(Exclusive to the Valentine, Pets & Kisses Box Set)
Unfortunately, now that Connor was promoted to chief, he
didn’t hang out as much anymore, which meant Larry was facing a Friday night
with a TV dinner in front of a basketball game.
A piercing wind blew as he lifted the dumpster lid,
threatening to blow it down. Larry held the lid with one hand and hefted the
trash bag into it. Letting the lid slam, he turned toward the warmth of the
building.
Something moved near the dumpster, darting behind it.
Probably a rat. He should set traps, but not tonight. The wind whined and
howled as he opened the door.
Another whine and something furry touched the back of his
leg. It was a puppy, likely a basset hound, with a brown and black patchwork
face and white paws.
“What’cha doing here, boy?” Larry bent down and held his
hand out for the puppy to sniff. There was no collar, but the puppy appeared
well groomed and plump. “Did you get lost?”
The puppy licked his hand, and Larry scooped him up. “I bet
you’re hungry. Tomorrow I’ll put up a poster. See if anyone lost you.”
He rubbed the puppy’s head and long ears while the puppy
licked his jowls and yawned. How could he resist such cuteness?
# # #
“I can’t believe I lost him,” Jenna cried on the phone to
her sister, Melisa. “One minute, he was following me to your apartment building,
and the next minute he disappeared.”
“Following you?” Melisa glanced at Rob who was driving her
home from work. “Didn’t you have him on a leash?”
“The leash and collar were in the shopping bag. I don’t have
five hands. I was carrying him and then when I got to the security door, I had
to put him down to punch in the code.”
“Couldn’t you have set the bags down?”
“No, that little rascal would have stuck his nose in and
stolen a chicken strip.”
“Rob and I are on our way. You stay put and we’ll help you
look.”
“Okay, hurry. It’s getting dark, and he’s only a tiny little
puppy. I’ve already run all around your building but no one’s seen him.”
“Maybe he went back home. Where did you get him?”
“The rescue center down near where you work. But there’s no
way he could have made it back. He’s so tiny and there’s so much traffic.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” her sister said. “We’re
almost home.”
“Good. I don’t know how much more stress I can take. What
with the show, the firemen not cooperating, and now my model gone.”
“Model? Which one?”
“Little Treat, the puppy.” Jenna couldn’t help pulling at
her hair. “He’s my signature piece.”
“Signature piece? Wait? What about the gowns and the
outfits?”
“Those are a mess. I need to get back home and sew, sew,
sew.”
“Then what are you doing with a puppy?” Her sister’s voice
took on a motherly, or was it a teacherly, tone. How was it that Melisa was
younger than her and so calm?
“He’s supposed to be Connor’s bribe so the firemen can
undress for my show!” Jenna wailed. “Now, the show will be a flop, all because
I lost Little Treat.”
***
Rachelle Ayala From
romantic suspense to sweet contemporaries, I write from my heart and love to
include children and pets in my stories.
Welcome to the Lost & Found Valentine's Edition Blog Hop! Featuring The Crazy Girl's Handbook
Ever missed out on an opportunity for love? Ever thought about what might have been? When Greenly Kendrick vehemently turned down a blind date her sister had set up without asking her, she never expected to find herself with gum in her hair, soda down her shirt, and face to face with the guy she'd blown off.
Check out the excerpt, then enter the giveaway at the bottom to enter for a chance to win a copy of the Valentine, Pets & Kisses box set!
Excerpt from The Crazy Girl's Handbook
The
body of a four year old crashed into me from behind. I felt something wet and
slimy slither down my neck and grimaced. “Auntie Greenly,” Evan said, his tone
oddly apologetic, “I dropped my gum.”
“What?”
He
leaned over my shoulder too far, nearly toppling into my lap. “I. Dropped. My.
Gum.”
I
almost told him not to worry about it, but the image of someone stepping in it
and getting ticked off made me reconsider. Tugging a napkin out from under a
half-eaten tray of nachos, I said, “Where’d you lose it?”
Evan
pulled away, quiet. When I looked back at him, he lifted a hand, finger
pointing behind me. “In your hair.”
For
a second there, I thought he said his gum was in my hair. Surely that was just
the heat scrambling my brain. “What?”
Scrunching
in on himself worriedly, Evan pointed again. “It’s in your hair. It fell out
when I jumped on your back.”
I
just sat there waiting for him to say he was joking. Ten seconds. Thirty.
Eventually it hit me. He was serious. Reaching back, I patted my hair gently.
Just above my shoulders, I felt it, a sticky blob drenched in saliva.
Maybe…maybe if I was really careful, it wouldn’t be stuck too badly yet. It
just plopped out of his mouth onto my hair, right? I pictured it almost floating
above my hair and hoped beyond hope I could just lift it off.
Gently…gently...and….
The
gum squished between my fingers even under gentle pressure, and as I tried to
lift it from my hair it strung out hopelessly. “Ew, ew, ew,” I whined.
My
hand froze, because what was I supposed to do now? I was holding a glob of gum
with a stringy mess connecting it to my hair. If I moved either direction it
would only make the mess worse! What on earth ever possessed me to give a four
year old gum? How did I not see this coming?
“Hold
on,” a man’s voice said from behind me. “Don’t move, or it’s just going to make
it worse.”
“What?”
I tried to turn and see who was talking to me, but a hand landed on the top of
my head and held it in place.
The
pressure on my head released a moment later, but then a napkin was pressed
against my fingers in an attempt to extract the gum from my grip. He wasn’t
quite able to get it, and suddenly his other hand was involved, maneuvering my
fingers so he could get the gum cleaned up more easily. That accomplished, he
dropped my hand and told me not to move again. I could feel my hair being
jostled slightly, but he didn’t seem to be trying to remove the gum just yet.
Actually, it sounded like he was taking a drink of his soda. Too afraid to turn
and figure out what was going on at the risk of spreading the gum even farther,
I had no choice but to wait.
“This
might be a little cold,” he said.
“What?”
Icy
water dripped down the back of my shirt. I jumped in surprise, sending it
rolling over my shoulder and down the front of my tank top as well. “What are
you doing?” I demanded.
“The
best way to get gum off anything is to freeze it. All I had was ice from my
drink. Sorry. I spilled a little on you trying to get the ice out.” He did
sound apologetic, but Evan thought it was hilarious. “I’m Roman, by the way.
Sammy’s dad.”
I
couldn’t immediately pinpoint who Sammy was, but the name sounded familiar and
I was fairly certain he was a kid on my other nephew’s team. The one whose game
was dragging on into eternity. “Greenly,” I grumbled.
“Lydia’s
sister, right?”
A
little weirded out that this guy knew that, I was slow to answer. “Yeah. Guess
she’s mentioned me?” Hopefully it wasn’t to complain about me, as usual.
Roman
laughed. “Once or twice.”
That
could not be good. My older sister was married to a great guy, had two awesome
kids, freelanced as a graphic designer, and ran marathons. I was working on a
master’s degree…still, hadn’t had a boyfriend in a while, worked part time at
the campus library, and according to my sister, was getting more disillusioned
by the day. When she wasn’t telling me what I should be doing with my life, she was trying to set me up with one
of her friends.
All
the blood drained from my face. No. No
way. A few weeks back, Lydia kept going on and on about this single dad of
one of the kids on Colby’s baseball team. She kept trying to talk me into
coming to a game to meet him because she was just sure he was exactly what I needed in my life. She even went so far
as to set up a date without asking me. I’d been so furious with her I refused
to call him myself and made her cancel since she was the one who’d set it up.
The fight we’d gotten into led to her husband James taking refuge on the deck
in the backyard for two hours.
Normally,
our arguments lasted a few minutes, long enough for both of us to rant a
little, then we made up and moved on. That one had been different, for more
than one reason, but mainly due to flat out bad timing on my meddlesome
sister’s part. Not that she understood why, or that I explained the reason
behind my freak out, but we’d eventually made up and she hadn’t set me up since
then. A small miracle, to be sure.
Now,
sitting here with gum in my hair and watered down soda dripping down my chest
and back, every word of that argument came back to haunt me. Lydia telling me
to grow up. Me throwing a fit about her sticking her nose in my business,
again. She’d begged me to just call and talk to him, promised he was different
than the other guys she’d set me up with in the past. I’d refused, flat out
refused, and made her do it instead. She’d been embarrassed and completely fed
up with me, and I had no doubt this guy had heard every spec of mortification
in her voice as she’d called to cancel the date.
I could
have sunk down through the bleachers in that moment, gum and all. The last
thing I wanted to do was talk to this guy now, but he was trying to get gum out of my hair and I felt like I owed him
some sort of explanation for that. “You’re that guy, aren’t you? The one Lydia
tried to set me up with?”
Roman
laughed. At me, I’m sure. “Unsuccessfully, but yes. That would be me.”
Of
course it was. “She never even asked me before setting that up with you,” I
said defensively. “I already had something going on.” Actually, I had nothing
at all going on, as usual, but that hadn’t stopped me from spurning Lydia’s
pity blind date.
Roman
tugged on my hair. It didn’t hurt, but it yanked my head back enough that I
almost lost my balance and fell on him. Awesome. Just what I needed right now.
Hooking my fingers under the bleacher seat, I held on for dear life.
“I
got the impression Lydia expects people to do what she says within the first
five minutes of meeting her and she didn’t disappoint,” Roman said as he tugged
my hair again. “I figured that’s what had happened. It’s not a big deal.”
He
said that, but I was still mortified. Right now he was probably thinking he was
lucky I’d refused to keep the date Lydia set up. Whatever. This would be just
another part of a story you tell your friends and have a good laugh about. Him,
not me. I was not telling this story to anyone. Ever.
“Well,
I got most of it out,” Roman said. “You might want to try peanut butter when
you get home for what’s left.”
“Peanut
butter?” I wrinkled my nose at the thought of putting peanut butter in my hair,
on purpose. “How many times have you had to do this?”
Laughing,
Roman said, “You’d be surprised.” He tossed the napkin into the nacho tray and
I reached back to feel my hair. There was still some stickiness, but he’d
actually managed to remove most of the gum wad.
I
turned to thank him despite my embarrassment after realizing who he was, but my
words and pride stuck in my throat when I saw him. Expecting some balding,
nice-personality, let-himself-go single dad like Lydia usually tried to set me
up with, I wanted to die right there on the bleachers when I looked at Roman.
He looked to be in his early thirties, had dark thick hair that demanded to
have fingers run through it, a casual weekend kind of stubble on his face, and
bright green eyes I knew were laughing at me. His smile was the worst. Holding
a hint of amusement, his lips curled up at what he saw.
Sweaty,
possibly sunburned by that point, covered in gum and slobber and watered down
soda, I was sure I looked like every guy’s definition of a bullet dodged. Heat
was creeping up my neck and I knew I was half a second from breaking out in a
full body blush. I wasn’t cute when I blushed. I looked like I had some sort of
spotted fever when I blushed like that. Could this encounter get any worse?
“Thanks,”
I mumbled before turning back around and pretending to be super interested in
the seven-zero game. I was such an idiot.
