Page 31 of Architect's Christmas Nanny

“Keep in touch,” she called to Brad before heading to her car with Helena in tow.

And then Brad was standing alone in the parking lot with a dog on the end of a leash. It hit him that he had chosen and bonded with this animal all by himself, without Josie having so much as laid eyes on it. But he wasn’t worried.

“She’s going to love you,” he told Moose, knowing somehow that it was true. “Ready to go home?”

The big dog wagged his tail and smiled up at Brad, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, like he was telling him to stop being so serious.

Brad couldn’t help smiling back and patting that broad head again.

When he opened one of the doors to the backseat, Moose leaped right in, moving with a surprising grace for such a big dog.

Brad got himself into the car too, and looked in the rearview mirror to see Moose gazing back at him, an expectant expression in his intelligent eyes.

“Yes,” Brad told him. “We’re going home now.”

He drove as carefully as he could on the winding roads home. They would have to get a harness or a crate or something if Moose was going to go on a lot of car trips with them. It suddenly hit him that he never asked if the dog was good in the car, and he glanced in the rearview mirror again, hoping he wasn’t about to see the poor thing get sick.

But Moose was just looking out the window, his mouth open with what Brad could only imagine was a rapturous smile.

“You like going for rides, huh?” he asked.

Moose snapped his mouth closed and tilted his head to the side again, like he was very serious about understanding what Brad wanted.

“It’s all good,” Brad told him. “Good boy.”

Moose panted out a relieved breath and turned his attention to the window again. Brad shook his head and tried to plan out exactly what to do first when they got home.

It was hard not to wonder if Jillian would be there. He knew how happy she would be when she saw that he had made Josie’s dream come true. As he pulled into thehomestead, he tried to imagine what she would say when she saw the new family member.

When the SUV was parked, he got out and headed back to get Moose. He was relieved to find that the big dog waited politely for him to take hold of the leash, instead of trying to streak past him and disappear into the trees.

Moose held his snout high, huffing in breaths, like he could taste everything about his new home on the cold air.

“Come on,” Brad told him. “Let’s go find Jillian.”

Moose leaped out, landing without a sound on the ground beside Brad.

He was so well-mannered on the leash that Brad grabbed the big bag of food out of the back too, and swung it over his shoulder before heading down the little path to the house.

“Hey,” he called out when he opened the front door. “Come meet our new roommate.”

But there was no reply, and no sign of Jillian.

Shaking his head, he led the dog into the kitchen and placed the food on the table.

He had no right to expect it, but normally Jillian worked around the house while Josie was at school, putting up holiday decorations, watering plants, or baking cookies. It was strange to come home to a house that really felt empty.

This is how it’s going to be once she goes…

“Oh my goodness, who is this?” her familiar voice cried from the dining room.

Moose wagged his tail and sat down politely to greether as Brad felt a wave of warmth in his heart at the sight of his favorite grown-up in the world.

“This is Moose,” he told her as she crouched down to pat and croon over the new family member. “I just went to the shelter to find out what we would need to do to get Josie a dog. But there was a lady there trying to surrender him and… well, it all just happened so fast.”

“He’sperfect,”Jillian murmured. “He’s absolutely positively just the right friend for Josie. She’s going tolove you, Moose.”

Moose gave her a big, sloppy kiss on the cheek, making her giggle. And Brad felt another wave of warmth and relief.

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