Dog Handling
Page 31
“Of course I do.” She kissed him and he was kissing her back. But then she stopped for a moment and looked closely and seriously at him.
“Ben?”
“Yes?”
“There’s one condition.”
“What’s that?” He looked concerned for a moment.
“When I look back on all I’ve been through over the last few months, all the lumps and bumps and little hurdles and all the stuff that life throws at you, well, when I look back I think there’s one lesson I’ve learned. One thing a girl must always put her foot down about.”
“What’s that?” Ben wondered if maybe this was Liv backing out.
She took a deep breath. “He can only stay if he promises that he will never ever take me to dinner and then not call me the next day. Is that understood? Because if he does that then I’m afraid he’ll have to go.”
“I’ll tell him that.” Ben laughed.
“You’d better.” Liv smiled and raised her glass of champagne, “To dogs everywhere. May they get the owners they deserve.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Ben laughed. “They always do.”
Praise for Clare Naylor
Catching Alice
“Delicious . . . A refreshing, sexy, and funny novel.”
—Publishing News (England)
“Naylor has fun in this send-up—surely only in Los Angeles would old-fashioned wooing with chocolates, flowers, and love notes be interpreted as stalking—and her readers will, too.”
—Booklist
Love: A User’s Guide
“A perky tale of a glossy magazine fashion assistant’s adventures in wonderland.”
—The Guardian
“Lighthearted and assured . . . [Naylor] has created a comic heroine with a difference. . . . With the sharply intelligent wit of a modern Elizabeth Bennett and the imagination of Ally McBeal, Amy is the best excuse yet for surrender . . . to the [British] invasion.”
—Publishers Weekly
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Clare Naylor
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN 0-345-45485-5
v1.0