“Aw,” Nemi crooned. “I don’t know what rabbit that is, but I agree. Save Bumper!”
There was a rustling noise, and then the smallest, cutest rabbit I’d ever seen poked its head out of the box, disappeared again, and then the box began moving across the sawdust.
“She does that,” Bond sighed, putting Nemi on the ground. “She forgets where the holes are to get out and takes the house with her by mistake.”
The top of the cage was wire, and he unhooked part of it and slid it back, before reaching in and lifting the plastic house up, hay and all, revealing the most adorable creature I’d ever seen. If I thought her head was cute, it had nothing on seeing her from top to tail.
Leaning over my back so she could see Bumper, Nemi whispered, “Is it a baby? I wanted Mommy to have a baby, but Bumper’s better than that.”
My reaction to the comment was vastly different from Bond’s. Whereas I covered my face and groaned into my hands, Bond burst out laughing.
“Bumper loves cuddles, but you have to make sure you don’t surprise her, or she’ll go and hide in her box. Because she can’t see, she won’t know you’re about to touch her. I find it’s better for her if I shake her food bowl first, then when she’s close to it, I give her a gentle stroke with the back of my finger first, then I do it with my whole hand,” he explained. “You’ve got to imagine, if you closed your eyes and couldn’t see anything, you’d want people to make a noise to warn you they were close, too, wouldn’t you?”
The way he explained things to Nemi, finding ways she’d understand and learn from, amazed me.
“Wow, I never thought like that.” Nemi scrunched her eyes shut. “I can see Cody.”
Bond frowned and then looked at me.
“She’s talking about Evie’s son.”
“I know who Cody is. What I don’t get is why she can see him?”
Leaning in close to him, I whispered, “She has a small crush on him.”
“Hell, no! That little punk’s almost ten years older than her.”
Cody was hardly a ‘little punk.’ He was a lovely kid who’d had a lot of shit emotionally and had come through it. He looked up to Alex Bell, his soon-to-be stepdad, and he thought his soon-to-be stepbrother, the sheriff at Piersville Police Department, was the absolute shit. He got along well with all of the guys who worked there and the Klein brothers, so why was Bond so pissed about it.
“He’s not a little punk, and I thought you liked him? You said he was an awesome kid the other day.”
“That was before I found out about this.” He gestured at Nemi, who was smiling at whatever she was picturing with her eyes shut.
“She also has a teeny crush on one of the Townsend boys,” I held my finger and thumb an inch apart for emphasis. “I just can’t remember which one it is this month.” Seeing his eyes widen and a vein becoming more prominent in his neck, I gestured back at the cage. “Let’s get back to Bumper. It’ll keep you saner than trying to understand a three-year-old’s emotions.”
Jerking his chin up, he tapped Nemi on the shoulder.
“I didn’t get a fright, Bond, ‘cuz I heard you talking in front of me,” she giggled, and all of the irritation and tension in him oozed away at the sound of it.
“That’s right, so that’s what we do for Bumper.”
Opening her eyes, Nemi cocked her head to the side. “Why’s she called Bumper?”
“Because she bumps into everything when she walks.”
Nemi’s lower lip pouted out. “Aw, poor Bumper.”
Reaching in, he shook the bowl, getting the rabbit’s attention. Almost like she knew what was coming, she leaned slightly just as he ran his finger down her side.
“Watch this, Nemi,” he said over his shoulder and then cupped his hand in front of her. She might not have been able to see, but she definitely could memorize things, because she jumped into his hand before he lifted her out, holding Bumper to his chest. “Lop bunnies have these big, floppy ears, and her kind are mini versions of them.”
I couldn’t help it, I had to touch her. She was just so damn cute! Gently running my finger down an ear, I murmured, “How big will she get?”
“She’ll stay this size.”
That surprised me. I had no idea such tiny rabbits existed. Then again, I’d never really paid much attention to them, so there was that.
“How old is she?” Nemi asked, copying what I’d done on the rabbit’s other ear, before softly stroking its head.
“I’ve had her for just over a year, and she was three months old when I got her. My friend’s sister was going to keep her, but she has three little kids and was afraid Bumper would get hurt when they ran around the place.”