Cupid to the Rescue: A Tail-Wagging Valentine's Day Anthology

by Lisa Mondello

  From Jack Levine – Read Rachel’s story. All I’ll say is: magic, my eye! Sure, I’ll admit that sailors are a superstitious bunch. But here’s what really happened: my boat went missing and shook her up. It wasn’t magic. It was a miracle! All of it. So believe what you want.

  From Jason Parker – I came back after nine years because I couldn’t outrun the pain. Prom night. A car wreck. My twin brother gone. Our music gone with him. Except not. I’ve got platinum behind me, and what does it mean? Nothing without the folks I love. Less than nothing without Lila Sullivan. She’s always been the one, the only one for me. Bless Bart Quinn for lending me Sea View House. My daughter was conceived there a long time ago. But I didn’t know anything about her all those years. Folks might call Katie The Daughter He Never Knew, and they’d be right. But I know her now. As for her mom and me…? Sea View House came through for us again. Our wedding took place right there. I believe in the magic. I believe in happily ever after. If that’s not love, what is?

  From Lila Sullivan Parker – Read Jason’s account. All I’ll add is that the right girl for lovely Adam Fielding is still out there. Jason’s return saved Adam and me from a tepid marriage of convenience. We both deserved more. My money’s on Adam and Sea View House.

  Sea View House Series

  From Rebecca Hart Fielding – It’s summer again, a year since the last entry in this journal. The magic is still here. In this place, in this town, in its people. After the Boston Marathon, I arrived at Sea View House with no expectations except to focus on rehab. I wanted to hide, but that’s impossible in Pilgrim Cove. In a nutshell, I met Adam in a bar. A nice bar at the Wayside Inn. It was definitely NOT love at first sight. But something changed along the way.

  From Adam Fielding – We fell in love. That’s what happened. That’s the magic everyone talks about. No woo-woo. No smoke and mirrors. Scientists don’t believe in that stuff. When Becca came to Sea View House, all she wanted to do was walk again. She was stubborn. She was proud. And she was determined to remain the athlete she’d always been. I’m happy to say that Her Long Walk Home brought her straight into my arms.

  From Joy MacKenzie Nash – If anyone needed the magic of Sea View House, it was Logan and me. He didn’t believe in it, of course. But grief lived in my heart, and I was open to anything. How ironic that this kindergarten teacher couldn’t have her own children. I pretended to be happy. Maybe I overdid the act. When Logan met me, he thought I was a ditz, and I thought he was the loneliest person I’d ever met, always hiding behind his camera.

  From Logan Nash – Love stared at me through the lens of my Nikon. Joy, Joy, Joy. She was everywhere. But what I did I know about love? Nothing. I was a foster care kid, never dreaming of a family of my own, not even knowing how an ordinary family worked. And the magic? When Joy said yes, her eyes shining with love, I knew that between us, she’d get Her Picture-Perfect Family. And so would I. That’s magic enough for me.

  From Alison Berg-Romano – After my husband died, I wasn’t looking for another love or another hero. The grief and guilt following his death haunted me. All I wanted was a safe, quiet life, a private life away from the city. I took my infant son and rented a house in cozy Pilgrim Cove. Little did I know Mike Romano lived across the street. Mike didn’t believe in quiet. Or solitude. Or privacy. He drove me crazy until I saw the truth. He was my cheering section. My go-to guy. He had my back. And his eyes shone with love when he looked my way. But not even for me would he stop fighting fires in Pilgrim Cove.

  From Mike Romano – Starting over is not easy, but Ali is much stronger than she thinks. All I did was nag and tease and challenge her—and play with baby Joey—until she finally agreed to a dinner date. I’m sure she just wanted to shut me up and live her quiet life again. But I couldn’t let that happen. She’s too brave, beautiful, and talented to give up on life. In her, I saw myself, no stranger to second chances. Her husband was a hero, and I’m certainly not qualified as Her Second-Chance Hero. I’m just a guy giving back to the town I love. And to the woman who stole my heart.

  From Kathy Russo – All I wanted was a quiet place to write. No family. No neighbors. No interruptions. Peace and quiet would be magic enough for me! With my grandmother’s rescue dog, Sheba, for company, the upstairs unit at Sea View House was perfect. Even in winter, with the mighty Atlantic next door, a house on the beach is a treat. I had no idea I’d run into trouble before I’d even arrived.

  From Brandon Bigelow – It should have been easy. An off-season rental on the beach should have been a perfect place to rebuild my business and figure out where to live next. I hadn’t counted on meeting Kathy Russo on my way into town and becoming one of Her Roadside Rescues along with my new dog, Rocky. Somehow peace and quiet doesn’t have a chance when a couple of rescues are involved. And a man doesn’t have a chance when looking into the sparking eyes of a petite woman who thinks she’s a superhero. Neither of us believed in the tales of magic that went with the place. But we didn’t have to. Finding each other was magic enough.

  From Bartholomew Quinn – It’s all about the magic. That’s the truth, but these young people refuse to admit it. So let’s be scientific. What do these loving couples have in common? Sea View House! Is it mere coincidence that, in recent times, eight couples met there, fell in love, and got married afterwards? No! It’s not a coincidence. The sun, sand, and ocean might provide the perfect atmosphere, but in the end, it’s the magic.

  Sea View House has been an enchanted hideaway from the beginning. A special place to heal. Or a place to solve life’s problems. I expect the powers of Sea View House will continue long after I’m gone. But to tell the truth, I’ve got no plans to go anywhere yet…except to Florida for a winter break. I’m going with a gal who likes my company. A gal who made this old heart race like a young stallion’s. But I can also see that Honeybelle’s eyes gleam when I look her way. It seems the Sea View House charm is not only for the young but for the young at heart. Did I mention that Honeybelle MacKenzie happened to live there for a while?

  Imagine! After all this time, the magic’s come around to touch me! And it’s still there.

  HELLO FROM LINDA

  Dear Reader:

  Thank you so much for choosing to read Her Roadside Rescues. I hope you enjoyed your visit to Pilgrim Cove where a love story always unfolds for the tenants of Sea View House. If this was your first visit to Pilgrim Cove and you’d like to read more stories, you can find Her Long Walk Home, Book 1 in the series, at your favorite bookseller. And it’s free! If you’ve been a loyal reader, I hope you enjoyed your visit with old friends.

  In either case, if you enjoyed the book, I’d truly appreciate you helping others find it so they can discover Linda Barrett books, too. Here’s what you can do:

  *Write an honest review and post it on the site where you purchased it.

  *Keep up with me at my website at www.linda-barrett.com.

  *Sign up for my newsletter at here.

  *Tell your friends! The best book recommendations come from friends because we trust them!

  Thanks again for reading and for helping to get the word out.

  Best always,

  Linda

  P.S. All my books are available in print as well.

  HEART OF A RUSSIAN BEAR DOG

  White House Protection Force

  M. L. Buchman

  Heart of a Russian Bear Dog: Chapter 1

  “Don’t you mind their sneers for one single second,” Alex Warren used his squeakiest high voice to cheer up his dog. The chill fog of his breath blanketed Valentin’s furry face for a moment.

  Valentin wagged his long tail slowly in agreement. Actually, being a dog, he would just be happy at the attention.

  Not a chance that his massive Caucasian shepherd cared about the group of US Secret Service handlers and their Malinois and German shepherds waiting for their turn. Valentin wasn’t the sort of dog to judge himself by others. Alex wished he could say the same.

  The Secre
t Service K-9 test-and-training course at the James J. Rowley Training Center was the most impressive one he’d ever seen. Behind them was the main building which included classrooms, kennels, and interiors for room-clearing and explosives-detection practice. Out here in the bitter February cold of a rural Maryland sunrise, the exterior course spread out over an acre of ground. There were agility courses, obedience and communication tests, and, of course, attack and takedown training.

  And this was only the smallest corner of JJRTC where all DC Secret Service agents trained. This morning he’d come in past driving courses, an urban combat zone, and even a chunk of airliner fuselage and an old Marine One helo. He couldn’t wait to try those.

  No, Valentin wasn’t threatened by the other dogs at all. It was easy to understand why, as even the largest was barely half Valentin’s size.

  But the other USSS handlers were bugging the crap out of Alex.

  “Your Valentine looks like a rug, not a dog,” Lieutenant Carlton, never Carl, Tibbets called out. Alex had learned that rule about the Lieutenant in his first two minutes after joining the Washington, DC, team this morning. San Francisco suddenly felt very far away.

  “Val-en-teen. He’s Russian, not a greeting card,” Alex tried to stare the man down. But as they were both wearing sunglasses against the low, early-morning sun, it didn’t seem to work very well.

  “Valenteen. Yeah, right.” Carlton clearly hadn’t gotten his crème-filled donuts this morning. Instead he’d eaten a dose of nasty. Alex wondered if the guy had merely turned into an asshole or if he’d been born that way.

  Alex patted Valentin’s big head. He didn’t have to reach down at all; the dog’s head was waist high.

  “Valenteen! Ooo! Ooo!” Bethany Wilson called out in an overly prissy tone—one that still had her West Virginia twang behind it. “Y’all are going to have to say Valenteen’s Day next week or there’s gonna be a mess o’ trouble.” It earned her a laugh from most of the other guys. She was cute, funny, and a damn fine dog handler. She and her dog had been out to his old posting in San Francisco for a couple weeks last year. They never got together, but he’d certainly enjoyed her company. Her and her dog’s demonstrations of just how “next level” DC was in the Secret Service dog world had played a major role in his transferring here.

  Alex joined in the laugh easily. “Well, he was born on Valentine’s Day. So making it Valentin’s Day definitely works for him.”

  “Slow, big-assed piece of dogmeat who’ll never keep up with my Malinois. Can’t believe they let you two into the Secret Service at all.” Carlton was just looking for a fight, but Alex didn’t see any reason to give it to him.

  But he didn’t like it when someone insulted his sweet dog. He chose an underhanded jibe rather than a frontal assault.

  “You’re not like those hyperactive little Malinois fluffballs, are you?” Alex squeaked it to Valentin loud enough to earn a happy smile from his dog and some laughs down the line.

  Except from Carlton Tibbets—probably Junior, or the Third, or the Junior Third—who turned to face him, and snapped out “Asshole!” in a nasty tone.

  Before Alex could even think about reacting, Valentin spun on Carlton.

  His deep snarl silenced the entire line.

  The dog out on the course twisted to see what was happening, ran into a slalom pole, and tumbled to the ground.

  Carlton’s seventy-pound Malinois, Ripper, was the only one to step forward, bristling all the way down to his tail, ready for the command Fass—Attack!

  Carlton, however, stumbled back and fell on his ass. Too bad the February cold snap had briefly frozen the muddy field grass.

  No one else moved an inch.

  Valentin wasn’t called a Russian bear dog just because of his big square head. He and Alex weighed in at the same one-eighty—right at the top of his breed. His dog’s long, shaggy coat was a pure dark brown, that was rare, except for a light tan chest blaze. He looked like a not-so-small shaggy bear and sounded like a royally pissed grizzly.

  Alex called out the Russian command for Quiet, “Tiho.” Then followed it with a soft “Molodets” for Good Boy.

  Valentin silenced immediately but didn’t look away from Carlton for an instant—he ignored the still-bristling Malinois as if Ripper was a three-pound Pomeranian, which somehow seemed to piss of Ripper even more.

  Alex’s was the only dog he knew of in the whole US Secret Service that was trained in Russian. German and occasionally English was a Service dog’s normal command set.

  When he’d been paired with Valentin two years ago, he’d tried to point out to his parents that his degree in the Golden Age of Russian literature hadn’t been completely wasted. They hadn’t bought it. Up against their expectation of his joining the family’s law firm that dated back to the days of the California Gold Rush, he supposed they never would.

  Alex turned his back on Carlton, instead watching the German shepherd out on the course restart his run. After one low woof, that sounded more like a scoff of dismissal than a threat, Valentin did the same.

  JJRTC’s maples and oaks were still bare branch, so he could just hear the squealing tires from the defensive driving course a quarter mile to the west. The chill morning breeze carried just a hint of burning rubber as the Secret Service drivers skidded and spun their vehicles. Thankfully, the urban street for assault simulations that lay between them hadn’t kicked into gear yet, so he could also hear the early morning birdsong.

  “Hell of a first day,” Lieutenant “Jerk” Jurgen, the head of the dog center at JJRTC, sneered as he walked up. Alex had only been in DC forty-eight hours and on duty for only these last two, but already knew the nickname was deserved. “Where’s his goddamn leash?”

  “I don’t use one. We might weigh the same but a lot more of him is muscle than me, so the leash doesn’t do much. He obeys my voice commands.”

  Jurgen grimaced at him. But he did think to let Valentin sniff him before offering a pat—always a smart move with a Caucasian shepherd as the breed wasn’t noted for its friendliness to strangers. In fact, it was a dog to be approached carefully by anyone not identified as immediate family by its alpha handler. One of the many reasons they made such good guard dogs.

  Jurgen gave Valentin time to make his own decision, and accept the gesture.

  The head trainer might be a jerk, Bethany had told him when he’d called for some coming-East and first-day advice, but he’s a very skilled jerk who loves his dogs far more than his people.

  Alex was good with that.

  Jurgen even squatted in front of Valentin and whispered to the dog.

  Alex had to lean in to overhear.

  “You would take on the lead ERT dog team on your first day. Good job!” He scrubbed his knuckles on the dog’s head before moving on.

  Alex glanced sideways at Carlton. The top Emergency Response Team? Shit! “Lead dog” might not be an official title, but no question DC was thick with hierarchy. If Carlton Tibbets and Ripper—as if someone named Carlton could possibly handle a dog named Ripper—were at the top, then it was more like Alex’s first day in hell. Carlton was going to heap all the garbage he could manage on him and Valentin as payback.

  The sun was a handspan above the horizon, but the temperature hadn’t cracked twenty degrees yet—a bitter rarity Bethany had assured him. A couple of the short-coated Dobermans looked plaintively at their Secret Service handlers as they puffed out steamy breaths.

  Valentin, however, was truly in his element. His shaggy coat was made for sleeping in snowstorms during a Russian winter. DC summers would be the challenge for him, in ways that a foggy and cold San Francisco summer could never be.

  But when the Secret Service had said there was an opening on the DC team, the two of them had hit the ground running. Actually, they’d had a great week-long drive across the country in Alex’s Jeep Wrangler, but same idea.

  He dug his fingers deep into Valentin’s soft undercoat to reassure himself and Valentin leaned agai
nst his thigh in response. They’d been the top of the dog heap in San Francisco. A much more informal world out there. Here they were the unknown, the outsiders. Chances were that after this morning’s introduction, he’d be bottom-rostered until the day he retired.

  Because hell, it was Washington, DC—the gold medal posting of the Secret Service. They’d done their “foreign” office time in the City by the Bay, and it was time to prove themselves. That he had no fear about.

  He might miss the California girls, but maybe not that much. The chill fogs of his family’s Nob Hill home and UC Berkeley were a far cry from Malibu bikini-land.

  If Alex could just not have to deal with Carlton Tibbets on his first day.

  Bethany ran her dog, a big German shepherd named Trixie of all silliness, into the course. Because, of course, you’d give a girl dog with a cutesy name to a pretty blonde. Jerk Jurgen had come by his nickname honestly—seemed to revel in it.

  Not that Bethany or Trixie appeared to care; they did a fine job of working the course. A combination of voice and hand signals, they were well on their way to one of the top scores of the day.

  Slalom through a line of spaced stakes to prove high-speed agility. Dive down into a twisting ten-yard by eighteen-inch tube at a full run. Exit at a full sprint, up a narrow walkway and across a six-inch wide bridge high over a water pool, and down a ladder on the far side. Clear a four-foot wall. Jump into a full-size pickup truck’s window and put a bite on the “terrorist” driver mannequin. Then over a six-foot wall and take down a live runner in a thick, heavily padded bite suit.

  That was just the first lap of the course.

  Later, more agility work.