The Truth About Cats & Dogs

by Lori Foster

  Tish let out a long, doggie sigh, dropped her head onto Sadie’s thigh and closed her eyes.

  “You did it, Sadie.” Buck’s heart swelled so big, it felt ready to pop out of his chest.

  Enormous tears swam in Sadie’s eyes. “This is stupid,” she whispered on a shaky laugh, “but I feel like bawling.”

  “Yeah,” Buck admitted, “me, too.”

  Sadie leaned on his shoulder. “Butch has to have most of the credit.”

  Reminded of his goal, Buck was quick to agree. “It’d be a damn shame to separate them now, don’t you think? I bet Regina would love the idea of letting them play together. She’s taken only freelance jobs lately so she could be home more with Butch. And when she has to be away for regular business hours, she or Riley come home at lunchtime. If we were right next door—”

  With her head still on his shoulder, Sadie squeaked, “We?” She twisted to see him. “You think we should buy the house—”

  “Together.” He smoothed his hand over the dogs, taking turns petting them. “It’s a good plan.”

  She stared at him in mute surprise.

  That irritated Buck. “You know the dogs would like it.”

  Sadie nodded. “Yes. But…would you like it?”

  He touched her cheek. “I’d love it.”

  She bit her bottom lip, drew a deep breath, then nodded. “I’d love it, too.”

  The tension left Buck in a rush. Then Sadie said, “Because I love you.”

  His back snapped straight. “What did you say?”

  His strangled voice startled the dogs, and he rushed to calm them with soft pats.

  Sadie held his gaze. “I love you, Buck Boswell. You’re the most wonderful, loving, giving man. Even in my imagination, I didn’t think anyone like you could exist. But here you are, sitting in the yard, petting little dogs and offering to buy houses and being so wonderful…how could I not love you?”

  He almost hyperventilated. “I love you, too.” He wanted to grab her up and swing her around and laugh out loud. But he didn’t want to upset Tish. “I’ve loved you since the day you ran into my place in your nightie, demanding I go head to head with a killer cicada.”

  She blushed. “I am sorry about that.”

  “I’m not. If Tish hadn’t caught the nasty bug, we might not have gotten together. And I never would have realized that you and one tiny bald dog were the very things missing in my life.”

  She didn’t laugh the way he expected. Instead, she bit her lip.

  Buck kissed her, licked her bottom lip to soothe it, then asked, “What is it?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  He stared at her, then burst out laughing. The dogs barely paid him any mind, but Sadie blushed hotly. “I would have been on one knee within the next five minutes. Thank you for saving me the trouble.”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  “I love you. Everything about you,” he reminded her. “Thank you for proposing to me, and yes, I accept.”

  “There’ll probably be more dogs. I can’t give up what I do.”

  The cautious warning only made him grin again. “Okay by me. After all, the dogs are nothing compared to my loony friends.”

  Her smile warmed his heart. “Your friends are wonderful.”

  “Yeah, they are.”

  “Do you think we should get ahold of Rosie and make an offer on the house right away?” She bubbled with new enthusiasm.

  “Yeah.” He stood, pulled Sadie to her feet, and then his voice lowered to a husky rumble. “We’ll get right to that.”

  “After?” Sadie asked, and her voice, too, grew rough.

  “After,” he agreed.

  A FEW MONTHS LATER, they closed on the house. Once they moved in, Sadie did indeed bring in more dogs. But with the means to keep them, she couldn’t bear to give them away.

  They ended up with three—which Buck claimed was fair, since he had the same number of buddies.

  Ethan ended up with two dogs, and Harris had a dog and a cat. Every get-together did resemble a zoo—not that anyone minded.

  In fact, the men began speculating that the dogs needed kids to play with. And judging by the love and attention they gave their pets, the women had no doubts that they’d make doting fathers.

  Butch and Tish remained the best of friends. Whenever there was a crowd, they crawled under a couch together—curled up in Buck’s yellow boxers.

  Sadie claimed that Tish saw the boxers as a security blanket.

  Buck saw Sadie the same way. His life had always been good.

  Now, with Sadie as his wife, it was perfect.

  SECONDHAND SAM

  Kristine Rolofson

  For Mary Harrigan,

  one of the most dedicated and caring rescue people I’ve ever met.

  Thanks for letting me help the dogs.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for buying this book and helping to raise money for animal rescue organizations.

  Three years ago my dog died. Now Charlie, a gold ten-pound Lhasa mix I’d adopted eleven years earlier from the local pound, was no ordinary dog. He was one of those intelligent and devoted animals of which legends are made. But his heart gave out at age fourteen and I was devastated.

  So what do you do when your heart is broken? Well, I foolishly thought that if I could find another little dog like Charlie my troubles would be over. I visited shelters, spent hours on the www.petfinder.org Web site and volunteered to be a foster mom for Atlantic Maltese Rescue. I volunteered with my local Animal Rescue League and wrote “Pet of the Week” articles for the newspaper. And, like my heroine in this story, I used my passion for vintage fabrics, trims and buttons to raise thousands of dollars sewing Christmas stockings for rescue groups.

  And then a chance came to foster an elderly Pekingese, one who had been found nearly dead in a West Virginia snowbank. Not many people believe me when I tell them about the Pekingese Underground Railroad (aka PUR), a group of volunteers who, in hundred-mile increments, drive homeless Pekes to new adoptive homes, but last year a wonderful PUR volunteer drove two days on icy January roads to give me a skinny redheaded Pekingese who was blind, one-eyed and deathly ill from huge mammary tumors. She smelled like a Dumpster, snored like a trucker, had few teeth and looked nothing like Charlie, but it was love at first sight. “Miss Lillie” survived surgery and many other ailments to become the prancing, dancing queen of my house and the inspiration for this novella.

  To say thanks to the many wonderful people I’ve had the privilege to work with, I’m donating my advance and royalties to Atlantic Maltese Rescue (www.adoptamalt.com), Northeast Pekingese Rescue (nepekerescue.org), Hearts United for Animals (www.hua.org) and the Animal Rescue League of Southern Rhode Island (www.southkingstown.com/arl). And if you want information on how to help stop puppy mills or if you want to donate old curtains or drapes (no, you don’t have to clean them first), trims or buttons for stockings, please contact me at P.O. Box 323, Peace Dale, RI 02883, or via e-mail, knr8361@cs.com.

  Always,

  Kristine Rolofson

  CHAPTER ONE

  SAM WONDERED if his heart was broken or if the pain he felt in the region of his chest was due to breathing the musty air of the church basement. He’d been hauled down there by his best man to meet with his bride’s father, a husky former Olympic wrestler, who’d choked back tears as he’d informed him that the wedding had been cancelled.

  The one-hundred-seventy-four guests, due to arrive within the hour, would be told there would be no wedding. Apparently, the bride had sent her apologies; the bridesmaids had returned crimson dresses to their hangers; and the mother-of-the-bride had thrown a crystal vase filled with red and white roses against the locked door of her daughter’s hotel room.

  “I suppose it must be for the best,” his former future father-in-law had sniffed before blowing his nose on the red silk handkerchief he’d pulled from the jacket pocket of his size fifty-two tuxedo. “Th
ough for the life of me I can’t see how. I don’t know why she made this decision now, of all times.”

  Sam could have told him. He could have said, “Your daughter never could make up her mind, sir. Have you ever seen her try to order from a restaurant menu? Decide which black dress in her closet to wear? Select new sheets and towels for her apartment?”

  But he kept silent, afraid that any words out of his mouth could be construed as bitter. Or worse, angry.

  “Uh, Sam,” the older man said, flushing red before he reached inside his jacket once again. “She wanted to make sure you got—well, here it is.” He handed Sam the six-carat diamond engagement ring.

  “Thanks.” He swallowed his disappointment, shook hands with the man who’d fathered the woman Sam had had the bad luck to propose to, accepted the sympathetic slap on the back from his best man, and untied Darcy from the metal post by the stairs. The ring, selected by his fiancée after too many trips to every jeweler in town, was slipped into a satin-lined pocket of his tuxedo jacket, to be immediately forgotten.

  “Let’s go get drunk,” his best friend said.

  “At ten o’clock?” It was to have been a morning wedding, followed by a champagne brunch in the Emerald Room of the city’s most exclusive hotel. Sam had hoped for dancing, had even picked out the band, but the bride had opposed participating in anything but the most sedate and elegant reception. Susan was nothing if not sedate and elegant. He had liked that about her, not being a sedate or elegant kind of guy.

  “Sure,” Jim said. “What else do you have to do?”

  “Call my parents, I suppose.” His mother had come down with a bad case of the flu last week and had been too sick to travel to the wedding. His father wouldn’t leave her, of course. Not even if he had been thrilled by Sam’s choice of a bride, which he hadn’t.

  “At least Darcy won’t have to go to the kennel again.” Jim led the way up the stairs to the back of the church. A side door took them to the parking lot, now with only three cars.

  “I tried to bring him there this morning, but he started howling—well, you know what he sounds like when he gets going.” The English mastiff, a brute of a dog with the heart of a poodle, wagged his tail and licked his master’s hand.

  “Like all the hounds of hell have gotten loose?” Jim chuckled. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Susan would have a fit if she knew I brought him to the church.”

  Darcy pranced over to a snow-dusted bush and lifted his leg. The two men, dressed in identical black tuxedos and red cummerbunds, stood with their backs to the wind and ignored the bitter cold December air.

  “What Susan likes or dislikes doesn’t matter anymore,” Jim reminded him.

  “Yeah.” That was a strangely freeing observation, Sam noted, though he would have liked to have married. They’d been together for more years than he could remember and he didn’t know what to expect next. He was alone, he was thirty-three and he couldn’t imagine starting the dating process all over again.

  Darcy walked to Sam’s SUV and sniffed the back tire before peeing on that, too.

  “Come on back to the house,” Jim said. “I’ve got a bottle of scotch that’ll cure anything, even a disaster like this.”

  “I appreciate it.” He unlocked the doors of the three-year-old Escalade and opened the back door for Darcy. “But I think I’m going to head back to D.C.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone this weekend. Stay with me and Caroline. Darcy can play with the kids and you and I can watch football and yell at the Redskins.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think I’d be good company. Right now all I want to do is get out of town. Tell the rest of the guys that I’m fine, will you?” The six ushers were to have met in the lobby of the hotel in half an hour, where they would have been chauffeured to the church in time to seat the guests.

  “Sure. I’ll go over to the hotel now,” Jim promised. “I’m sure they’ve heard what’s going on. Susan’s father probably spread the word before he came here.”

  “Thanks.” Sam opened the driver’s door and slid inside. He’d inherited the Escalade from his father, who’d wanted a luxury SUV to drive after a particularly harsh New England winter. He’d had it for a year, until Sam’s mother’s arthritis had prevented her from climbing into it without pain. Susan had wanted to trade it in for something smaller and more politically correct, but Sam liked the Escalade. He was a large man with a large dog and he liked having room.

  “No problem,” said his best friend. “Take it easy.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, before closing the door. He would take it easy, all right. After he did whatever it was a groom did when he’d been dumped an hour before the wedding.

  He wasn’t going to cry in his beer, drown his broken heart in whiskey or confront Susan in room seven-twelve of the Hilton Emerald Hotel. No, he had his pride, his dog and a week’s vacation.

  Sam Grogan was free.

  Whether he wanted to be or not.

  “QUIET,” JESSICA HALL TOLD the barking dogs. “I have to think.”

  Two of the Pekes paid no attention to her command, not that she expected them to. But a few moments of quiet would be appreciated, especially now that she sat in her wounded van, its hood propped open for inspection, parked next to a gas station six hundred miles from home.

  “I’m really sorry, ma’am,” the young mechanic had said, looking sincerely upset about having to give bad news. “You’ve got a leak in your transmission. I can fix it, but it will sure take some time to get a new transmission, or even a rebuilt one. And the money, well, ma’am, you’d be better off putting the money towards a new vehicle, if you know what I mean.”

  “Thank you.” She’d thought of her pathetic bank account and a Visa card that wouldn’t bear the cost of an expensive car repair. And she did need a new car. Or a new used one.

  “Shh,” she told the one of the barking dogs, a red Pekingese the shelter called Harriet. The dog looked at Jess and panted, her little red tongue sticking out of her mouth in typically comical Pekingese style. Harriet was the noisy one, Jess had learned in the two hours she’d had the dogs. Ozzie, too thin and somewhat nervous, was also red, but he made no noise unless Harriet started barking. Samantha, the quiet one, simply hid in her crate and peered out with one frightened brown eye, and Jess didn’t think she could see much out of that one.

  “Ma’am?” The mechanic returned and knocked on the glass.

  Jess rolled down the window and let the cold air sweep inside while the mechanic nervously wiped his hands on a dirty rag.

  “I put some transmission fluid in,” he said. “If you go slow you might make it to Richmond before it all leaks out. Least there you can get a place to stay. And maybe somebody there’ll be able to fix it for you faster ’n me.”

  “Can I buy some of that, just in case?”

  “You want to put it in yourself?”

  “If I have to, sure. Maybe you can show me where it goes.” She hopped out of the van and had a quick lesson in transmission fluid.

  “You let it go dry and you’ll blow the engine,” he warned, looking uncertain as he handed her a plastic jug filled with liquid. “Be real careful heading home.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  He followed her to the driver’s side of the car and peered into the back seat while she retrieved a credit card from her wallet. “You sure have a lot of dogs back there. You headed north?”

  “I hope so.” She smiled, which made the kid turn red to the tips of his ears. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ma’am. That was a new one. She was twenty-eight, not exactly matron material, but to a teenager she supposed she looked like a much older woman. A woman with an old van, old dogs and a thermos half-full of lukewarm coffee. Jess dug her cell phone out of her purse and proceeded to call for help. She left voice mails with Janice, the Pekingese Underground Railroad coordinator who normally would have handled this transport, and with Mary, her part
ner at Big Hearts for Little Dogs. “Help,” she said. “This is Jessica Hall. I’m stuck in Virginia. Can someone foster two dogs for a week or so?”

  As much as she hated to leave her van, she would fly back to Rhode Island and, if PUR couldn’t transport next weekend, she’d borrow someone’s car and drive back to get the dogs herself. Samantha, the oldest dog, was in bad health. She would take her on the plane with her. Surely there would be an airport in—she checked her map again—Richmond, if she could make it that far. She didn’t want to count the miles between this small town and Interstate 95. She’d keep driving, at least until someone called her back with a better plan.

  Sitting in a gas station worrying about her car wasn’t an option. The attendant returned with her charge receipt and she was ready to go. She and three homeless Pekes didn’t have any choice but to keep moving forward.

  Jess drove slowly, heading east along the road. It was a cold, gray Saturday morning. She hoped it wouldn’t snow, though the weather report on the local radio station this morning had predicted the strong possibility of a storm. She hadn’t worried, though, planning to be well on her way north before the storm descended upon the mid-Atlantic states.

  Thirty-four miles later she stopped for a hot cup of coffee and a chance to take the dogs out to relieve themselves on the frozen grass beside the Krispy Kreme parking lot. She left more voice-mail messages, checked the road map and, as she began to pull out of the parking area, swerved to avoid hitting the largest dog she had ever seen.

  Then came the crash.

  CHAPTER TWO

  UH-OH. DARCY JUMPED back on the grass and started to shake. Sam would know what to do. He’d been inside their favorite place in the world getting a treat. A super-sugared hot Krispy Kreme treat. And Darcy, relieved to have escaped a week at the kennel and a lifetime of Sam’s girlfriend, Smelly Susan, had jumped out of the car and danced for joy as soon as Sam had opened the door to put his coffee in the cup holder. No more Susan. They were both free to be together without Smelly Susan and her voice, a voice that pretended to be nice but underneath said, I don’t like dogs.