For Keeps Read online

  Blue Sky Farm was currently home to two stallions, eleven broodmares, and an ever-changing number of weanlings and yearlings. Jewel’s foal would be the fifth and last born this year. T.J. missed being a bigger part of things here, working daily with Blue Sky’s many horses. Someday, when he had a wife and family of his own to help out, he hoped to grow his own herd.

  His father stepped out of the office and tipped his hat. “Hey, T.J.”

  “Hi, Dad.” T.J. unlatched Jewel’s stall door and eyed the sorrel beauty inside. The mare raised her head and gazed at him with her warm doe-eyes, her coat gleaming in a shaft of afternoon sunlight as ruby red as her name indicated. She nickered, then sauntered over to check his palm for treats.

  He fed her a carrot as he ran a palm over her swollen middle. Beneath his fingers, the foal gave a strong kick that caused Jewel to snort in discomfort.

  “Big, strong baby in there, Miss Jewel. You done good, girl.” He slid his hand over her rump, feeling along the base of her spine. Her ligaments were loose, soft, to allow the foal to pass through. He bent to check her bag of milk. As his mom indicated, she was full.

  She snorted again, pawing at her bedding. Yep, tonight could very well be the night. His father had birthed many foals, but Jewel was a maiden mother, and a nervous one at that. Perhaps T.J. should stay the night, just in case. It gave him an excuse to have his mother’s homemade biscuits and eggs for breakfast, at any rate.

  “Can’t wait to see this one,” Trace commented from the doorway. With Jewel’s exquisite coloring and fine lineage, combined with Blue’s athleticism and soundness, the foal should be a showstopper, for sure.

  “Going to be a beauty,” he agreed.

  While he was there, his dad asked him to check on another mare who’d cut herself in the pasture. By the time he’d finished in the barn, supper was ready and Noah sat at the table, staring into his empty bowl.

  “Hey, Bud. How’s the head feeling?” T.J. ruffled his hair gently on his way to the sink to wash up.

  Noah shrugged. When he wanted to, the boy spoke just fine. The struggle was motivating him to. Unless the topic was Legos or dogs, he tended to stay locked inside his own head.

  Noah picked at the frayed sleeves of his shirt, a nervous habit. He’d pick at his sleeves until they unraveled rather than engage in conversation.

  T.J. would move heaven and earth to get his nephew talking, to help him overcome the social limitations of his autism. And the first step was finding a therapy dog for his camp.

  * * *

  Merry stared in horror at the gash on Salsa’s shoulder. The puppy shook and cried, thrusting her head into Merry’s lap for sympathy. This was a disaster. Not the cut itself, because she dealt with worse on a daily basis at work. But financially?

  Oh, crap.

  Salsa needed stitches and antibiotics.

  “Oh, you poor clumsy puppy.” She kissed the little dog’s forehead and held her steady as she cleaned the wound with an antiseptic wipe, then wrapped a bandage around the injured shoulder. She and Chip had been wrestling in the backyard when Salsa turned a somersault, knocked over a ceramic flowerpot, and sliced herself open on one of the broken shards.

  Amber watched from the patio, silent and stoic as usual, while Ralph and Chip crowded close, sniffing at their wounded comrade and making sympathetic sounds. Salsa, not being either silent or stoic, let out a series of high-pitched cries, milking her injury for all it was worth.

  “All right, you. Lucky I already have the vet on speed dial.”

  Thirty minutes later, they were in Dr. Johnson’s office. Salsa, little squealer that she was, was taken in back to be sedated and stitched while Merry sat in the waiting room and fretted. Not about Salsa. No, her accident-prone puppy would be fine.

  But Merry didn’t get paid until the end of the week. The rescue’s credit card was still maxed out, and her personal card was dangerously close to the limit. She’d never been in this much financial trouble before, and it terrified her.

  She swallowed over her fear and sent a text message to her supervisor, Diana, to see if there were any overtime opportunities coming up. She’d take any shift she could get.

  Desperate, she accessed the rescue’s Facebook page from her cell phone and typed out a quick plea for funds to help pay for Salsa’s stitches. This was embarrassing, having to beg for help with each vet bill. She noticed three new postings on the page, from followers.

  Intrigued, she clicked on the first one. A woman was inquiring about how to surrender her eight-year-old male boxer. He’d developed a heart condition, and she could no longer afford to care for him. Merry’s temper spiked straight to red. She wanted to reach inside her phone and wrap her hands around that woman’s throat.

  The very nerve.

  Later, when she’d calmed down, she would see if she could finagle a foster home for the soon-to-be-abandoned senior. As much as she wanted to help, available foster homes were as hard to come by as money for her vet bills at the moment. That poor dog. Old, sick, and unloved.

  The next message was from someone advertising a litter of puppies for sale.

  “Asshole,” she blurted, then mumbled an apology when the woman next to her gave her a dirty look. Oops.

  She deleted the inappropriate message and sent the offender a quick reminder about the purpose of Triangle Boxer Rescue and its Facebook page. Advertising the sale of any dog or puppy went explicitly against their mission.

  Now thoroughly disgusted, she left Facebook and tapped her foot impatiently on the floor. Screw social media. Hopefully the adoption event at Perry’s Pet Boutique on Friday would introduce her to some new potential volunteers and supporters.

  A volunteer would be sketching caricatures of dogs and their families to benefit the rescue, and one of her foster families had put together a basket of doggy goodies for her to raffle off. She hoped to raise several hundred dollars by the end of the day.

  It wasn’t an answer to her long-term problem though. She needed a much bigger influx of money to replace what she’d lost and get Triangle Boxer Rescue safely afloat. How had she managed a rescue for six years without learning how to fund-raise? She was an embarrassment to her own cause.

  The door opened, and Dr. Johnson came into the waiting room. “She’s all patched up. It only took two stitches. You’ll be able to remove them in about two weeks.”

  “Great.” Merry followed him into the exam room and closed the door behind them. Yes, as a nurse, she was certainly capable of removing stitches, and anything that saved a vet bill was a win in her book.

  “We gave her a mild sedative to keep her calm during the procedure, so she’ll be a little woozy for a few hours.”

  Merry laughed, imagining her sweet, crazy puppy on drugs. “That should be fun.”

  Dr. Johnson smiled broadly. “She’s a feisty one, that Salsa. Tell her no more gymnastics near breakable pottery.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  While she waited for the tech to bring Salsa out, she checked quickly to see if any donations had come in from her Facebook plea. They hadn’t, but someone else had inquired about surrendering a dog. Damn social media to hell and back.

  The door opened and Salsa stumbled into the room, her nub a blur of excitement, her eyes droopy and unfocused.

  “Oh, look at you! You poor, adorable thing.” Merry bent and scooped her up. At forty-five pounds, Salsa had nearly outgrown Merry’s arms. In another month, she’d have to walk herself to the car, wounded or not.

  They headed to the front desk, and Merry set her down as the vet tech rang up the damage. Salsa curled over her feet, uncharacteristically mellow following her ordeal.

  “Your total for the exam, sedation, stitches, and antibiotics comes to two hundred thirty-five dollars.”

  Merry’s stomach soured. “And that includes the rescue discount?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “And Dr. Johnson gives you an extra discount for being such a frequent customer.”

 
Ha! That was sweet, if unfortunate.

  Reluctantly, she handed over her personal card. She’d never hesitated to spend her own money when the situation demanded, but this month, she’d gotten way over her head. She flinched as he swiped the card.

  The machine beeped. He frowned and swiped it again. The pit of Merry’s stomach dropped to her feet.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but your card’s been declined.”

  Crap. “Uhh, Dr. Johnson sometimes lets me run a tab until I can make a payment. Can you just check with him?”

  It was true. He’d let her run a tab a few times when the rescue’s card was full. In fact, she already owed him over four hundred dollars. Double crap.

  “Merry,” Dr. Johnson came up behind the desk, his brow furrowed, “you can add today’s bill to your tab, but I need you to start paying it down by the end of the week, and no more until your balance is cleared. I want to help, and you know how much I value what you do for these dogs, but times are tough here too. I have my own bills and employees to pay.”

  Her cheeks burned. “Of course. I’ll make a payment by Friday, I promise, and thank you so much for your understanding.”

  She stumbled into the parking lot with Salsa and tucked the puppy into the backseat, then slumped into the front and rested her head against the steering wheel. Merry had grown up in a double-wide trailer. She and her dad had eaten spaghetti or baked beans most nights to make ends meet. As soon as she’d been old enough, she’d taken any job she could get to help pay the bills.

  Times had been tight, but they’d always paid their way.

  She wasn’t about to change that now.

  A thousand-dollar donation from T. J. Jameson would pay off the rescue’s current debt, with a little left over to make it through the rest of the month.

  Much as she loathed the prospect, it was time to get down on her knees and grovel for the chance to sweat her butt off at his summer camp.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  T.J. gave Tango a nudge with his heels and sat back as the horse galloped across the field, his gait smooth and supple as well-worn leather. Tango’s chestnut mane billowed in the wind, and his hooves thumped rhythmically against the earth.

  This was T.J.’s stress relief. He’d never been much of a drinker, and more often than not lately, he’d had no one to share his bed, so he turned to his horse when he needed to leave the world behind for a while.

  They approached the stream at the far edge of his property, and Tango slowed to a walk. T.J. rolled his shoulders and leaned back in the saddle.

  Jewel had indeed foaled last night, keeping him and his dad up most of the night. She’d been nervous, which had caused her labor to progress more slowly, but eventually she’d given birth to a beautiful filly. The filly had her mother’s stunning chestnut coloration, which had earned her the nickname Ruby.

  Tango walked along the edge of the stream, head down and relaxed. He snorted his satisfaction about the afternoon excursion.

  T.J. tipped his head to the sky, a beautiful Carolina blue. An hour ago, he’d met with John Wheeler, the psychiatrist with a therapy dog. The man had shown up in a bow tie and polished loafers. His dog, some kind of terrier, cowered when T.J. bent to pet it. He might not know much about dogs, but he knew that was a bad sign.

  Which meant he was back at square one, with camp starting in four days.

  He rode Tango through the woods and around the property in a loop, coming in from the East. Twilight and Peaches whinnied loudly as they caught sight of him. Tango let out an answering call, his gait quickening.

  T.J. lifted his hat to wipe his brow, then squinted at the silver SUV parked next to his truck. As he and Tango approached, he saw Merry Atwater leaning against the rear bumper, Ralph at her feet. She wore a green knit skirt and black top, her curls wild and loose about her shoulders.

  Ralph stood at attention, his eyes riveted on the horse walking toward him. Probably he’d never seen a horse before. John Wheeler’s dog had bolted when one of the horses approached the fence. He was curious to see Ralph’s reaction.

  The dog didn’t move, never taking his eyes off Tango. T.J.’s mount was no more familiar with dogs than the dog was with a horse. Tango lowered his head and blew through his nostrils, an equine hello.

  The hair along Ralph’s spine rose, but still he didn’t budge.

  “It’s okay,” Merry said softly. “Go greet.”

  Cautiously, he extended his nose and sniffed at Tango. The horse snorted again, and Ralph jumped back, but just as quickly he sprang forward, fascinated by the beast before him.

  “Merry.” T.J. tipped his hat.

  “T.J.” She looked up at him, squinting against the sun, her eyes reflecting the mossy green tones of her skirt. Dangerously gorgeous.

  “What brings you out this way?” he asked.

  “Well, I just did a home visit not too far from here, and I thought I’d stop by and see if you’d found a dog trainer yet for your camp.” She still leaned against the back of her SUV, one sandaled foot crossed over the other.

  “Why? You interested?”

  She shrugged. “I like your nephew, and he certainly seemed to hit it off with Ralph.” She glanced down at the dog, currently sniffing noses with Tango. Ralph’s tail stub wagged so fast it was a blur.

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “Maybe I was a little too pushy the first time we spoke. If you’re still looking, maybe you could give me a second chance.”

  Her demeanor was casual, but there was an edge to her tone. Merry Atwater didn’t strike him as the type of girl who came asking for second chances. David Johnson had mentioned her rescue was hard up for money. Perhaps she was in worse shape than he’d realized.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Look, Ralph’s amazing. You won’t find a better dog to work with your kids. If you’re still willing to honor the donation you promised on Monday, I’d be happy to bring him and be a part of your camp. I can promise he’ll deliver the impact you’re looking for.”

  “Just Ralph?”

  She nodded. “If that’s what you want, but will you at least hear me out on my reasoning for wanting to involve several foster dogs as well?”

  “Still listening.” He shifted in the saddle. Merry wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but he saw now that she and Ralph could carry out his vision. The foster dogs would be a harder sell.

  “Did you know that Ralph was a shelter dog?” she asked.

  “No.” T.J. looked down at the dog before him. He looked to be a perfect specimen, gorgeous lines and flawless demeanor. Not his idea of a shelter mutt in the least.

  “I rescued him when he was two years old, starved and neglected. When we bring a dog into rescue, they undergo a full behavioral test to check for any signs of aggression. Any dog that’s to be around children is put under even more scrutiny. The dogs I have in mind for the program are all currently in foster homes. Two of them are five-month-old puppies.

  “Imagine what it could do for the kids’ self-esteem to help train them. It’s a huge feeling of accomplishment to teach a dog a new command. I think that’s as important to what you’re trying to accomplish as having them interact with Ralph. Let them be a part of something bigger and even more rewarding.”

  T.J. sat for a moment, pondering her words. “That sounds great in theory, but I still think it’s too risky to have shelter dogs around the kids.”

  “Stop thinking of them as shelter dogs. They’re foster dogs now. They’re all living in homes. They’ve been screened for any signs of aggression or other behavioral problems that could affect their ability to participate in camp.”

  “I don’t know…”

  She cocked her head. “I can arrange for you to meet all of the potential dogs ahead of time. No dog enters the program without your approval.”

  Dammit, he really hated having his opinion swayed, but she made a good argument for her cause.

  “Why don’t I bring a couple of dogs out to meet you and Noah
and see what you think?”

  He rubbed his neck. “Well, I guess that couldn’t hurt.”

  “The two puppies I mentioned are my own fosters. They’re adorable. The kids would love helping to train them.”

  That was probably true. “You have three dogs?”

  “Four actually, but only Ralph is mine. The others are fosters. Three is my usual limit, but I’ve inherited a stray dog this week, and we’re short on foster homes at the moment.” She looked up with those big, bottomless eyes, and T.J.’s gut clenched.

  “Oh, hell no. I’m not fostering a dog for you.”

  “Just one or two? It would be a logistical nightmare trying to get dogs from different foster homes out here every morning.”

  “I don’t keep dogs in my house.”

  Merry didn’t back down. “I have the perfect dog for you. He’s two years old, completely housebroken, very well behaved. You’d hardly know he was here.”

  “No.”

  “Just let me bring him and the other dogs by and introduce them to you and Noah. See what you think.”

  T.J. swung down from the saddle to face her directly. “Bring them tomorrow, but I’m not making any promises.”

  Merry’s chin lifted. “Okay.”

  “The trainer I had originally hired was going to bring an assistant with her. You’re talking about bringing a lot of dogs out here. Do you have an assistant?” He needed another adult to make sure the children were fully supervised, and while he could probably beg his mom to come and help, if Merry wanted to bring her shelter dogs, then she needed to provide supervision for them as well.

  These were kids with special needs, and he had to ensure their safety on his farm. He also needed to secure their parents’ confidence in his vision. Already it looked bad that his first trainer quit before camp started. He couldn’t afford another mark against the credibility of Camp Blue Sky.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you agree to foster at least one of the dogs, I’ll bring a second person with me to help out.”