by Stella Quinn
Keeping Katie
The Gold Coast Retrievers, Book 14
Stella Quinn
© 2018, Stella Quinn
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover Design by RockSolidBookDesign.com
Proofread by Alice Shepherd
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Sweet Promise Press
PO Box 72
Brighton, MI 48116
Contents
Publisher’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
What’s Next?
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Chapter 1
“Tell me again,” muttered Katie through the gray furry muzzle of the smelliest costume she had ever worn, “why I have to be the one to dress up as the dog?”
Her friend Ramon jangled the fundraising bucket he was holding towards a loved-up couple sharing a giant stick of candy floss. “I gave you a choice, fundraising or marketing. You chose marketing.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or howl. “Huh. If I’d known you were tricking me with fancy words, I’d have paid more attention.”
“Look,” said Ramon, nudging her with his shoulder. “There’s a photographer coming from the local paper. Now’s our chance.”
She couldn’t see very clearly through the eye-slits cut into the dense fur of her fake head. Food stalls and tourists filled the grassy park and the beach full of market stalls was a dizzy blur of color. “Where?”
“Near the jazz quartet on the wharf. Let’s get over there and play for the camera. Who knows, we may get the front page of the Cove to Coast Herald.”
Katie felt her stomach sink like she’d just dropped off the top of one of those beach-side rollercoaster rides. Why, oh why, had she agreed to accompany Ramon to the Summer Festival fundraiser? She was so much happier home on her sofa, binge-watching cooking shows with her dog—her real dog—snoozing at her feet. “When you say play,” she said, “you better not mean you’re going to throw me a frisbee.”
Ramon’s chuckle was rich enough to win a ribbon at the fudge stall. “Relax, Katie. I know you hate being sociable. I’ll hold the bucket and talk up the feel-good benefits of donating to the refuge, and you can hold the sign and look…um…like a good dog.”
Huh. People thought she hated being sociable? She scrabbled around in the corner of the Gold Coast Dog Refuge stall until she had their donations sign gripped in her oversized furry paws, then turned in the direction of the wharf. “Let’s do this,” she said. She could worry about why Ramon’s comment had stung later.
Navigating the crowd wouldn’t have been easy for a wiry pickpocket. It was certainly not easy for a grown woman in a great furry suit with poorly cut eyeholes. Their trek to the wharf was slowed by all the festival goers who were keen to donate to their cause.
“We find homes for abandoned dogs,” Ramon told a young woman who ran up to pop a twenty in the bucket.
“Yes, all our dogs are vaccinated, neutered, and put through behavioral training,” he said in answer to another query.
Katie stumbled over an abandoned tent peg wedged in the grass and found herself jerked backwards as someone hauled on her tail. “Excuse me,” she said, swinging around to face a toddler with a sticky face and a ten-dollar bill clasped in his chubby hand.
“For the lonely dog-dogs,” he said.
“Um…woof,” she said. Man, she had so not thought this through. Should she speak and destroy this kid’s belief in giant magic dogs who walked on two legs and collected donations at parks? Or was woofing an appropriate way of saying thank you to a sugar-fueled toddler with a big heart?
“Nearly there,” said Ramon in her ear, and he thanked the toddler, popped the proffered bill into his bucket, and steered her around until she was again facing the wharf. He kept his hand under her arm until he’d schmoozed his way in front of the photographer like the public relations expert he was. “Need a photo of us, pal?” he said brightly. “Festivals and fundraising make a terrific headline.”
“Sure,” the man said. “Can’t promise you’ll make the paper, but happy to take one. I’ll need your names for the disclaimer.”
“Ramon Bowtell,” said Ramon. “And this is Ka—”
“This is Buddy the Dog,” she said firmly. “Buddy is the mascot for the Gold Coast Pet Refuge. He’s very photogenic.”
The photographer grinned. “Ramon and Buddy,” he said, keying a note into his phone. “Hold the bucket and sign a little higher and say cheese.”
Katie obliged by holding the sign up, then turned to Ramon when the photographer moved away. “How are we doing for donations? I’m getting a little hot in here.”
Ramon gave the bucket a jangle. “Feels heavier than it did three hours ago. Why don’t we keep walking through the crowds for another half hour, then call it a day.”
Half a minute would have been enough for her, but after Ramon’s comment about her social habits, it seemed too awkward to say so. Finally, though, she was waving Ramon and his full bucket goodbye and slipping to the edge of the crowd.
If only she could remember where she’d parked her car.
The alley behind the bakery? She poked her head around the corner of the old canning factory that had been converted into an artisan brewery. Nope, not up that alley. Must be the next.
Sweat tric
kled down between her shoulder blades as she hurried her steps. Fresh air and at least a liter of water to drink, that’s what she needed. She was dehydrated, that’s why she’d taken Ramon’s comment to heart. Dehydrated, not unsociable.
Hauling her keys out of the hidden pocket behind the fur of the dog belly, she rounded the next corner just as a flash of color popped into her narrow field of vision.
“Oof,” she said, as a broad chest in a snug-fitting running shirt knocked her off her feet.
“Oh no!” said a deep voice. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.”
She looked up, but all she could see was the inner webbing of the dog head. She grabbed the snout and twisted it around until the eye-slits were aligned again. A man stood over her, tall and fit in exercise gear and a baseball cap, his chest heaving as though he’d been running for some time.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Sorry, I can’t see so well in this outfit.”
The top half of his face was shadowed by his cap, but she could see his lips twitch. “Gotta say, I’ve never run into a five-foot dog before. You need a hand getting up?”
She held out a paw, and the guy hauled her to her feet.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Going to the festival?”
“Just leaving. There’s only so much fun a dog can take in one afternoon. How about you?”
He looked over her shoulder to where the music and tourists were in full swing across the esplanade and foreshore. “Yeah, crowds aren’t really my thing. I’m just running past. You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, thanks. But—”
She’d just noticed a streak of red on his jawline. She gestured to it with a furry foreleg. “You might have grazed yourself. There’s a little, um, mark there.”
He swiped his hand over his face and winced. “Smacked my head into the bricks coming round the corner. It’s fine.”
“There’s a first aid station set up by the wharf.”
His face, the part she could see of it, slid from friendly to sad. “Seriously, it’s fine. I like to save my panic moments for the big stuff these days.”
Oh, wow, had she touched a nerve? She should say something, but what?
“Well,” he said. “I’d better, er…”
“Keep going. Sure. Me too.”
She watched through her fuzzy eye-slits as the man with the sad face slipped through the crowd, then disappeared onto the cliff walk.
It was a view she was used to. People left her. That’s just the way it was.
Chapter 2
“I think I’m cured,” Anton Price said to his therapist, first thing Monday morning.
Dr. Alice Goodly raised her eyebrows. “Really? You don’t call me for months, then show up without an appointment to tell me you’re all better now.”
He smiled. “Okay, it sounded a lot more reasonable when I was practicing it in my car on the way over here.”
Alice Goodly must have trained her eyebrows as psychotherapy consultants, because a lot of the time, she just sat there while they did all the work. This was one of those times…silence, just those disbelieving eyebrows daring him to speak.
He broke first. “I ran through a festival last weekend. Hundreds of people, noise, photographers—I didn’t even flinch.”
“Did they know who you were?”
“No, but—”
“Were they at a book signing? At a book launch? At a publicity event?”
“No, but—”
“I see.”
He tried to speak up, but those eyebrows were doing their thing again. Alice drummed her fingers on the desk.
“You still running?”
“Every day.”
The left eyebrow frowned. “Like—every day? Obsessively, or just because you enjoy it?”
He tried not to smile. “Not obsessively, Doctor. I have not replaced panic attacks with obsessive running.”
“Good to hear. How’s the cooking coming along?”
“I could open a restaurant.”
“Really?” She made a note on the open file in front of her.
“What did you write down?”
Her brown eyes met his. “You really want to know?”
“I really do.”
“I wrote ‘ego unimpaired.’”
“Huh.”
She grinned then, and he knew he was forgiven for missing the last half dozen appointments.
“Seriously, Alice. I really do feel like I’ve mastered my panic reaction.”
“I want to believe you, Anton, I really do, but when you don’t visit, it limits my ability to be useful.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Tell me what’s been working for you.”
He leaned back in one of the faux-leather chairs that Alice had decorated her rooms with. “Working at the paper, mostly. It’s routine, it gets me out of my house…it’s peaceful. I think peace has restored me.”
It was the right eyebrow’s turn to question his words. “Too peaceful, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Julia still embroidering you those cute little self-help samplers?”
He should never have let that slip to Alice; she’d be taunting him with it forever. “She’s a grandmother, Alice. Embroidery is what grandmothers do.”
Alice neatened the folder on her desk until it sat exactly flush with the edge. “You’re feeling restored, calm, as though you can cope, but you’re not testing yourself, Anton. You’re working one day a week in an office where they treat you like their treasured pet. Have you been to New York lately? Done a television interview? Answered your mail?”
She had him there.
“You see? You want to know if you really are over your anxiety? You need to test yourself.”
“How?”
“Start small. The next time an opportunity comes your way—an invitation, an offer of work—ask yourself if the idea of accepting it makes you feel uncomfortable.”
He had a bad feeling about where this was going. “And then?”
She shut his folder with a snap. “Then you accept it. Get out of your peaceful little rut, Anton. Get uncomfortable, cope with something new and unexpected, then come back here and tell me you’re cured.”
Something new and unexpected. Where was he going to find that in Redwood Cove?
Chapter 3
Katie pulled the industrial-gray earphones from her head and turned to her supervisor. “Sign me out, Andy. I’m at my time limit for the week.”
“Again? I thought you were taking less shifts this summer, not more.”
She picked up her cup and took a swig, then grimaced. Eesh. Somewhere between the light plane coming in at the wrong angle and the helicopter pilot who must have found his commercial license in the bottom of a cereal box, her coffee had grown as tepid as...well, as her heart.
No. She was not going to live her life being defined by the cheap shots her ex had thrown at her before he packed up his apartment and took off for Someplace Else, U.S.A. She forced herself to take another sip. Her coffee was as tepid as a mudpuddle, she thought. There, see? Her similes had moved on, and so had she. Go her.
Her boss, Andy, was standing, hands on hips, surveying the busy row of uniformed staff manning the controls below the huge window. “Who’s working the second airstrip now that you’ve clocked out?”
She sat her cup back on the desk and started paying attention. Air traffic controllers weren’t paid to be distracted at work. “Fabiana. We’ve done the handover. She’s got a commercial plane due in twenty minutes, the noon commuter from San Francisco, then nothing until two p.m. unless we get a take-off request from a local pilot.”
Andy looked at Fabiana, who was already snapping instructions into her mouthpiece, then typed a few notes into the tablet that he was never without. “Great. See you on Monday?”
“I’ve got a day off on Monday. I’m the Tuesday afternoon shift next week.”
“Gotcha. Enjoy your weekend.”
&nb
sp; She picked her coat up from the back of her chair and checked her watch. Rats, she was behind schedule. She’d been hoping to spend a moment or two alone on the outdoor observation deck of the control tower before leaving. Her safe place, she thought of it…above the world, rolling fields and ocean spread below her, and the deep rugged green of Griffin State Park looming behind. No people, no pain, just her and the view.
Maybe she could still sneak in a few seconds? She edged away from Andy, hoping to make a getaway. Her boss was an angel, but he was a chatty angel, and she was on a timetable this afternoon. “Bye Andy.”
“And when I say enjoy,” he said, settling his hip on a desk as though he was about to give her a monologue on how she ought to spend her weekend, “I don’t mean wallowing in your kitchen baking cookies, Katie.”
She smiled at him. “No baking, I promise.” She checked her watch again. She was out of time for view-gazing if she was going to get a full training session in at the refuge. Her quiet time on the observatory deck would have to wait.
She set off for the elevator that would drop her a hundred feet to the bottom of Redwood Cove Airport’s control tower.
“I mean dancing!” Andy called after her. “Having a reckless white wine spritzer at a café overlooking the water! Meeting some new guy already!”