Page 8 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
“It’s a .... dog,” Holly sighed.
After the bare minimum of leg-lifting against the side of the house, Cupcake sprinted back to her. Holly scooped him up again, straightened, and turned around to face the music.
“A dog?” her dad said, staring skeptically as Cupcake’s anime-hairstyle head swiveled toward the pancakes. “Are you sure? What in the heck happened to it?”
“He’s supposed to look like that. He’s a crested hairless.”
“A crested hairless what?”
“Dog,” Holly said again, patiently.
“Does this—erm—dog have a name?”
“Yes,” Holly said, bracing herself. “He’s called Cupcake.”
Reacting to his name, and possibly also to the closeness of the pancakes, Cupcake wagged his tail against her chest and looked up at her adoringly.
Her dad continued to stare for a long moment at Holly and the dog, and then he said, “Well, your sister named her gerbil Princess Whiskers.”
“I didn’t name him, I swear. We could rename him, maybe?”
“I knew a guy once with a Chihuahua named Killer,” her dad said.
“We’re not calling him Killer, Dad.”
Her dad shrugged and returned to flipping pancakes with one final look of disbelief, while Holly went to get the bag of small-dog food she had picked up yesterday, and poured out some for Cupcake in a bowl on the floor.
“Has he met Rocket yet?” her dad asked from the stove.
“Yeah, they met yesterday. They seem to get along okay. I was thinking Rocket might like to have another dog around,” Holly said hopefully.
“Uh-huh. You know, it seems like we had a conversation about how you definitely, absolutely weren’t getting a dog at that event.”
“I’m not a kid, Dad,” she said more sharply than she intended. “I can have a pet if I want to.”
Her dad raised the spatula in tacit acceptance. “Didn’t say you weren’t. The problem is, you said you wouldn’t, and then you did. You know how I feel about keeping your word.”
I got flustered and adopted a dog to distract myself and everyone else from the fact that I just kissed the hot maintenance guy under the mistletoe... probably wouldn’t help her situation. “He just looked so lonely. And nobody else was interested.”
“Well,” her dad said gruffly, “your bacon’s getting cold, and there’s a stack of pancakes about to land with your name on it.”
Holly accepted the peace offering for what it was. “Oh, are those this year’s blueberries from the farm?” She had helped pick them herself.
“Figured a snow day deserved a treat.”
Butter, syrup, and a glass of milk were laid out neatly on the kitchen island, fork and knife positioned just so. Holly picked up her fork and got down to the serious business of eating.
And it was business. It would be a long day, so they both needed the energy. Soon her dad would go out to start up the plow truck so customers could get to the tree farm at all, while she fed the chickens and ran the snowblower on the paths around the farm.
But for now, he finished stacking himself an alarmingly high pile of pancakes laden with bacon and over-easy eggs. It would have been a marvel that he kept himself trim at his age, except she knew that he ruthlessly monitored his fitness. If he felt that he needed to skip dinner to stay in fighting form, she knew he would do it, and she’d be rustling herself up a can of soup.
“Snow came down pretty heavy in the night,” Dad said as he set his plate across from hers. “I figured it’d be at least a foot, no matter what the weather gal said.”
Her dad had always had an uncanny ability to predict the weather. She didn’t know if he came by it as a shifter, but his predictions, especially around snow and rain, always put the weather forecast to shame.
“I’ll feed the chickens and get the snowblower,” Holly said. “You’re going to handle the plowing?”
Dad grunted an affirmative with his mouth full. “Hope the county gets the snowplow out early. Get the roads clear.”
