You Lucky Dog

by Julia London

  Max understood, but he couldn’t help but sigh with relief. “Thank you so much, Carly. I will never be able to convey to you how much I appreciate this. I’ll be back before you know it, and I swear, I’ll return the favor. Anytime you need to get out of town, you let me know. A week, a month, whatever you need. Baxter always has a home here.”

  She snorted. “You think I’m going to let Baxter stay here with you, eating mac and cheese and lounging on the couch? It’s going to take forever to undo that damage as it is.”

  “I appreciate it so much. This has been weighing on me—I thought I was going to have to resort to drastic measures.”

  “Well, news flash, Max—asking a total stranger to take your dog for a few days is a drastic measure.”

  “Yeah . . . but there are worse options,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I mean . . . no offense.” He clasped his hands together in prayer pose. “You’re a good person, Carly . . . What is your last name?”

  “Kennedy. Carly Kennedy Public Relations.”

  “You’re a good person, Carly Kennedy Public Relations. I’ve got a few things,” he said, and walked across the living area to a box on the floor near the kitchen. “Hazel’s things. Her favorite toy, some treats,” he said, rummaging through it. “Plenty of food, too.”

  Carly stared at the box in disbelief. “You were really hoping this worked out, weren’t you?”

  “I really was.” He carried the box under his arm and went to the back door, opened it, and whistled. Both dogs came running.

  “I am taking them now?” she asked incredulously.

  “Our flight is at seven in the morning. I thought it would be easier this way. I could drop her off in the morning if you like.”

  She covered her face with both hands, her red nail polish stark against her fair skin. “How do I get myself into these things?” She dropped her hands. “Well, all right, then, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it.”

  A bubble of maniacal relief was building in Max’s chest, but he pushed it down before it escaped into a deranged laugh, then walked to the front door. When he opened it, Hazel shot past him and out onto the flagstones. Baxter ran behind her. He actually looked like he was grinning.

  Max followed Carly to her car and put Hazel’s things in the back, stuffing the box down between yards of fabric and what looked like two carved wooden circles. He loaded the dogs in the back seat and asked for her phone. “I’ll enter my contact number. Text me or call me if you have any problems.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  He entered his number, then rang his number with her phone so that he’d have her contact as well. “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Don’t you even want to know where I live?” she asked curiously. “I could live in a rusted-out bus next to the highway. You really have no idea where you’re sending your dog.”

  “I considered the rusted-out bus theory, but since you and I had the same dog walker, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you don’t. I think you probably live around here somewhere.”

  “On the other side of Mopac,” she said, pointing in the direction of a highway that ran north and south on the west side of town.

  “See? You can tell me exactly where when I get back from Chicago. I’ll text you from the airport.”

  She opened the driver door.

  “Carly?”

  She paused and looked back to him.

  Inexplicably, his gaze went to her mouth. For a single breath he had the wildly inappropriate thought of kissing her goodbye. It was such a wayward thought, popping up like a weed between all the logistical thoughts in his head, that it shook him a little, and he reached around her and opened the car door a little wider. “Seriously. Thank you so much.”

  “Okay, stop thanking me. It’s starting to get weird.” She got in, pushed two overeager dogs off the console between her seats and to the back. As she backed out of the drive, she paused and through her open window shouted, “I can’t believe you talked me into this!” then rocketed out of his drive onto the main road.

  Max couldn’t believe it either. And for the first time in days, he could actually breathe a sigh of relief.

  But as he walked back in his house on that wave of relief, that weed of a thought, the idea of kissing her, wouldn’t wither away like it was supposed to.

  Six

  Carly told the dogs on their way home that she was an idiot. “This is what happens when a handsome guy asks me for a favor—I end up with you two. I mean, let’s be real. Everyone in this car knows that if Brant had asked me, I would have laughed in his face.”

  The dogs surged forward to lick her with agreement.

  “It was that business with the brother that did it,” she muttered as she pushed the dogs back. Note to self: invest in a car harness for the dogs. Dog. “He’s handsome and he’s taking his brother to a dog show. You can’t even find that guy in a romance novel, am I right?”

  They had reached the gate to her house. She pulled through and turned down the long drive to the cottage in back.

  She loved her quaint little two-bedroom cottage with its front porch and red chimney. She loved the location, too—it was almost exactly smack-dab in the middle of town. She’d stalked the cottage for months before it was available, and when the FOR RENT sign had finally gone up, she was the first one at the gate. It was her sanctuary, tucked in beneath some pecan trees and away from the road.

  The slap of a happy dog’s tongue across her cheek startled her back to the present. Carly ducked to one side. “Stop that, Hazel. It tickles.” Hazel panted in her ear a moment, then went back to her window, crowding Baxter out for the prime spot.

  “Don’t take that lying down, Bax,” she advised her dog.

  Baxter responded by lying down on the seat.

  As she was coasting down to the cottage, she spotted her landlord, Conrad Rutherford. He was in his drive, illuminated by floodlights. She tapped the horn in greeting.

  Conrad and his wife, Petra, had moved here a few years ago after retiring from some tech job in Silicon Valley. In spite of having a name that sounded like a round, monocled man in an old dime-store detective novel, Conrad was actually a young, rich hipster. He’d once tried to explain what he’d done in California, but Carly’s thoughts had taken a mental trip to Italy in the middle of his long-winded explanation. Whatever the job was, it had paid them enough to tear down one mansion and build another, then renovate the cottage on their property. As far as Carly knew, the only thing Conrad and Petra did now was grow herbs and tomatoes and flowers and talk a lot about climate change.

  Conrad jerked upright when she honked, then he waved at her. Both hands, high overhead. “I think he wants me to stop?” Carly mused. She slowed.

  He had on wide-legged shorts that hung to midcalf and a bandanna tied around his forehead. At his crown was the impressive man bun he’d been cultivating for a few months now. Petra was a former dancer, and sometimes in the very early morning, Carly would see her in the yard moving through a sun salutation. She was so graceful that she could make a simple yoga practice look like a performance. Occasionally, Conrad and Petra would invite Carly to the big house for supper, and they would regale her with tales of California over a plant-based meal featuring microgreens.

  Conrad waved again but with some urgency, even though Carly had rolled to a stop. He began to lope across the drive, his lanky frame making it look like he had too much leg to run properly. “Hi, Conrad!” Carly said when he reached her.

  “So glad I saw you,” he said breathlessly. He paused to bend over and press his hands to his knees and wheeze a moment. She rolled down the window so the dogs could say hello.

  “Hey,” Conrad said, and reached inside to pet them both. “Am I seeing double?” He laughed. He continued to pet them as he said, “So, listen, we need to have a chat about the rent.�
�

  The abrupt transition from dog to rent startled Carly. “Come again?”

  “Yep, ’fraid so,” he said with a bit of a casual shrug. “You’re on a month to month, you know.”

  Well, yes, of course she knew. Her heart started to jackhammer. She did not want to hear what he was going to say. No good news ever came after We need to have a chat about the rent. Her life was in enough of a shambles—

  “Looks like we’re going to have to go up on the rent, and we’ll probably want to sign you up for a year or so. Petra wants a two-year lease, but I don’t know if we need to push that idea just yet.”

  She could only gape at him as her brain cells scrambled together, trying to get in working formation.

  “Hey, don’t look so surprised. It’s just business.”

  “How so?” It was remarkable she could speak at all, given how high up into her throat her heart had just climbed.

  “Well, our property taxes have gone up, and we’ve got that hospital district that’s taxing now, so . . .” He shrugged again. And then smiled at the dogs and called one of them a good dog.

  “How much more?” she made herself ask.

  “Two hundred.”

  Lord help her, it was all she could do to keep from fainting dead away behind the wheel. She’d thought maybe, maybe, he’d ding her for another seventy-five a month. “Two hundred dollars?” she repeated, her voice almost a whimper.

  “That’s still under market rate, you know,” Conrad said. “I could get four grand for this place, easy, so you’re getting a bargain, Carly. And you know, Petra and I like you. We don’t want to push you out.”

  Didn’t they? Because raising her rent two hundred a month and forcing her to sign a year’s lease would probably push her out, and she suspected they had to know that.

  “Hey! Want some crookneck yellow squash? That stuff is still growing, can you believe it? Wait right here and I’ll get you some.” Conrad turned and loped back up his drive.

  Carly sank back against her seat. Baxter nudged her shoulder with his snout. “I know,” she muttered. “I’m freaking out, too.”

  Conrad returned with an armload of squash, and she took it, piling it into the front passenger seat, assuring him that she understood the rent situation all the while. Then she drove down to the cottage with squash rolling around in her seat and onto the floorboard.

  She did not sleep well that night for two reasons—one, because of the rent, obviously. And two, because two dogs crawled onto the bed with her during the night, which, in the beginning, had been kind of nice and comforting, but by morning, they’d spread themselves out, leaving her just a patch of her own bed.

  She woke up with a crick in her neck and a sixth-sense type of dread that things were about to go south. How could they not when you added another dog to the mix of dogs that you already hadn’t asked for? How could they not when you’d just heard about a two-hundred-dollar-a-month rent hike when you didn’t have a full-time job? It was just the laws of the universe—stuff was bound to happen.

  Her first business of the day was to log Gordon into his blog. But with no dog walker—she wouldn’t be able to afford one now, for sure—and no place to park her two matching beasts, Carly had to take the dogs along with her. She parked in Gordon’s drive, took the dogs out of the car, and leashed them to a magnolia tree, where they lay side by side in a cool breeze, apparently a-okay with hanging out in the shade for a time with the water bowl she set up for them.

  Gordon wasn’t home, but his housekeeper, the evil Alvira, was. Alvira wasn’t appreciative of the dogs, but Carly just smiled and went into Gordon’s office and logged him in to his blog. He hadn’t written anything but the initial blog post she had helped him with, and that was two weeks ago. So her plan was working beautifully! Not. She would need to rethink her five-point publicity proposal.

  From there, she took the dogs with her to run a dozen errands—no way was she leaving Hazel with any pillows in the house, her brand-new subscription to Dog TV notwithstanding, which, if she was being honest, was pretty soothing for people, too. That was as much TV as she’d watched in weeks.

  She took the dogs to her sister’s house when Mia called on the verge of tears, as she often did. “It’s Finn,” she said, referring to her oldest child, a five-year-old. “He’s the devil, Carly. Satan has inhabited his body, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”

  “Why? What’d he do?”

  “He tried to flush his brother’s bear down the toilet. But it wouldn’t go down, so he got a stick to help it along. My bathroom is flooded, and the toilet is probably ruined, and Will called and said he had to extend his trip by two days. Two days!”

  Mia did not handle stress well. Once, when Mia was pregnant with Millie, Carly had pointed out that she didn’t handle stress well, and Mia had almost come across the table for Carly’s throat. Thereby, Carly had further pointed out, proving her point.

  “It’s too much, Carly. I can’t take another thing today. What am I supposed to do?” Mia cried into the phone. “Just tell me, What. Am. I. Supposed. To. Do?”

  “I’ll be over,” Carly said. When Mia got like this, what she really needed was contact with an adult, and Carly was always the one on speed dial.

  She showed up with Baxter and Hazel in tow. Mia took one look at the dogs, then at Carly, and shrieked, “What are you doing? Why do you have two dogs? Why are they in my house?”

  “I told you the whole mix-up story. The second dog is the basset I found in my house. And, of course, you know Baxter.” Baxter wagged his tail. “I’m dog-sitting.”

  Mia stared at her. Somewhere upstairs in this beautiful, modern home, a child screamed. Mia glared at Carly. “Carly? I can’t deal with your dog sitch right now. I am having a meltdown and cannot add anything else to it.”

  “You are not adding anything to your meltdown, Mia. This problem,” she said, gesturing at both dogs, “is not a problem. Think of it as a playdate.”

  Another shriek and a loud thud made both of them wince.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” Bo screamed, and came running down the stairs. “Finn hit me!”

  “No, I didn’t!” Finn shouted, running down the stairs behind his brother. At the top of the stairs, little Millie had to stop and turn around so she could crawl backward down the stairs.

  “Finn. Stop hitting your brother!” Mia shouted.

  Finn instantly burst into tears and ran off in the direction of the kitchen. But the rush of shouting children had stirred up the dogs, and they began to bark. The barking only excited the children more, and as Bo and Millie ran from the dogs, Hazel thought it was an invitation to play, and went chasing after them. Baxter followed, barking loudly and often, then running back to make sure Carly hadn’t deserted him.

  Finn reappeared, still sobbing. “I don’t like you, Mommy!” he shouted, and ran up the stairs.

  “I know why mothers eat their young,” Mia said tearfully. “I totally get it. They never sleep. They eat like animals. They won’t mind me.”

  Carly noticed then that Mia’s hair, as light as Carly’s was dark, was standing on end. She had a mysterious stain on her shirt, and her chinos were worn at the knees. “Where is your nanny?” Carly asked.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? She left! Got a job in West Lake Hills that paid better. Second nanny this year to find a better job in West Lake Hills, and we are paying top dollar.”

  “Let’s fix your plumbing problem,” Carly suggested evenly.

  Mia pointed toward the guest bath.

  Crammed together into the small room, they stared down at the toilet and the bear leg, the only part of the bear that was visible. “What are we going to do?” Mia asked.

  “Dig it out,” Carly said.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Carly. You always know what to do,” Mia said. “You’re always there for me and
my hellions.”

  “I don’t know what to do, but it seems like the only solution. And I don’t know what I’d do without you, either. You were there for me when I got laid off. And when Blake broke up with me.”

  Mia thought about it a moment, and nodded. “You’re right. So it’s like you practically owe me this.” She smiled.

  Carly laughed.

  It took fifteen minutes to dig the bear out of the toilet. Carly did the digging. Mia stood over her, too close, watching and offering her opinion about how it should be done. But somewhere in the middle she said, “Do you think Mom and Dad are getting back together?”

  “What?” Carly yanked on a soggy paw. “Why would you even say that? They are divorced. The ink is dry on that deal. It’s over.”

  “I don’t know,” Mia said. “Don’t let it drip on the floor!”

  “Then could I have a plastic bag, please?” Carly asked.

  Mia moved to dig a plastic bag out of a bigger plastic bag, and when she did, Hazel suddenly appeared. She chomped down on the wet teddy that Carly was holding between two fingers, yanked it free, and raced away with it, leaving a trail of toilet water down the hall. Somewhere close by, Baxter barked.

  “Why did you let that dog have it?” Mia exclaimed.

  “I didn’t let her! She took it,” Carly said. They hurried out of the bathroom and down the hall after Hazel. The dogs were nowhere to be seen, but standing in the living room was Finn. He was clutching marigolds. His face and shirt were smeared with dirt.

  Mia blinked. “Where are your brother and sister?”

  “Outside,” Finn said, and sniffed back tears. “Mommy? I’m sorry.” He held out the clutch of marigolds.

  “Aww,” Carly said.

  “Oh, Finny,” Mia said, and went down on one knee. “C’mere.” She opened her arms to her son. Finn ran to her, and Mia hugged him and kissed his dirty cheeks, and as she pushed his hair back from his eyes, she said, “Where did you get the flowers, sweetie?”