professional, wearing a lacy white blouse and a pale blue skirt.
She smiled a greeting for the children and Ian was uncomfortably aware of a curious twitch in his chest.
“Good morning, Amelia. Thomas. I’m so happy to see you. This must mean you’ve agreed to help me out with my puppies.”
“We are. Dad just told us about it this morning.” Amelia’s voice seemed to vibrate with excitement, as if she couldn’t contain it all inside.
“Oh, I’m so glad. I can’t tell you what a big help this will be to me. Come in. You’re just in time. I was about to prepare breakfast for the puppies. I’ll do this before I leave every day so you won’t have to worry about it, but it’s fun to watch them eat.”
She scooped food from a large storage container into a rectangular bowl, filled another one with water and then carried them into a small room where the puppies were contained by a gate.
The three little puppies, no more than a few pounds each, attacked the food like they were wild coyotes on a fresh carcass.
“They’re so cute,” Thomas said, enthralled.
Samantha stood next to Ian, the children in front of them, and he found himself painfully aware of her. She smelled delicious. He couldn’t place the scent exactly. Berries and lemons with a sweeter note he couldn’t quite identify. Whatever it was, he wanted to bury his face in her hair and simply inhale.
He held himself stiffly, doing his best to ignore the urge as they watched the puppies for a few moments. He was relieved when she finally headed toward her kitchen.
“Here’s a key to my house.” She held out a key on a sparkly pink lanyard. Amelia reached for it, but before her hand could connect, Samantha held it out of her reach.
“Wait a minute. Before I give you my house key, I forgot to ask. Are you secretly a mysterious band of traveling house burglars who want to steal all my tiaras?”
Thomas and Amelia giggled.
“No, silly,” Thomas said. “We’re just two children.”
“Your father’s not a child.”
She sent him a look under her lashes and Ian could feel his face heat. Hunger flared again and he wanted to wrap his arms around her and press her against the kitchen cabinets, kissing her until neither of them could think straight.
Where in the hell was this coming from? This wasn’t him at all.
“He’s not a burglar, either,” Amelia assured her. “He’s our dad and he’s usually very nice.”
“Unless you leave your toys on the floor for him to trip over,” Thomas said thoughtfully.
“Or stay up late reading when you’ve promised to turn off the light,” Amelia added.
“Good to know,” Samantha said with a slanted smile in his direction that left him slightly dizzy.
“You can trust Amelia and Thomas,” he said gruffly. “You won’t find two nicer, kinder, more responsible children anywhere.”
His words must have been the right ones. She gave him a startled look first, as if he had said something completely unexpected, which quickly turned into a blinding smile that made him feel as if his head was spinning.
“That’s good enough for me, then.” She handed over an index card covered in a neat, flowing script. “Here is everything I need you to do. As I said, I will feed them breakfast before I go so you won’t have to worry about that. I thought perhaps you could check on them once around noon and once more a little later, if you’re around. If you’re not, don’t worry about it. Just text or call me so I can come home or send someone from the boutique.”
“Should we take them outside?” Amelia asked.
“They would enjoy that very much. Perhaps on sunny days you can take them out to their pen in the afternoon so they can play in the grass.”
“Would you like us to take them on walks?” Amelia asked eagerly.
“For now, they get enough exercise in here, playing with each other. If you’d like to walk them around the yard that would be fine but it isn’t necessary. I should warn you that they’re not very good on leashes yet. If you decide to do that, you can find leashes for them hanging inside the room where I keep the puppies.”
“All right.”
“Let’s see. What else? They love to play with toys. Balls and sticks are their favorite.”
“Got it,” Amelia said.
“The gate on the door to their room opens by pushing the button on the top, then swinging it inside the room. If you