Page 70 of A Line in the Sand
“Skippy is a last-minute substitution. Violet volunteered to come and train Sprinkles, but she got a last-minute order to bake one hundred cupcakes by tomorrow morning. I didn’t think five dogs would be enough, and Larry graciously agreed to step in with Skippy,” Molly said.
Max took another glance at the cat, who looked like a puff of gray fur with startling sea-blue eyes. She let out a loud meow, prompting an explosion of barks from her fellow trainees.
Max could practically feel the grant money slipping between his fingers like sand through a sieve.
“All right, folks.” Sam clapped his hands, and the dogs quieted down. “Let’s get started.”
For the next hour, Sam showed the handlers how to introduce their pets to the sample scent. Every time a dog touched its nose to one of the small metal containers where he’d stored the sand that Max had excavated from the turtle nest, the handler said “turtle,” clicked the training clicker, and gave the dog a treat. In the beginning, chaos reigned. Unsurprisingly, Skippy’s presence proved to be a major distraction. But Max had to hand it to the Persian—she was the first animal to earn a reward for smelling the sample scent.
Max tried to get a read on Sam, but if their dog trainer was frustrated with the situation, he didn’t let on. He was as cool and unflappable as his Dalmatian. For this Max was grateful, because by the time the training session ended, Molly’s eyes had grown shiny with unshed tears.
She held it together while she told everyone goodbye and reminded them to meet back at the dog beach tomorrow night at the same time. But once Betty White, Bingo, Clover, Nibbles, Skippy, and the three Hoyt Hoopers crossed the dune and were out of sight, a lone tear slipped down Molly’s cheek.
Chin quivering, she turned toward Max. “This isn’t going to work, is it?”
Max could have been honest right then. He could have told her no, it wasn’t going to work—not even if she’d had months to train her sad little group of volunteers. He could have gone back on his promise and said they needed to switch gears and do something more conventional for the grant proposal. He could have done the professional thing and put the aquarium first.
But doing so would have broken Molly’s heart.
So instead, he cupped her face in his hands and told her not to cry. He brushed the tear from her cheek and smiled into her eyes. And then Max lied through his teeth.
“You’ve got this. It’s all going to be okay.”
Chapter 18
“Thank goodness,” Caroline said the following Friday morning when Molly walked through the door of Turtle Books. Ursula strained at her leash to get to Sebastian, but the cat leapt to the tallest bookshelf in the travel section and flicked his tail. “I was about ready to send out a search party. Where have you been all week?”
Where to start?
Molly sat down at the counter and gathered Ursula into her lap. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by all week, but things have been crazy busy at the aquarium. Plus I’m finally putting together that grant proposal I’ve been wanting to write for ages, and it’s required a lot more energy than I expected.”
Understatement of the century. Molly had been walking around with a gnawing sense of dread in the pit of her stomach for five days running. Her only saving grace was that Max hadn’t yanked the grant application away from her. He’d been stunningly supportive, showing up at every training session and effectively acting as a cheerleader to the search teams. And in the moments when Molly’s confidence started to crumble and she let her anxiety show, he promised her that everything was going to be just fine.
She kept waiting for the dam to break…for him to point out that they were over halfway through the training period and thus far—other than Cinder, who was already a trained working dog, and Ursula, the class wunderkind—only one dog had successfully identified and alerted to a turtle sample on command.
Onedog ononeoccasion.
The entire class had whooped and hollered when Betty White had pressed her nose to the correct sample container and then lowered herself into an immediate sit position—the signal that Sam had taught the dogs to use when they needed to alert their handlers. Molly had whooped and hollered right along with them, but deep down, she couldn’t help but wonder if it had simply been a lucky guess.
“I know all about your sea turtle tracking project.” Caroline slid a frozen Milky Way latte across the counter toward Molly. “Violet’s been giving me updates when she comes in to drop off cupcakes for the bakery case. For the record, I’m deeply hurt that you didn’t ask Sebastian and me to participate. He’d make a way better search cat than Skippy the Persian.”
Molly regarded Caroline as she took her first sip of her coffee drink. She had to hold back a moan when the chocolate, caramel, and espresso flavors hit her taste buds. It had been way too long since she’d had one of these.
“You’re joking, right? You don’t really want to try and train Sebastian,” Molly said.
Caroline bit back a smile as Sebastian purposefully knocked a book from the shelf with a swipe of his paw. “What do you think?”
“Okay, good. You scared me for a minute.” She set her cup down. Ursula whined in Molly’s lap, clearly displeased that no one appeared to be paying any attention to her.
Caroline opened the glass jar full of dog treats that she kept on hand for canine customers and slipped one to Ursula. “No worries. Sebastian and I are happy to leave the turtle egg saving to Skippy and Larry.”
“That’s the thing.” Molly cleared her throat. “I’m not sure there’s going to actually be any egg saving going on.”
“What do you mean? Your dog is a genuine turtle hero. Everyone on the island is talking about it.” Caroline offered Ursula another treat. Sebastian hissed as she crunched loudly on it.
“That’s definitely true.” Molly pressed a kiss to the top of her puppy’s head. There’d been so much going on the past few days that she sometimes lost sight of how the training class had started. “I’m just worried about what will happen if she’s the only one.”
A man approached the counter to order a plain drip coffee and buy a copy of the latest hardback legal thriller from the fiction table. Molly polished off her latte while she waited for Caroline to ring him up.
