Spooning Leads to Forking (Hot in the Kitchen #2) - Kilby Blades Page 0,69
saw had to have been taken when Dev was a teenager. His clothes were dated and his face had baby fat; his eyes were bright and his cheeks had a flush to them that held the vitality of youth. Whereas Dev seemed just as tall in height as he was now, Butch was just a puppy.
“My mom was allergic, so we could never have a dog. I still remember the day Pete took me to the pound to get him. He told me his house was my house, too, and if I wanted a dog to live with me in my house, I could damn well have myself a dog.”
Shea’s smile grew even wider. She hadn’t taken her eyes off of the screen. “Both of you were really cute.”
Dev cast her a sidelong glance and raised an eyebrow. “Past tense?”
She nudged him with her elbow then handed back the phone. Things fell silent between them for minutes of the drive as they took long, meandering roads—a comfortable silence that felt full of reflection.
As they pulled up to the house, Shea put her hand over Dev’s and gave him a little smile. “Maybe there will be two cancellations and she’ll have two dogs.”
“Are you a hugger?”
The door to Brody’s house flew open to reveal who could be none other than Jess, dog breeder and police dog trainer extraordinaire. Never in a million years would Shea have expected the woman who stood in front of her. With Brody being as serious and strait-laced as he was, Shea had expected someone more subdued. In an instant, Shea judged their marriage as a textbook case of “opposites attract.”
“Um…yes.” Shea replied a beat too late after she got over the initial shock. In any case, Jess hadn’t awaited her answer. She was already on tiptoe greeting Dev. In quick succession, Shea received her own tight hug.
“I feel like I already know you,” Jess announced after she pulled back. “The way Dev talked about you on the phone, I knew you just had to have one of my dogs. He told me ‘bout that big, glass house with all the forest behind it and that big ol’ back lawn, and all the time you’ll have to spend with Klaus, and how you need a good companion and all.”
“Klaus?” Shea repeated.
“That’s just her puppy name, but if you like her, she’ll be your dog. She’s still young enough that she’ll be flexible to new conditioning. You can call her anything you want. You know anything about Belgian Malinois?”
It was hard to get a word in edgewise. Jess seemed to talk in one long sentence.
“I looked them up a little online,” Shea said.
Brody’s house was on a nice piece of land with the house near the front of the property. Jess had walked them in a labyrinthine way that revealed rooms without a whisper of a man’s touch. Shea found that she kind of loved it. there were furry rug and cursive-colored pillow shams embroidered with cute sayings and dozens of other rather feminine baubles.
“Great breed,” Jess said offhandedly as the trio spilled out of the kitchen and into the back, revealing a spacious plot of land. Kennels could be seen in the distance—at least an acre back. They were well-spaced and the operation looked professional. What looked like a training course was fenced in, half an acre forth in another part of the yard.
“Now, Klaus is three weeks old, but our protocol for transitioning her to you would be a bit different. Domestic pets usually stay with the breeder for six to eight weeks. Since we train for law enforcement, we usually keep our dogs longer. We provide them with the foundations to become strong working dogs.
“The training Klaus might need would be less extreme. Even if you’re just looking for personal safety, I’d want to work with you and Klaus for a while.” At some point, Shea tuned Jess’s exhaustive detail out. And it was fine that Shea did. Jess ended up volleying dog talk back and forth with a very excited Dev.
“That’s one fine-looking pup,” Dev said once they finally reached their mark.
All the while as Jess was talking, she was walking them toward the shade of a tree where a set of gates had been arranged to form a pen. There were blankets at the base and Shea couldn’t help but to bend over excitedly to peer in. To her surprise, she was met with not one, but two, dogs.