Page 7 of Sanctuary

“Honeycomb and Cash—did they come to you with those names?” Gabe asked and smirked slightly.

“Yes and no.” Lori gestured to the path and started walking again. “Beth named the horse Cash because he’s jet black.”

The way Gabe tilted her head slightly indicated she hadn’t made the obvious connection. Well, it was obvious to her and Beth anyway. “After Johnny Cash. He always wore black.” Lori shrugged, thinking that it sounded silly when she said it out loud. “She’s a big fan of old country music, or real country music, as she calls it.”

“I like a lot of the country artists from this century,” Gabe said. “Like Carrie Underwood. Miranda Lambert. Ashley McBryde. Kacey Musgraves. Kelsea Ballerini.”

“Hm, you have good taste,” she said. That was a lot of very beautiful women. Very feminine women. She stopped herself from asking if it was just their music she was so enamored with and tried to think of something Max-related to talk about. “Max has gotten himself quite the fanbase since he arrived.”

“You mean the kids on their field trips?”

Lori hid her surprise at Gabe’s knowledge. Had she done her homework on the Sanctuary, or had Toni told her all about their operation? “Oh no, Max isn’t ready to be with the children yet. I meant his TikTok fans.”

“Oh, of course. I watched some of your videos.”

Gabe smiled a little, and Lori swooned a little more. Some videos? Or all the videos? If Gabe had her own thirst trap TikTok channel, Lori would be all over it in the privacy of her bedroom. Had Gabe just been interested in where Max was staying? Or had her interest been piqued by Lori? “It’s a useful way to secure donations to help with our ongoing costs.”

“I saw the link to your website and all the stuff you need every week. It must be crazy hard to keep this place going.”

“It has its challenges, that’s for sure.” Lori stopped at the far end of the kennels. “This is Max,” she said, but there was no sign of him. “Oh.” Actually, there was his muzzle poking around the corner of his inner sanctum. And then his eyes. And the rest of his head. Lori’s heart raced, and she grabbed Gabe’s forearm without thinking, excited to see Max venturing out of his safety zone.

The flexing of strong muscle beneath her fingers drew her attention back to Gabe, and she withdrew her hand. “Sorry. I’m just so happy to see Max interested in something on the other side of that little door.”

“Definitely no need to apologize,” Gabe whispered.

Lori opened the gate slowly and ushered Gabe in, ignoring the husky tone of her response, and closed the gate behind her. Before Lori could give Gabe any instructions, Gabe had already dropped to her knees. “Hey, boy. It’s me,” she said gently. “Do you remember me?”

Oh, wonderful. An incredibly handsome butch carved out of God’s own granite, combined with a gentle heart of gold. The Almighty had sent this woman to torture her, that much was obvious. Lori pulled her gaze away from the wide expanse of Gabe’s back and glanced up the run. Max was inching his way out, his whole body shaking with the intensity of him sniffing the air.

“That’s right, boy. Come on out,” Gabe whispered. She sat down, stretched her legs out in front of her, and held her hands, palm up, on the ground. “You can do it, Max-a-million.”

Lori smiled at the same nickname she’d been using and wondered if that’s why Max had responded to her better than he had to Beth or anyone else. She crouched down herself and pulled in her breath, not wanting to do anything to spook him.

“Come on, Max-a-million.” Gabe eased back against the short brick wall that formed part of Max’s run. “Come say hi, old buddy. I want to see how your war wound’s doing.”

Gabe hadn’t asked Lori about the wound, but it had been fully healed before Max had even arrived at the Sanctuary and hadn’t been an issue. His mental war wounds were the thing she and the rest of her team had been most worried about.

Max was fully visible and in his run now, and Lori had to tamp down the urge to open the gate and join them. This wasn’t her moment; it was theirs. Two war heroes reunited. It was the kind of thing they made movies and wrote books about; who didn’t love a human/dog friendship that had survived the trauma of battle? But this was going to be a short-lived reunion, and she couldn’t help the stab of sadness at that notion, though she couldn’t say with total authority that her emotion was purely for Max and not for selfish reasons. Eye candy like Gabe didn’t come along on a regular basis, and even though Lori was in no position mentally or emotionally to delve into anything deeper, having a hunk like her visiting on a weekly basis until Max was ready for a normal civilian life wouldn’t hurt.

“Who’s my brave boy?” Gabe whispered as Max took a few more tentative steps forward, still sniffing the air like crazy. “You know it’s me, Maxi. Trust your nose.”

Lori nodded slowly. Gabe had somehow divined exactly what was happening with her canine colleague: he’d been having a crisis of confidence in his instincts. And then it was like a switch flicked in Max’s mind, and he quickened his pace until he was almost within touching distance of Gabe. He dropped to his belly and stretched out his neck until his nose touched the middle finger of Gabe’s left hand. She didn’t move at all, impressing Lori still further, and Lori held her breath for fear that even a loud puff of air might make him bolt back to his kennel area.

“Hey, buddy. Have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you?”

At Gabe’s quiet words, Max stuck out his tongue and ran it along the length of her palm, like the taste of her would confirm her identity. It must’ve done exactly that because he immediately drew himself closer to Gabe, sitting to attention and as close to her as he could without actually sitting on her. Lori had no doubt that Gabe’s thighs would be more than strong enough to take the pressure of all eighty pounds of the pooch, but she suspected that might be a level of affection and familiarity that wasn’t encouraged in the Army. Not that she really knew, of course. Almost every dog or horse that had left the Sanctuary had gone to regular civilian homes, and she’d had little contact with actual Government personnel, other than when they dropped the animals off with her.

Still, Lori decided that since Max had shown that he was happy to see Gabe, she should give them some time together. “I’m going back to the house. When you’re ready, just make sure you close the gate properly, okay? I’ll have the lemonade and some homemade cookies waiting for you.”

Gabe glanced across at her briefly and nodded, the joy of the reunion shining through in her grin. “I can stay a while? You’re not in a hurry to close up?”

“No hurry, I don’t have any plans,” she said and backed away quickly to head up the path. For Pete’s sake, why tell her that? For the few minutes it had taken Max to emerge from his kennel, Lori had just about managed not to have sexy thoughts about her visitor. Now she was back to oversharing. The fact that she had no plans on a Saturday night, even with friends, tugged at that part of her she’d been valiantly trying to hide away. She hadn’t been out with Rosie for about three months since their last night out turned into an unauthorized double date. Lori hadn’t forgiven her. Nor did she trust her not to try it again. Which was what Rosie’s visit a couple of days ago had been about: a night out with a promise not to push Lori into anyone else’s arms.

She got back to the house, pushed the door closed behind her, and rested her head on its stained-glass window. The warmth felt nice, but she pushed away from it at the memory it evoked: the last time she’d done that had been when she closed the door on the lawyer as she left with all of her belongings and half of everything else. Half their tableware, cutlery, even three of the dining table chairs. Lori had glibly suggested they flipped a coin to see who would get to keep the actual table, but the lawyer had pulled up a spreadsheet on her iPad with the costings of every single thing they had ever bought together. She’d pointed to the matching sideboard, which apparently was exactly the same price, and suggested that Lori keep that while she took the table. By that time, Lori had lost the will to fight over furniture and simply let the lawyer take whatever she wanted.

She took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly, completing the box breathing her therapist had suggested she try whenever she had these kinds of thoughts. Chocolate cherry cookies. Lori headed to her kitchen to bake, something that always cleared her head better than any breathing exercise.

It was two hours later when Lori heard a knock on her front door. She made last-minute adjustments to the freshly baked assortment of cookies on her new dining table before letting Gabe in. Her well-pressed gray marl T-shirt that Lori had admired earlier—though obviously, it was what was underneath that she had actually admired—now looked like Gabe had been rolling around in the muck of Lori’s stables.

---