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S tone didn’t second-guess his decision. He’d learned long ago not to doubt his instincts. Never before had anyone, let alone a woman, tempted him to share what he was about to share. Juliana had changed that. Anxious unease swirled through his body, but it was the good kind—like walking into a carnival fun house knowing you were going to be scared but also that it was safe. Juliana was safe.

They set the food in the kitchen before he led her upstairs to his bedroom. Once inside, he walked to his dresser.

“This,” he said, handing her a small silver bowl with a dark gray—almost black—stone in it. A little bigger than a quarter, it was shaped like a round loaf of bread with one side domed and the other flat.

She tipped the bowl and slid the stone into her palm, rubbing her thumb over the smooth top just as he’d done thousands of times.

“The bowl came from an antiques stall in a flea market in Germany. But the stone, the one in your hand, came from Mrs. Baxter,” he said. Her thumb continued stroking it, but her eyes held a patient question.

“The day before I left for boot camp, she took me to Mile Rock Beach for a dinner picnic,” he started. “We had cold roasted chicken, pasta salad, and watermelon. And because it was San Francisco in July, we had a thermos of hot tea along with our hats and jackets.” That elicited a smile from Juliana.

“We ate and talked about everything and nothing,” he continued. “Toward the end of the evening, she picked that stone up and handed it to me. She said she knew I couldn’t take much with me to boot camp, let alone wherever else I ended up going, but she figured I might be able to stash that little guy away with me.”

“As a reminder of home?”

He lifted a shoulder. “In a way, but more a reminder of everything I’d already faced. Of all the hard times I’d already survived. She didn’t want me to focus on San Francisco as a place but more of a…an event. She gave me that stone as a talisman but also to use as a touchstone.”

“Something to help you judge the quality of something?”

He nodded. “But that something was me. She wanted me to use it as a reminder of the person I’d worked hard to be. To turn to it when in doubt or drifting from the right path.” He paused. “Over time, it became more. Over time, it became something that grounded me in the future, not just my past.” He paused, and she held out the stone. He cupped his hand, and she set it in his palm.

“While in the army, I became a man I liked. One I respected. Sure, I fucked up sometimes and made mistakes.”

“We all do,” she said.

He inclined his head. “We do. But I became a man who is loyal and trustworthy and reliable. A man who considers different perspectives and doesn’t act rashly. A man who is sometimes even fun,” he added with a wry smile.

“I didn’t always like what the government asked me to do,” he said. “But I grew to like myself. And the stone, the little piece of my past that traveled all over the world with me, became about the man I wanted to be, not just a reminder of the boy who’d survived.” He curled his fingers around the rock, warm from Juliana’s touch.

“I carried it everywhere,” he said. “Mrs. Baxter was right about that. It wasn’t a piece of jewelry that might get lost or stolen or a book that wouldn’t fit in my pack, or a photo that would disintegrate over time. It fit everywhere—in my pack, in the pocket of my fatigues, in my vest or shirt. And now, home with me,” he said.

“And that’s why they call you Stone. Not because you’re steady as, but because you always had it with you,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but he nodded.

“It’s next to impossible to keep secrets from your teammates when you’re Delta Force. We’re also a bunch of nosy—and observant—bastards. It didn’t take long for one of them to notice I had it with me all the time. Sometimes I’d bring it out and toss it around, sometimes I’d hold it like you were holding it and run my thumb across the top.” He paused, then shrugged. “I had in my hand enough that they noticed. And yes, that’s why they started calling me Stone.”

“And now it’s here. In your first home in a town that you live with your brothers doing work that gives you purpose,” Juliana said. Then smiling, she added, “I hope you have it always. You’re stronger now than when she first gave it to you, and you probably don’t need anything to remind you of the person you want to be—and if you did, I suspect the club would be happy to remind you?—”

“True that,” he interjected with a chuckle.

“But I hope you keep it forever. It never hurts to have a talisman or a touchstone. We all need them at different times throughout our lives.”

With his stone in one hand, he cupped Juliana’s cheek, then leaned forward and kissed her. It was sentimental, it was mush, it was all sorts of things his brothers would chide him about even though they’d probably also be a tiny bit jealous. But it felt right to hold his little gray token in one hand and Juliana in the other.

She stepped into him, and his fingers trailed down her back as he basked in the moment. Her hands came to rest at his waist and, hooking his belt loops, she tugged him against her.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are an amazing kisser?” she said as he lifted his hand and tangled his fingers in her hair, tipping her head to the side to trail kisses down her throat.

“It only matters that you think so,” he murmured, tracing the line of her neck to her jaw. He was about to set his lips to hers again when something crashed on his back porch.

His body shot to attention and he tightened his arms around Juliana, holding her close, as he listened.

“What was that?” she whispered.

He strained to hear signs of any movement. Then keeping his hold on her, he set the stone back in its bowl and pulled his phone out.

“Security system?” she asked, her voice low.

He nodded, then quickly opened the app and started thumbing through the cameras. No alarms had gone off, which made him think it was an animal—of the nonhuman sort—but he wanted to be sure.

Pausing on the camera that covered the back deck, he studied the area. The only thing amiss was a toppled-over chair.

“It was probably an animal that scared itself,” he said, cycling through the cameras one more time and double-checking that the system was fully functional. When he was mostly reassured, he released Juliana and stepped away.

“Can you look at the footage to confirm?” she asked.

He nodded. “I wanted to be sure there wasn’t an imminent threat, but now that we know there’s not, that’s next on the agenda.”

He led her to the end of his bed where they perched, leaning over his small screen. Pulling up the footage, he rewound four minutes, then let it play.

“What’s that?” Juliana asked immediately. In the lower right corner, a dark furry shape darted in and out of the frame. “A baby deer? Isn’t that what you thought I might have heard the other morning?” She paused and frowned. “That looks different than what we saw with the heat sensors. It’s…furrier.”

He cocked his head as a paw once again stepped onto his porch. “The heat sensing image is different than video imaging. It’s about the same size.” A second paw stepped onto the deck. A few seconds later, a black nose tentatively sniffed the area.

“A baby bear?” Juliana asked.

Stone shook his head. “A puppy. A large one, but a puppy.” As if to confirm his statement, a young dog stepped fully into view. It held its head low, swinging it side to side, ever watchful. Pausing with its front paws on the patio and bottom paws on a lower stair, it glanced furtively around before inching all the way onto the deck.

“It’s terrified,” Juliana said. “The poor thing. Do you think someone dumped it?”

“Probably,” he said, his heart heavy with compassion for the young animal. They watched it climb up onto a chair and lean toward the window they’d opened in the kitchen. Stone grimaced, knowing what was coming next. Sure enough, the large, though judging by the size of its feet, young dog leaned a little too far forward and the chair tipped before crashing to the ground. All they saw next was a blur of black-and-brown fur making a beeline back to the woods.

When it was clear the puppy was gone, Stone closed his phone and looked at Juliana. “I don’t even need to say it, do I?”

“If by ‘it’ you were going to say we need to try to help it, then no, you don’t,” she replied. “It seemed hungry, let’s try that.”

Without further discussion, they retreated to the kitchen where they prepared not just their own plates, but one for the puppy. In unspoken agreement, they set their own dinners on the bistro table, then Stone walked thirty feet from the house—in the direction the dog had fled—and set the third plate down.

Ten minutes into their food, the bushes at the tree line stirred. They stilled, and Stone suspected that like him, Juliana was holding her breath. A minute passed before the form emerged from the woods. It paused, lifted its nose, and took a visible sniff. As it lowered its head, it caught sight of them and froze.

“Hey, sweet baby,” Juliana crooned, startling Stone. He didn’t have much experience with dogs and assumed staying silent would be the best route. But judging by the way the puppy cocked its head, maybe not.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you? Some people left you to fend for yourself and you’re far too young for that, aren’t you?” she continued. The dog dropped to its belly but inched forward as she continued talking.

Five minutes later, it was eating the salmon they’d left in the yard, darting looks at them between bites. Although, with each passing moment, it seemed to relax more and more.

“Should we approach it?” he asked.

Juliana shook her head. “We have food left on our plates. Let him finish what he has, then see if we can coax him to us.”

“Him?” he asked.

She wiggled an eyebrow and laughed. The pup raised his head. “When he squatted down, I saw some very male parts between his legs. He definitely hasn’t been fixed.”

The dog studied them. He had a blockish head, appeared to be about thirty-five pounds, and had huge feet. His coloring reminded Stone of a Doberman, but his coat was much longer, like that of a retriever, and his ears stood up.

“The size of his feet makes me think he’s young, but he’s big,” he said.

“He is,” she agreed. “Both young and big. I can’t tell what breed he is, maybe a mix of rottweiler and golden retriever?”

That would explain the size, coloring, and coat. An odd mix, but a damn cute one, even though the poor boy was both filthy and scared.

“You want more food?” Juliana called out as she held a piece of bread in her hand for him to see.

He hesitated, then inched forward. When Juliana remained still, he came forward another few feet.

“He needs to get used to both our voices,” she said. “Call out some encouragements.”

And so he did. He was pretty sure that when the US government invested thousands of dollars in his negotiation skills, they’d not imagined them being used in this type of scenario.

Five minutes later, the puppy crouched on his stomach at the top of the stairs, four feet away from where Stone and Juliana sat. “Slowly toss a piece of salmon to him,” Juliana said.

The dog startled when he moved but didn’t dart away, which Stone took as a good sign. When the salmon landed a foot in front of his snout, he wiggled forward and snatched it up.

“That’s a good baby. You’re so hungry, aren’t you?” Juliana said. “Come have this piece of bread and let me give you a little pet. We can see how that goes,” she continued. Slowly, she coaxed the dog forward until, finally, it took the bread from her hand as she reached out with the other and set it between the dog’s ears. His furry head ducked and he stilled, but when Juliana neither removed her hand nor made any other move to touch him, he went back to the bread. As he ate, Juliana began stroking and petting him.

“Um, do we need to worry about rabies?” he asked. The dog’s ears twitched in his direction, but he remained focused on chewing the heel of the bread.

“Probably, but only if he bites us. I don’t think we have to worry about that, though. I don’t think he’s mean, just scared.”

“Scared people lash out. Dogs might be the same.”

“Oh, they’re definitely the same,” Juliana said. “But this dog wants to trust. He just needs encouragement.”

“How can you tell?” Even as he asked, he saw the answer. With every gnaw on the bread, the puppy moved closer and closer to her. When she scratched behind his ears, he practically sighed. And when she reached down to give his shoulders a good rub, his tail wagged.

“Let’s give him a little more food. We don’t know how long it’s been since he’s eaten, so I don’t want to give him too much, but I want him to see us as providing for him,” she said.

When he finished the bread, Stone held out another piece of salmon. Only this time, rather than tossing it, he held it in his hand. To his shock, the puppy didn’t hesitate before scrambling over and taking it gently from his fingers. As he licked his lips, Stone reached out and pet him in the same way Juliana had. A beat later, the puppy flopped onto his side at Stone’s feet, his tail thumping against the wood.

“We should keep talking to him and not make any sudden moves, but I think he’s decided to trust us,” Juliana said, smiling as he rubbed the tangled fur on the dog’s belly.

Dark brown eyes watched him, a hint of wariness lurking there even as his tail swished across the deck.

With his hand still buried in fur in desperate need of a cleaning, Stone looked at Juliana. “I guess the next big question is what do we name him?”