Ruff and Tumble

by Lucy Gilmore

  “He’s not that bad,” she said with a nod at Wheezy, who’d given up howling to scratch at an itch on his neck. Enthusiastic flecks of mud splattered all over the white linoleum. “A little rough around the edges, maybe, but he has something this poodle doesn’t.”

  “Fleas?” Spencer suggested with a laugh.

  Ruby wasn’t impressed. “I was thinking more along the lines of personality.”

  To be fair, the man wasn’t entirely wrong. Wheezy—a golden retriever of questionable parentage, zero formal training, and the personality of a slug—was the last animal on earth who should be entering any dog show, let alone the West Coast Canine Classic.

  Yet here they were, doing it anyway.

  “Why, dear—don’t you think you can help Wheezy win?” Wheezy’s owner had asked. Mrs. Orson, who weighed all of a hundred pounds soaking wet, had been in bed at the time, which was Ruby’s excuse for giving in so easily. Mrs. Orson always looked her most frail while she was lying down. And she knew it, too, the old sneak. Of all the residents at the retirement community where Ruby worked in the nursing home, Mrs. Orson was the wiliest. “I was so sure you could manage, with all your experience in pageants… No matter. It’s only a dying woman’s last wish. I’ll ask Harry if he can do this one small thing for me instead.”

  Harry, who’d never set foot on a pageant stage in his life. Harry, who’d once thrown Mrs. Dewan’s Maltese into the community pool after Ruby had spent two painstaking hours combing the tangles out of its hair. Harry, who’d gladly let Ruby do every bit of work around the nursing home and then proceed to take credit for it.

  If Ruby had stopped to think for five seconds, she’d have seen Mrs. Orson’s tactics for what they were. The older woman had been threatening to die for as long as Ruby had known her, and always rallied the moment she got her way. But Ruby, with her pride on the line and the image of Harry Gunderson in her stead, had ruffled up, hotly defended her ability to claim any crown no matter the odds, and accepted the task set before her: to bring home a dog-show trophy for the world’s most useless animal.

  In theory, putting Ruby in charge of a golden retriever’s show-dog debut was a sound plan. For the first eighteen years of her life, she’d been a show dog herself. Okay, she’d technically been a show human, but the idea was the same. She’d been primped and curled and trained to jump through the right hoops. She’d spent hours every day on grooming and deportment. She’d gazed longingly out the window at the other children chasing balls and going for walks.

  She’d won, too. Her childhood bedroom—untouched by time or her mother’s hands—was a testament to all she’d once been and would ever be. The walls were lined with obscenely large tiaras, stacked and organized by size and weight. Should the Big Quake ever hit Seattle and raze it to the ground, no one standing inside that room would survive. They’d be buried under a mountain of Ruby’s gilded—and wasted—potential.

  “Where’s his owner, anyway?” Spencer asked with a glance at his watch. “It’s past ten. The show’s probably closed to new entries by now.”

  “Probably?” Ruby echoed. “Shouldn’t you know? I thought you were one of the judges.”

  “I am,” Spencer was quick to say—almost too quick, if you asked her. “Which is why you’re in luck. For the small price of dinner with me, I’d be willing to fudge the time stamp in your favor.”

  Every part of Ruby recoiled. Like most women who’d grown up on the stage, she was well aware of the image she presented to the world. Her hair was a tangle of golden-blond curls that she tamed into submission every morning, her eyes a rich brown that she made of the most of with carefully winged eyeliner. Add her mother’s fantastic bone structure and years of good skincare into the bargain, and Ruby had all the traditional Eurocentric beauty standards checked.

  None of that made interactions like these more palatable. Getting chatted up by strangers was nothing new, but she didn’t take well to such heavy-handed tactics. It was nice when a man at least pretended to be attracted to her personality first.

  Before she could tell Spencer what she thought of his methods, the poodle’s owner appeared in the doorway, breathless but holding the requisite forms. As Ruby knew from the stack in her own bag, there were a lot of them. You could buy a house with less.

  “Thank goodness,” the woman said. “I hope I’m not too late. Muffin would be devastated to miss the deadline.”

  Muffin looked as though she’d never suffered a disappointment in her life, much less a devastation, but the poodle sniffed happily as her owner drew near.

  “Muffin?” Spencer asked with a laugh. “Did you name him that because he ate too many of them?”

  Ruby stiffened. While there was no denying the golden retriever was somewhat…portly, she didn’t appreciate jokes being made at Wheezy’s expense. It was hardly his fault that he was carrying a few extra pounds around the middle. Life as the pampered darling of a dozen elderly ladies would do that to a dog.

  “Oh dear,” The woman took the leash from Ruby’s hand and cast an anxious eye over her poodle. “Do you think she’s put on too much weight? We switched to organic chicken breast recently, but I didn’t think—”

  “Wait.” Spencer reared back with a start. He glanced back and forth between the two women and then the two dogs, confusion lowering his brow. “This poodle belongs to you?”

  “We’ve been looking forward to this all year, haven’t we, Muffin?” the woman cooed. She swelled with maternal pride. “Muffin comes from a long line of show dogs. Her mother took Best of Breed at the national dog show three years ago.”

  “Come, Wheezy,” Ruby said, hoping to put Spencer in his place. It didn’t work. Wheezy showed as little interest in her as he did the air around him. He heaved a sigh and dropped to his belly instead.

  “We’re still working on that one,” she explained. They were still working on all of them, but she wasn’t about to admit that out loud.

  The poodle owner spoke up. “We’re not too late to enter, are we? We were both here in plenty of time, I promise. It was only that I left the silly papers in the car, and this woman very nicely offered to wait for me before heading in.”

  “Weren’t you just saying you’d be willing to change the time stamp for me?” Ruby asked, sensing an opportunity. “It’s only fair that you’d offer the same to my friend and her poodle.”

  Hope lit Spencer’s eyes. “Does that mean you’ll go out with me?”

  “Of course not. But I’m sure the AKC would love to hear about how you use dog-show extortion to trap women into dating you.”

  For the longest moment, Ruby was afraid she’d pushed too far. It was obvious that this Spencer guy was used to getting his way—and even more obvious that he felt no remorse at breaking the rules to do it—but she’d stopped using her physical charms to win pageant judges’ approval years ago.

  Ten years ago, in fact. And she wasn’t about to change that now.

  With a good-natured laugh, Spencer threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. You win. I can’t resist a gorgeous woman making threats. Welcome, both of you, to the West Coast Canine Classic.”

  The poodle owner let out a long, relieved sigh, but Ruby wasn’t buying it. “Don’t you need to look over our applications first?”

  “Caleb!” Another sharper male voice interrupted before the man could answer. “What are you doing here?”

  Ruby turned to find herself facing another version of Spencer. A literal version of Spencer that made her swivel her head in a double take. Instead of facing one finely sculpted paragon of masculinity with eyelashes painted by the hands of a master, she was facing two of them. The newcomer was built just as powerfully as the first, but he was dressed more formally in a button-down shirt and well-pressed slacks. He wore his dark hair neater and cropped closer to the head, and his movements were more rigidly controlled, but they were otherwise as identical as
, well, twins.

  “Spencer!” Spencer said—only…wait. That couldn’t be right. “Just the man to help us out of this fix.”

  The newcomer strode forward, his mouth set in a firm line. “Caleb, I don’t know what you’re doing or how you got here, but you need to get home.” He glanced at a clock on the wall and added, “Now.”

  “Don’t worry,” the man said. “I have a half hour until the next bus comes, so I thought I’d pop in and see how things are going.”

  By this time, the poodle owner looked as perplexed as Ruby felt. “I’m sorry…” She glanced back and forth between the two men. “Which one of you should I turn the application in to? Muffin and I are anxious to get everything squared away.”

  Muffin didn’t look the least bit anxious, but Wheezy was starting to show serious signs of something. He strained and pulled in an attempt to get closer to the newcomer, a low whine escaping his lips. In all the time Ruby had known this dog, she’d only ever seen him this animated about pork products.

  “To neither of us, I’m afraid,” the newcomer said. He stabbed a finger at the wall. “The entry cutoff was at ten. You missed it.”

  At this, Wheezy let out a bark of protest. Ruby wasn’t slow to follow. “But this man—Spencer, Caleb, whatever—said we could still enter.”

  “I’m Spencer,” the newcomer said. “And I’m in charge of the dog show. I don’t know what my brother told you, but rules are rules.”

  Wheezy showed exactly what he thought about that. With a yelp, he flung himself at the real Spencer and did his best imitation of a dog who’d never known the comfort of a human’s touch. To his credit, Spencer immediately squatted down to Wheezy’s level and extended a calming hand. Instead of accepting it, Wheezy began enthusiastically licking the man’s face.

  “I don’t understand,” the poodle owner said.

  Ruby did. She cast a sideways look at the first brother—Caleb—at which he promptly winked. “Can you blame me?” he asked, laughing. “I’d have lied and pretended to be Prince Harry if it meant I’d get a chance to talk to you.”

  “Prince Harry would never do anything so underhanded,” Ruby retorted. “Prince Harry is a gentleman.”

  By now, the rest of the party had caught up on the lie. The poodle owner looked flustered, Caleb looked amused, and Spencer looked extremely displeased.

  Ruby could hardly blame him for it. She was leaning that way herself.

  “Let’s try this again, shall we?” Ruby said, forcing her irritation down. “My name is Ruby Taylor. I’m here to enter this golden retriever in the dog show.” She turned to Spencer. “And you must be the real judge. Where would you like us to drop off the forms?”

  Instead of ameliorating the man, his displeasure seemed to grow. “I’m sorry, but I can’t allow you to enter.” He glanced at the poodle owner with a touch of actual regret. “It sounds harsh, I know, but we have to stick to strict guidelines. In the name of fairness.”

  At that, Ruby’s competitive instincts sat up and took notice. It seemed this new Spencer wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as the first—and she loved a challenge.

  “If it’s fairness we’re talking about, then you should let both these dogs in,” she said. “Your brother already said we could enter. It’s only right that you honor his promise.”

  “But Caleb isn’t—” Spencer drew a deep breath and tried again. “Despite what he may have told you, my brother doesn’t have anything to do with the show. Not officially. He’s a dog trainer, not a judge.”

  “And yet promises were made. How are this woman and I to know which of you is which? Is it our fault we were misled about your identity?”

  “It’s not—” Spencer was cut off as Caleb released a low chuckle.

  “I think you should give in,” Caleb said. “I already tried to get the better of her, and it didn’t work.”

  A spark of something combative flashed in Spencer’s eyes. All at once, Ruby was struck with how much better that spark suited those long lashes than Caleb’s insouciance. Eyes like that were meant to be taken seriously. Eyes like that were meant to carry fire.

  “Fine.” Spencer stood up and took a step back. “Show him to me.”

  “Um…” Ruby waved her hand in Wheezy’s general direction. “He’s right there.”

  “No, I mean show him. Put him through his paces. Let me see what he can do.”

  Ruby hesitated as she ran through her list of options. It wasn’t a long one. Wheezy’s skills included very little outside of eating and napping. Putting him in the spotlight—and with that dratted poodle looking on—wasn’t going to end well for any of them.

  Except maybe the poodle.

  “Wheezy, sit,” she said.

  Wheezy didn’t sit.

  She went for an easier one. “Wheezy, stay.”

  In a move of pure perversity, the golden retriever heaved himself up and started wandering down the hallway. A sound halfway between a laugh and a snort escaped Spencer’s mouth. That did more to set Ruby’s hackles up than all the rest combined. No man laugh-snorted at her and got away with it. At least, not unless she wanted him to.

  “Wheezy, you stubborn beast, make us both look like fools,” she said.

  This time, Wheezy happily complied. Discovering a half-open garbage can, he got up on his hind legs and started to explore its contents.

  “Oh, for the love of Pete.” Ruby took off after the dog. She grabbed hold of his collar and tugged, but it was no use. It took a lot to get Wheezy animated, but once you did, he was a force to be reckoned with. Wheezy had discovered something delicious inside the garbage and had every intention of digging his way through until he found it.

  To her surprise, a solid male form came up behind her. She didn’t need to look to know it was Spencer. The ease with which he extracted the golden retriever from the garbage can was clear proof of that.

  “You can’t seriously plan to enter this dog in the West Coast Canine Classic,” he said. The hand he laid on Wheezy’s head was gentle even as he squared off against Ruby.

  “Oh, I don’t,” Ruby replied, turning to meet him head on.

  Relief started to touch Spencer’s lips, but Ruby stopped it short. “Wheezy isn’t just going to enter the dog show. He’s going to win. Can’t you tell a pedigree champion when you’re looking at one?”

  Apparently, he could. “This dog is overweight.”

  “Don’t be rude. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.”

  “He isn’t properly trained.”

  “That’s not true,” Ruby protested. “He knows all the commands. He just doesn’t always feel like listening to them.”

  “He doesn’t look like a purebred.”

  Ruby had no response for that one. Mrs. Orson swore up and down that Wheezy was as much a pedigreed golden retriever as his papers claimed, but Ruby was pretty sure she’d had them forged. For such a sweet old lady, Mrs. Orson had some pretty shady connections.

  “I have his paperwork.” Ruby crossed her arms defensively. “And the full entrance fee. He deserves his chance as much as any other dog.”

  “Let me see his papers.”

  Ruby blinked. Spencer might be in charge, but she’d never responded well to demands—particularly when they were uttered by people in positions of authority. Police officers, bosses, teachers…the more power they had to shape her life, the less likely she was to fall in line.

  She was a lot like Wheezy that way. She knew all the commands. She just didn’t always feel like doing them.

  “Why?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”

  Want more Lucy Gilmore?

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  About the Author

  Lucy Gilmore is a contemporary romance author with a love of puppies, rainbows, and happily ever afters. She began her reading (and writing) career as an English literature
major and ended as a die-hard fan of romance in all forms. When she’s not rolling around with her two Akitas, she can be found hiking, biking, or with her nose buried in a book. Visit her online at lucygilmore.com.

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