Page 30 of Broken SEAL'S Secret Baby
“I think so,” Kate says. “Just light abrasions, and scared.”
“I’m not scared!” Cece protests. “I’m mad! Bad Gidget!”
The puppy flattens herself even tighter to the pavement, then tries to scoot closer.
“Gidget didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kate says gently. “Look at her. You can see how sorry she is. She was excited and forgot to be careful about where she was running.”
“I guess I wasn’t careful either,” Cece admits. “But my chin hurts, and my hands and my knees.”
“You made a very nice five point landing,” Kate says. “Let’s go clean up your five points and put some Band-Aids on them.”
Cece is instantly diverted. “Will the Band-Aids have dinosaurs on them?”
Kate smiles and helps my big girl onto her feet. “I’m pretty sure they will. I think I saw some dinosaur Band-Aids in your bathroom.”
I have to smile at how easily Cece forgets her hurts. If only dinosaur Band-Aids would solve all problems.
“Charles? Could we bring Gidget with us to the office?” Kate asks.
“Gidget? In the office? After she ate my phone book?” I don’t like this idea at all.
“It looks like rain. I’m worried about her out here alone in her kennel. Puppies are like children. They need companionship and someone to tell them how to behave. Surely with three of us in the office, we can keep her from eating anything she shouldn’t.”
“Please, Daddy, Please, please!” Cece begs. “I’m not mad at her anymore. She was just excited because we were playing with her.”
My heart melts. When Cece looks at me with those big, blue eyes that are so like her mother’s, I can not find it in me to refuse her anything.
Something tells me that eventually this is going to be a problem, but a puppy in the office would surely not be too difficult.
“Alright,” I say. “We’ll try it. But she must not eat the mail or any of my reports. And someone will have to take her walkies every now and then so she does not potty on the floor.”
“Ok,” Cece says. “I can do that.”
“I’ll go with them,” Kate adds. “Don’t worry. We can handle this.”
As we go inside, the first drops of rain begin to spatter down, and there is a mutter of thunder. Maybe it is a good idea to bring the pup inside. She had to be lonesome out in her kennel by herself.
We all troop indoors, including Mr. Fluffy. Kate takes Cece off to her bathroom to get her scrapes cleaned up andto look for dinosaur Band-Aids. The pets obligingly follow me into the office.
Gidget cuddles up under Cece’s desk. Mr. Fluffy leaps up onto the bookcase that stands in front of the window.
In a few minutes, Cece joins me. Then Kate follows, carrying her laptop and book bag. Cece gets out her coloring book and crayons. In today’s picture, the girl astronaut was wearing her spacesuit and walking on the moon.
Kate glances over from where she was setting up her laptop and organizing her mountain of books. “What are you working on, Cece?”
“‘Member how we watched the men walking on the moon? I’m coloring a girl astronaut. Someday, I’m going to the moon.”
“Then you have a lot of hard work ahead of you,” Kate says gravely. “You will need to know how to read books with hard words and you’ll need to do amazing things with numbers.”
“You’ll teach me?” Cece asks.
“As much as I can,” Kate replies. “But someday you will want better teachers who know more.”
“All right,” Cece says. “I’ll start with making this space girl beautiful.”
“A very good idea,” Kate comments, opening what looks like a work journal. “Now, we need to be very quiet, so we don’t bother your daddy. He has work to do, and we want to be invited back.”
Cece nods and begins coloring the space suit with a pink crayon.
