Heather wrote down the address for Sullivan Autos, then gave both Agnes and her dog hugs as they said goodbye.
She couldn’t imagine a mechanic’s boss being too happy about a madcap puppy running around in an auto shop. Not to mention that it definitely wasn’t the safest environment for an untrained dog.
“Ready to go play with a puppy?” she said to the dog lying at her feet.
Atlas’s ears perked up at his favorite word. It had always amused her how much her two-hundred-pound Great Dane loved to play with puppies, even though they tended to nip at him with their sharp little teeth and use their sharp nails to climb onto his broad back with no concern whatsoever for their own welfare.
She suspected the reason had to do with the fact that the early part of his own life hadn’t been at all carefree. Clearly, he thrived on being around a puppy’s untamed wildness.
It was a warm day out and she pulled her long hair up from her neck into a ponytail as she grabbed her training bag and headed out to her car. Atlas bounded into the backseat, immediately sticking his head out of the window in anticipation of wind in his fur, his tongue flying free.
Ten minutes later, Heather pulled up outside Sullivan Autos and slipped on Atlas’s leash. She could see a half dozen men onsite and even though her dog was worlds better around men than he had been when she’d first taken him home four years ago, she was concerned that so many big men in one place might overwhelm him. She wasn’t surprised when he stuck close to her, the stiffness of his ears and tail a telltale sign that he wasn’t entirely relaxed.
“Everything’s fine,” she soothed him, rubbing gently between his ears. “We’re just going to play with a puppy, remember?” His tongue plopped out at that happy news and she grinned in response. “That’s right, we’ve got nothing to worry about at—”
“Where the hell is that damned puppy!”
Chapter Two
The frustrated roar split apart the otherwise normal sounds of the sprawling auto garage and both Heather and Atlas went on red alert. She immediately began to scope out the hiding places a puppy would be likely to go in a place like this...especially if it were afraid of its new owner.
Her Great Dane tugged her toward a hedge at the edge of the parking lot and she followed his lead. If anyone could find a lost and helpless little one, it was Atlas. He stopped in front of a thick hedge on the edge of the parking lot, sniffed at the bush, then whimpered and pawed at the dirt.
Heather dropped his leash to get down on her hands and knees to peer inside. Ah yes, she could see black-brown fur between the leaves and branches.
“Hey there, cutie,” she crooned softly. “Want to come out and meet a friend I’ve brought to play with you?”
Unfortunately, just then, the man yelled again. “You’d better get your furry little butt back here!”
Of course the puppy didn’t come any closer. And why would it, if all it had to look forward to was more yelling, or maybe even worse?
Hoping she wasn’t going to end up with fierce little teeth clamped around her hand or ankle, she started to push in through the branches. The sharp tips scratched at the bare skin of her legs in her shorts, but she was too intent on the puppy to pay much attention to the cuts and scrapes.
A large branch snagged on her long-sleeved T-shirt and she realized she couldn’t go any further. Breaking through a few of the branches, she finally managed to squat so that she could get down on the puppy’s level. Reaching into her pocket, she prayed she had a small crumble of a treat left over from the last time she’d worn these shorts.
Giving thanks that she hadn’t actually remembered to do the wash last night, she pulled out a small piece of sausage.
“Mmm. Doesn’t this smell yummy?”
She’d thought the puppy was trembling in the bushes, but now that she was closer, she realized it wasn’t scared.
It was playing.
And, clearly, the way its whole body was vibrating with glee, the puppy thought her little predicament of being stuck in the bushes with it was hilarious.
Despite her jammed-in position between a bunch of sword-sharp sticks and branches, she had to agree that it kind of was.
Knowing at this point that it was a matter of waiting for the little guy or girl to get tired of the game, she sat back on her heels and looked up through the branches and leaves. The clouds slowly changed shape above her in the blue sky. Huddled in a bush might not be the standard place in the world for a breather from her often hectic workday, but she found she was glad for a moment’s respite.
Unfortunately, she could still hear the owner yelling for the dog and vowed to deal with him appropriately once she had the puppy.
“I wouldn’t want to come out either, if I were you,” she told the puppy in a soft voice. “But don’t worry, Atlas and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She ran a training business, not a rescue, but if she found that an owner and a dog weren’t compatible, she did any and everything she could to take care of the dog.
“Doing okay out there, big guy?” she asked Atlas.
She heard the loud thump of his tail on the pavement in response.
“Quite the little adventure Agnes sent us on, isn’t it?”
Which didn’t make sense. How could the man who was yelling and cursing at the puppy be a close friend of a lovely woman like Agnes? Having seen the woman interact with the dog she adored, Heather had thought her training client was more perceptive than that.