Love Gone to the Dogs
(Second Chances Series)
By
Margaret Daley
Heartwarming to
heart pounding…an electrifying read
Single mom, Leah
Taylor, has her hands full with a grandfather, an inventor, who lives a bit
risky when it comes to his job and two sons, one a rambunctious genius. But it
is her free spirited beagle who gets her into trouble with her new neighbor,
Dr. Shane O'Grady, when her dog makes a move on his champion bichon that he
wants to breed.
Leah and Shane clash
over their dogs that clearly like each other. Leah is determined to ignore her
neighbor, but when her youngest son who tries to defy gravity and fly ends up
hurt, it is her neighbor, the doctor, who takes care of her son. Can Leah and
Shane find love or has love gone to the dogs?
Genre: Contemporary
Romance
Author Margaret Daley
Margaret
Daley, an award-winning author of eighty-four books, has been married for over
forty years and is a firm believer in romance and love. When she isn’t
traveling, she’s writing love stories, often with a suspense thread and
corralling her three cats that think they rule her household. To find out more
about Margaret visit her website at
Excerpt:
When Leah Taylor heard the pounding on her front door at
seven o'clock in the morning, she jumped, nearly sloshing her coffee all over
her hand. Did burglars now announce themselves before stealing a person blind?
No one else in his right mind would be out visiting at this time. Carefully, so
as not to spill the hot brew, she placed the mug on the kitchen counter and
made her way toward the insistent pounding that she was sure was waking up the
whole neighborhood.
She peered out a narrow slit in her mini blind and saw
an enraged, huge man standing on her front porch with a shredded newspaper in
one hand. The other was clenched at his side. He wore practically nothing
except a pair of jean shorts. He stepped back and glanced around, clearly not
happy that no one had answered his summons.
Backing away from the window next to her door, Leah
nervously chewed the end of one of her acrylic nails. The man looked familiar.
She was sure she had seen him in the yard across the street. He had to be a
neighbor. But why was he welcoming her to the neighborhood at such an early
hour, and with an angry expression on his face? She had been here only a few
days, and her family hadn't done anything yet to upset the delicate balance of
this small town. Or had they? She thought back over the past few days of
almost nonstop unpacking. She had been too tired to even venture from the house
much, and the same went for the rest of her family—she hoped.
When the pounding started again, she was so surprised by
the sound that she bit through the end of her new acrylic nail. Well, now he
was making her mad. Without thinking, she yanked open the front door and
prepared to confront the man who had the nerve to pay her a call at seven
o'clock in the morning.
"Look what you made me do!" Leah held up her
hand. "I've tried everything to grow my own nails long, and nothing's
worked. I finally decide to get fake ones—that I might, by the way, tell you
cost me forty dollars—and look what your pounding has done. They haven't even
lasted one week." She blew out a deep breath, then brushed her bangs away
from her face in frustration.
His dark eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. He
started to say something, but decided instead to allow his gaze to trek
downward slowly—way too slowly for Leah's peace of mind. A blush leaped into
her cheeks as she remembered her skimpy attire. She controlled the strong urge
to try to stretch her large, white T-shirt until it covered more than the tops
of her thighs. When his survey stopped at her bare feet, her toes wiggled as if
they had a will of their own.
She felt practically naked under his intense look. While
he was staring at her, she began at his bare feet, which were braced apart in a
stance that conveyed his anger, not one toe wiggling. Her gaze traveled upward
over long legs that probably belonged to a runner, to narrow hips that the jean
material hugged nicely. She paused ever so slightly at the washboard ripples in
his flat stomach and came to the decision that the man worked out religiously,
something she religiously tried to avoid. Her impression of his being an
exercise freak was confirmed when her gaze skimmed over a broad chest, wide
shoulders, and arms with taut muscles bulging as he held them rigid at his
sides. Bod of steel, she thought, realizing her impulsive inspection had done
nothing to cool the heat in her cheeks.
That realization was utmost in her mind until her gaze
came to rest on his face—not poster boy handsome, but rugged and very
masculine. Then she noticed his eyes, dark as chocolate, growing rounder as he
took in her features. Oh, no! All traces of the heat from her blush left her
cheeks. Why hadn't she remembered that she had forgotten to remove yesterday's
makeup, when she had fallen exhausted into bed, and that her short hair lay at
odd angles all over her head as it did every morning? Realizing she looked like
Rocky the Raccoon having a bad hair day, Leah stepped behind the front door,
gripped its edge, and peered around it to carry on the rest of the
conversation, trying to hide as much as possible from view. Too bad she didn't
have a sack to put over her head.
Her actions snapped the stunned expression from the
man's face. He held up the newspaper, which appeared to have gone through a
shredder. "This is what your dog did to my paper—for the third morning in
a row, I might add. Makes it a little hard to read."
His tightly clipped words blasted her. Who still read an
actual newspaper? Her grasp on the door strengthened. "That's not
possible. He's in the backyard—which is fenced, I might add."
The man's scowl deepened. "Your dog's a beagle,
right? I saw him this morning. Medium size, brown, black, and white."
"Must have been someone else's beagle. Arnold is as
secure as a baby in a playpen." Then, without really thinking again, Leah
swung her shield wide open, leaving her visible to his full view once more, and
motioned her less-than-friendly neighbor inside. "I'll show you you're
wrong about Arnold."
"Lady, I'm not wrong," he said, as he stomped
into her house, his large presence in her small entryway dwarfing everything,
including her.
"Leah Taylor." She held out her hand for him
to shake. After all, they were going to be neighbors, and he would realize his
mistake when he saw Arnold in the backyard. She believed in making a good first
impression—which in this case had been blown. At least she could shoot for a
good second impression.
"Shane O'Grady." He nodded his head slightly,
but didn't take her hand in his. He still clenched the newspaper with torn bits
hanging like black and white streamers.
Her blush came back to haunt her cheeks. Leah gritted
her teeth and proceeded to the kitchen, intending to show the man her dog and
then, with a relish, the door. Forget that second impression. "One of the
reasons I rented this house was the chain-link fence. It's four feet, and
Arnold isn't even two feet tall. I don't think he's learned to pole vault yet,
even though he did enjoy watching it on the Olympics telecast."
Shane O'Grady shot her a skeptical look. "I know I
saw him. He was running back toward your yard."
Leah waved her hand toward the window that afforded them
a view of the yard behind her house. There lay Arnold by his doghouse, sprawled
on his back with his legs stuck in the air as if he were dead. She pointed to
the closed gate. "Did you see him open the gate and run back into the
yard?" It was hard to keep the smug tone out of her voice. In fact, she
didn't succeed.
"It was him, lady."
"Are you the type of man who doesn't like to admit
he's wrong, Mr. O'Grady?"
The flint in his eyes could have set her on fire.
"Ms. Taylor, if you don't take care of the problem, I will."
"What do you mean?" Her voice rose with panic.
"We have leash laws in Shady Oaks."
The threat hung suspended between them. The only sounds
in the kitchen were the clock ticking over the stove and Leah's increased
breathing.
"I'm not without some pull, since I am, the
mayor." He stalked toward the door, turned back to rake her with a sharp
look, and added, "Keep that hound in your yard. We've had problems with
wild dogs biting people."
"You must be a dog hater," she shouted at his
retreating back as she followed him to her front door.
Shane halted on the bottom step. "Far from it. I
have two dogs of my own, but you won't see them running wild in the
neighborhood. I keep them where they belong."
She came out onto her porch. "Yeah, well, Arnold is
innocent. In America even a dog is innocent until proven guilty. Where's your
proof, Mr. Mayor?"
He said nothing to that last remark, probably because he
was jogging across the street and up the flight of steps in front of his house.
But several people had heard her words—the woman next door, who was coming out
to get her newspaper, and two men power walking. They all stopped what they
were doing and stared at Leah as if she were an alien who had just landed in
the middle of their peaceful town.
Leah did the only thing she could think of. Smiling, she
waved to each one. "Just exercising my voice. It's such a beautiful day to
exercise, don't you think?"
One man shook his head as though he couldn't quite
believe his eyes, and the other laughed. They resumed their power walk while
the woman grabbed her paper and rushed back inside, probably heading straight
for the telephone to tell everyone that the newcomer was obviously crazy.
"Welcome to Shady Oaks," Leah muttered to
herself as she made her way back inside her house.
When she caught sight of herself in the mirror in the
entrance hallway, she groaned. She looked worse than she had thought She had
dark mascara circles under her blue eyes and her orange lipstick was smeared
across her right cheek. And her hair was just awful—a brash, coppery shade of
red that shone in the sunlight. Well, she couldn't help it if her home tinting
had gone awry. Red was normal—usually.
Shrugging away her less than desirable reflection, Leah
headed straight for the back door. "Arnold. Breakfast," she called
out, and watched her beagle roll his head into a position to see her. He stared
at her for a good minute before getting up and slowly walking toward her as if
he hadn't had twenty hours of sleep, and barely had enough energy to make it to
the door.
"For being falsely accused you get an extra portion
this morning," she murmured, and bent to pat Arnold. Her hand stopped on
the fur by his neck. She spied a strip of newspaper tangled in his collar, and
closed her eyes.
When she opened them a second later, Arnold was butting
her hand to get her to scratch him behind the ears. Instead, she took the scrap
of newspaper off the collar and saw the evidence against her dog mount—the
piece of paper had the day's date written across it in bold, black letters.
"Oh, no, Arnold, you couldn't do this to us. We've
just moved here. This was supposed to be a fresh start. Now look what's
happened. I've antagonized the town mayor." Leah balled the shredded piece
up in her hand and marched to the trashcan. No one was going to know about
this.
Looking out the window at the securely shut gate, she
wondered how Arnold had gotten out. He couldn't open it, then close it, could
he? Well, however he had gotten out, she would make sure that Arnold didn't
escape again, even if she had to chain him outside the next morning.
She had wanted to make a good first impression. She
plopped down on a stool at the kitchen counter and buried her face in her
hands. She knew how important that was in a small town, where everyone knew
everyone. She wanted her family to belong, to finally have a place they could
call home. She had researched Shady Oaks, and the town had everything she
wanted, especially an excellent school system.
The sound of feet running upstairs drew her attention.
Her exchange with Shane O'Grady awakened the neighbors, and her family as well.
She turned her accusatory glare on her dog that sat at her feet wagging his
tail while he patiently waited for his breakfast. "I should give you half
rations, you Benedict Arnold."
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