and a blaze down their noses of white. Their paws were mostly white, along with their chests, and their backs were mostly black, with a little brown here and there.

“Have you worked on ‘sit’?” I asked Tuck, trying hard to avoid direct eye contact.

“Annie, I’ve let them do whatever they do naturally. We better start at the very beginning here.”

I nodded and we got to work, teaching the dogs to sit and stay while Hattie looked on with interest. Tuck’s dogs were full of personality, much like him, I guessed. Zappy liked to add a little something extra to each command she obeyed — sitting came with one paw off the ground, and staying was an approximate stay, but she liked to creep slowly forward. Yoga Pants was a little more by the book, reveling in the praise we lavished on her when she performed as expected.

After thirty minutes of training, the dogs were starting to show signs of tiring, so I gave them each a treat and we let