Page 65 of 15 Summers Later

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Thanks, though.”

With a wave to both women, he and the dog made their way outside into the June afternoon.

“I’m sorry,” Ava whispered, despising herself for the weakness. She had no problem with some dogs. She could even pet the smaller ones without breaking out into a cold sweat. But anything bigger than a beagle and she freaked out. It had been a point of contention between her and Cullen, who had always had big dogs and would have liked to adopt another one. Fortunately, their current apartment did not allow pets larger than twenty-five pounds. To her great shame, she could admit in her heart of hearts that rule was one of the reasons she had favored their current living space over others when they were apartment hunting.

What would she do when they bought a house together and she could find no more excuses not to accede to his wishes?

Ifthey bought a house together.

She fought the urge to press a hand to her abdomen again, to the tiny, vulnerable, infinitely precious life growing there.

A few more hours and she would tell Cullen and this would no longer be her secret alone.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Madi said, her tone brisk. “I understand.”

She gestured around the space with its comfortable furniture and three desks. “This is the office and reception area, as you can see. All the volunteers check in here first, when they arrive, to receive their assignments for the day.”

“How many volunteers do you have?”

“Around twenty-five. We use anywhere from six to seven volunteers a day. They help with feeding the animals, walking them, playing with them. For now, I coordinate all the volunteer hours while my assistant, Elana, and Hal usually handle all the HR and training. I’m currently part-time as I’m still working with Luke at the clinic, but I will be transitioning to full time at the end of the month.”

For the next half hour, Madi walked her through the animal rescue facilities, showing her the pastures where farm animals had room to ramble, the large play yard where the dogs were allowed to run at least twice a day and the cat room that featured an assortment of climbing structures and tunnels.

Ava immediately sneezed and Madi closed the door quickly. “Right now we are limited to about twenty cats. As you can imagine, there are far more than that in the area who need shelter. We do try to adopt them out as soon as we can, but for various reasons, that’s not possible for about four of them. They will probably live out their lives here. Same for about five of the dogs and most of the farm animals.”

“It’s fantastic,” Ava said, moved almost to tears by her sister’s obvious pride in what she had created here.

Madi looked surprised. “Th-thank you,” she said.

“How wonderful, that you have been able to create a safe, comfortable, happy home where they can live out their days.”

Madi shifted, clearly uncomfortable with the praise. “We try to do our best with our limited funds. It’s not always easy, but through a combination of grants and fundraising, we have a healthy bank balance. We were especially fortunate about six months ago to receive a huge gift from an anonymous donor. We should have enough between all our funding sources to keep us going for at least a few years.”

“That’s great.” Ava gave a polite smile and quickly changed the subject. “You showed me the dog play yard. What about their kennel facilities?”

“Right. Our dogs are split into three groups. Large breeds, small breeds and puppies. We can skip the large-dog area, if you’re more comfortable.”

“No. I’ll be okay.” She hoped.

Why wasn’t Madi afraid of dogs as well? Ava wondered that as her sister led her into a section of the building that had a row of kennels. Maybe because she had never been attacked by the dogs. Her sister had even tried to befriend the most vicious of the guard dogs.

Each of the kennels was filled with one or two animals, who jumped up to greet Madi with enthusiastic barks.

She opened every door and scratched each dog, no matter how vicious-looking.

“In our small-dog room, most of these rotate out pretty quickly. People are more willing to adopt the smaller dogs and puppies than the big ones, unfortunately.”

Everything was clean, comfortable and homey.

“Okay. That’s it,” Madi said as she led the way back to the office. “In addition to the play areas, we have various trails going through the ranch for our volunteers to walk the dogs. We plan to continue grooming the trails in winter so they can get plenty of safe exercise. Is there anything else you want to see?”

Ava shook her head. “It’s wonderful,” she said again. “You really love this, don’t you?”

Madi shrugged. “What’s not to love? We’re making a difference. Each of these animals was either abandoned, has come from a home where they were abused or neglected or was given up after the owners either were unwilling or unable to care for them. We’re giving them a second chance for a better future.”

Madi looked at her watch. “I’ve got to make a few phone calls before we leave and you probably want to go to Grandma’s and grab a jacket. It gets cool up in the mountains in the evenings.”

---