The Perfect Match

“Fine,” he said at last through gritted teeth. “Take the damned dog. That is, if you’ve got enough nerve to take legal—and financial—responsibility for any damage he causes in the future.”

“Absolutely.” Rowena tried not to think about what her mother would have to say about her promise. But Dr. Nadine Brown’s features swam into Rowena’s consciousness, her mother’s brow creased with all too familiar exasperation. What are you thinking? That’s a legally binding document he’s talking about. You don’t even know how you’re going to pay for the tea shop debacle, let alone the next disaster!

But Rowena would have signed a deal with the devil himself to keep animal control from sticking a needle in Clancy’s vein. The moment she had glimpsed his big dark eyes from behind the bars of the cage in “doggie death row” half an hour before he was scheduled to be euthanized, she’d felt a shock down to her toes. A wild, desperate need to swoop him into her arms, save him.

And that would be different from the way you react to any animal in trouble exactly how? Rowena imagined her sister Bryony taunting.

But Clancy was different. There was something special about this dog. Rowena felt it in her bones. A life he needed to live, work he was destined to do, a future he had to have or else…

“Ms. Brown?” Lawless’ voice snapped Rowena back into the sheriff’s office to face yet another disapproving frown. “I’m beginning a new file on the dog. If he ever gets loose again, I’m going to have him legally declared a public nuisance. And from that point on, I’ll take every step the law allows to see that he’s off the streets permanently. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” She wondered if he was smart enough to know she meant it as an insult.

Apparently so. His cheeks darkened. “You’ll have to fill out some paperwork before I can release him.” He checked his watch again, an even deeper frustration darkening his face. “Which means I can pretty much kiss my appointment goodbye. They’ll be closed before I—”

“It’s an appointment,” Rowena fired back, her temper flaring. “People reschedule them all the time, Deputy.”

“Is that so?”

“As a matter of fact, it is. This isn’t the end of the world. You aren’t going to jail because of it. Small children aren’t going to die because of it.”

Whoa! Rowena took a step backward at the rage in Lawless’ eyes. What was she doing, poking him with a sharp stick? Clancy didn’t have his get-out-of-jail-free card yet. Did she want Deputy Whiplash to change his mind?

She swallowed the rest of her anger and reached for the firm tone she used to calm hostile animals. “Listen. Obviously we’re not going to agree on this. Just show me where to sign and Clancy and I will get out of your way.”

The deputy sat down at his desk.

“Couldn’t we let Clancy out first before you whip out his release papers? I hate the idea of him behind bars.”

“And I hate the idea of him back on the street. Looks like we’re both going to have to get used to disappointment. When I open that cell, all I want to see is the door hitting him in his backside. Give me any more time and I might just change my mind.”

Rowena opened her mouth, closed it. Could the deputy do that? Keep Clancy here if Lawless decided to turn stubborn about it? She didn’t know the legalities, but she didn’t dare risk it. She sank down on the chair across from him and turned her attention to something she figured couldn’t get her in trouble, digging the leash she’d brought with her out of her bag.

Satisfied with her concession, Lawless retrieved a set of forms from his desk and began to fill them in. After twenty-some minutes, he shoved them across the desk to her. Taking out her favorite pen, she scrawled her name in bright green ink.

“There,” she said, adding a flourish. “As to the damages and such, you know where to find me if you’ve got any questions about—well, anything. My shop is—”

“I know where it is. If there isn’t a law against building a pet shop across the street from an elementary school playground, there should be.”

Rowena compressed her lips. “If you want to change the law you’ll have to take that up with your alderman or councilman or whatever you have here. But it’s only fair to tell you that they were pretty much thrilled when they heard a new business was coming to town.”

“That was before they knew—”

“Knew what?” Rowena dared him to finish the sentence, even though she could have filled in the gist of it herself. Before they knew some big-city nutcase was moving in. But Lawless didn’t rise to the bait, probably heeding some office policy about insulting the locals only when necessary.

“Never mind. Let’s just get this over and done with.” The deputy pushed himself to his feet and started toward the back of the building, nabbing a set of keys on the way. She followed him, straining to get a better view of the holding cell beyond his rigid silhouette.

Her heart leapt as she glimpsed the Newfoundland busily scratching at the wall to the cell next door, a worried look in those big brown eyes, as if Clancy knew something was wrong with the drunk on the other side. There was no way to tell the dog the human’s problems were self-inflicted. Or that, at the moment, she and Clancy had enough trouble of their own. Still, she couldn’t help but be grateful to the deputy—asshole though he was—for releasing her dog in the end.

“You won’t regret this, Deputy Lawless,” she said, itching to throw her arms around the Newfie.

“I already do.”

Rowena swallowed hard. What could she say? “You’ll never see either one of us again.”

“Ms. Brown, I’m just not that lucky. In fact—wait.” He pressed his fingertips to his temples, closed his eyes in a mock trance. “I’m peering into the future…I see…”

“I don’t see into the future,” Rowena cut in. “I just feel—” She stopped, cursing herself for a fool. Why did she even bother to attempt to explain her gift? She’d tried it before. But that was what had started the whispering behind her back, triggered the abrupt silences when she walked into a store or passed someone on Whitewater’s streets.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Rowena said, trying hard not to hurt.

“Let’s try and keep it that way.”

“Deputy Lawless, I promise that Clancy—”

Lawless whipped around to face her, his features grim, the keys jangling in his hand. “Listen, lady, I don’t care how many aliases you give that dog. He’s still the same fence-breaking, tire-chewing, steak-stealing juvenile delinquent he always was.”

“He is not!”

“Destroyer!” the deputy called sharply.

In the holding cell, the Newfoundland wheeled away from the wall and leaped up to plant his plate-sized paws on the bars. Eager canine eyes fastened on Lawless, the dog’s bearlike body quivering in excitement as if to say Here I am! Yeah, that’s me, boss! The Newfie’s tongue lolled out of his cavernous mouth in a goofy grin, his giant tail wagging so hard it could have knocked someone out.

Lawless crossed his arms over his broad chest and pinned Rowena with his pointed glare. “I rest my case.”

CHAPTER TWO

ELVIS WAS PRACTICING his pick-up lines again. Not a good idea, when the after-school crowd was due to burst into the pet shop at any moment. The irascible African Gray parrot’s vocabulary wasn’t exactly G-rated, and the last thing Rowena needed was for a mob of angry parents to storm into Open Arms, ready to burn the local witch at the stake.

If they made up their minds to do it there wouldn’t be any problem finding a public official in Whitewater to light the fire. Deputy Lawless would be happy to donate a whole book of matches to the cause of ridding his town of an unsavory element.

Rowena grimaced. Fortunately for her, even the deputy would have a hard time getting a blaze going today. A miserable cold drizzle had been falling all day, leaving the world beyond her front window soggy and gray. That meant there would be an hour of mopping muddy footprints before she closed up for the night. One could hardly expect kids charging in to see puppies and kittens to stop to wipe their feet.

But while they were leaving all of those damp patches on her floor, she’d just as soon they didn’t pick up any colorful language, courtesy of the store’s most incorrigible rogue. She left off cleaning the gecko aquarium and went to fetch the black drape she used to throw over Elvis’s cage to shut him up temporarily. Not that she had much hope her technique would work any better than her efforts to drive Cash Lawless out of her head.

Time and time again in the three days since she’d left the ill-tempered deputy’s office his chiseled features flashed into focus just when she’d least expected it. Those heavy brows, the arrogant jut of his nose, his mouth drawn into a sneer that almost—almost—negated the sexy shape of his lips. Too bad the man had such rotten things to say to her. Her cheeks heated as she remembered him taunting: Wait…just a minute…I’m peering into the future…

Jerk face.

The name a freckle-faced sixth grader had called his classmate in the shop the day before rose in her mind, the label not particularly eloquent, but describing Lawless to perfection, nonetheless.

He’d made it plain what he thought of her. He’d taken all of ten minutes to form his opinion. Less than that, really. He’d had his mind made up even before he met her. But then her “crimes” against Whitewater’s social order reached even deeper than opening a pet shop across from the school, as far as Lawless was concerned. Like far too many of the people in this small town, he would’ve been happy to deem just being different a crime. And if Rowena was anything, she was different.

Rowena swallowed hard, her fingers tightening in the folds of the cage drape. A familiar awkwardness settled over her, inescapable as the plaster dust when Open Arms was a construction site. Self-doubt crowded her.

What if her move here had been exactly the reckless mistake her mother and sisters had predicted? She’d invested every cent of the legacy her godmother had left her, the money that was supposed to be her nest egg. Knowing that safety net existed had been the only thing that had comforted her mother when Rowena had dropped out of vet school last spring.

She closed her eyes, remembering how the painful scene had ended in the wee hours of the morning, once Nadine Brown had realized there was no budging Rowena from the course she’d chosen.

Gray-faced with exhaustion, bordering on tears the cool and capable Dr. Brown never shed, Rowena’s mother had surrendered.

At least you’ll always have your inheritance to rely on, Nadine had said a week after Maeve’s funeral.

About my inheritance, Mom. While Auntie Maeve was in the hospital, we talked about how I should use it. She said it would help me find my destiny.

Your what?

My destiny. She didn’t dare say “soul mate” as the irrepressible Maeve had. Just listen, Mom. I’ve thought this whole plan out. You and Bryony and Ariel are right. I can’t save every stray I run across. But just think how many I could place if I used that money to work in tandem with a shelter, helping rehabilitate rescue dogs and cats, finding them homes.

And you’re going to support yourself how?

I could design all kinds of stuff—collars and bowls—and, well, sell fun pet supplies for ready cash, and I’d keep the pets I’m working with at the shop all day, so I can match them with owners. I know it’s a little unorthodox, but—

A little? her mother had exclaimed. Rowena, I’m trying to understand this. I really am. But it bewilders me that a young woman as bright and talented as you are would fling away six years of education to open a pet shop anywhere, let alone in a town where you don’t know a soul, hours away from your family. And with pets someone has already rejected? For heaven’s sake, why?

A question impossible to answer in a way her mother could understand.

Because I feel right inside when I’m placing rescue pets, and in vet school I felt wrong…

Rowena should have saved her breath. Article number one in the Brown Family Constitution was “logic above all,” mere instinct far too messy. “Rowena’s Voodoo,” her younger sister Ariel called it. Even now, pushing twenty-five, she still made “woo woo” sound effects to tease.

Rowena tossed the drape over the parrot’s cage in an effort to throw Elvis into a make-believe night, hoping that the wily bird would settle down, fall asleep and be blessedly silent.

Not that she had much hope that her ruse would work. Could you arrest a bird for profanity? Public indecency? Corrupting the innocence of a minor? Maybe she’d ask the good deputy, if she were ever unfortunate enough to run into him again.

Her mind filled with eyes that flashed, dark and angry, when she’d told him missing the appointment was no big deal. Talk about overreacting! And yet, didn’t it stand to reason that anyone who worked in law enforcement was bound to be a control freak? At least on some level. And it seemed that the needle on Lawless’ irritation meter jumped right off the charts where Rowena was concerned.

Guilt itched as she remembered the way he had chewed her out, describing Miss Marigold’s despair over her broken treasures. Rowena’s next-door neighbor had been heartbroken. Rowena had been hosing off some cage trays at the back of the shop the night of Clancy’s Great Scone Raid when she had seen the sixty-year-old woman carrying out a big box of something that clinked as she moved. Before Clancy’s escapade, Rowena might have plopped down the hose and hurried over to help, even if the lady did tend to look bug-eyed with alarm every time Rowena said hello.

But this time, Rowena had just stood rooted to the spot as Miss Marigold hauled her burden to where the garbage would be picked up the next morning. The older woman had been weeping, her nose chafed Rudolph-red, her eyes all swollen behind cat’s-eye glasses she’d probably bought sometime during the 1960s.

Rowena had tried to apologize, her stomach as knotted as her garden hose. But before she could get out more than a few words, Miss Marigold had dropped her box with a horrific crash and fled back into the rear entrance of the tea shop, as if Rowena had set an attack dog snapping at her heels.

Rowena had crossed to where the box lay off-kilter on one side. A china tea spout decorated with a motif of peacock feathers lay in the gravel, a teapot lid with a finial shaped like a cat a few feet beyond. Rowena stooped to pick each up, amazed at the delicate work.

She stared down into the box. Lawless had been right about one thing. Even if she did pay for the damages, it wouldn’t matter. She’d never be able to piece her neighbor’s treasures together again.

She’d lifted Miss Marigold’s box into her arms, holding it for a long time, not knowing exactly what to do with it. But somehow in spite of the wreckage she couldn’t leave the broken china for the garbage man to take. Instead she’d stuck it in her back room.

And what are you going to do, oh brilliant one? Wave your hands and say abracadabra? Cast some magical spell that would make the teapots whole again? Now, that would be a gift she’d be grateful to have at the moment.

The school bell rang in the distance, bringing Rowena back to the moment at hand. A parade of delighted faces, kids jabbering and laughing and cajoling their parents to come into the shop just to take a look. She’d done her best to make Open Arms irresistible, and it seemed where Whitewater’s children were concerned she’d succeeded.

At least with all of them except one.

Rowena turned away from the parrot’s cage and glimpsed an all too familiar small figure scowling into the store’s front window. Yes. Her crabby ghost was back again, hovering under the rainbow-striped awning, a few feet away from the door the kid had never once entered. Mousy brown hair was swept into a ponytail, exposing sharp drawn features. Her brow crinkled in aggravation, the folds of a duckling-yellow slicker gleaming from the rain.

The first time Rowena had seen the nine-or-so-year-old girl she’d assumed that the kid’s disgruntled expression was due to the glare reflecting off the window into the child’s eyes. But today there wasn’t a sunbeam for miles and those eyes behind round silver wire glasses still glared into the shop’s interior as if something about the place frustrated her beyond bearing.

Rowena had tried to imagine what could possibly have displeased the child, but she’d been so busy working the kinks out of the shop’s layout that she’d pushed her questions to the back of her mind. But today, the ghost finally shoved Rowena’s curiosity right over the edge.

In spite of the awning’s shelter, the child was trying to keep an adult-sized purple umbrella over her head while she wrestled with a book the size of a dictionary. That was one serious piece of literature, Rowena thought. Wasn’t that monstrosity of a volume a little much for a fourth grader to handle? Surely her ghost couldn’t be reading something that advanced, even if the kid was one of those pint-sized geniuses that made the newspapers now and then.

All business under the wavering shelter of the umbrella, the girl balanced the volume between the pet shop’s window ledge and her tummy and opened the book to one of about a dozen pages marked with scraps of orange construction paper.

Rowena watched the child study what must be pictures of some kind, then raise those too-solemn eyes to peer intently back into the pet shop interior. Frowning in obvious frustration, the disgruntled little girl plunged on to the next marked page, studying the book again. The poor little thing was going to put herself in traction wrestling with a volume that heavy.

Rowena glanced around her store and, finding it empty for the moment, ducked outside. A gust of wind sprinkled her left side with rain, her orange linen tunic sticking in chill, damp patches to her arm. But the little scowler was so intent on whatever she was reading she didn’t even notice anyone approach. Rowena couldn’t help but be amused by the way the kid screwed her face up in fearsome concentration.

“Hi, there,” Rowena said.

The child jumped as if Rowena had just yelled “boo,” the book starting to tumble from her small hands. Rowena made a quick grab for the volume, nearly throwing her back out in her effort to keep the thing from landing in the rain puddle below.

“Whew, that was close,” Rowena said, eyeing the murky pool that covered the bottom inch or so of the girl’s green sneakers. The poor kid’s feet must be soaked.

Stubbornly silent, the child looked up at Rowena with eyes a woodsy color, somewhere between green and brown. Rowena might have been tempted to laugh out loud if she weren’t sure she’d wound the soggy little soul’s dignity. Instead, she tried to lighten the mood.

“You know, you keep scrunching your face like that, it’s going to freeze that way.”

“Grownups always say that. But I never saw a single person’s face freeze. Even the principal’s and he looks grumpy all the time.”

Smiling to herself at the girl’s cranky response, Rowena glanced down at the volume in her hands. “This is some book you’ve got here. It’s almost as big as you are.”

“That’s an exaggeration.” The five-syllable word came so naturally from the child’s mouth Rowena stared. “If the book was big as me I couldn’t carry it at all.”

“Right,” Rowena said, nonplussed. She tapped the book’s spine. “Still, it looks pretty heavy. Wouldn’t it fit in your backpack?” Rowena nudged the olive drab bag slung over the child’s narrow shoulders. “Most of the kids I see around here have pictures of superheroes or Disney princesses on theirs. Yours looks as if you could climb Mount Everest and not have to worry about it splitting.”

She’d hoped to coax a smile out of the little girl. Instead, the child leveled her with a serious stare.

“I’m too young to climb Mount Everest. People freeze to death up there, you know.”

“It was a joke…well, at least it was supposed to be.”

The child peered at her, silent.

“You want to come in out of the rain?”

The child shook her head. A schoolbus passed by, splashing water in an arc that spattered the backs of Rowena’s jeans. She sighed but tried again.

“My name is Rowena, what’s yours?”

“Charlie.” The little girl waited, as if expecting some comment about that being a boy’s name.

Rowena had been teased on the playground because of her unusual name often enough to catch on. “I like it. Your name, I mean.”

“I wasn’t hurting anything,” Charlie said.

“You’re going to hurt yourself, lugging a book this size around,” Rowena observed. She flipped to the cover and read the title aloud. “MacGonagle’s International Expert’s Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds.” She flipped it open to a page, her own eyes crossing at the complex descriptions. “Whoa! You can read this stuff?”

The girl’s lips pursed. “I’m only in fourth grade you know.”

Okay, so the kid did have that fourth grade look-permanent teeth still too big for her face, marker-stained hands from some art project during the day. But her eyes looked far older than they should. Not to mention the child had been studying the book as if she were a zoologist trying to unlock the mystery of some exotic species.

“Do you like dogs?” Rowena asked.

Charlie nodded. “All three of them.”

“You’ve got three dogs?” Rowena asked in surprise. She wouldn’t have guessed it. The kid didn’t have the look of someone who had a pet waiting at home to lavish her with unconditional love. “What are their names?”

“Tiffany and Sweet Pea and Sugar Cookie. But I don’t have them now,” Charlie said softly. “Mommy didn’t like it when they weren’t puppies anymore. She gave them away when they got big and then she’d get another puppy again. After last time, my daddy said absolutely no more dogs. Not ever.” For the first time, Rowena saw vulnerability in the little girl’s face. Charlie caught her bottom lip between her teeth and blinked hard. “Sugar Cookie liked me best.”

Rowena’s blood boiled. Anyone could make one mistake—get a dog that didn’t work out for some unforeseen reason. But to bring home three different dogs and then dump them each in turn when Mom got tired of them…? It seemed Charlie’s parents were exactly the kind of pet owners who abandoned the pets she was trying to save. Charlie had paid the price, too. The heartbreak was still in her eyes.

“So now that your puppies are gone you just look at pictures?”

“Not usually. It makes me sad. But since you moved in here, well, I just have to. It’s driving me crazy.”

Deputy Lawless’ disgust at the shop’s location flashed into Rowena’s mind. She hadn’t considered it from the perspective of a woebegone little waif like Charlie. Rowena laid the dog book gently into the girl’s arms. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“That my shop drives you crazy.”

“It’s the kids at school that make me crazy. They say you’ve got a bear in here. Even my best friend Hope Stone says so. It’s all my little sister talks about. She says she wants to pet the grizzly bear.” Charlie face crumpled in exasperation. “You can’t pet a grizzly bear! They chew people’s arms off. I saw it on Animal Planet.”

Rowena bit back a smile. “I think I caught that show, too.”

“So that big black thing you’ve got in here just has to be a dog. But I never saw one that big. Maybe you could just tell me what kind he is, because this book is getting real heavy.”

“How about if I show you, instead? Would you like to give Clancy a treat?”

“I don’t know…” Longing filled Charlie’s eyes. She leaned her umbrella against the wall so she could check a watch a scuba diver would envy. She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the street. “Can you show me real fast?”