Diamond in the Ruff (Matchmaking Mamas Book 13) Read online

Since the high heels Lily had selected to wear this morning were open-toe sandals, the upshot was that the puppy was also licking her toes. The end result of that was that the fast-moving little pink tongue was tickling her toes at the same time.

  Surprised, stunned, as well as instantly smitten, Lily crouched down to the puppy’s level, her demanding schedule temporarily put on hold.

  “Are you lost?” she asked the puppy.

  Since she was now down to his level, the black Labrador puppy abandoned her shoes and began to lick her face instead. Had there been a hard part to Lily’s heart, it would have turned to utter mush as she completely capitulated, surrendering any semblance of control to her unexpected invader.

  When she finally rose back up to her feet, Lily looked in both directions along the residential through street where she lived to see if anyone was running up or down the block, frantically searching for a lost pet.

  It was apparent that no one was since all she saw was Mr. Baker across the street getting into his midlife-crisis vehicle—a sky-blue Corvette—which he drove to work every morning.

  Since it wasn’t moving, Lily took no note of the beige sedan parked farther down the block and across the street. Nor did she notice the older woman who was slouched down in the driver’s seat.

  The puppy appeared to be all alone.

  She looked back at the puppy, who was back to licking her shoes. Pulling first one foot back, then the other, she only succeeded in drawing the dog into her house because the Labrador’s attention was completely focused on her shoes.

  “Looks like your family hasn’t realized that you’re missing yet,” she told the puppy.

  The Lab glanced up, cocking his head as if he was hanging on her every word. Lily couldn’t help wondering if the animal understood her. She knew people who maintained that dogs only understood commands that had been drilled into their heads, but she had her doubts about that. This one was actually making eye contact and she was certain that he was taking in every word.

  “I have to go to work,” she told her fuzzy, uninvited guest.

  The Labrador continued watching her as if she was the only person in the whole world. Lily knew when she’d lost a battle.

  She sighed and stepped back even farther into her foyer, allowing the puppy access to her house.

  “Oh, all right, you can come in and stay until I get back,” she told the puppy, surrendering to the warm brown eyes that were staring up at her so intently.

  If she was letting the animal stay here, she had to leave it something to eat and drink, she realized. Turning on her heel, Lily hurried back the kitchen to leave the puppy a few last-minute survival items.

  She filled a soup bowl full of water and extracted a few slices of roast beef she’d picked up from the supermarket deli on her way home last night.

  Lily placed the latter on a napkin and put both bowl and napkin on the floor.

  “This should hold you until I get back,” she informed the puppy. Looking down, she saw that the puppy, who she’d just assumed would follow her to a food source, was otherwise occupied. He was busy gnawing on one of the legs of her kitchen chair. “Hey!” she cried. “Stop that!”

  The puppy went right on gnawing until she physically separated him from the chair. He looked up at her, clearly confused.

  In her house for less than five minutes and the Labrador puppy had already presented her with a dilemma, Lily thought.

  “Oh, God, you’re teething, aren’t you? If I leave you here, by the time I get back it’ll look like a swarm of locusts had come through, won’t it?” She knew the answer to that one. Lily sighed. It was true what they said, no good deed went unpunished. “Well, you can’t stay here, then.” Lily looked around the kitchen and the small family room just beyond. Almost all the furniture, except for the TV monitor, was older than she was. “I don’t have any money for new furniture.”

  As if he understood that he was about to be put out again, the puppy looked up at her and then began to whine.

  Pathetically.

  Softhearted to begin with, Lily found that she was no match for the sad little four-footed fur ball. Closing the door on him would be akin to abandoning the puppy in a snowdrift.

  “All right, all right, all right, you can come with me,” she cried, giving in. “Maybe someone at work will have a suggestion as to what I can do with you.”

  Lily stood for a minute, studying the puppy warily. Would it bite her if she attempted to pick it up? Her experience with dogs was limited to the canines she saw on television. After what she’d just witnessed, she knew that she definitely couldn’t leave the puppy alone in her house. At the same time, she did have the uneasy feeling that the Labrador wasn’t exactly trained to be obedient yet.

  Still, trained or not, she felt as if she should at least try to get the puppy to follow her instructions. So she walked back over to the front door. The puppy was watching her every move intently, but remained exactly where he was. Lily tried patting her leg three times in short, quick succession. The puppy cocked its head, as if to say, Now what?

  “C’mon, boy, come here,” Lily called to him, patting her leg again, this time a little more urgently. To her relief—as well as surprise—this time the puppy came up to her without any hesitation.

  Opening the front door, Lily patted her leg again—and was rewarded with the same response. The puppy came up to her side—the side she’d just patted—his eager expression all but shouting, Okay, I’m here. Now what?

  Lily currently had no answer for that, but she hoped to within the hour.

  * * *

  “Hey, I don’t remember anyone declaring that this was ‘bring your pet to work’ day,” Alfredo Delgado, one of the chefs that Theresa Manetti employed at her catering company, quipped when Lily walked into the storefront office. She was holding a makeshift leash, fashioned out of rope. The black Lab was on the other end of the leash, ready to give the office a thorough investigation the moment the other end of the leash was dropped.

  Theresa walked out of her small inner office and regarded the animal, her expression completely unfathomable.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Lily apologized to the woman who wrote out her checks. “I ran into a snag.”

  “From here it looks like the snag is following you,” Theresa observed.

  She glanced expectantly at the young woman she’d taken under her wing a little more than a year ago. That was when she’d hired Lily as her pastry chef after discovering that Lily could create delicacies so delicious, they could make the average person weep. But, softhearted woman that she was, Theresa hadn’t taken her on because of her skills so much as because Lily’s mother had recently passed away, leaving her daughter all alone in the world. Theresa, like her friends Maizie and Cecilia, had a great capacity for sympathy.

  Lily flushed slightly now, her cheeks growing a soft shade of pink.

  “I’m sorry, he was just there on my doorstep this morning when I opened the door. I couldn’t just leave him there to roam the streets. If I came home tonight and found out that someone had run him over, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave him at your place?” Alfredo asked, curious. “That’s what I would have done.” He volunteered this course of action while bending down, scratching the puppy behind its ears.

  “I normally would have done that, too,” Lily answered. “But there was one thing wrong with that—he apparently sees the world as one giant chew toy.”

  “So you brought him here,” Theresa concluded. It was neither a question nor an accusation, just a statement of the obvious. A bemused smile played on the older woman’s lips as she regarded the animal. “Just make sure he stays out of the kitchen.”

  Lily gestured around the area, hoping Theresa would see things her way. This was all temporary. “Ev
erything here’s made out of metal. His little teeth can’t do any damage,” she pointed out, then looked back at Theresa hopefully. “Can he stay—just for today?” Lily emphasized.

  Theresa pretended to think the matter over—as if she hadn’t had a hand in the puppy’s sudden magical appearance on her pastry chef’s doorstep. After Maizie had mentioned that their late friend’s son was opening up his animal hospital two doors down from her real estate office and went on to present him as a possible new candidate for their very unique service, Theresa had suggested getting Christopher together with Lily. She’d felt that the young woman could use something positive happening to her and had been of that opinion for a while now.

  The search for a way to bring the two together in a so-called “natural” fashion was quick and fruitful when, as a sidebar, Cecilia had casually asked if either she or Maizie knew of anyone looking to adopt a puppy. Her dog, Princess, had given birth to eight puppies six weeks ago, and the puppies needed to be placed before “they start eating me out of house and home,” Cecilia had told her friends.

  It was as if lightning had struck. Everything had fallen into place after that.

  Theresa was aware of Lily’s approximate time of departure and had informed Cecilia. The latter proceeded to leave the puppy—deliberately choosing the runt of the litter—on Lily’s doorstep. Cecilia left the rambunctious puppy there not once but actually several times before she hit upon the idea of bribing the little dog with a large treat, which she proceeded to embed in the open weave of the welcome mat.

  Even so, Cecilia had just barely made it back to her sedan before Lily had swung open her front door.

  Once inside the catering shop, the puppy proceeded to make himself at home while he sniffed and investigated every inch of the place.

  Lily watched him like a hawk, afraid of what he might do next. In her opinion, Theresa was a wonderful person, but everyone had their breaking point and she didn’t want the puppy to find Theresa’s.

  “Um, Theresa,” Lily began as she shooed the puppy away from a corner where a number of boxes were piled up, “how old are your grandchildren now?”

  Theresa slanted a deliberately wary look at the younger woman. “Why?”

  Lily smiled a little too broadly as she made her sales pitch. “Wouldn’t they love to have a puppy? You could surprise them with Jonathan.”

  Theresa raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Jonathan?” she repeated.

  Lily gestured at the Labrador. “The puppy. I had to call him something,” she explained.

  “You named him. That means you’re already attached to him,” Alfredo concluded with a laugh, as if it was a done deal.

  There was something akin to a panicky look on Lily’s face. She didn’t want to get attached to anything. She was still trying to get her life on track after losing her mother. Taking on something new—even a pet—was out of the question.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Lily protested. “I just couldn’t keep referring to the puppy as ‘it.’”

  “Sure you could,” Alfredo contradicted with a knowing attitude. “That you didn’t want to means that you’ve already bonded with the little ball of flying fur.”

  “No, no bonding,” Lily denied firmly, then made her final argument on the matter. “I don’t even know how to bond with an animal. The only pet I ever had was a goldfish and Seymour only lived for two days.” Which firmly convinced her that she had absolutely no business trying to care for a pet of any kind.

  Alfredo obviously didn’t see things in the same light that she did. “Then it’s high time you got back into the saddle, Lily. You can’t accept defeat that easily,” he told her.

  Finding no support in that quarter, Lily appealed to her boss. “Theresa—”

  Theresa placed a hand supportively on the younger woman’s shoulder. “I’m with Alfredo on this,” she told Lily. “Besides,” she pointed out, “you can’t give the dog away right now.”

  “Why not?” Lily asked.

  Theresa was the soul of innocence as she explained, “Because his owner might be out looking for him even as we speak.”

  Lily blew out a breath. She’d forgotten about that. “Good point,” she admitted, chagrinned by her oversight. “I’ll make flyers and put them up.”

  “In the meantime,” Theresa continued as she thoughtfully regarded the black ball of fur and paws, “I suggest you make sure the little guy’s healthy.”

  “How do I go about doing that?” Lily asked, completely clueless when it came to the care of anything other than humans. She freely admitted to having a brown thumb. Anything that was green and thriving would begin to whither and die under her care—which was why she didn’t attempt to maintain a garden anymore. The thought of caring for a pet brought a chill to her spine.

  “Well, for starters,” Theresa told her, “if I were you I would bring him to a veterinarian.”

  “A vet?” she looked at the puppy that now appeared to be utterly enamored with Alfredo. The chef was scratching Jonathan behind the ears and along his nose, sending the Labrador to seventh heaven. “He doesn’t look sick. Is that really necessary?”

  “Absolutely,” Theresa answered without a drop of hesitation. “Just think, if someone is looking for him, how would it look if you handed over a sick dog? If they wanted to, they could turn around and sue you for negligence.”

  Lily felt hemmed in. The last thing she wanted was to have to take care of something, to get involved with a living, breathing entity.

  Eyeing the puppy uncertainly, Lily sighed. “I should have never opened the door this morning.”

  “Oh, how can you say that? Look at this adorable little face,” Theresa urged, cupping the puppy’s chin and turning his head toward Lily.

  “I’m trying not to,” Lily answered honestly. But Theresa was right. She didn’t want to chance something happening to the puppy while it was temporarily in her care. Emphasis on the word temporarily, she thought. “Okay, how do I go about finding an animal doctor who’s good, but not expensive? I wouldn’t know where to start,” she admitted, looking to Theresa for guidance since the woman had been the one to bring up the matter of a vet to begin with.

  Theresa’s smile bordered on being beatific. “Well, as luck would have it, I happen to know of one who just opened up a new practice a few doors down from one of my best friends. She took her dog to him and told me that he performed nothing short of a miracle on Lazarus.” The fact that Maizie didn’t have a dog named Lazarus, or a dog named anything else for that matter, was an unimportant, minor detail in the grand scheme of things. As a rule, Theresa didn’t lie, but there were times—such as now—when rules were meant to be bent if not altogether broken. “Why don’t I call her to get his phone number for you?” she suggested, looking at Lily.

  That sounded like as good a plan as any, she supposed. “Sure, why not?” Lily replied with a vague shrug, resigned to this course of action. “What do I have to lose? It’s only money, right?”

  Theresa knew that times were tight for the younger woman. She saw what she was about to propose as an investment in Lily’s future happiness.

  “I tell you what. We’ve had a great month. I’ll pay for ‘Jonathan’s’ visit,” she offered, petting the eager puppy on the head. The dog stopped roaming around long enough to absorb the head pat and then went back to sniffing the entire area for a second time. “Consider it my gift to you.”

  “How about me?” Alfredo said, pretending to feel left out. “Got any gifts for me, boss?”

  “I’ll pay for your visit to the vet, too, if you decide you need to go,” Theresa quipped as she retreated into her office.

  Once inside, Theresa carefully closed the door and crossed to her desk. She didn’t care for cell phones. The connection was never as clear as a landline in her opinion. Picking up the receiver, she quickly dialed the numbe
r she wanted to reach.

  Maizie picked up on the second ring. “Connors’ Realty.”

  “Houston, we have liftoff,” Theresa announced in what sounded like a stage whisper to her own ear.

  “Theresa?” Maizie asked uncertainly. “Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me. Who else would call you and say that?”

  “I haven’t the vaguest idea. Theresa, I mean this in the kindest way, but you’ve definitely been watching too many movies, woman. Now, what is it that you’re trying to say?”

  Impatience wove through every word. “That Lily is bringing the puppy to Frances’s son.”

  “Then why didn’t you just say so?”

  “Because it sounds so ordinary that way,” Theresa complained.

  “Sometimes, Theresa, ordinary is just fine. Is she bringing the puppy in today?”

  “That’s what I urged her to do.”

  “Perfect,” Maizie said with heartfelt enthusiasm. “Nothing like being two doors down from young love about to unfold.”

  “I don’t see how that’s any different from Houston, we have liftoff,” Theresa protested.

  “Maybe it’s not, Theresa,” Maizie conceded, not because she thought she was wrong, but because she knew Theresa liked to be right. “Maybe it’s not.”

  Chapter Two

  The first thing that struck Christopher when he walked into Exam Room 3 was that the woman was standing rather than sitting. She was clearly uneasy in her present situation. The puppy with her appeared to have the upper hand.

  Smiling at her, he made a quick assessment before he spoke. “This isn’t your dog, is it?”

  Lily looked at the veterinarian, stunned. “How can you tell?” she asked.

  All she had given the receptionist out front was her name. The dark-haired woman had immediately nodded and told her that “Mrs. Manetti called to say you’d be coming in.” The young woman at the desk, Erika, had then proceeded to call over one of the veterinary aides, who promptly ushered her and Jonathan into an exam room. As far as she knew, no details about her nonrelationship to the animal she’d brought in had been given.