Loe raamatut: «Diamond In The Ruff»

To

Rocky and Audrey

who made my life so much richer

in their own unique way.

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Maizie Connors, youthful grandmother, successful Realtor and matchmaker par excellence, looked at the tall, handsome, blond-haired young man standing in the doorway of her real estate office. Mentally, she whizzed through the many faces she had encountered in the past handful of years, both professionally and privately. Try as she might to recall the young man, Maizie came up empty. His smile was familiar, but the rest of him was not.

Ever truthful, Maizie made no attempt to bluff her way through this encounter until she either remembered him or, more to the point, the young man said something that would set off flares in her somewhat overtaxed brain, reminding her who he was.

Instead, Maizie shook her head and admitted, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“I was a lot younger back then and I guess I looked more like a blond swizzle stick than anything else,” he told her.

She didn’t remember the face, but the smile and now the voice nudged at something distant within her mind. Recognition was still frustratingly out of reach. The young man’s voice was lower, but the cadence was very familiar. She’d heard it before.

“Your voice is familiar and that smile, I know I’ve seen it before, but...” Maizie’s voice trailed off as she continued to study his face. “I know I didn’t sell you a house,” she told him with certainty. She would have remembered that.

She remembered all of her clients as well as all the couples she, Theresa and Cecilia had brought together over the past few years. As far as Maizie was concerned, she and her lifelong best friends had all found their true calling in life a few years ago when desperation to see their single children married and on their way to creating their own families had the women using their connections in the three separate businesses they owned to find suitable matches for their offspring.

Enormously successful in their undertaking, they found they couldn’t stop just because they had run out of their own children to work with. So friends and clients were taken on.

They did their best work covertly, not allowing the two principals in the undertaking know that they were being paired up. The payment the three exacted was not monetary. It was the deep satisfaction that came from knowing they had successfully brought two soul mates together.

But the young man before her was neither a professional client nor a private one. Yet he was familiar.

Shrugging her shoulders in a gesture of complete surrender, Maizie said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to take pity on me and tell me why your smile and your voice are so familiar but the rest of you isn’t.” Even as she said the words aloud, a partial answer suddenly occurred to her. “You’re someone’s son, aren’t you?”

But whose? she wondered. She hadn’t been at either of her “careers”—neither the one involving real estate nor the one aimed at finding soul mates—long enough for this young man to have been the result of her work.

So who are you?

“I was,” he told her, his blue eyes on hers.

Was.

The moment he said that, it suddenly came to her. “You’re Frances Whitman’s boy, aren’t you?”

He grinned. “Mom always said you were exceedingly sharp. Yes, I’m Frances’s son.” He said the words with pride.

The name instantly conjured up an image in Maizie’s mind, the image of a woman with laughing blue eyes and an easy smile on her lips—always, no matter what adversity she was valiantly facing.

The same smile she was looking at right now.

“Christopher?” Maizie asked haltingly. “Christopher Whitman!” It was no longer a question but an assertion. Maizie threw her arms around him, giving him a warm, fond embrace, which only reached as far up as his chest. “How are you?” she asked with enthusiasm.

“I’m doing well, thanks.” And then he told her why he’d popped in after all this time. “And it looks like we’re going to be neighbors.”

“Neighbors?” Maizie repeated, somewhat confused.

There’d been no For Sale signs up on her block. Infinitely aware of every house that went up for sale not just in her neighborhood, but in her city as well, Maizie knew her friend’s son was either mistaken or had something confused.

“Yes, I just rented out the empty office two doors down from you,” he told her, referring to the strip mall where her real estate office was located.

“Rented it out?” she repeated, waiting for him to tell her just what line of work he was in without having to specifically ask him.

Christopher nodded. “Yes, I thought this was a perfect location for my practice.”

She raised her eyebrows in minor surprise and admiration.

“You’re a doctor?” It was the first thing she thought of since her own daughter was a pediatrician.

Christopher nodded. “Of furry creatures, large and small,” he annotated.

“You’re a vet,” she concluded.

“—erinarian,” he amended. “I find if I just say I’m a vet, I have people thanking me for my service to this country. I don’t want to mislead anyone,” he explained with a smile she now found dazzling.

“Either way, you’ll have people thanking you,” Maizie assured him. She took a step back to get a better, fuller view of the young man. He had certainly filled out since she had seen him last. “Christopher Whitman,” she repeated in amazement. “You look a great deal like your mother.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said with a warm smile. “I was always grateful that you and the other ladies were there for Mom while she was getting her treatments. She didn’t tell me she was sick until it was close to the end,” he explained. It was a sore point for him, but under the circumstances, he’d had to forgive his mother. There hadn’t been any time left for wounded feelings. “You know how she was. Very proud.”

“Of you,” Maizie emphasized. “I remember her telling me that she didn’t want to interfere with your schooling. She knew you’d drop out if you thought she needed you.”

“I would have,” he answered without hesitation.

She heard the note of sadness in his voice that time still hadn’t managed to erase. Maizie quickly changed the subject. Frances wouldn’t have wanted her son to beat himself up over a decision she had made for him.

“A veterinarian, huh? So what else is new since I last saw you?” Maizie asked.

Broad shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “Nothing much.”

Habit had Maizie glancing down at his left hand. It was bare, but that didn’t necessarily mean the man wasn’t married. “No Mrs. Veterinarian?”

Christopher laughed softly and shook his head. “Haven’t had the time to find the right woman,” he confessed. It wasn’t the truth, but he had no desire to revisit that painful area yet. “I know Mom would have hated to hear that excuse, but that’s just the way things are. Well, when I saw your name on the door, I just wanted to drop by to say hi,” he told her, adding, “Stop by the office sometime when you get a chance and we’ll talk some more about Mom,” he promised.

“Yes, indeed,” Maizie replied.

As well as other things, she added silently as she watched Christopher walk away, anticipation welling in her chest. Wait until the girls hear about this.

Chapter One

Okay, how did it get to be so late?

The exasperated, albeit rhetorical, question echoed almost tauntingly in her brain as Lily Langtry hurried through her house, checking to make sure she hadn’t left any of her ground-floor windows open or her back door unlocked. There hadn’t been any break-ins in her neighborhood, but she lived alone and felt that you could never be too careful.

The minutes felt as if they were racing by.

There was a time when she was not only on time but early for everything from formal appointments to the everyday events that took place in her life. But that was before her mother had passed away, before she was all alone and the only one who was in charge of the details of her life.

It seemed to her that even when she was taking care of her mother and holding down the two jobs that paying off her mother’s medical bills necessitated, she had usually been far more organized and punctual than she was these days. Now that there was only one of her, in essence only one person to be responsible for, her ability to be on top of things seemed to have gone right out the window. If she intended to be ready by eight, in her mind she had to shoot for seven-thirty—and even that didn’t always pan out the way she hoped it would.

This morning she’d told herself she would be out the door by seven. It was now eight-ten and she was just stepping into her high heels.

“Finally,” she mumbled as she grabbed her bag and launched herself out the front door while simultaneously searching for her keys. The latter were currently eluding detection somewhere within the nether regions of her oversize purse.

Preoccupied, engaged in the frantic hunt that was making her even later than she already was, Lily wasn’t looking where she was going.

Which was why she almost stepped on him.

Looking back, in her defense, she hadn’t been expecting anything to be on her doorstep, much less a moving black ball of fur that yipped pathetically when her foot came down on his paw.

Jumping backward, Lily’s hand went protectively over her chest to contain the heart that felt as if it was about to leap out of it. Lily dropped her purse at the same time.

Containing more things in it than the average overstuffed suitcase, the purse came down with a thud, further frightening the already frightened black ball of fur—which she now saw was a Labrador puppy.

But instead of running, as per the puppy manual, the large-dog-in-training began to lick her shoe.

Since the high heels Lily had selected to wear this morning were open-toe sandals, the upshot was that the puppy was also licking her toes. The end result of that was that the fast-moving little pink tongue was tickling her toes at the same time.

Surprised, stunned, as well as instantly smitten, Lily crouched down to the puppy’s level, her demanding schedule temporarily put on hold.

“Are you lost?” she asked the puppy.

Since she was now down to his level, the black Labrador puppy abandoned her shoes and began to lick her face instead. Had there been a hard part to Lily’s heart, it would have turned to utter mush as she completely capitulated, surrendering any semblance of control to her unexpected invader.

When she finally rose back up to her feet, Lily looked in both directions along the residential through street where she lived to see if anyone was running up or down the block, frantically searching for a lost pet.

It was apparent that no one was since all she saw was Mr. Baker across the street getting into his midlife-crisis vehicle—a sky-blue Corvette—which he drove to work every morning.

Since it wasn’t moving, Lily took no note of the beige sedan parked farther down the block and across the street. Nor did she notice the older woman who was slouched down in the driver’s seat.

The puppy appeared to be all alone.

She looked back at the puppy, who was back to licking her shoes. Pulling first one foot back, then the other, she only succeeded in drawing the dog into her house because the Labrador’s attention was completely focused on her shoes.

“Looks like your family hasn’t realized that you’re missing yet,” she told the puppy.

The Lab glanced up, cocking his head as if he was hanging on her every word. Lily couldn’t help wondering if the animal understood her. She knew people who maintained that dogs only understood commands that had been drilled into their heads, but she had her doubts about that. This one was actually making eye contact and she was certain that he was taking in every word.

“I have to go to work,” she told her fuzzy, uninvited guest.

The Labrador continued watching her as if she was the only person in the whole world. Lily knew when she’d lost a battle.

She sighed and stepped back even farther into her foyer, allowing the puppy access to her house.

“Oh, all right, you can come in and stay until I get back,” she told the puppy, surrendering to the warm brown eyes that were staring up at her so intently.

If she was letting the animal stay here, she had to leave it something to eat and drink, she realized. Turning on her heel, Lily hurried back the kitchen to leave the puppy a few last-minute survival items.

She filled a soup bowl full of water and extracted a few slices of roast beef she’d picked up from the supermarket deli on her way home last night.

Lily placed the latter on a napkin and put both bowl and napkin on the floor.

“This should hold you until I get back,” she informed the puppy. Looking down, she saw that the puppy, who she’d just assumed would follow her to a food source, was otherwise occupied. He was busy gnawing on one of the legs of her kitchen chair. “Hey!” she cried. “Stop that!”

The puppy went right on gnawing until she physically separated him from the chair. He looked up at her, clearly confused.

In her house for less than five minutes and the Labrador puppy had already presented her with a dilemma, Lily thought.

“Oh, God, you’re teething, aren’t you? If I leave you here, by the time I get back it’ll look like a swarm of locusts had come through, won’t it?” She knew the answer to that one. Lily sighed. It was true what they said, no good deed went unpunished. “Well, you can’t stay here, then.” Lily looked around the kitchen and the small family room just beyond. Almost all the furniture, except for the TV monitor, was older than she was. “I don’t have any money for new furniture.”

As if he understood that he was about to be put out again, the puppy looked up at her and then began to whine.

Pathetically.

Softhearted to begin with, Lily found that she was no match for the sad little four-footed fur ball. Closing the door on him would be akin to abandoning the puppy in a snowdrift.

“All right, all right, all right, you can come with me,” she cried, giving in. “Maybe someone at work will have a suggestion as to what I can do with you.”

Lily stood for a minute, studying the puppy warily. Would it bite her if she attempted to pick it up? Her experience with dogs was limited to the canines she saw on television. After what she’d just witnessed, she knew that she definitely couldn’t leave the puppy alone in her house. At the same time, she did have the uneasy feeling that the Labrador wasn’t exactly trained to be obedient yet.

Still, trained or not, she felt as if she should at least try to get the puppy to follow her instructions. So she walked back over to the front door. The puppy was watching her every move intently, but remained exactly where he was. Lily tried patting her leg three times in short, quick succession. The puppy cocked its head, as if to say, Now what?

“C’mon, boy, come here,” Lily called to him, patting her leg again, this time a little more urgently. To her relief—as well as surprise—this time the puppy came up to her without any hesitation.

Opening the front door, Lily patted her leg again—and was rewarded with the same response. The puppy came up to her side—the side she’d just patted—his eager expression all but shouting, Okay, I’m here. Now what?

Lily currently had no answer for that, but she hoped to within the hour.

* * *

“Hey, I don’t remember anyone declaring that this was ‘bring your pet to work’ day,” Alfredo Delgado, one of the chefs that Theresa Manetti employed at her catering company, quipped when Lily walked into the storefront office. She was holding a makeshift leash, fashioned out of rope. The black Lab was on the other end of the leash, ready to give the office a thorough investigation the moment the other end of the leash was dropped.

Theresa walked out of her small inner office and regarded the animal, her expression completely unfathomable.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Lily apologized to the woman who wrote out her checks. “I ran into a snag.”

“From here it looks like the snag is following you,” Theresa observed.

She glanced expectantly at the young woman she’d taken under her wing a little more than a year ago. That was when she’d hired Lily as her pastry chef after discovering that Lily could create delicacies so delicious, they could make the average person weep. But, softhearted woman that she was, Theresa hadn’t taken her on because of her skills so much as because Lily’s mother had recently passed away, leaving her daughter all alone in the world. Theresa, like her friends Maizie and Cecilia, had a great capacity for sympathy.

Lily flushed slightly now, her cheeks growing a soft shade of pink.

“I’m sorry, he was just there on my doorstep this morning when I opened the door. I couldn’t just leave him there to roam the streets. If I came home tonight and found out that someone had run him over, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“Why didn’t you just leave him at your place?” Alfredo asked, curious. “That’s what I would have done.” He volunteered this course of action while bending down, scratching the puppy behind its ears.

“I normally would have done that, too,” Lily answered. “But there was one thing wrong with that—he apparently sees the world as one giant chew toy.”

“So you brought him here,” Theresa concluded. It was neither a question nor an accusation, just a statement of the obvious. A bemused smile played on the older woman’s lips as she regarded the animal. “Just make sure he stays out of the kitchen.”

Lily gestured around the area, hoping Theresa would see things her way. This was all temporary. “Everything here’s made out of metal. His little teeth can’t do any damage,” she pointed out, then looked back at Theresa hopefully. “Can he stay—just for today?” Lily emphasized.

Theresa pretended to think the matter over—as if she hadn’t had a hand in the puppy’s sudden magical appearance on her pastry chef’s doorstep. After Maizie had mentioned that their late friend’s son was opening up his animal hospital two doors down from her real estate office and went on to present him as a possible new candidate for their very unique service, Theresa had suggested getting Christopher together with Lily. She’d felt that the young woman could use something positive happening to her and had been of that opinion for a while now.

The search for a way to bring the two together in a so-called “natural” fashion was quick and fruitful when, as a sidebar, Cecilia had casually asked if either she or Maizie knew of anyone looking to adopt a puppy. Her dog, Princess, had given birth to eight puppies six weeks ago, and the puppies needed to be placed before “they start eating me out of house and home,” Cecilia had told her friends.

It was as if lightning had struck. Everything had fallen into place after that.

Theresa was aware of Lily’s approximate time of departure and had informed Cecilia. The latter proceeded to leave the puppy—deliberately choosing the runt of the litter—on Lily’s doorstep. Cecilia left the rambunctious puppy there not once but actually several times before she hit upon the idea of bribing the little dog with a large treat, which she proceeded to embed in the open weave of the welcome mat.

Even so, Cecilia had just barely made it back to her sedan before Lily had swung open her front door.

Once inside the catering shop, the puppy proceeded to make himself at home while he sniffed and investigated every inch of the place.

Lily watched him like a hawk, afraid of what he might do next. In her opinion, Theresa was a wonderful person, but everyone had their breaking point and she didn’t want the puppy to find Theresa’s.

“Um, Theresa,” Lily began as she shooed the puppy away from a corner where a number of boxes were piled up, “how old are your grandchildren now?”

Theresa slanted a deliberately wary look at the younger woman. “Why?”

Lily smiled a little too broadly as she made her sales pitch. “Wouldn’t they love to have a puppy? You could surprise them with Jonathan.”

Theresa raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Jonathan?” she repeated.

Lily gestured at the Labrador. “The puppy. I had to call him something,” she explained.

“You named him. That means you’re already attached to him,” Alfredo concluded with a laugh, as if it was a done deal.

There was something akin to a panicky look on Lily’s face. She didn’t want to get attached to anything. She was still trying to get her life on track after losing her mother. Taking on something new—even a pet—was out of the question.

“No, it doesn’t,” Lily protested. “I just couldn’t keep referring to the puppy as ‘it.’”

“Sure you could,” Alfredo contradicted with a knowing attitude. “That you didn’t want to means that you’ve already bonded with the little ball of flying fur.”

“No, no bonding,” Lily denied firmly, then made her final argument on the matter. “I don’t even know how to bond with an animal. The only pet I ever had was a goldfish and Seymour only lived for two days.” Which firmly convinced her that she had absolutely no business trying to care for a pet of any kind.

Alfredo obviously didn’t see things in the same light that she did. “Then it’s high time you got back into the saddle, Lily. You can’t accept defeat that easily,” he told her.

Finding no support in that quarter, Lily appealed to her boss. “Theresa—”

Theresa placed a hand supportively on the younger woman’s shoulder. “I’m with Alfredo on this,” she told Lily. “Besides,” she pointed out, “you can’t give the dog away right now.”

“Why not?” Lily asked.

Theresa was the soul of innocence as she explained, “Because his owner might be out looking for him even as we speak.”

Lily blew out a breath. She’d forgotten about that. “Good point,” she admitted, chagrinned by her oversight. “I’ll make flyers and put them up.”

“In the meantime,” Theresa continued as she thoughtfully regarded the black ball of fur and paws, “I suggest you make sure the little guy’s healthy.”

“How do I go about doing that?” Lily asked, completely clueless when it came to the care of anything other than humans. She freely admitted to having a brown thumb. Anything that was green and thriving would begin to whither and die under her care—which was why she didn’t attempt to maintain a garden anymore. The thought of caring for a pet brought a chill to her spine.

“Well, for starters,” Theresa told her, “if I were you I would bring him to a veterinarian.”

“A vet?” she looked at the puppy that now appeared to be utterly enamored with Alfredo. The chef was scratching Jonathan behind the ears and along his nose, sending the Labrador to seventh heaven. “He doesn’t look sick. Is that really necessary?”

“Absolutely,” Theresa answered without a drop of hesitation. “Just think, if someone is looking for him, how would it look if you handed over a sick dog? If they wanted to, they could turn around and sue you for negligence.”

Lily felt hemmed in. The last thing she wanted was to have to take care of something, to get involved with a living, breathing entity.

Eyeing the puppy uncertainly, Lily sighed. “I should have never opened the door this morning.”

“Oh, how can you say that? Look at this adorable little face,” Theresa urged, cupping the puppy’s chin and turning his head toward Lily.

“I’m trying not to,” Lily answered honestly. But Theresa was right. She didn’t want to chance something happening to the puppy while it was temporarily in her care. Emphasis on the word temporarily, she thought. “Okay, how do I go about finding an animal doctor who’s good, but not expensive? I wouldn’t know where to start,” she admitted, looking to Theresa for guidance since the woman had been the one to bring up the matter of a vet to begin with.

Theresa’s smile bordered on being beatific. “Well, as luck would have it, I happen to know of one who just opened up a new practice a few doors down from one of my best friends. She took her dog to him and told me that he performed nothing short of a miracle on Lazarus.” The fact that Maizie didn’t have a dog named Lazarus, or a dog named anything else for that matter, was an unimportant, minor detail in the grand scheme of things. As a rule, Theresa didn’t lie, but there were times—such as now—when rules were meant to be bent if not altogether broken. “Why don’t I call her to get his phone number for you?” she suggested, looking at Lily.

That sounded like as good a plan as any, she supposed. “Sure, why not?” Lily replied with a vague shrug, resigned to this course of action. “What do I have to lose? It’s only money, right?”

Theresa knew that times were tight for the younger woman. She saw what she was about to propose as an investment in Lily’s future happiness.

“I tell you what. We’ve had a great month. I’ll pay for ‘Jonathan’s’ visit,” she offered, petting the eager puppy on the head. The dog stopped roaming around long enough to absorb the head pat and then went back to sniffing the entire area for a second time. “Consider it my gift to you.”

“How about me?” Alfredo said, pretending to feel left out. “Got any gifts for me, boss?”

“I’ll pay for your visit to the vet, too, if you decide you need to go,” Theresa quipped as she retreated into her office.

Once inside, Theresa carefully closed the door and crossed to her desk. She didn’t care for cell phones. The connection was never as clear as a landline in her opinion. Picking up the receiver, she quickly dialed the number she wanted to reach.

Maizie picked up on the second ring. “Connors’ Realty.”

“Houston, we have liftoff,” Theresa announced in what sounded like a stage whisper to her own ear.

“Theresa?” Maizie asked uncertainly. “Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. Who else would call you and say that?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea. Theresa, I mean this in the kindest way, but you’ve definitely been watching too many movies, woman. Now, what is it that you’re trying to say?”

Impatience wove through every word. “That Lily is bringing the puppy to Frances’s son.”

“Then why didn’t you just say so?”

“Because it sounds so ordinary that way,” Theresa complained.

“Sometimes, Theresa, ordinary is just fine. Is she bringing the puppy in today?”

“That’s what I urged her to do.”

“Perfect,” Maizie said with heartfelt enthusiasm. “Nothing like being two doors down from young love about to unfold.”

“I don’t see how that’s any different from Houston, we have liftoff,” Theresa protested.

“Maybe it’s not, Theresa,” Maizie conceded, not because she thought she was wrong, but because she knew Theresa liked to be right. “Maybe it’s not.”