Love Is a Four-Legged Word

by Kandy Shepherd

  “We have to beat him. If he were a nice nephew who’d been good to Walter and would love Brutus, I wouldn’t mind. But Jerome doesn’t deserve a cent. Not after what he tried to do to an innocent little animal.”

  “As the custodian of the millionaire mutt you won’t lack for money.”

  She’d dreamed a little about Walter’s money and moving into the big house; she wouldn’t be human if she hadn’t. “But I can’t imagine not working. I’m passionate about my work.”

  “I think you match me on that score.”

  But he wasn’t the one who would be bearing the children when and if he ever married. “I guess there’s nothing about babies in your five-year plan?”

  “There isn’t. However, I’ll be writing a new plan at the end of this five years.”

  But nothing would change in his current plan, she thought, unable to stop herself from feeling wistful. No serious girlfriend, no fiancée, no wife. No her. Her heart contracted in an unexpected spasm of pain.

  “What about your sister’s husband?”

  “He needed some convincing to give up his job in San Francisco, but now he’s living his dream and running a small sound recording studio.”

  “That sounds like happy endings all round,” she said. “So what’s your dream, Tom?” Did he have any ambitions that didn’t relate to work?

  His mouth set tight. “To make partner at Jackson, Jones, and Gentry. I’ll do whatever is necessary to reach that goal.”

  Maddy took a deep breath. “Well, Brutus and I will do our best to stay out of your way.”

  She was so grateful to him for giving them refuge here. It was nothing to him that Brutus survived the twenty-one days. He was just hiding them out of kindness. To make things easier for her.

  “You don’t have to stay out of my way, Maddy.” He leaned across the table and this time he took her hand. She trembled at the memory of how exciting him caressing her body had felt last night. “In fact, the closer you are the happier I’ll be.”

  She met his eyes and was stunned by the warmth she saw there. He wasn’t offering anything permanent. But was she sure something permanent was what she wanted or needed? And she still hadn’t ascertained whether Tom expected his underpants to be ironed.

  She answered the pressure of his hand with her own. “I’ll keep that in mind, Tom,” she murmured. In fact, his words would probably never be far away from her mind. They might help her decide how far to take things the next time he kissed her.

  Fifteen

  “Don’t let anyone in, okay?” Tom told Maddy as he left the apartment for his office.

  “Yes, Grumpy. I’ll be on full alert for witches with shiny, red poisoned apples.”

  “Be serious, Maddy. Please.”

  But she noted a hint of dimple as he spoke that told her he appreciated the joke.

  “Can I go out if I’m very, very careful not to be seen? I love the gourmet food stores at the Ferry Building and it’s so close.”

  Tom’s hand dropped from her shoulder. “Go to the Ferry Building? Maddy, haven’t you heard anything I’ve been saying? Think of those headlines. You need to stay out of sight of reporters. Not to mention Jerome.”

  “You mean I’m confined to quarters? It isn’t just Brutus who’s behind bars?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way but that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “But there’s no food in this apartment except the stuff I brought with me for Brutus. I guess you wouldn’t want canned dog chow served up to you on toast for dinner. I couldn’t guarantee it’s low fat.”

  “Ha-ha,” he said with a complete lack of dimple. “Order food on the Internet. Use my computer. The password is Buzz20.”

  “Buzz?”

  “As in Buzz Lightyear.”

  “So your nieces like Toy Story?” She injected a teasing tone to her voice.

  “They do,” he said, refusing to be drawn.

  “How can I get stuff on the Internet when I can’t let anyone into the apartment? You know, on Grumpy’s orders.”

  “The doorman will call up so you’ll know the delivery is okay.”

  “But you said I’d be safe here.”

  “Yes, but why risk being seen? You’ve been on national television now. Someone might recognize you.”

  “Okay, Grumpy,” she said, conceding defeat.

  Tom put his finger under her chin and tilted her face upward. “You know it’s only in your best interests—and Brutus’s.”

  But before she could say anything in reply he kissed the breath from her and was gone.

  Maddy showered and dressed. The apartment seemed very quiet without Tom. She wandered aimlessly through the rooms. Brutus trotted along behind her, his tags clinking companion-ably.

  Hmm. Should she sneak a peek and see if Tom’s boxers were neatly ironed and folded? No. Raiding his underwear drawer would definitely be an invasion of privacy. More important, careful as she would be, he might know she’d done it.

  Finally, she settled herself at his computer. She accessed the Internet and ordered the stuff she needed for the next few days. Including a selection of corporate-style dog collars.

  Then she opened up a document to jot down notes and recipes for the audition.

  Annie was a young women’s magazine and she assumed that the readers didn’t have much time to cook. They cooked to impress, with as little effort as possible. Recipes had to be fast and easy but look fantastic. How could she give that a different twist?

  Brutus came up to her, nudged his head against her leg, and whimpered deep in his throat. Poor little thing. He was used to Walter’s garden. And the freedom of the streets whenever he got the chance. Becoming a millionaire wasn’t much fun for him so far.

  She tickled him behind his ears and he snuffled his appreciation. He must be bored. Maybe she could think up some dog-friendly new recipes for him. If truth be told, she wasn’t happy with feeding him stuff from cans and packets all the time.

  But that was distracting her from the main game. The audition. Competition would be tough. It would be a matter of luck if she hit on something that would appeal.

  Luck! She froze with her hand on the mouse. Then she jumped up from the computer and dashed down the hallway to Tom’s bedroom. Frantically she burrowed through her suitcase, emptied her handbag out on the bed, pulled out the pockets of her jacket. No lucky pony. Not anywhere.

  No wonder she hadn’t been struck by inspiration. Without her lucky pony she never would.Think, think, think. She’d taken it to Serena’s and put it on the bookshelf in her bedroom. But had she packed it last night in the rush to decamp to Tom’s apartment?

  Maddy grabbed the phone and punched in Serena’s number. “Please be home, Serena. Please be home,” she whispered as it rang. She whooped when Serena answered.

  “Yes, the pony is still in your room,” Serena said.

  Maddy clutched the receiver. “Thank heaven. I’d die if I’d lost it.”

  “How come this pony thing is so important?”

  How could she explain to anyone the significance of the mass-produced china figurine? “My mother gave it to me when I first started competing at pony club. I won my first blue ribbon that day. Ever since it’s brought me luck. And . . . and my mom’s presence.”

  Serena was silent at the other end of the phone before she spoke again. “Right. I’ll go get it for you.”

  “No! Don’t touch it.”

  “I’ll be careful, Maddy.” Serena now sounded affronted.

  “That’s not what I meant. Only I can touch it. That’s part of the luck.”

  “Huh? I don’t get it.”

  “The last person ever to touch it but me was my mom. It’s . . . it’s kind of like a link.”

  “Now I get it,” said Serena. “But if I can’t touch it, how can I get it to you?”

  “You can’t. I’ll have to come and get it myself.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Yes,” she said, casting her eyes around for her c
ar keys. Her Honda was in a parking garage a few blocks away.

  “Maddy!” Serena’s shout came through so loud it hurt her eardrum. “You’re supposed to be in hiding.You can’t come here. What about the press?”

  “Are any reporters outside your house?”

  “No. But what about Jerome?”

  “I told him I was going away on a shoot, remember. I think we’re okay for a few days.”

  “As if he believed you.”

  “You don’t understand, Serena. I haven’t got a hope of getting anywhere in that audition without my lucky pony. I have to have it. Now.”

  “What about Brutus?”

  “I’ll ask the lady next door to watch him while I run out.”

  “Isn’t Tom worried about you as well as Brutus?”

  “Yes. But I’m a big girl. I can look after myself. I have to have that pony, Serena. Nothing else is more important.”

  Serena still sounded very dubious.

  Maddy thought for a moment. “I’ll call from my cell as I drive into your street. Then I’ll double-park in front of your house.You hold your front door open for me, I dash upstairs and get the pony, come straight back down, jump into the car, and drive off. I’ll be in and out in seconds. That will be perfectly safe.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Trust me, Serena. It’ll be fine. I’ll go crazy with worry here if I don’t have that pony.”

  “Well, okay.” Serena’s reluctance was obvious. “I’ll wait for your call.”

  Tom wouldn’t approve. Maddy knew that but she pushed his reaction to the back of her mind. She wasn’t putting Brutus at any risk. He was Jerome’s real target. Not her.

  This plan was foolproof. She’d be out and back again in thirty minutes. Tom wouldn’t even have to know she had gone out.

  But some of his caution filtered through. From Tom’s closet she pulled a blue chambray shirt off of its hanger and threw it on over her T-shirt, rolling the sleeves up to her elbows. It hung practically to her knees. What else? She grabbed a cap from the top shelf. The beer logo and the “Goof-Off Golf Day” slogan weren’t really her thing but it would have to do.

  She stuffed her hair right up under the cap, forcing the loose tendrils inside. Her hair color was a giveaway but this camouflaged it nicely.

  She waved to the doorman as she rushed through the lobby. Nothing would work out for her if she didn’t get that good-luck pony.

  Sixteen

  Tom lounged back in one of the big, squishy chairs his mother, Helen O’Brien, kept in her boutique on Fillmore Street. The chair was there specifically for the comfort of long-suffering males who waited while their female folk shopped.

  Tom wasn’t there to shop. He had come directly from his office to ask his mother to be a witness in the probate court hearing that had been set for Tuesday morning. She agreed without a moment’s hesitation.

  “I spent quite some time with Walter in his last weeks,” she said as she twisted one of a pile of silk scarves on the counter into an elaborate knot for display. “I’m happy to swear hand-on-Bible that he was totally in command of all his senses.”

  She flicked the tail of the scarf well out of reach of her cat, Pixie. The fluffy princess was, as usual, snoozing in her basket on the countertop. Tom often wondered how customers with allergies felt about that.

  His mom stopped folding the scarf she was holding. “I can testify to Maddy Cartwright’s innocence as well if you need me to.”

  Tom sat up straighter in his chair. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sickened by all that poison in the press directed at the poor girl.” She shook her head in disapproval. “Why does she deserve that? All she did was be kind to Walter and make sure he ate properly. You know that as well as I do.”

  Tom shifted uncomfortably at the memory of what he’d put Maddy through at their first meeting.

  His mother continued. “Someone seems hell-bent on destroying her reputation. And swiping at yours at the same time.”

  Tom’s gut knotted as it did when he thought about Stoddard. The senior partners had hauled him over the coals because of the adverse publicity. If it weren’t for that bonus in the offing, he might have lost his job. “It’s the nephew from England.Watch me hammer him in court.” He slammed his fist into his open hand.

  “I hope you do. Maddy was clueless about Walter’s fortune. But the nephew knew its value to the last cent.”

  Tom’s eyes narrowed, “How do you know that, Mom?”

  “I . . . I heard people talk. That’s all.”

  Something about her reaction didn’t seem quite right. It came as no surprise when she quickly changed the subject. He filed a mental memo to ask her about it again before the probate hearing.

  “Maddy’s a marvelous cook, you know. But I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?”

  “Yes, Mom, more than once,” he said with the long-suffering-son look that always made her laugh. He then filled her in on Maddy’s and Brutus’s move to his apartment.

  “Oh.” His mother raised her immaculately groomed eyebrows. “Is there something you want to tell your dear old mom?”

  Tom snorted. Slim and elegant with her sleek bob of silver gray hair, Helen O’Brien was about as far from a “dear old mom” image as you could get. “No, Mother. There is not.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Sure, I’m sure.”

  “So that photo in the newspaper of you and Maddy kissing was . . . ?”

  “Nothing.”

  The part of him that would always be six years old in the presence of his mother ached to ask her advice about the inconvenient, unscheduled feelings Maddy aroused in him. But thirty-year-old Tom was way too used to keeping his own counsel to take that step.

  Her voice gentled. “There’s no shame in admitting you find Maddy attractive, son. She’s a very special person.”

  “She is that.” He folded his arms in front of his chest and refused to be drawn any further.

  His mother sighed a long, exaggerated sigh. “You get so cranky with me for what you call my ‘damn matchmaking.’ But life is so much more fun when you have someone to share it with. I’d hate for you to wake up one day middle-aged and alone.”

  “Like you did after Dad left?” Tom couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.

  Helen put down the scarf, came around the glass-framed counter, and sat down in the other chair opposite him. “That was a difficult time for me. But the situation wasn’t as black-and-white as you seem to think.”

  A woman pressed her nose to the boutique’s plate-glass window and waved to get his mother’s attention. She waved back and pointed to the watch on her wrist. The store didn’t open until eleven o’clock.

  Tom was glad they had the place to themselves. He had never actually asked his mother the question directly. Adult to adult. “Why did you take him back? I’ve never understood it.”

  A rueful smile twitched around his mother’s mouth. “Because I loved him. It’s as simple as that. Because every moment with that man was a moment lived to the max.”

  “You thought that even after the way he treated you?”

  “Tom, no one but the two people involved ever knows what truly goes on inside a couple’s private moments. Not even their kids.”

  He shrugged. “Especially not their kids.” He’d never seen his parents’ marriage as anything but a template to avoid at all costs.

  “I knew your father was . . . shall we say ‘high maintenance’ from the moment I met him. But I willingly signed on for that until death did us part.”

  “He didn’t seem to have taken the same vows.”

  “Raymond paid a high price for breaking them.” She sighed. “So did I. So did you and your sister. That didn’t ever stop me loving him. It stopped me liking him for a while. But it didn’t stop my heart from singing the day he came back. Or from cherishing every new hour I had with him.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  S
he laughed. “Neither do I.You can’t explain love.You can’t analyze it.You just open yourself to feeling love and enjoy where it takes you.”

  He shook his head. “You know that’s not how I live, how I’ve always lived.”

  She threw up her hands. “I know, darling. But maybe you need to rethink things. You were such a sunny little boy. Now you’re so . . . so relentless.”

  “Relentless? That’s harsh. Determined, maybe. That’s what’s gotten me to where I am.”

  “True. But maybe you don’t need to be quite so determined anymore. Have you ever considered that what used to work for you might not be right for you now?”

  He remembered the day his shattered, angry self mapped out that first five-year plan of action. His pen had stabbed right through the paper. Could his mom be right? Was he still reacting like an eighteen-year-old? Had he boxed himself in with a framework constructed from the green, unseasoned timber of adolescence?

  His mom leaned closer. “Tom, I know you had issues with your dad. But wasn’t it fortunate we were granted the time to mend bridges before he was taken from us?”

  Tom remembered the stilted discussion with his father just weeks before his death. “I guess. But he still thought I was doomed to be a wage slave. Kept suggesting alternate ways I could use my law degree.”

  His mother leaned over and patted him on the knee. “He was stubborn. I’ll grant you that. There was his way or the highway. But he would be so proud of what you’ve achieved.”

  Tom thought back to the horseback-riding excursions with his father. He remembered how they’d end with a furious gallop back to the stables. How his dad had whooped and hollered his approval on the occasions when Tom had beaten him. How he’d boasted to anyone who would listen of how well his boy could handle a horse.

  “Did I tell you I started horseback riding again?” Tom asked, knowing full well that he had not said a word to anyone.

  Her face lit up. “Tom! That’s wonderful. It was something you and your dad loved to do together. I envied you those wonderful times.”

  “Except you’re terrified of horses.”