Hot Under the Collar

by Roxanne St Claire

  Hot Under the Collar

  The Dogmothers

  Book 1

  Roxanne St. Claire

  Hot Under the Collar

  THE DOGMOTHERS BOOK ONE

  Copyright © 2019 South Street Publishing

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights to reproduction of this work are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the copyright owner. Thank you for respecting the copyright. For permission or information on foreign, audio, or other rights, contact the author, roxanne@roxannestclaire.com.

  ISBN Print: 978-1-7339121-2-9

  ISBN Ebook: 978-1-7339121-1-2

  COVER ART: Keri Knutson (designer) and Dawn C. Whitty (photographer)

  INTERIOR FORMATTING: Author E.M.S.

  Table of Contents

  HOT UNDER THE COLLAR

  Copyright

  Before The Dogmothers…

  Dear Reader

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Before

  The Dogmothers…

  there was

  The Dogfather!

  Sit…Stay…Beg – book one

  New Leash on Life – book two

  Leader of the Pack – book three

  Santa Paws is Coming to Town – book four (a holiday novella)

  Bad to the Bone – book five

  Ruff Around the Edges – book six

  Double Dog Dare – book seven

  Bark! The Herald Angels Sing – book eight (a holiday novella)

  Old Dog New Tricks – book nine

  For a complete list, buy links, and reading order of all my books, visit www.roxannestclaire.com. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to find out when the next book is released! And join the private Dogfather Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/roxannestclairereaders/ for inside info on all the books and characters, sneak peeks, and a place to share the love of tails and tales!

  Dear Reader,

  After the success and support I received for the nine-book Dogfather series, I’m thrilled to launch this “spin-off” series. The Kilcannon kids have found love, and so has “The Dogfather” who set all those romances in action, but there are still the “Mahoney cousins” and now the Santorini stepkids. Enter Gramma Finnie and Yiayia… The Dogmothers! One grandmother has the steel spine of a Greek warrior, the other has the heart of an Irish poet. With the help of some very special puppers, these two are on a matchmaking mission to make sure all of their grandchildren are hooked, hitched, and happy. I am so excited to write this new series and I sure hope you’ll come along for the ride.

  Like all of the books in the previous series, the covers of The Dogmothers books were all photographed at Alaqua Animal Refuge (www.alaqua.org) in my home state of Florida using rescue dogs and local heroes. And, as I did with The Dogfather Series, a portion of the first month’s sales (digital and print) is donated to that amazing organization dedicated to helping animals survive, thrive, and find forever homes. (One of my own is an Alaqua rescue!)

  As always, I have to acknowledge the incredibly talented team of professionals that keep me sane and happy, and allow me to focus on writing books for you. Love and gratitude to my developmental editor, Kristi Yanta; my copyeditor, Joyce Lamb; my proofreaders, Marlene Engle and Chris Kridler; and my most beloved assistant, Maria Connor. Behind the scenes, there is a husband who cannot be matched, two (grown) kids that still cheer every book like it’s the first, and two dogs who own my heart and soul.

  Xoxo

  Rocki

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated the original “Dogmothers” – the super fans who make up a private Facebook reader group where we gather to celebrate “tails and tales.” I would be lost without this community of pawsitivity…and I hope these special readers know how much their love and support means to me.

  Prologue

  “The attitude that you embrace will change the reality that you face.”

  – Gramma Finnie (embroidered on a pillow)

  “Fake it till you make it.”

  – Agnes Santorini (screamed into a pillow)

  Agnes Santorini stepped out of the Bitter Bark Bed & Breakfast into the sunshine with one simple thought: Life was good.

  Okay, okay. Life was mostly crap. But it sure beat the alternative. And no one knew that better than a woman who had experienced both.

  Taking a deep breath like she’d learned in yoga, Agnes took a moment to get her bearings, panning the view of quaint brick buildings, flowered window boxes, and a vast park bursting with green at the center of it all. Familiar, comforting, and genuine, the town of Bitter Bark was not at all unlike Chestnut Creek, just a little over an hour away, where she’d lived almost her entire adult life until her husband died ten years ago.

  She missed the small-town North Carolina life, she thought as she began to walk. But, after making sure her grandchildren were ready to take over the family restaurant, Agnes had done what any widow her age was supposed to do—she retired to Florida.

  Blue skies, palm trees, and endless talk about arthritis and grandkids had suited her well enough in the sea of Spanish tile and retention ponds they called Jacaranda Lakes. She’d settled into an inexpensive condo, made a few somewhat tolerable friends, got unbeatable at canasta, and acquired two ridiculously cute dachshunds and one was-probably-cute-once boyfriend.

  Pygmalion and Galatea were the lights of her life. Ted, however, bought the farm. Literally. He won a million dollars in a Florida Lottery Scratch-Off game, bought his grandson a farm in Iowa, then went there to live, and Agnes hadn’t heard from him since.

  But eight months ago, her simple retired life changed in a heartbeat. Well, the loss of a heartbeat. During the six and a half minutes that her heart didn’t beat, Agnes experienced something called “circulatory death.”

  And then she circled right back to life.

  Having defied the odds, she knew her very existence had suddenly become more precious and meaningful than ever. That’s when Agnes set out to live her life over again, as a different woman, to accomplish whatever it was she’d been sent back from the dead to do.

  The only problem was she had no idea what that was.

  Her steps slowed at the corner, but not because she was uncertain or lost. She was terrified.

  Life had transformed Agnes, formerly an aging grandmother of five. No, correct that. Death had transformed Agnes. And she couldn’t forget how easily death could happen again.

  Which was why she’d come up to North Carolina in response to what was surely a begrudgingly issued invitation to an
engagement party. No doubt the whole family thought their boorish, complaining, self-centered old Yiayia would want no part of celebrating the pending nuptials of her not-so-beloved daughter-in-law, Katie Santorini, to a man named Daniel Kilcannon.

  And who could blame them? They didn’t know what happened to Agnes last year, because she’d never told a soul, not even the doctors. And for the forty years Katie had been married to Agnes’s son, there’d been very little love lost between mother and daughter-in-law. Even at Nico’s funeral, Agnes had been cold to the woman whose only real fault was not being Greek.

  Oh, Agnes Mastros Santorini. No wonder you weren’t allowed in…up there.

  But then, she’d changed. Or was trying to change.

  She passed a store window and caught her reflection, where that change was most evident. Gone were the gray, unstyled locks, dyed to something called warm espresso and cut to match a picture from a magazine. A few thousand dollars’ worth of Botox and filler had smoothed out her face, eliminating the deepest creases that almost eight decades of scowling had etched. Complete denial of everything delicious, daily two-mile walks with one of her dogs—the fat one could go only a few blocks—and regular visits to the Jacaranda Lakes Fitness Center had whittled down her formerly matronly figure. Today, she wore a size-ten sheath and kitten heels.

  But her brush with death had transformed so much more than Agnes’s face and body. During seemingly endless moments, she had floated toward the light and felt inexplicable peace, and then she got there, to the brightest center of joyous brightness…only to go careening back to a stretcher in the middle of an Olive Garden. That had altered something deep inside her, and it wasn’t just that she’d never eat in a second-rate chain restaurant again.

  Agnes wanted to be better. No, no. She had to be better. Otherwise, next time, she might not get a second chance, and she’d get sent…somewhere else. But “better” was a challenge for an old battle-ax like her.

  All her life, negativity had come naturally because she bitched the way most people breathed. Constantly and without much thought. And her deeply ingrained cultural bias that anything Greek was better than the rest of the world reared its ugly head on more than one occasion. Like every single day.

  Changing her body, face, and hair had been a breeze. Changing on the inside? Much more difficult. Oh sure, she could fake it with friends for an hour or two of playing cards, but something told her the change had to be with her family. To really work, her change had to be directed at people she’d hurt the most.

  So, after weeks of ignoring that invitation on her kitchen counter, she’d packed her bags, locked her condo, gathered up Pyggie and Gala, and climbed into her Buick Regal for the long drive to North Carolina with one goal: to be New Yiayia to her family.

  And speaking of family…she sucked in a noisy breath at the sight of her granddaughter, not one block away.

  Holy sh…

  Oh. Dang. She squeezed her eyes shut and erased the curse word, replacing it with the closest thing she knew to a prayer. Please God, don’t let me screw this up.

  Then Agnes pinned her gaze and all her hopes on the young woman on the other side of the street, headed straight for Santorini’s Deli.

  Cassie walked next to a little old lady with white hair and the same kind of button-down sweater and slacks that Agnes used to wear. She even had the rubber-soled shoes and a frumpy handbag hanging on her arm.

  The famous Gramma Finnie, Agnes surmised.

  All of what Agnes knew about this new extended family had come from Cassie, who was the only grandchild who called frequently to fill her in on what had happened in the Santorini family over the last few months.

  If Cassie wondered why Agnes hadn’t busted a gut when she found out that Nick, her oldest grandson and Cassie’s brother, wasn’t a Santorini at all, but a love child conceived in a dorm room back in the seventies…well, the girl was too smart and classy to ask. Or maybe Cassie thought, Yiayia lost her marbles—which was closer to the truth.

  Cassie had detailed the whole story of how the man who was Nick’s biological father, Daniel Kilcannon, had fallen in love with Katie, proposed to her, and they’d set a wedding date for this fall.

  The old Yiayia—the one Katie had no doubt reluctantly invited to her engagement party—would have blown a gasket over the news that her precious grandson wasn’t her grandson at all. The old Yiayia would have rolled her eyes and delivered a hate-filled diatribe about how she’d never liked Katie all that much and reminded them all that Nico Santorini was a very great Greek man who deserved better than this sad legacy. The old Yiayia would dip into her deep well of mean to remind her own daughter-in-law that she liked her but didn’t love her because she wasn’t Greek.

  Shame, regret, and a wayward brick nearly buckled her at the knees.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered with a glance to the sky, regaining her balance.

  So what would the new Yiayia do?

  She’d wish the happy couple well and raise a glass to a long life together. Would that be enough? Was that her “purpose” in this second chance at life? To be nicer? Maybe. But there might be more, and she had to figure out what it was before…before her heart stopped again, which could happen in the next five minutes based on the way it was slamming against her chest right that moment.

  Taking a deep breath, she watched the two women cross at the corner, heading toward the restaurant. No surprise, Cassie didn’t even notice Agnes. She was deep in conversation with the little white-haired granny, laughing as they reached the front door of Santorini’s Deli at the very moment Agnes did.

  They all stopped, and for a second, Agnes pressed her hand over her chest and closed her eyes, vowing to be nice.

  “Oh, sorry, ’tis closed today,” the older woman said in a rich brogue, likely mistaking Agnes’s turmoil for disappointment. “But surely you can come back tomorrow and enjoy some delicious Greek food.”

  “That’s redundant,” Agnes said, looking at Cassie. “All Greek food is delicious.”

  “Oh my God.” Cassie croaked the words, her dark eyes widening like the black olives she loved to steal from the restaurant back bar when she was a little girl. “Yiayia?” Her voice rose in utter shock. “Is that you?”

  Never the most affectionate person on earth, Agnes forced herself to lift her arms to reach out to her granddaughter for a stiff hug. “I made it. No doubt the earth will stop revolving now.”

  Cassie let out something between a shriek and a laugh, stepping forward to fold Agnes in a warm embrace whether she wanted one or not.

  “Look at you, Yiayia!” Cassie eased back to stare at Agnes, who was used to the reaction. It happened every time she ran into someone who hadn’t seen her in a while. “I would never have recognized you until I heard your voice. Oh my gawd,” she cooed, putting her hand on Agnes’s cheek and blinking. “You look ten, no, twenty years younger!”

  Agnes smiled into those familiar Santorini eyes. “And you are as beautiful as ever, koukla.”

  Cassie gave her another quick hug at the use of her childhood Greek nickname. “Mom is going to freak,” she said. “She never dreamed you’d come.”

  Never feared she’d come, more like. “I wanted to surprise her,” Agnes said, glancing at the other, older woman. “And meet this new family of ours.”

  Cassie pressed her knuckles to her mouth, too overwhelmed, it seemed, to make introductions. “Who are you and what did you do with my Yiayia?”

  “I left her at the gym, the beauty salon, and…” She tapped her cheek. “A sweet little business called Palm Place Plastic Surgery where they give out Juvéderm like it’s candy.” She added a casual shrug. “‘Do not go gentle into the good night.’ Isn’t that what they say?”

  Little grandma lifted one knowing and very white brow. “They also say, ‘The older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune.’”

  Agnes flicked off the comment. “Even a Stradivarius gets refurbished once in a while. You must be the Irish leprecha
un that Cassie has told me about.”

  “Lepre—”

  “Gramma Finnie, this is my grandmother, Agnes Santorini.” Cassie slipped between them as if she expected blows to be exchanged. “And Yiayia, this is Gramma Finnie, who will be…” She hesitated for one awkward beat.

  “Katie’s new mother-in-law,” Finnie finished for her with a gleam in crystal-blue eyes that Agnes couldn’t quite interpret. “I suppose that gives us quite the common bond, lass.”

  Agnes let out a sharp laugh. “Lass? Now you’re just mocking me.”

  “Not a bit,” the woman said. “I’m shamrock green with envy at your fine self. Hard to believe we’re of the same generation.”

  Well, Grammie, there’s Betty White, and then there’s Jane Fonda. I choose Jane.

  Agnes bit her lip to keep from spilling out the bitter brew she used to serve to everyone. “Well, you’ve been wonderful to my family, Finnie,” she said instead. “Cassie has told me so much about the Kilcannons and the Mahoneys, and I’m thrilled our dear Katie has found love again.”

  Cassie inched back a bit, making a face. “Wow. Somebody’s on her best behavior.”