Patting Carly’s back, Dana shifted sideways to ease her protruding belly past her. She gazed around the French-country cabinets with the top-tier glass doors, and the stainless-steel appliances with nothing short of awe and envy. “I’ll take some water, Retta, thanks. I’m so envious of you having a well. You know how our city water reeks of chemicals. I keep a purifier in the bathroom, too, just to avoid having to brush my teeth with the awful stuff. Oh, my . . . this kitchen! It’s exactly what I’d always dreamed of having. And everything is arranged so well. Where were you when we were trying to set up the restaurant kitchen?”
Before I could reply, my three-year-old Australian shepherd, Rosie, was at the back door giving me a soft, “Woof,” to announce she had finished her business, or had her fill of exploring, and was ready to investigate what was happening inside. Rosie was as good a watchdog as she was company, and knew Maggie’s platinum-silver Mercedes well. She hadn’t been threatened by the vehicle’s arrival. However, now we would find out how she would react to Carly’s little fur ball.
“Carly, is your puppy intimidated by larger dogs?” I asked, hoping my tone exuded concern, not negativity. “Rosie is amiable, but I haven’t had any other dogs inside to test her territorial instincts.”
Carly’s expression turned doubtful, and she gave Dana a see-I-told-you-I-shouldn’t-be-here look. “I honestly don’t know. But Wrigley likes me to hold him most of the time, so maybe that won’t be a problem.”
“Well, we can’t leave sweet Rosie out in the cold, so we might as well put this to a test,” Maggie said, abandoning the wine pouring to let my brown-and-black sweetie inside. “Hello, darling girl! Have you been telling the squirrels to leave your mommy’s pecans alone? Missed me? Come see what we have for you to play with.”
To be fair, Maggie enjoyed Rosie’s company almost as much as I did, but she was laying on the saccharin-sweet tone a little thick. And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to catch the underlying dark humor when she made that last comment.
“Mags,” I drawled, injecting only a hint of warning into my voice. “Do you need me to make you sit through back episodes of Dog Whisperer so you remember how to deal with canines unfamiliar with each other?”
My lifelong friend straightened from giving Rosie a two-handed rubbing to scoff, “Oh, where’s your sense of humor?”
“I’ve always wanted a dog.” Dana’s confession matched her expression—sheer wistfulness. “What with Jesse having been at the restaurant at all hours, it would have been nice to have the company at night, but then he was concerned about an animal in the house and transferring dog hair to the restaurant.”
Seeing Rosie had already noticed Wrigley and was venturing closer, I said in a conversational tone to Carly, “Just ignore her and act normal. What breed is he? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one with a face so small yet framed by so much hair. Don’t take this the wrong way, but he looks like a Christmas ornament.”
“Or, a dashboard one,” Maggie piped in.
Ignoring her, Carly directed her words to Sybil and me. “Wrigley is a Maltese. Walter got him for me last Christmas. Knowing we would never have a child together, I guess he thought Wrigley was as close as we could get. We spoiled him terribly.”
In the next instant, the tiny dog leaped from her protective embrace and bounced toward Rosie, barking as though someone had flipped a switch on a battery-operated toy.
With the hair on the back of her neck bristling, and her tail rising high in alpha, pack-leader position, Rosie stood her ground with the yappy intruder. Her stare and body language said it all: “My house. So you can just take your mouthy self elsewhere.”
Something must have reached through Wrigley’s nerve-grating rant. Before our eyes, the Maltese suddenly went mute, did an impressive about face, and launched himself back toward his mistress. Carly bent to catch him just in time to save him from a belly flop on the hardwood floor.
Returning to fill the wine glasses Maggie noted, “Well, we know who won that territorial battle.”
I couldn’t have been more disappointed and embarrassed with Maggie’s latest dig at Carly if she’d tried to high five Rosie. “No such thing, Mags. I thought Rosie handled that with her usual restraint. She’s had to deal with far worse conduct from our cattle.”
“I’m sorry, Retta,” Carly offered quickly. “I’ll do my best to keep him in control from now on.”
I gave Rosie the hand signal to lie down beside me, before assuring Carly that I was comfortable with how things had turned out. “Given some time, they’ll probably become friends.”
Carly looked pleased and about to say something when a bright flash of light, followed almost instantly by a loud crack of thunder, had us all tucking into ourselves like turtles. The meteorological surprise was quickly followed by the lights flickering on and off a few times. Realizing that the storm had arrived, we all rushed to the wall of windows that ran the length, and half the width, of the kitchen and breakfast nook. I had yet to close the white plantation shutters I’d had installed to help against summer’s heat and winter’s cold, and the view was impressive.
“Oh, wow,” Dana breathed in awe. “Thunder snow. Look at it coming down now. Minutes ago as we drove here, there was only an occasional flake hitting the windshield. Now it looks like an Alaskan blizzard out there.”
“‘Thunder snow?’” Carly looked as stunned as her pup that abruptly began burying himself deeper into the warmth and protection provided between her jacket and sweater. “That’s a new one to me. Those flakes have to be the size of quarters. Do you think it will keep snowing as heavily the entire time?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, awed myself. “But if the weather warnings are correct, we could see record-setting accumulations by this time tomorrow. Did anyone besides me hear the weather guy say they were studying several computer scenarios, and no two were agreeing on the same forecast?”
“I did,” Dana replied. “Why do you think I didn’t need Maggie to twist my arm to come out here?”
The others continued to stare outside as though mesmerized, until Sybil clapped her hands and headed back toward the stove. “Okay, beans are on and the bad weather is here,” she said in her school teacher voice. Returning to the stove where she adjusted the flames under both pots, she continued, “Did we get everything we needed from the car? It’ll get dark faster than usual with the skies so dense with moisture. The stairs and sidewalk will get slippery, too, and we’ll trudge in all kinds of mess onto Retta’s beautiful floors. We should go ahead and bring in whatever’s left in the car that we need, and start putting our Girl Scout skills to use preparing our quarters.”
Noticing the younger women exchanging concerned glances, I couldn’t help but grin. “She’s not suggesting that we need to stake tents.” To Sybil, I said, “I think Dana and Carly have their things inside. Maggie, it has to already be getting slick out there. You’re liable to break your neck in those high-heeled boots before you get halfway to your car. I’ll get whatever else you need.”
“You aren’t going out there, either.”
Another flash and ear-splitting thunder had Maggie putting down her glass to cover her head with her arms. By then I already had grabbed my red jacket with the hood from the mud room. It was what I used for quick town errands.
“I think it’s mostly sheet lighting,” I assured her. “The activity seems to be caught up in the higher level mix of warm and cold air. At any rate, we sure aren’t going to dawdle.”
“In that case, I want to catch a snowflake on my tongue.” Before anyone realized what she was up to Dana hurried to the front door. She pressed her thumb onto the door latch, just when a frigid gust of wind pushed back at her from the outside, almost knocking the mother-to-be to the floor.
“Oh no, you don’t!”
Carly