“I love that we are getting snow again, just like our date last year.”
“I love that at the end of this one we won’t have to go home to separate houses.”
Rachel grinned up at him. “I like that, too.” She cocked her head. “If we’re repeating our date from a year ago… Do you think we’ll get interrupted when we try to kiss this time?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know. Our kids are a year older. And there aren’t any big rocks hiding under the snow at our house for Holly to hurt her ankle on. But just to be on the safe side, we better kiss right now.”
Rachel moved closer to him, but then said, “No, wait! We have to do our selfie first!”
He pulled out his phone, opened the camera, and flipped the screen to their faces. They were both smiling like a couple who had spent a year getting everything figured out and were loving where they were at. He snapped the picture, and then placed a soft kiss on her lips. “Happy anniversary, my wife.”
“Happy anniversary, my husband.”
The moment he grinned back at her, her phone rang. She pulled it from her coat pocket, said, “It’s Jack,” then answered the call and put it on speaker phone.
“It’s time,” Jack said, a note of excitement and worry in his voice.
“Noelle is in labor? Okay, we’ll—”
“No, not Noelle. Everything is totally fine with her. It’s time forBailey. Her first puppy is already here!”
“She’s early!” Rachel said. “The vet said it wouldn’t happen until next week!”
“Well, I don’t think that the babies heard that bit of news, because they are coming now. Remember how she didn’t come running to us when we showed up? Apparently, she was hiding in the room you got ready, nesting around the box and blankets you’d set up.”
Rachel turned and started walking in the direction of their car, which was parked a couple of blocks away. “I need to call the vet.”
“That was the first call Noelle made,” Jack said. “He’s out of town—some emergency with his adult daughter. But don’t worry—Noelle seems to know exactly what she’s doing. And she said that more importantly, Bailey knows exactly whatshe’sdoing and we just need to monitor her and not interfere. So don’t stress out and don’t feel like you need to hurry. Everything is under control.”
As he and Rachel hurried back down Main Street toward their car, talking about how they and Jack and Noelle had decided that they needed more golden retrievers in their lives, Rachel said, “If we recreate our first date every single year, do you think we’ll always get an emergency call at this point in the date?”
He chuckled. “Let’s hope not. But who knows? Fifty years from now, we might be walking down this path with our canes and get a call that one of our grandkids just got proposed to.”
When they got home, they pulled into the garage and hurried into the house. He glanced around the kitchen, dining, and family room area that was even more decorated than it was last Christmas, snowflakes already hanging from the ceiling, just as Holly and Aiden came running toward them, their rough collie, Rosy, at their feet.
“Bailey is doing so good!” Holly said. “She hasn’t needed any help at all.”
Aiden nodded. “We didn’t even know she was having her babies. We thought she was just tired from having that big belly and didn’t want to play. But then I kept hearing weird sounds, and I found Bailey with a teeny baby puppy!”
They were trying to make their way to the small room off the kitchen that they’d just been using for storage until they cleared it out for Bailey when Holly held up a hand. “I’m going to warn you that it’s gross in there.”
“That’s okay,” Nick said.
They found Bailey in her whelping box, two little cream-colored puppies near her, their eyes closed, taking a couple of stumbling steps. Bailey’s mouth was open in her signature smile, looking so proud of her babies. A very pregnant Noelle was sitting on the floor nearby, Jack at her side, and she smiled up at them like she was just as proud.
“Aren’t they the cutest?” Aiden said from the doorway, where Rosy was turning around in circles with excitement. “I just want to pick one up in my hands and cuddle it.”
“Soon, sweetie,” Rachel said. “Right now, we’re going to let Bailey enjoy them.”
Two hours later, Bailey had given birth to the final puppy—number five—and they had gotten the area cleaned up, Bailey fed and resting peacefully with her babies. Not long after, they quietly said goodbye to Jack and Noelle, then read a Christmas bedtime story to Holly and Aiden before getting them tucked into bed.
Then they went back to check on Bailey and her puppies. They stood in the doorway, Rachel leaning against him as they took in the five sleeping puppies snuggled into Bailey. He put his arms around Rachel and pulled her close. They wouldn’t be keeping all the puppies—they’d already promised one to Jack and Noelle and at least two to friends, but there still came with the puppies a feeling of their family expanding, just like it had when they’d joined their two little families together.
He soaked in the feeling, enjoying every moment of it. Then he kissed Rachel’s temple and said, “I guess our schedule for the rest of December is going to be thrown off a bit.”
“I hear that’s not the most important part of the season. It’s all about the people you spend it with.” She twisted a bit to smile up at him. “Whatever life throws at us or our little family, we can handle.”
He placed a kiss on her lips. “Yes, we can.”
