Free Once Upon a Proposal by Allison Leigh Page A

about this woman that turned his guts inside out? He knew he should look at her and think “too young,” but her age was truthfully the last thing he had on his mind when she was around.
    Maybe that explained midlife crises…
    â€œThey’ve got their differences,” he pointed out a little doggedly. “Archie here has a quirk in the way he holds his ears. And Zeus just looks at you like he wants to lie on your feet and sleep for a week. Which is a thought I’ve had myself lately.”
    Bobbie laughed softly, and he couldn’t help himself. He looked up at her.
    She wore stretchy black pants that clung to every inch of her shapely legs from knee to hip. And even though she had some gauzy white shirt on, it didn’t do diddly to disguise the lush curves adoringly displayed by a sleeveless black top beneath it that ended well above her waist. What the thin fabric did succeed at was taunting him mercilessly with the filmy silhouette of those inches of bare skin exposed between the top and the pants. Bare skin that nipped in over a tiny waist that made everything else seem even more…curved.
    He stifled on oath, dragging his gaze away.
    Archimedes slapped his gold, feathered tail on the ground, still grinning sloppily as if he read Gabe’s mind all too easily.
    And maybe the dogs did, because Zeus trotted back over to his mistress, leaning his healthy, growing body protectively against Bobbie’s legs. Her hand dropped to her side,her slender fingers sliding over his well-shaped head. The dog looked as if he wanted to purr. “They’re both good boys,” she said. “Once they go to their trainer, I’m sure they’ll end up being excellent assistance dogs.”
    Gabe distracted Archimedes from sniffing the bag of grout sitting inside the bucket. “How many puppies have you raised for Fiona’s group?”
    â€œCounting these two?” She didn’t hesitate. “Seventeen.”
    â€œThat’s a lot of dogs. You have them for nearly two years, don’t you?”
    â€œThey usually go into training around eighteen months. I generally get them when they’re about eight weeks old, but sometimes it’s later because they’ve been moved from another raiser for some reason. These guys were littermates, so I got them at the same time. Usually, I have a mixture of ages. One time I had four dogs at once.” She grinned wryly. “Needless to say, my mother and sisters thought I’d lost a few screws. And it was a little…crazy. Compared to that, just having these two now is pretty quiet, actually. I have photo albums of all of my puppies on the shelf in the hall.”
    The shelf he’d nearly knocked over the day he’d brought the tile in for her bathroom floor. “But in the end, you give them all up.”
    She looked down at the dog beside her. “That’s the point. I’m just the puppy raiser. Not one of Fiona’s dog trainers.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause this is something I’m actually good at. All of the puppies I’ve raised have been successfully partnered with someone. Guide dogs for the blind, a few hearing dogs, a few service dogs. One even became a search and rescue dog out in Montana.” She lifted her shoulder and the filmy shirt shimmied around her hips. “It’s my one part in helping someone else’s life be a little easier.” Her cheeks colored and hereyes looked like fog clouding Rainier. “I know that probably sounds—”
    â€œâ€”like Fiona talking.”
    She shook her head, her lips curving slightly. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
    â€œBut it’s the truth.” For several generations, the Gannon family had had nearly every advantage in life. But instead of simply donating her money to some cause she believed in, his grandmother had spent most of Gabe’s life personally involved in one. She’d