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amount of spray or gel or relaxer or blow-drying or clippy doo-dads would whip it into submission, either. They hadn’t invented the product that could handle her particular mop, and the day they did, she was buying stock. She’d be a millionaire overnight.
    â€œMoah? Amicks?” she muttered around the hairpins.
    â€œYeah?” Noah and Alex’s muffled voices came from the back of her shop.
    â€œMat are oo doing?”
    â€œPlayin’.”
    â€œId oo tut ’er shoes on, yike I asked?” Annie removed the pins from her mouth and crammed them into her makeshift bun and hoped for the best.
    â€œUh…” Whispered laughter and some scrambling reached her ears. “Yeah, we’re putting our shoes on.”
    â€œAre you putting them on your feet?” She grinned at their giggles. One didn’t live with two five-year-olds and not know when they were up to no good.
    â€œEr, uh, okay,” Alex, self-appointed spokesman for the two, answered.
    â€œAre you putting them on now?”
    â€œUhh…yeah.”
    â€œAre you wearing socks?”
    â€œOh…well—”
    With a sigh, Annie dropped her brush on a Louis XIV love seat and strode from the showroom of the antique store, Summer’s Autumn Antiques, that she’d inherited from her father. Moving into the play area she kept next to her office for her boys, she stopped short and stared.
    â€œWhat the—” Exasperated, Annie shook her head. “What are you guys doing in your—” she took in the bare chests and, in one case, bare bottom “—underwear? Alex, where is your underwear?”
    â€œIt was his idea,” Alex said, pointing at Noah.
    â€œWas not.”
    â€œWas too!”
    â€œWhat idea?” Annie asked.
    â€œWe were going to put our clothes on the dog and surprise you.”
    As Alex explained, Chopper, the aging black Lab, came hobbling out from behind the toy box, his foot caught up in the arm of a sweater. He sported socks and shoes on three of his four feet. His tail, which he wagged pitifully, protruded from the fly of some small body’s—obviously Alex’s—underpants. Chopper looked absolutely miserable.
    Try as she might, Annie could not hold back the giggles. Screaming with delight, the boys joined in, doing a little jig that had their skinny little bodies flailing and leaping.
    â€œWhy on earth did you think to put clothes on poor Chopper?”
    â€œNo shirts, no shoes, no service,” Noah offered.
    â€œWhat is that supposed to mean?” Annie looked backand forth between the two faces, mirror images of hers, both earnest in their explanation.
    â€œWe wanted Chopper to come out to lunch with us—”
    â€œâ€”and he couldn’t go if he was naked—”
    â€œâ€”cause Emma says the sign in the window says—”
    Annie held up her hand. “Okay. I get it. But you guys need to know that they don’t serve dogs at the Mi-T-Fine Café. Even well-dressed dogs, like Chopper, here.”
    Alex’s face fell. “Never?”
    â€œNever?” Noah echoed.
    â€œNope.” She gestured to the dog. “And since they don’t serve naked kids either, put this poor animal out of his misery and you two get dressed.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ll give you five minutes. If you’re not ready, I’m going without you. And I’m ordering hot dogs.”
    â€œHot dogs!” the boys shouted with glee and in record time were ready for lunch on the town—or at least at the restaurant next door—with Mom.
    Â 
    Over the glass entrance doors of the Mi-T-Fine Caféin Keyhole, Wyoming, an electronic chime announced Wyatt’s arrival. The restaurant was doing a healthy business and no one in particular looked up to see who’d come in. From inside the kitchen a wonderfully familiar female voice called, “Take a seat. I’ll be with you in a