Love Gone to the Dogs

by Margaret Daley

  Love Gone to the Dogs

  Second Chances Series

  By Margaret Daley

  Copyright 2012 Margaret Daley

  Discover other titles by Margaret Daley:

  Yours, Mine and Ours, Second Chances

  Love Triumphs, Second Chances

  Deadly Race

  Books by Margaret Daley at Amazon

  Second Chances: Book One

  Dear Readers,

  I wrote this series because I believe in second chances. In these books I show different people who are given another chance at love. I don't want people to give up on hope or love. They are what makes life exciting and worth living. Love is a powerful emotion that can cause people to do things they didn't think they would be able to. So enjoy the stories in the series: Love Gone to the Dogs, Yours, Mine and Ours, and Love Triumphs. These books are dedicated to all the couples that fell in love the second time around. If you enjoy the story, please write a review on Amazon and other sites. Thank you.

  Margaret Daley

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Excerpt from Yours, Mine and Ours

  Excerpt from Love Triumphs

  Love Gone to the Dogs

  By Margaret Daley

  Chapter One

  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 l
ike 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."

  "Mom! Mom, Joey won't come out of the bathroom, and I've got to go bad!"

  She walked to the bottom of the stairs and shouted to her ten-year-old son, "Then come down here and use this one."

  "Oh, I forgot we have more than one bathroom now." Sam thundered down the steps as if he were leading a herd of stampeding elephants, and disappeared into her bedroom.

  The sound of Arnold's tail striking the hardwood floor brought her attention back to him. The dog had moved to sit at her feet in the entrance hallway, making sure she didn't forget he existed, and was hungry. She felt Arnold's big, brown eyes boring into her as though he would blow away if he didn't get his meal quickly.

  "Okay, I'll feed you, but you'd better shape up. Wasn't it bad enough that the mailman refused to deliver the mail at our last place? Now you've decided to anger a higher authority," Leah muttered as she walked back into the kitchen. "And you sure didn't waste any time doing it."

  She spooned canned dog food into Arnold's red bowl, then backed away as the beagle launched himself at the dish. Timing him, she would have been amazed if the animal had even tasted what he had eaten. He had his meal bolted down in less than two minutes, a new record. Arnold had undoubtedly sensed her less than enthusiastic mood toward him, Leah thought as she began to prepare breakfast for her family.

  The rest of the Taylor clan appeared in the kitchen within fifteen minutes, in various stages of dress. Sam had on his tan shorts and a Just Do It Nike T-shirt, which summed up her son's motto in life rather nicely. She tousled his sandy hair, wishing she could give him a hug and a kiss, but he had recently informed her that stuff like that was for babies, not someone of his age.

  Her youngest, Joey, came into the room a few minutes behind Sam. Joey held one sneaker, while the other was on his foot His hair was even messier than hers, and his shirt was buttoned wrong. He at least righted his glasses as he scanned the room. She knew her six-year-old could dress himself. The problem, however, was that he didn't care what he looked like. His mind was on greater things, like why birds could fly and he couldn't, or why ice floated and he sank to the bottom of the pool. And, much to her dismay, if he had any say in the way the world worked he intended to change those two things, and soon.

  "Where's Gramps?" Leah asked, as she flipped the French toast over on the griddle.

  "He's coming. At least I heard him in his room bumping into a chair and then swearing—"

  "Sam! Never mind. I don't need you to repeat what your great-grandfather said." Leah looked pointedly at Joey, just in case her eldest son hadn't gotten the hint not to repeat such language in front of his little brother.

  "That's okay, Mom. I heard Gramps say son of—"

  "Joey! You wouldn't want me to resort to washing your mouth out with soap."

  "You wouldn't. Your beliefs about child raising don't condone that kind of treatment"

  Leah blinked, trying to adjust to Joey's language. Having a genius for a son was extremely hard. She had a difficult time keeping one step ahead of him, especially when he was already becoming knowledgeable in areas like quantum mechanics that she hadn't even known existed until recently.

  Her head began to throb with tension. No one should have to begin her day as she had. She knew she would have to find a way to apologize to Shane O'Grady without him suspecting the truth—that Arnold had done everything he was accused of doing.

  Her grandfather took that moment to enter the kitchen, causing her head to pound even more as she glanced back at him shuffling to the coffeepot. She knew where her youngest got his brains. Harold Trenton Smith was an inventor extraordinaire, and the reason they had been practically th
rown out of the last town they had lived in—well, not thrown out but asked to leave even if it was couched in polite words like the "grass is greener across the country," and "middle America is so much better to raise children than the West Coast."

  "You look like h--Hades, girl." Her grandfather poured coffee into a large mug and shuffled to the oak table in front of the bay window.

  "Gee, thanks. That's what I like to hear first thing in the morning." She suddenly remembered the stunned expression on Shane O'Grady's face when his gaze had connected with hers. Any more of this and she would develop a complex.

  "Leah, you know I've always called it like it is."

  Unfortunately, Leah almost said out loud. She stacked the French toast on a plate and placed it in the middle of the table. She didn't have to tell her sons to come and get it. They were diving into the food almost as quickly as Arnold had.

  Luckily they left her one piece, which she speared and plopped onto her plate. She took her time eating, savoring every bite, even though it was only French toast. That was her preferred way of going through life. Someone had once told Leah that she knew how to make the most of small pleasures, and she supposed that was true. But lately she spent most of her time on the run nonetheless, with next to no time to relish or savor anything, much less breathe.

  "Are we finally through putting this place together?"

  Her grandfather's gruff question brought her back to the reality of her situation. "Have you looked in the living room recently? We still have half the boxes to unpack."

  "Why bother? We'll just be moving a year or so down the road."

  "And whose fault is that?" Leah hadn't intended her voice to sharpen, but her temper was short after meeting her new neighbor, the town mayor.

  "I only blew up one house."

  "And the town declared you a public menace."

  "I tried to tell them it was an experiment that had gone awry, and that I knew what I had done wrong and could change it the next time."