Diamond In The Ruff. Marie Ferrarella

toy out of his lab coat pocket. Distracted, Jonathan went after the toy—a lime-green octopus with wiggly limbs.

      High-pitched squeaks filled the air in direct proportion to the energy the puppy was expending chewing on his new toy.

      Just for a second, there was a touch of envy in her eyes when she raised them to his face, Christopher thought. Her cheeks were also turning a very light shade of pink.

      “You probably think I’m an idiot,” Lily told him.

      The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was judging her—harshly or otherwise. But he could admit he was attracted to her.

      “What I think,” he corrected, “is that you might need a little help and guidance here.”

      Oh, God, yes, she almost exclaimed out loud, managing to bite the gush of words back at the last moment. Instead, she asked hopefully, “You have a book for me to read?”

      Christopher inclined his head. He had something a little more personal and immediate in mind. “If you’d like to read one, I have several I could recommend,” he conceded. “But personally, I’ve always found it easier when I had something visual to go on.”

      “Like a DVD?” she asked, not altogether sure what he meant by his statement.

      Christopher grinned. “More like a P-E-R-S-O-N.”

      For just a second, Lily found herself getting caught up in the vet’s grin. Something akin to a knot—or was that a butterfly?—twisted around in her stomach. Rousing herself, Lily blinked, certain that she’d somehow misunderstood the veterinarian.

      From his handsome, dimpled face, to his dirty-blond hair, to his broad shoulders, the man was a symphony of absolute charm and she was rather accustomed to being almost invisible around people who came across so dynamically. The more vibrant they were, the more understated she became, as if she was shrinking in the sunlight of their effervescence.

      Given that, it seemed almost implausible to her that Christopher was saying what it sounded as if he was saying. But in the interest of clarity, she had to ask, “Are you volunteering to help me with the dog?”

      To her surprise, rather than appearing annoyed or waving away the question entirely, he laughed. “If you have to ask, I must be doing it wrong, but yes, I’m volunteering.” Then he backtracked slightly as if another thought had occurred to him. “Unless, of course, your husband or boyfriend or significant other has some objections to my mentoring you through the hallowed halls of puppy ownership.”

      Her self-image—that of being a single person—was so ingrained in her that Lily just assumed she came across that way. That the vet made such a stipulation seemed almost foreign to her.

      “There’s no husband or boyfriend or significant other to object to anything,” she informed the man.

      She was instantly rewarded with the flash of another dimpled grin. “Oh, well then, unless you have any objections, I can accompany you to the local dog park this weekend for some pointers.”

      She hadn’t even been aware that there was a dog park anywhere, much less one here in Bedford, but she kept that lack of knowledge to herself.

      “Although,” the vet was saying, “I do have one thing to correct already.”

      Lily braced herself for criticism as she asked, “What am I doing wrong?”

      Christopher shook his head. “Not you, me,” he told her affably. “I just said puppy ownership.”

      She was still in the dark as to where this was going. “Yes, I know, I heard you.”

      “Well, that’s actually wrong,” he told her. “That phrase would indicate that you owned the puppy when in reality—”

      “The puppy owns me?” she guessed. Where else could he be headed with this? She could very easily see the puppy taking over.

      But Christopher shook his head. “You own each other, and sometimes even those lines get a little blurred,” he admitted, then went on to tell her, “You do it right and your pet becomes part of your family and you become part of his family.”

      For a moment, Lily forgot to resist experiencing the exact feelings that the vet was talking about. Instead, just for that one sliver of time, she allowed herself to believe that she was part of something larger than just herself, and it promised to ease the loneliness she was so acutely aware of whenever she wasn’t at work.

      Whenever she left the people she worked with and returned to her house and her solitary existence.

      The next moment, she forced herself to lock down and pull back, retreating into the Spartan world she’d resided in ever since she’d lost her mother.

      “That sounds like something I once read in a children’s book,” she told him politely.

      “Probably was,” Christopher willingly conceded. “Children see the world far more honestly than we do. They don’t usually have to make up excuses or search for ways to explain away what they feel—they just feel,” he said with emphasis as well as no small amount of admiration.

      And then he got back to the business at hand. “Since you can count the length of your relationship with Jonathan in hours, I take it that means you have no information regarding his rather short history.”

      She shook her head. “None whatsoever, I’m afraid,” she confessed.

      Christopher took it all in stride. He turned his attention to his four-footed patient. “Well, I’m making a guess as to his age—”

      Curious about the sort of procedures that involved, she asked, “How can you do that?”

      “His teeth,” Christopher pointed out. “The same teeth he’s been trying out on you,” he added with an indulgent smile that seemed incredibly sexy to her. “He’s got his baby teeth. He appears to be a purebred Labrador, so there aren’t any stray factors to take into account regarding his size and growth pattern. Given his teeth and the size of his paws in comparison to the rest of him, I’d say he’s no more than five or six weeks old. And I think I can also safely predict that he’s going to be a very large dog, given the size of the paws he’s going to grow into,” the vet concluded.

      She looked down at the puppy. Jonathan seemed to be falling all over himself in an attempt to engage the vet’s attention. No matter which way she sliced it, the puppy was cute—as long as he wasn’t actively biting her.

      “Well, I guess that’s something I’m not going to find out,” she murmured, more to herself than to the man on the other side of the exam table.

      Christopher watched her with deep curiosity in his eyes. “Do you mind if I ask why not?”

      “No.”

      “No?” he repeated, not really certain what the answer pertained to.

      Her mind was really working in slow motion today, Lily thought, upbraiding herself. “I mean no, I don’t mind you asking.”

      When there was no further information following that up, he coaxed, “And the answer to my question is—?”

      “Oh.”

      More blushing accompanied the single-syllable word. She really was behaving like the proverbial village idiot. Lily upbraided herself. What in heaven’s name had come over her? It was like her brain had been dipped in molasses and couldn’t rinse itself off in order to return to its normal speed—or even the bare semblance of going half-speed.

      “Because as soon as I leave here with Jonathan, I’m going to make some flyers and post them around town,” she told the vet. She was rather a fair sketch artist when she put her mind to it and planned to create a likeness of this puppy to use on the poster. “Somebody’s got to be out looking for him.”

      “If you’re not planning on keeping him, why did you bring