Must Love Pets: A Romance Box Set

by Theresa Weir

  The woman who’d introduced herself as Alma Young said she made tapestries while her husband, a retired mechanic, plowed driveways. In summer, her husband took care of lawns for the summer houses. Once a month, she came in and dusted the MacLeesh house and cleaned the toilets, “to make sure there are no rust stains.” She wanted to know if there were going to be any changes in the routine.

  As if she were a hand puppet and someone else was putting the words into her mouth, Maddie said, “While I’m here, I’ll clean the toilets. No need to mention it to the lawyers.”

  “Oh, I have to. It wouldn’t be right to cheat someone.”

  “Okay, then I won’t clean,” Maddie said. Though of course she would clean after herself.

  Alma gave her a sideways look, as if she thought the same thing. When she asked how long she planned to stay, Maddie said, “I’m not sure.” As the words came out of her mouth, her heart beat fast.

  What was she doing? This wasn’t like her. Not at all.

  Then she told Alma her name—and immediately cringed. She should’ve given a fake name. She would make a terrible criminal.

  Alma chattered about the snow, driving slowly down a curving driveway. Looking at the trees on each side, the branches bending under the wet snow, Maddie stopped being afraid. Now that she was in a car with the heater roaring and the tip of her nose no longer feeling like it might be in danger of dropping onto her lap, she could view it with wonder, the misery and sorrow and anger that were like poison inside her sliding away.

  Was everything going to be okay after all?

  Of course not, she answered herself. This was just a reprieve, not a solution. But the question wouldn’t go away, still shining brightly in Maddie’s mind as the single driveway lane opened up to a horseshoe drive, with a house and a detached garage. Gazing at it, Maddie sucked in her breath.

  “Surprised?” Alma asked. “Is it too old-fashioned for you?”

  “It looks like a house out of a Christmas card.” Maddie stared at the stone house with the cedar roof shingles. It wasn’t too big or too small. It looked…just right for her.

  Of course, she wouldn’t stay forever. Maybe just until after Christmas to give Kris and her family some breathing room. What would it hurt?

  “My son used to think it looked like a place out of a fairy tale.” Alma chortled. “That was a long time ago. Next year he’s graduating from Marquette University with a law degree.”

  “It does look like a place where a fairy godmother would appear.” Maddie spoke slowly and could hear the dreaminess in her voice.

  Alma stopped the car in front of the house. “If you saw one, what would you say to her?”

  Maddie turned to Alma. “I think you’re the fairy godmother.”

  “Me?” Alma laughed loudly, her hand over her breastbone. “Oh lord, when I tell Dexter that, he’ll laugh so hard his belly will feel like it’s on fire.”

  “Then you’d better have some Pepto Bismol in your house, because you look a lot like one to me. I’ll just say thank you, and congratulations on your son’s law degree. I’m sure he owes a lot to you and your husband.”

  “We always believed in him, but he believes in us, too.” Beaming, Alma opened her door, and a freezing wind gusted into the SUV’s interior. “We’d better get you inside. Did you bring any food with you?”

  When Maddie admitted she only had an apple and a bag of cashews, Alma insisted she take a grocery bag from the back seat, telling her there was a can of tuna for the kitten, and she had enough at home for her and Dexter to last until tomorrow when the roads would be clear. Ignoring Maddie’s protests and the two twenty-dollar bills she tried the give her, Alma pressed a button to open the hatch.

  It really was like a dream. And Alma really was like a fairy godmother. Who said they had to come with golden hair and a wand?

  At the front doorway, while Maddie was dragging her suitcases over the snowy driveway, Alma lifted a key from beneath a rubber mat. When Maddie reached the doorway, Alma was already inside.

  Maddie glanced down at the mat, protected from the snow by the overhang and the direction of the wind. On the black rubber background, yellow and pink flowers spelled out four words: Welcome To My Home.

  Tears warmed Maddie’s eyes. When she’d walked into her apartment after work three days ago to find it emptied of everything that had belonged to Todd—and quite a few of her own belongings, along with the early Christmas gifts she’d bought for him and had hidden in her closet—she’d felt as if she’d reached the bottom of her life. As if all hope and happiness were gone. As if life were bleak and the coming months would be about survival and nothing else.

  The only thing that kept her going was that she had no other choice but to put one foot in front of another. To get through one day, and then the next, and then the one after that. All her emotions shut down, because if she allowed herself to feel, she would scream and cry and grab lamps and dishes then throw them on the floor and walk on broken glass and not care that her feet were bleeding.

  And what would that help? Not a damn thing.

  So this morning she’d packed, taking care not to break anything. She’d taken her secondhand furniture and lamps to the consignment store, giving Todd’s recliner to the neighbor who helped her. Then she’d carried her suitcases to her car, shutting down her emotions and locking them away.

  And now…still standing on the doorway as the icy bullets changed to large flakes, she let go of a suitcase handle and put her hand over her still-flat stomach.

  “This is a sign, baby,” she murmured softly. “I think everything is going to be okay.”

  She inhaled deeply, her diaphragm opening wide for the first time in a week. Exhaling, she stepped into the hall, dragging her suitcases with her. She reminded herself that this wasn’t permanent…and it wasn’t hers.

  And any good she had here was going to turn sour unless she paid it forward.

  Chapter 2

  Five years later…

  A car chased Dog. He ran and ran and ran. Someone threw food at him, trying to make him turn and come to the car. Trying to make him stay.

  Hunger burned a hole in Dog’s belly. He wanted badly to stay, badly to eat.

  But there was another hole inside him, in his chest, cold and frozen. The way he’d felt when he was taken away from his mom and brothers and sisters and kept in a cage in the back of a house where the people were hardly there.

  Until he’d finally broken out, the wire cutting his leg. But he hadn’t let it stop him. With blood dripping down his leg, he’d run. And he’d run and run and run.

  This was another day, and he was in a city now, still running. He didn’t know these people, the smells and voices unfamiliar as the man stuck his head out of the window and yelled that he had food for Dog. Lots of food.

  Dog knew what food meant. He knew what a lot of things meant. More than other dogs, he suspected, but he didn’t know for sure, having been away from his brothers and sister since he was a puppy.

  The food the man held out the window smelled good, but he didn’t like the scents of the people in the car. They smelled like the people who’d taken him into their home and locked him in a cage. And something else was wrong with their smells. Blood. That’s what he smelled. Blood and death.

  Though his stomach wanted food, he ran faster. Changing directions, he ran through yards, leaving the car behind. The scent of water came to his nose, and he veered toward it. Finally he reached a big body of water. He ducked his head to it, drinking the cold water until he couldn’t drink anymore, his belly full of water, his hunger eased just a little. Then he peed all around him to let other animals know this was his territory. That he was there. Only then did he lie down and nap.

  When he woke up, night was coming, the light going down. After he drank more water, he lifted his head and sniffed something good. Something wonderful. He ran away from the lake, the smell getting stronger until he reached a garbage can.

  There. He star
ed at the garbage can that was blending into the dusk. It had a cover on it. How was he supposed to get the top off?

  He stepped back and back and back. And then he ran forward, full speed. Jumping up, he knocked it over with his front feet. It clattered to the grass, the cover popping off, stuff spilling out of it.

  Food! He had food!

  He ate and ate and ate, telling himself he was a very smart dog. He had always thought so, but now he knew.

  When he was done, he headed back to the water. Drank more and left. As he ran, he realized it was getting colder. He should turn around and go back to a place where it was warmer. He didn’t like it when the air was too hot. But he didn’t like it when it was too cold, either.

  But something was drawing him forward, something in the air. He lifted his head, and the very faint smell of a human came to him.

  The right human.

  His heart thumped. So did his tail.

  It was his human. The one he’d been looking for since…forever. Even before he’d left his mom and brothers and sisters.

  He didn’t know how he knew this, but he’d known this since before he was even born. As if it came from another lifetime.

  * * *

  “You’re Ruth’s grandson!” A sixtyish woman with a figure that reminded Logan MacLeesh of a barrel parked her shopping cart next to him in the Angel Lake Grocery Mart cereal aisle and gazed up at him. Way up. “I haven’t seen you for a long time. Decades. You must’ve been a young teen then, but you have Ruth’s eyes. Even in her eighties, she had those bright blue eyes. Laser blue, my daughter calls it. I’m right, aren’t I? Are you going to her house?”

  Though he nodded, he gave her the bored, haughty look he’d cultivated for paparazzi. The caretakers for his grandmother’s house were the only ones in this small town who knew about his visit. He’d called his lawyer over an hour ago. The caretakers must have spread the word already.

  “I’m so glad for this chance to thank you.” Her voice throbbed with emotion. “I don’t know what my Sarah would’ve done without your help.”

  “I’m sorry.” He drew his head back. “I don’t believe I know your Sarah.”

  She sniffed, and two tears traveled down her chubby cheeks. “Maddie said you’d say that. She said you hated thanks.”

  “Maddie was right.” Whoever the hell she was.

  “Maddie’s always right.” She patted his arm, and she had the fervent look in her eyes that made him brace himself for a quick escape. “I just wanted to let you know that Sarah is fine now. She’s working as a nurse in Oshkosh, and she has a new boyfriend who treats her like a princess. But without your refuge, I don’t know what would’ve happened to her.”

  His refuge?

  “My grandmother’s house?”

  “You’re a wonderful man. I’ll tell Sarah. She’ll be thrilled that I’ve seen you.” She patted his arm again. “I’ll tell her how handsome you are.” She giggled like a young girl. “You look just like Paul Newman when he was young, only with dark hair. He was always my favorite.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and was about to ask her if she was flirting with him, but that would lead to laughter and conversation and perhaps getting to know his grandmother’s neighbors. None of which he wanted. Instead, he thanked her coolly, grabbed a box of gluten-free cereal with nuts and dried berries and honey, and dropped it into his shopping cart.

  She backed up like he was royalty. He nodded at her and headed the other way, toward the two cash registers, hoping he wouldn’t run into her again and thinking he needed to call his lawyer to get the name of the people taking care of his house.

  At the end of the aisle, a young, gaunt-faced man waited for him, a nervous tic making his eye jump.

  “Um, I heard the owner of Ruth MacLeesh’s home was in town. It’s you, isn’t it?” Without waiting for a reply, he rushed on, “It has to be. No one else would stop off to buy groceries. Maybe summer when the lake is open, but not this time of year. I know Maddie gave you our thanks, but I wanted to thank you in person, for letting us stay in your house after the fire. Without your help, I don’t know what we would’ve done.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Logan said. He judged the man to be about thirty. Only three years younger than he was, but in life’s experience, about twenty years younger.

  “You did everything.” Moisture filled the man’s eyes. “Maybe it meant nothing to you, but without you… I just don’t know what we would’ve done, what with the doctor bills and everything else. You saved us, you did.”

  Shit. This was worse than the paparazzi. At least he could sneer at them and turn his back, avoiding most of the exposure. After all, he wasn’t their prey; it was always the woman on his arm.

  The woman who was on someone else’s arm now.

  He muttered that he was glad everything was better with his family then put his head down and wheeled the cart to the cash register at a quick pace.

  At last, he was at the checkout, manned by a woman his age with a robotic face and no smile who kept gazing at the store’s exit, obviously wishing she were anywhere else besides this rinky-dink grocery store.

  Then she took a good look at him, and her face lit up.

  “It’s you,” she whispered. “It has to be you. You look just like I thought you did.”

  “Stop.” He held up his hand. He didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want to know. “Whatever you do, don’t thank me.”

  Her chin wobbled; her eyes filled. “Maddie warned me you wouldn’t want thanks.” She sniffed then proceeded to check out his cereal and a half dozen other items efficiently. His neck prickled. He felt stares on his back as he pulled out his credit card.

  “I’m not letting you pay,” she said. “It’s the least I can do to repay you.”

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  “I wish you’d let me do it. I owe it to you.”

  “Pay for someone else’s groceries. Someone who needs it.” He couldn’t believe he’d said the sappy words. He swiped his card and listened to her fervent avowal that she knew just the person she could help.

  And she would tell her it was all due to him.

  He closed his mouth to hold back a groan.

  Two minutes later, he was in his rental car and hoped it didn’t look like he was fleeing.

  What had just happened here?

  Someone had leaked that he was coming, and it had to be the caretakers. And what the hell had all that thank-you crap meant?

  He’d come to his grandmother’s old home in cold-as-a-freezer Wisconsin for one thing: to be left alone. No paparazzi, no drama, no interruptions.

  No women.

  The always-calm female voice of the GPS on his cell phone told him his destination was on the left in one hundred feet. He turned onto a curving driveway and recalled a few memories of his grandmother. She’d played with him and kissed him and made him laugh. So different from his Anglophile parents, who’d treated him like a small adult and tried to instill in him their own passions.

  The last time he’d seen his grandmother, he was only thirteen, already taller than her. She’d made him smile, especially the way she teased his dad, her son, who took it so painfully. His dad wasn’t a man who liked to be teased. When they’d left, his grandmother had hugged and kissed him good-bye, and he remembered feeling embarrassed.

  That was twenty years ago. She’d been dead for about nine years now. He could’ve visited her but hadn’t. He was pretty sure his father hadn’t left his beloved England to visit her, either. Not even to come to her funeral.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he forced himself to loosen his grip. He hadn’t expected to feel anything for his grandmother but a mild affection, a mild remembrance. After all, he hadn’t really known her.

  But that love… It was hard to forget feeling so loved….

  The driveway straightened, and he could see the house, like a fairy-tale cottage from the English countryside at Christmastime, though Christmas was stil
l a month and a half away. And since this was Wisconsin, a carpet of snow blanketed the grass.

  Only one thing was out of place: the SUV in front of the house with the rear door open and boxes and a suitcase inside it.

  He parked behind it, got out of his car…and smiled.

  He’d had a few crappy months, and he was in the mood to eviscerate someone.

  Chapter 3

  Ginger’s plaintive meow warned Maddie that something was wrong. She stopped her frantic packing and heard the door open then close.

  Every muscle in her body tensed.

  It wasn’t Alma or Dexter. They would call before they came. And even then, they’d ring the doorbell. They wouldn’t just walk right in. After five years, they considered it her house, though Maddie always remembered she was a liar and a lawbreaker.

  She was almost glad it was at an end. She’d been ready to leave so often—and then someone else would need a temporary home. Her way to pay it forward for her lucky break.

  And now her luck had run out. Her last guests, Cindy and her baby, had left two months ago to stay with Cindy’s mother-in-law in Atlanta. The only other person staying with her was Zach—also known as the best boy in the world.

  Most of the time.

  And the smartest boy in the world.

  Most of the time.

  And the boy she loved more than any other in the world.

  All of the time.

  Zach was in his kindergarten classroom with the other four-year-olds, so it couldn’t be him.

  Her heart pounded. It had to be him. The mysterious owner. Alma had called her less than an hour ago to tell her the owner was on his way. That’s all the lawyers had told her; they hadn’t given her any specific time or even a general time.

  For all Maddie knew, “on the way” might have meant a day away.

  Or ten minutes away.

  So she’d left work and sped to the place she’d claimed as her own for the last five years.