Duke lifted his head and pressed it tightly against Kitty's hand, telling her that he liked her and had no fear of her, even though he had only known her for just a few hours. Kitty, too, liked the German shepherd, and she would have liked to pet him all day. But her tub was getting full, and she wanted to take a bath right now more than anything. Duke could wait.

"I'm sorry, you doll, but if I don't get in that tub right away, I'm not going to be ready for dinner. You wouldn't want that to happen, now would you?"

She sighed and began unbuttoning her shirt. With the plane ride and all the walking in the woods, it had been a long, tiring day. Getting in the tub of hot water would make her feel better than she had in months, she knew.

She jumped slightly as the relative silence of the cabin was shattered by the sound of the kitchen door slamming. Duke, too, perked up his ears at the sound and cocked his head to listen, then relaxed as he heard the familiar sounds of Johnny, his mistress's twelve year old son barging into the house.

"Hey, Mom," the boy called out. "Is Aunt Kitty here yet?"

Kitty felt a thrill of happiness as she heard her nephew stomping through the kitchen. She had not seen him since he had come to her sister's cabin. In fact, she had not seen him since she had moved to St. Louis. She tried to imagine how he had changed in the last two years, and she knew that no matter what she thought he might look like, it would be totally different from her mental image. She could not get over how he had looked when she last saw him, so sweet and cheerful, the warm innocent smiles he always had for her. He sounded as though he had not changed from that very much, and she was looking forward to meeting him for the first time after all these years.

"Oh, Duke, you're very lucky…we're both very lucky to have people who love us so much," the curvaceous young woman whispered, dropping to her lushly rounded haunches to take his big head between her slender white hands.