“There,” he said, arranging the pillowcase so that it wrapped around Bubbles. She looked like a fluffy, brown cherry atop a swirl of ice cream. “Now you can be warm and settle down.”

All he got in reply was another one of those mournful blinks.

“Goddammit, Sophie didn’t say anything about you sleeping in the bed!”

Since the words had been uttered more forcefully than he intended, he reached down and scooped up the puppy—pillows and makeshift blanket and all. Almost immediately, Bubbles emitted a small, contented sigh and tucked her head in the crook of his arm.

“Ten minutes,” he warned as he lay back on the bed. Bubbles stayed exactly where she was, stuck to his armpit like Velcro. “You can be up here for ten minutes, but then it’s back to the floor where you belong. I can’t have you up here with me all night. If I roll over the wrong way, you’ll die.”

Apparently, death by his crushing weight held no danger as far as Bubbles was concerned. She’d spent the entire last hour fighting sleep and shivering on the floorboards only to fall asleep within seconds of being cradled against him.

“Goddammit,” he said again. This time, it came out more like a whisper. “What am I supposed to do now?”

At least he had his pillows back. Moving carefully so as not to dislodge the sleeping puppy, he arranged things so he was more comfortable. Even then, he only had the flattest pillow of the lot under his head. The other two he set up along the mattress’s edge as a kind of barrier. Babies rolled. Did puppies roll? Hell, for all he knew, he wasn’t supposed to have pillows in here at all. What if she suffocated?

“I’m going to give that woman a piece of my mind tomorrow,” he said, careful to keep his voice low. “In fact, I’m going to start making a list of all the things she forgot to tell me. Does she think we’re all born knowing how to take care of dogs? I wasn’t kidding about that goldfish thing. You’ve seen this place—who would willingly bring anything living into it?”

Bubbles gave a twitch of her small body.

Harrison tensed, afraid he’d done something to hurt her, but she only sighed and settled into a deeper sleep. Puppies he might not understand, but the heavy, dreamless sleep of the exhausted was a thing he knew well. Some of the men and women on his wildfire team had been known to literally fall asleep on their feet after a particularly grueling day.