There were supposed to be no surprises when you lived at Maple Grove, especially if you were family. That was partly why Taylor and Kaylee had decided to move onto the estate, charmed by Lilac Cottage, which had been suggested by Jon. A couple of months after moving in, they were virtually completely settled, with furnishings they had been allowed to pick out but not to pay for. Between Miranda, Jon, Humphrey, and the occasional present from Correy, it was a wonder the young couple were even allowed to buy their own groceries. They didn't have a life plan, but they were working on it, slowly. They'd gotten married; they were living in a house. They were all normal, healthy steps, and even if there were still some nights when the Grove was too dark for comfort, or the nightmares came back, that, too, was under their control.

With snow still on the ground, the raised porch had become Kaylee's favorite place to sit when Taylor was out, and there she was today, swinging gently with a blanket wrapped around herself and a steaming cup of coffee in her hands. There was a tune half-formed in her head, something she would put to paper in a day or so, but for now, she was content to sit and listen to the sounds of the Grove, muffled by the gentle fall of snowflakes.

For two people who had lived so much of their lives in the darkness, the move to Maple Grove seemed to have moved them into the light. Not only was it safe here, but both their families were close by to help tether them and keep them grounded in case the darkness started to creep its way back into their lives. It was hard to acknowledge the darkness when they were so surrounded by light. The couple was practically inseparable, but each day when Taylor left for work, it was always with a promise that he'd be back in the evening. The only difference this evening was that he wasn't coming home alone.

Since Kaylee had rediscovered her music, she was beginning to contribute to their daily living allowance, though royalties were more of an ongoing creep of cash into their account than a lump sum payment. She'd realized that she was almost perfectly suited to keeping house, though, quite content to clean and cook and do all the little sundry tasks that made a house livable, and so long as she stayed on top of them, she always had time to compose and play, and to give lessons as her reputation as a singing teacher slowly grew. She did spend most of each day Taylor was working alone, but they were on the Grove. Out here, there was always the option of walking over to see Miranda and Rufus, or dropping in on Humphrey.

Taylor hadn't been planning on bringing a guest home with him, but in his mind it was the perfect solution to Kaylee's solitude. Whether she was a Granger or not, one of them had to work for a living, and Taylor wasn't the kind to sit around on his laurels and be a man of leisure, no matter how much he missed her while he was away. He'd become an EMT for a reason - because he wanted to help people - and Kaylee would never have asked him to give that up, no matter how much she missed him in return. He was running a little bit late today, just late enough to make her worry, but not late enough to have her calling his cell to ask where he was. When the SUV finally pulled onto the gravel drive in front of their house at Maple Grove and Taylor climbed out, he was accompanied by a small canine friend who was wagging his tail happily and following at his heels, as if he belonged there, too.

She heard the car before she saw it, stretching as she stood to hug the blanket about her shoulders as she leaned against the post to watch her husband park up and climb out. Her mouth fell open a little at the sight of a little friend of the doggy persuasion hopping out to walk with him, but she was hardly unhappy about it, letting out a quiet laugh at how adoringly the little dog looked up at Taylor. "Did I get replaced?" she teased her husband as he reached the porch.

"Would you believe he followed me home?" Taylor asked with a grin as he mounted the porch steps to greet his wife with a kiss, the dog following along, like his shadow. "I almost hit him on my way home," he explained further with a frown. The dog looked like a mongrel of some kind, possibly a mix of beagle and doberman and retriever, though Taylor wasn't familiar with dogs enough to know for sure. "No collar or tags, but he seems friendly enough," Taylor explained, crouching down to get a better look at him. "Needs a bath and some food," he said. From the look of things, the dog hadn't had a decent meal in some time. "He must have been wandering for a while."

"Well, he seems pretty pleased to have crossed your path," she pointed out, hugging Taylor as he kissed her. "He's handsome for a mutt. Aren't you, cutie?" Crouching down, she ran her hand through the animal's fur, glad she couldn't feel any flea bites. He seemed thin, but otherwise fairly healthy. "Well ....we can throw him in the bath, and call Jon or the Storms. They've gotta have some spare dog stuff we can borrow until we get a chance to get him set up." She looked up at Taylor hopefully. "We are keeping him, right?"

"I thought we'd clean him up, get him some food, and put an ad in the paper," he replied solemnly. Though he was secretly hoping no one claimed him, the dog was too friendly to not have known a good home, and he didn't want to steal a dog from a loving family who might be missing him. "Your guess is as good as mine where he's from or what his name is, but I couldn't just leave him alone out there."

Disappointment flickered for a moment across Kaylee's expression, but she was adult enough to recognize that Taylor was right. "I guess we should try and find out if you've got a home somewhere before we lure you over to our side," she admitted to the dog ruefully. Leaning closer, she whispered loudly, "I hope you don't." The dog licked her cheek in answer, making her laugh as she reared back. "Okay, so ....you wanna bath the dog or crash in on Jon briefly?" she asked Taylor with a chuckle. "Or just call him; I'll bet he'd come rushing out here with a huge bag of stuff if we sound desperate enough."

"I'll give Jon a call. I think I might need help with the bath!" he replied with a chuckle. It was strange to hear himself laugh and feel that laughter bubbling up inside him. Both he and Kaylee had gone too long without laughter, and sometimes it almost felt like they had been reborn into a new life together where anything was possible.

Smiling, Kaylee rose up onto her feet, curling her arms about Taylor's waist to kiss him tenderly. "How was work, anyway?" she asked, glancing down as their house guest sat himself on the porch in front of the door as though requesting permission to enter the house with them.

Taylor slid his arms around her to return her embrace, smiling into her kiss. "Thankfully, quiet. Just a few calls today. Nothing too serious. Edward and Lisbeth are pretty busy with the clinic though. What do you think the chances are they can talk George into working there, too?"

She blinked in surprise, tilting her head back as she looked up at him. "He'd have to retrain a little," she mused, reaching out to open the door. "Get inside, I'm freezing my *ss off here." Whether Taylor did as he was told or not, their new canine friend was only too happy to trot inside out of the cold. "Maybe he'll think about it after he marries Gabi. She applied to the clinic for that part-time reception job, didn't she?"

"I think so, but with Edward and Lisbeth mostly running the clinic, I doubt she'll have any trouble getting the job. Maybe we should change the name to the Granger-Bennett Medical Clinic," he teased as he followed her and their new canine friend inside. Though he was the only Bennett currently working there, there was no shortage of Grangers who seemed interested in the place. "So ..." Taylor mused aloud, turning his attention back to the dog, who was looking up at them expectantly, while his tail thumbed against the floor. "What should we call him?"

"Hmm ..." Kaylee followed his gaze to the patient mutt watching them hopefully as she closed the cold air outside. "J.D.," she suggested with a faint grin, flicking a teasing glance at her husband.

"J.D." As in Jack Daniels?" Taylor asked, unsure what those initials might stand for otherwise. Of course, they could stand for "Just Dog", or any other number of acronyms, but that was the first one that popped into his head.

"I don't know," she smiled, stroking the now silken head resting on her knee as she watched Taylor with quietly appreciative eyes. "I guess it seems selfish to want to keep him when he might have a family already. Little bit." She shrugged, rubbing her thumb gently between the dog's eyes. "Even if we have to give him up, can we get a replacement?"

Taylor, now dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants, took a seat on the bed beside Kaylee, frowning thoughtfully at the subject of conversation. "I think we should do what we can to find his owner, but if we can't, then we should be able to keep him." But that didn't really answer her question.

She was quiet for a long moment before speaking up again. "So I guess you wouldn't really be on board with me hiding him under the bed, then?" she asked, tilting her head toward Taylor with a mischievous smile playing at her lips.

"Would you want to break someone's heart by keeping him if he belongs to someone else?" Taylor asked, putting her in the shoes of the person who might have lost Sam, rather than those who had found him. "You know, Johnny and Liv found a stray a while back, before they adopted Bella. The owner was a little boy," he told her, having overheard Johnny telling the story to someone at the fire station.

Guilt flared on Kaylee's face as he made a point of making her see the other side. She shook her head. "I wouldn't want to hurt anyone like that," she assured him. "Am I allowed to hope a little bit, though?"

"Kay, I promise ....If we find Sam's owner, and you still have your heart set on a dog, we'll find one of our own, okay?" he asked, though there was something else poking at him besides that of a pet.

Her smile softened as it reappeared, her body leaning into his with tender trust. He knew her better than anyone, but there was one thing she was about to say that he might not have been expecting. "Or maybe we should just get pregnant."

That was a surprise, but it put a smile on his face, as he poked her gently in the ribs. "Don't you mean you should get pregnant' I'm just here to help," he teased, knowing what she meant.

She snorted with laughter, batting his hand away as her smile widened to the familiar sight of her merry grin. "Oh, I think it's definitely we," she insisted. "Takes two to tango, you know. Or is what we do more of a polka?"

"Hmm," he murmured, pushing her back onto the bed to grin down at her, his hands disappearing beneath her shirt. "I wouldn't mind polka-ing with you," he said, but even as his lips grazed her neck, their guest barked again to remind them that he was still there and still needing attention.

Kaylee's giggles were muffled as he eased her down onto her back, but erupted louder than before when Sam not so gently reminded them that he was still in the room. Laughing, she drummed her fingers against Taylor's bicep affectionately. "I guess I should feed my boys, huh?" she suggested. "Any requests?"

Taylor echoed Kaylee's laughter as Sam reminded them very vocally that he was still there. "So long as it's not dogfood," he teased, touching a kiss to her lips. The subject of starting a family wasn't closed yet, just delayed for a while so they could get some food in their stomachs.

"How does lemon chicken and rice sound?" she suggested after that kiss. Despite their slightly rocky, misunderstanding-filled start, she and Taylor had never been short on affection for one another, or shy about sharing it.

"Sounds perfect. You want to get that started while I take care of the 'little man' here?" he asked, purposely using her own words for their new friend. "What did Jon have to say?" he asked further as he started going through the pile of stuff her cousin had sent over.

"Uh ..." Kaylee sat up thoughtfully, smiling as he repeated her moniker for Sam. "One cup of the dry, and he can have meat scraps so long as they're not processed or too fatty," she offered from her memory. "He said he put bowls in there, too, so we can put water down." Pushing herself up onto her feet, she rolled her shoulders to stretch them, aiming herself for the kitchen. Cooking was something she was very proud of, and surprisingly good at, too.

"Maybe this is good practice for us," Taylor said as he followed her into the kitchen to fill Sam's food and water bowls. "Good practice for having kids, I mean," he explained further, though it seemed perfectly obvious what he was getting at.

For some reason, hearing him say that put the sweetest smile on his wife's face. They'd briefly mentioned children a few months ago, but hadn't really come to any definitive conclusion. It was wonderful to hear him talking about starting a family together without the wariness or hesitation that had marked that conversation. "I guess it is," she agreed softly, pulling various ingredients out of the fridge and cupboards to start putting together their dinner, aware of Sam's wagging tail as he followed Taylor around the kitchen. "Do you think we're ready, now?"

"Don't you?" he asked, as he poured dry food into Sam's bowl and set it on the floor. "Easy, boy," he told the canine as he gently stroked his fur. "There's more where that came from." Crouched nearby, he continued to stroke the dog's fur for a long moment before getting up to fill a bowl with water. "We have a home of our own now, and I'm more than able to provide for a family. The nightmares have subsided. I feel almost normal," he said with a strained smile her way. Both of them knew they'd never really be normal. After everything they'd gone through, there would always be nightmares, but neither of them was hiding in a closet anymore or waking up screaming in the dark.

This was normal, for them. It was the sunny kind of normal they had developed together, starting the morning after he'd come home from the hospital following the hunt that had ended a seven-year cycle which had caught both of them in its trap. Kaylee's sweet smile didn't diminish as he spoke, touched and hopeful. It was no secret that she loved children, after all. "I think we're ready," she agreed quietly. "We're never gonna be like other families, but we don't have to be. We just have to be happy with ourselves. And I'm very happy with you."

"That's all that matters then, isn't it?" he asked, leaning sideways to touch a kiss to her cheek before turning to set the dog's water bowl on the floor. "I think we answered our own question," he added, scritching Sam's fur again before rising to his feet and turning to face her. "You wanna get a jump on Elle and Dom?" he teased, predicting that couple might be the next to start a family, since their wedding was looming.

She laughed, leaning into him as he kissed her cheek, her hands busy filling the crockpot before she set it on the stove. One of these days, she was going to get a slow cooker, but for now, these kinds of dishes were crockpot-friendly. "I think ....I should stop taking the potion," she told him with a thoughtful smile. "No stress, no fuss. If it happens, it happens, and we have all the time in the world."

"Not all the time in the world, but I'm in no hurry," he said, his arms going around her waist while she worked on getting dinner going. "In the meantime, we have Sam," he added with a grin, the dog barking once as if in agreement with the man who had found him and given him a home, temporary or otherwise.

"What, are you planning on becoming an old man in the next ten years?" she asked with a warm laugh, leaning back into him as he embraced her from behind. Sam's bark only made her laugh harder, glancing down to see the hopeful little face looking up at her. "No dice, little man, not until it's cooked, anyway."