Runaway Bridesmaid Read Online Free PDF

seemed to be genuine regret, as if they knew wonderful wet stuff was going to fall out of the sky any minute. Labs and water went together like biscuits and gravy. Sarah allowed a sympathetic smile.
    â€œSorry. I’m in no mood to clean up mud today, okay? So whaddya think? Should I go check the babies— Oh, Lordy! ”
    Katey jumped as much as she did.
    â€œShoot, baby, don’t sneak up on people like that!” Sarah lay her arm across Katey’s shoulders, as much to steady herself as out of affection. “What on earth are you doing here? Looks like the sky’s about to burst wide open.”
    Katey hunched her thin shoulders in a gesture Sarah took to mean there really was no reason other than it seemed like a good idea. Or that Mama had asked her to do something, was more like it. “I just figured you were here. And…I didn’t have nothin’ to do.”
    â€œ Anything to do.” Sarah pretended sympathy. “And Mama couldn’t even find something for you to do in the kitchen…?”
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Katey asked, squinting. “Why are your eyes all red?”
    Rats. Sarah cleared her throat, forced a smile. “Just got a bunch of dirt in ’em, is all. You know, from the wind?”
    Which got a tell-me-another-one look from the little girl. But then the newborns eeked again, and Katey clasped both hands to her chest in supplication.
    â€œJust for a minute,” Sarah said. Wouldn’t take much longer than that before her mother sniffed her out, anyway.
    Katey skipped over to the pen where mama and pups were quarantined from the rest of the dogs, Sarah following. It was chowtime; the tiny black lumps looked more like oversize fat bugs than dogs as they jostled for position at their mother’s teats.
    â€œThis is the cutest batch we’ve ever had,” the eight-year-old solemnly declared, her fingers entwined around the chainlink. Sarah hid her smile. Katey said that about every litter. Without fail. “C’n I hold one?”
    â€œLet’s just see how Mariah feels about it, okay?” Sarah slowly opened the gate so as not to startle the mother dog, then entered the pen, settling onto the floor beside the bitch and her six pups whose birth she had witnessed just two days before. Squirming as much as the pups, Katey squatted at her right knee. “Think it’d be okay if I held one of your precious babies for a minute?” Sarah asked, then carefully picked up one of the pups and cuddled it against her chest while the mother dog rooted at her offspring’s rump, just to be sure.
    Katey sighed, stroking the little furrowed head with one finger.
    â€œWish I’d’ve been here when the pups were born.”
    â€œIt was two in the morning, baby. And Mama dog did it all by herself. I was just here for decoration.” Sarah traded pups. “Now, sheep, on the other hand, don’t even know which end the lamb’s supposed to come out of.” She thought of last March when she and Doc helped George Plunkett and his pubescent son Joshua usher two dozen new lambs into the world, and yawned automatically. “Except they always decide to do it when it’s raining and dark.”
    â€œWell,” Katey announced, unperturbed, “when I’m a vet, those dumb sheep will just have to have their babies when I’m on duty.”
    Sarah regarded the little girl with a wry smile. Knowing Katey, she probably would get the dumb sheep to birth during office hours.
    â€œSo…still wanna be a vet?” She touched her forehead to Katey’s. “You didn’t seem real interested this morning at the clinic.”
    Katey squirmed, her dark brows dipping. “Well…” Sarah could almost hear the child’s brain fast-forwarding through several dozen possible answers. Then the little face relaxed into a grin as she let a puppy sniff her fingers. “I’m just a kid.