Cupid to the Rescue: A Tail-Wagging Valentine's Day Anthology

by Lisa Mondello

  “I know. I’ll try again, Abbie, but don’t hold your breath.”

  “I appreciate your effort. Seriously.” She raised her hands, both index and middle fingers crossed. The jukebox launched into another song, this one performed by a woman with a flute-like voice, singing the praises of her boyfriend. “‘My Guy’!” Abbie exclaimed. “I love this song!” She sprang to her feet and raced to her circle of friends on the dance floor.

  Hank admired her for a moment, then turned back to Nick. “She’s a teacher?” He’d never had any teachers as sexy as she was.

  “I told you, she’s the answer to your prayers. She’s a dog walker.”

  “She walks dogs?” At Nick’s nod, Hank frowned. “You can make a living doing that?”

  Nick shrugged. “She wants to branch out into dog training. I think she works one-on-one with some dog owners, but she wants to teach canine obedience classes. I’d love to give her a room at the Community Center to teach a group class, but you heard what I told her. The board says no dogs allowed in the building. No pets at all, other than service animals. But…” He lifted his glass in Hank’s direction. “You could hire her to train your mother’s dog.”

  Hank laughed. “No one can train Priscilla. She’s not really a dog. She’s Satan in disguise.”

  “Satan, huh?” Nick chuckled. “Abbie would save her soul. Dogs are her thing.”

  If dogs were her thing, she definitely wasn’t Hank’s thing. But she was lovely when she danced. All that hair, and her big, surprisingly pale eyes, and her mesmerizing smile, and her slim, lithe body swirling and swaying as if dancing was its sole mission in life…

  “All right,” Nick said. “Abbie doesn’t have to save Satan’s soul. You could hire her to take care of the dog, though.”

  “I can’t,” Hank said, although the idea tempted him. “I promised my mother I’d take care of Priscilla myself.”

  “Your mother is on a cruise ship, a thousand miles away.”

  True. But his mother wouldn’t have gone on the cruise if she’d known Hank would be handing off her dog to a total stranger to take care of.

  She had gone on the cruise. She was on her way to tropical ports of call, where—he hoped—she would be shopping at duty-free boutiques and sipping fruity drinks and meeting good-looking single men, and not giving Priscilla a second thought.

  The song ended, and Hank glanced toward the dance floor once more. Abbie and her friends were grinning and gravitating toward their table when a third song began, a simple progression of hard, rocking guitar chords, then a steady drumbeat, then a layer of a honky-tonk piano. He didn’t recognize the song, but he felt as if his heart shifted to beat in rhythm with it.

  Abbie stood stock-still. Her friends flocked toward their table, but she remained on the dance floor, staring at him. Her beautiful smile faded, her gaze intensified, and for a strange moment, he wondered if her heart was beating in tempo with the song, too.

  In tempo with his heart.

  A vocalist joined the song, chanting in a not terribly musical way about waking up early, commuting by train to work, checking out the pretty girls in the city, and then launching into a chorus. Taking care of business, every day. Taking care of business...

  For a brief, absurd moment, Hank recalled taking care of Priscilla’s business with a plastic bag in his mother’s back yard. And then that memory disappeared. His mind filled with Abbie Harding—her hair, her face, her body, the shocking intensity of her expression as she gazed at him.

  If he were crazy, he could almost believe she was his business.

  He wasn’t crazy.

  But as the song continued its rambunctious beat, its rasping lyrics, its refrain—Taking care of business, every day—and as Abbie remained transfixed in the middle of the dance floor, staring at him while dancers bopped and bounced around her, he thought maybe he was just a little bit crazy.

  Taking Care of Business: Chapter 2

  What just happened?

  Abbie had been dancing with her friends, and then they’d decided to order another round. And then… That song started to play, and all she could do was gape at Nick Fiore’s friend.

  It wasn’t a bad song, but it wasn’t a musical masterpiece, either. Like all the other songs that emerged from the jukebox at the Faulk Street Tavern, it was a rock-and-roll relic from a previous era. She didn’t know most of the songs the jukebox played, but they were usually fun to dance to. How could you not dance when men with high-octane falsettos were singing that everyone had gone surfing? Or My Guy. Abbie knew that song well. Her mother used to sing it to her as a lullaby, only instead of singing, “My guy, my guy, my guy,” she’d sing, “Abbie, Abbie, Abbie.”

  Her mother would never have sung Taking Care of Business. The song was too rowdy, too goofy. Too much fun.

  But Abbie wasn’t having fun when she stood frozen on the dance floor while the song blasted out of the jukebox. She was just feeling weird, as if Nick’s friend had cast a spell on her.

  She couldn’t look away from him. Not the worst problem in the world, since he was damned good-looking. But more than good-looking, really—he exuded a charisma she couldn’t identify. Maybe it was because he’d risen to his feet like an old-fashioned gentleman when she’d approached their table. Maybe because he had an old-fashioned name: Henry Patterson Jr.

  She didn’t like old-fashioned people.

  But Nick’s friend…

  Hank…

  Taking care of business. Was it the song or something about Hank that made Abbie think she had to take care of business?

  Neither, she told herself as the song faded out and she was able to move again. She didn’t need an old rock tune or a tall, lean man with dark bedroom eyes to remind her she had to take care of business. She only had to convince the Community Center to let her rent a room in the building for her dog obedience classes. She’d investigated so many other venues—the high school, a couple of vacant storefronts, a ramshackle barn on the outskirts of town. Either the buildings’ owners said flat-out no or they quoted an exorbitant rent.

  She was just one person, one teacher. It wasn’t as if she needed a space five days a week, eight hours a day. She had a few clients who wanted her to train their dogs, and she did so individually. But it would make so much more sense to run a class with a bunch of dogs and humans all at once. If the class proved successfully, she could expand. She could sign a lease on one of those empty storefronts. She’d crunched the numbers. She could do this, if only she had a room to do it in.

  The Community Center would be perfect. The building had a variety of rooms in a variety of sizes, housing art classes, music classes, Zumba classes, bridge classes, French classes, and yoga classes. Why not a dog obedience class? It wasn’t as if she’d leave the place filthy. She’d clean the room top to bottom after each class.

  And if, as Nick warned, kids who were afraid of dogs might be in the building, give Abbie a few minutes with those kids and she’d get them to overcome their fear. She loved dogs, and she could think of few activities more rewarding than helping others to experience that love.

  Nick was a good guy. He’d argued her case before the Community Center’s board of directors twice, and both times, her proposal had been rejected. She needed to brainstorm a new approach with him, a new strategy.

  But she could hardly think about that right now. All she could think of was his friend, Hank. The courteous man with the wicked bedroom eyes.

  Gradually, like mist burning off beneath a hot sun, the strange effect of the song dissipated in her mind. She could hardly even remember the song itself. The song about surfing, yes. “My Guy,” absolutely. “Taking Care of Business?” Huh?

  “Are you okay?” Cali asked. One of Abbie’s good friends, Cali taught yoga at the Community Center. She’d been courted by Nick, practically begged to teach a class there. She also ran a yoga studio in town—in which she rented space to a taekwondo teacher and a ballet teacher, so she couldn’t spare any studio time
for Abbie’s class. She’d submitted a written statement to the Community Center board about how responsible and diligent Abbie was, but the board had gone on and on about animal bites and lawsuits, and of course all those frightened, allergic children they imagined stampeding through the building, shrieking and breaking out in hives if they came within fifty yards of a dog.

  Abbie sent one last, perplexed look toward the table where Hank and Nick sat, then shook her head and said, “Yes. I’m fine.”

  Hank was still staring at her. He’d stared at her through the entire business song. She had no idea why, but he remained focused on her, looking as confused as she felt. Pivoting away from him seemed as difficult as breaking free of a choke chain, but she forced herself to drop onto her chair at the table her friends occupied, her back to him. She was tempted to order another drink, but she still had plenty of her strawberry daiquiri in her glass. She took a cool, sweet sip of the frothy pink beverage and forced herself to laugh at something her friend Gwen had said, even though she had no idea what she was laughing at.

  Cali leaned toward her and whispered, “Don’t look now, but a really hot guy is heading this way.”

  Probably heading Cali’s way, not Abbie’s. Cali was tall, blond, and hippie-chic. She attracted all kinds of men, some off-the-scale handsome, some psycho. That she was totally committed to her boyfriend didn’t faze those other men. They hovered around her like bees around a blossom, and she scarcely seemed to notice.

  The really hot guy, Abbie realized, was now standing directly behind her chair. Cali smiled up at him, questioning.

  “Abbie? Can I talk to you for a minute?” Hank’s voice cut through the din of conversation, the clink of glasses, the scrape of chair legs against the floor. He wanted to talk to her. Hank, the really hot guy who’d stared at her throughout the song, the way she’d stared at him.

  Twisting in her chair, she forced a polite smile and gazed up at him. Yes. He was really hot.

  She stood, her feminist inclinations as strong as his chivalrous ones. If he could stand when she approached his table, she could stand when he approached hers. Besides, she wanted to view him at eye level, even though he stood a good six inches taller than her.

  His smile seemed shy, nervous in a sweet way. “Nick said you were the answer to my prayers,” he said.

  As pick-up lines went, that was pretty bad.

  “I have a problem,” he continued. “It’s a dog.”

  Oh. Okay. This had nothing to do with hotness or pick-ups or that pounding, pulsing rock song that had momentarily locked the two of them into a staring contest. She felt her lips and cheeks relax, her smile no longer forced. “Dogs are not problems,” she told him. “Dogs are the solution to problems.”

  “Not this dog.”

  Still smiling, she shook her head. Had Hank been one of those shrieking children years ago, running from dogs in terror?

  “It’s my mother’s dog,” he explained. “She’s rude, she’s obnoxious, she’s spoiled rotten, and she’s driving me crazy. I’m supposed to be dog-sitting while my mother’s on a cruise.”

  “Supposed to be? Are you taking care of the dog, or aren’t you?”

  “I am. And—” his smile softened “—it’s driving me crazy.”

  She laughed. “You want to hire me to take care of the dog? We can work something out.”

  “That would be great.” His expression didn’t match his words, though. He looked anxious. “The thing is, my mother doesn’t want a stranger taking care of her dog. I promised her I would do it.”

  “So…you want me to take care of you while you take care of the dog,” Abbie guessed.

  “Something like that.”

  “Let me give you my card.” She reached for her bag, slung by its strap over the back of her chair, and pulled out a business card case. She handed him one of the cards. “Call me tomorrow morning, and we can set up a schedule.”

  “Do we have to wait until tomorrow?” He glanced at the table, where Abbie’s friends were chattering away, ignoring Abbie and Hank. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re out with your friends. I shouldn’t be disrupting your evening.”

  “You’re out with your friend, too,” she said, gesturing in Nick’s direction. “I charge twenty dollars an hour. You can tell me how often you want me to walk the dog, whether you want me to feed her, or any additional services. I’ll need a key to the house, of course, and you’ll have to show me where you keep the food, where you dispose of her messes, all that stuff. I need to meet the dog, of course. But I’m sure she’s not rude or obnoxious.”

  “You don’t know Priscilla.”

  Abbie gave him a grin. “I know a lot of dogs. And what I’ve discovered is that dogs are innately wonderful. Unfortunately, a lot of them have rude, obnoxious humans.”

  “I hope you don’t think I’m rude or obnoxious,” he said, a hint of apology filtering through his tone. “Don’t forget—she’s my mother’s dog, not mine. Which isn’t to say my mother is rude or obnoxious, either. But Priscilla is…difficult.”

  Abbie wanted to compliment him for finding a kinder word to describe this challenging dog. She wanted to point out that, just like the other adjectives he’d used, she knew many more difficult people than difficult dogs. Dogs were easy. They wanted to eat. They wanted to play. They wanted to receive and give love.

  Actually, they weren’t all that different from humans.

  Taking Care of Business: Chapter 3

  His cell phone rang as he was driving down Route One toward one of the big-box hardware stores located there. He would have preferred to patronize the hardware store in town, not only to support an independent local business but because snow continued to fall, and driving in bad winter weather was never fun. But the local hardware store closed at five, which meant he wouldn’t be able to get a copy of his mother’s key made there until tomorrow—which, in turn, would have meant he’d have to deal with Priscilla himself at six-thirty tomorrow morning, as he had today. He would have had to stumble out of bed, drive over to his mother’s place, and in all likelihood mop a puddle of dog urine off the kitchen floor.

  If he was paying Abbie twenty bucks an hour, she could deal with Priscilla’s puddles. The sooner she took over Priscilla duty, the better.

  The thought of giving Abbie a copy of his mother’s key unsettled him. Of course he had to, if he wanted her to deal with Priscilla. But not just allowing a stranger to take care of her precious pooch, but handing that stranger the key to his mother’s house…

  I’m just taking care of business, he told himself. The song rang through his brain, easing his apprehension.

  Abbie had said she would meet him at his mother’s house at eight o’clock. He’d given her the address, returned to Nick’s table, chugged his Guinness, and then bolted. If obtaining a copy of the key didn’t take too much time, he might have a spare minute to grab a bite before he introduced Abbie to her new canine ward.

  His cell phone rang again, and he poked the button on his steering wheel to activate his car’s phone connection. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Hank. It’s Colleen Flaherty.”

  He felt his eyebrows twitch upward. Colleen Flaherty was the investor he’d met with that afternoon. She’d been smart, pretty, and extremely wealthy thanks to the final settlement of her divorce from a hedge-fund manager fifteen years her senior. “He traded me in for a newer model,” she’d joked, although she didn’t look particularly old to Hank. He wondered whether her ex-husband’s newer model was still in high school.

  Colleen had a lot of money she wanted to park somewhere, and she’d arrived at New Horizons with her attorney and her business manager to discuss having the venture capital firm invest some of that money for her. “Colleen,” Hank greeted her now, his gaze remaining on the glistening road in front of him as his mind shifted gears. “How can I help you?”

  “You said I should call if I had any questions.”

  “Of course.”

  “So here’s my
question: are you free for dinner sometime this week?”

  Hank participated in working dinners fairly often. His schedule was flexible, and he willingly arranged his life to meet with anyone who had cash to invest or a promising start-up hungry for that cash. But he’d spent several hours discussing business with Colleen and her entourage that afternoon, and he’d assumed any further contact would come from her business manager, not Colleen herself.

  It occurred to him that the dinner she had in mind might not be a working dinner.

  He reminded himself again of how pretty she was—and how rich. But an image of Abbie Harding hijacked his brain: her large, pale eyes, her radiant smile, the way she’d moved her lithe body on the dance floor at the Faulk Street Tavern.

  Abbie Harding loved dogs. Without even meeting Priscilla, she was convinced that the malevolent fur-ball wasn’t a problem. He should definitely not be thinking about Abbie when Colleen was dangling an interesting romantic possibility in front of him.

  Then again, mixing business with pleasure was a bad idea. If Colleen was aiming toward pleasure, it shouldn’t be with someone she wanted to do business with. It was a matter of ethics.

  “I’d have to check my calendar,” he said, not wanting to insult Colleen by flat-out rejecting her overture. “Right now, I’m driving through a snow storm to take care of a family errand.”

  “Well, let me know if your schedule frees up a little,” Colleen said. Hank wondered whether he was just imagining the purring undertone in her voice.The quality of her voice didn’t matter. He couldn’t socialize with Colleen, because she was a client.

  And because he didn’t want to, he realized. Her wealth and beauty notwithstanding, he would rather spend an evening with…

  No. Whether or not Abbie Harding had anything in common with him, she had one thing strictly not in common with him. She thought dogs were solutions. Maybe some dogs were solutions. Others were definitely problems, however. Abbie hadn’t met Priscilla yet. Once she did, she might rethink her conviction that all dogs were wonderful.