Caleb Read online

  She stared at him and then returned her gaze to the road. “So he was only there for one night? Was it that bad?”

  “Or was it not fenced? Did he get taken by somebody else or did the coyotes get him, whether human or animal? Or did he try to head back home, looking for the war where he spent all those years?” he said. “It’s really hard to know.”

  “And do you have a picture of him?”

  “I do,” he said. “It’s in my bag. He looks like a really stocky black shepherd. The only other color on him is a brown and black pattern found on his ears.”

  “Interesting,” she murmured. “Well, I certainly haven’t seen any dog like it.”

  “The only thing I have to go on is the place he went missing from.”

  “And how long ago?’

  “It’s been a couple months now.”

  “Well, that’s a useless trip then, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” he said, “I don’t really know yet.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but at least it brought you here.”

  “It did. I’m not so sure I’m happy about that right now though.”

  She nodded slowly. “Well, if nothing else,” she said, “I am delighted to see you.”

  He barked out a laugh at that. “And I missed you too,” he said affectionately.

  She shook her head. “But not enough to come back and visit, huh?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Since the divorce, I buried myself in work. Then was injured and haven’t come up for air since.” He added, “And then it became a habit.”

  “Will you stop living just because of her?”

  “Well, I was hoping not to repeat my mistake,” he said jokingly.

  She smiled and nodded. As she headed home, she wondered how to broach the conversation. But then he said it himself.

  “What about you?” he asked. “You planning to marry again?”

  Chapter 2

  Laysha nodded. “I hope so,” she said. “I married basically after feeling rejected by somebody I really cared about. Threw myself into that substitute relationship and honestly don’t feel like I did Paul any service. The divorce was a relief for both of us. I did try to make it work, but you can’t force feelings that don’t exist.”

  “Good point,” he said. After an awkward pause, he looked at her several times, as if wanting to ask a question.

  She didn’t offer anything, focusing on the traffic instead. “How will you figure out where the dog went from here?”

  “Well, that’s another reason I need wheels,” he said. “I’ll go to the last place he was and see what I can figure out.”

  “And why would somebody take the dog?”

  “Jealousy? There’s quite a vetting process to adopt a War Dog after it’s been retired from service.”

  “But then somebody else could have just applied and been given another one,” she said.

  “True. And maybe it ran away because it didn’t like something about the scenario. Don’t forget these dogs are highly trained, but they’ve also been through tough times. They can come back with PTSD, just like the human soldiers do.

  “In some ways they need to be retrained to enter their civilian life of retirement, just like for me and others like me who were injured. I have his file, and I’ve read some of it, and he’d gone through several handlers before his retirement, after which several said he was difficult to work with. Mostly over his attachment to his one handler who died on the job. He was trained to find bombs and other chemical weapons.”

  “So was Beowulf aggressive? Maybe he did something really ugly, like attacking the adopting couple’s children or something, and the owner shot him and buried him, thinking good riddance?” She shivered. “But I hope not. All dogs deserve a second chance.”

  “The couple had no kids,” he said, “and Beowulf’s file doesn’t show any aggressive tendency, other than when called into action. However, that’s certainly a possibility, although it’s not the one I want to hear.”

  “Well, we’re almost there, at home,” she said, as she switched from city roads to country roads, and finally turned on her signal to pull into her driveway.

  “You sure you’re okay with me staying with you?”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Why not?” she asked. “You’ve stayed with me lots.”

  “I know, but I used to stay with my brother a lot of times too.”

  “Well, you can stay with him if you want,” she said. “You know your ex-wife’s there.”

  “True. That’s … that’s a good enough reason to keep me away.”

  “But you do you,” she said. She hopped out, closed the truck door, and headed to her front porch. She knew he had come up behind her as she turned to open the door and let her dogs out. Three dogs raced outside, barking like crazy, as if they’d just been attacked, and headed toward him. He dropped his big duffel bag and bent down to say hi to them. Immediately they turned into the slobberiest pups ever. She shook her head as she watched them. “Every damn time you’re here,” she said, “you can make the biggest, strongest, baddest animal turn into Jell-O.”

  He chuckled. “They know I’m a softy inside,” he said, trying to pet all three of them, as they wiggled in his hands.

  “Says you,” she said. “Graynor’s inside on the couch.”

  “You still got him?”

  “Not for much longer,” she said sadly. “He’s fifteen and well past his time.”

  He nodded in empathy. “And there’s nothing quite like losing our canine friends, is there?”

  “Well, losing family’s worse, yet he’s furry family,” she said. She walked in and called out, “Graynor, somebody to see you.” She could hear the thump of his tail on the couch. She walked around. She had blankets laid out for him, and here her great big old German wirehaired pointer was stretched out on the cushions with his eyes open, not moving, except for his tail wiggling. She bent down, gave him a quick cuddle and a kiss, and then stepped back so he saw Caleb. Immediately he struggled to get to his feet.

  Caleb stepped forward. “Hey, old man, stay where you are. It’s okay.” And he dropped to his knees to cuddle the huge dog that he had known since Graynor was a pup.

  The two connected like long-lost friends, and it brought tears to Laysha’s eyes because she knew she would lose Graynor at some point, and she wasn’t ready for it. She would never be ready for that. He had been there for her through the thick and the thin, through fifteen years of her life. Half of it. Almost half of it. She would be thirty next month. And here that guy had been a birthday gift for her after she had rescued him, but then her parents had refused to let her keep him. She had cried for days and weeks after they took him away, and finally they decided that she could have him and brought him back to her for her birthday gift. She and Graynor had been inseparable ever since. But she knew that, even though he had had a good life with her, his time was coming to an end.

  She walked into the kitchen, more to control the choking in the back of her throat, and she put on coffee, staring out the window to focus on something happier.

  She had five acres of land here. The one thing that she had really prided herself on when she needed to buy a house was space. She had lived in apartments, small townhomes, and everything possible in a city that made her feel cramped and too close to her neighbors. When she finally bought her own place, she purchased a house just out of the city and managed to get five acres with it, although not a whole lot grew on it. It took the bulk of her money to get it fenced, and she did most of that herself.

  She smiled at the memory. The house was by no means new, but it was hers.

  The old farmhouse needed a lot of upgrades, but something was extremely comforting about the original residence that had lasted as long as it had. As she looked up, Caleb walked toward her.

  “This farmhouse,” he said with a shake of his head, “it still looks the same.”

  “Yeah,” she said with a nod. “Takes money and time to fix it up,
and I just haven’t got to a whole lot of it.”

  “No, but I did see new boards on the front veranda,” he said in a mild tone.

  “And that’s a new faucet.” She laughed. “Yeah, some of the plumbing had to be redone,” she said. “After the fence, it was plumbing and electrical. The rest of it’s cosmetic,” she said with a wave of her hand, “and I can live with most of it.” She looked at the wallpaper, laughed, and said, “Although this wallpaper has to go.”

  He groaned. “It’s still the same, isn’t it?” He reached out a hand to touch it; it was half raised velveteen in an orange and brown brocade pattern. “God, who would have put something like this in the kitchen?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Coffee’s on. Let’s take a cup to the back veranda.” And she pushed open the big slider door and stepped out.

  He smiled as he joined her and said, “Honestly the best thing about this old farmhouse,” he said, “is the wraparound veranda. You never find porches anywhere like this anymore.”

  “And I love it,” she said. “There was a lot to fall in love with here. But it’s taking more time than I thought to get it to the point where I thought it would be by now.”

  “It’s just you doing the rehab,” he said, “and a single paycheck to fund these projects. Not to mention the hours at the day job where you get said paycheck. At least you managed to hang on to this gem when you were married.”

  “I rented it during that time,” she said. “Paul didn’t like the farmhouse at all. That should have been a huge red flag for me.”

  “But that’s not why you married,” he said. “You married for the companionship and to make sure you weren’t an old maid, right?”

  Startled, she stared at him. “Well, I’d hate to even think of it in those terms,” she said, “but a certain amount of truth is in those words, yes. I certainly married because I didn’t want to be alone anymore,” she said, “so that’s part of it.”

  “And it’s hard,” he said. “We want so much for ourselves. And then we turn around, and it’s all changed, and it’s different, and all those plans that you made? They go out the window.” He stopped and stared, as he looked back at the clapboard siding and the big old windows. “Instead of replacing the windows, you could probably get a secondary layer of glass added.”

  She nodded. “And I actually have a quote for it too somewhere,” she said. “I’ll start at one side of one floor and then move along,” she said, “but the fence took way more than I thought, then the plumbing became an issue.”

  “How’s the plumbing now?”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’ve completely redone the upstairs en suite bathroom and the downstairs guest bathroom,” she said, “because it’s just a little powder room. The upstairs guest bathroom still needs work, but it’s got a new bathtub and a new toilet. I haven’t got the vanity installed yet.”

  “Are you still doing all the work yourself?”

  “No, not all of it,” she said. “I contracted some of it out. I’m not that great with plumbing, and I really suck at electrical.”

  He grinned. He looped an arm around her shoulders, tucked her up close, and said, “You’re the only person I know with as many skills as you have, and yet you still think you suck.”

  “I’m a fair hand with wood,” she said. “I can fix anything, and I could probably install the glass myself, but I still have to order the glass to fit, and generally they don’t just let you have the glass to install it yourself.”

  “It depends whether you have to pull out these existing glass windows and reinstall them only because you don’t have enough room to work with,” he said, dropping his arm from her shoulders and walking to the window. He tested the bottom panel and nodded. “You know what? I think you could probably install them yourself.”

  “I was thinking about it,” she said. “I just haven’t got that far yet. It would cut the price in half.”

  He looked at her and said, “I don’t know if you can afford the cost of the glass now, but, while I’m here, I’m happy to help do something. I’m not sure what your priority is. Just let me know.”

  “How are your tiling skills?” she said with a cheeky grin. “I’ve got that new vanity to put in the guest bathroom and tiles to set.”

  “Well, we’ve set more than a few tiles ourselves,” he said. “So why not? Have you got them?”

  She nodded with a big grin and said, “Come on. I’ll show you.” And she raced up the stairs ahead of him.

  “This is the Laysha who I remember,” he murmured to himself, as he followed her, taking a big sip of coffee so he didn’t spill it as he went. He hadn’t told her how much he loved this farmhouse, but it was to die for. It was massive. It was old. The heating needed some work. But thankfully they were in Texas, so it’s not like it was as bad as if they lived farther north. The fact that she had five acres here made it a deal as far as he was concerned. She bought it before he even knew about it.

  When she told him what she had done, he wholeheartedly approved and was half jealous that he hadn’t found it first. He might have moved back home if he had a place like this to come to. As it was, she had helped him on a bunch of renovations that he had been doing on his brother’s house years ago, plus on his own house at the time—which he then sold during the divorce—so it was only fair that he helped her on a few of hers.

  As he walked into the upstairs guest bathroom, he whistled. “Wow,” he said, “you’re really taking this old girl and moving her into the new century.”

  “Just because she’s old,” Laysha said, “doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve the best.”

  A beautiful bathtub, a big clawfoot, modernized with stand-up plumbing on the outside of it, sat in front of a huge window that overlooked her acreage. The floor underneath had been tiled right up to where the bathtub rested, but the remainder of the tiling hadn’t been done, and a walk-in shower was off on one side, built into a small section, all the tiling completed in there—loved that, complete with the great big rain showerhead. He noted the vanity sitting here but not installed. “You’ve done a lot of this work,” he said, “and it looks fantastic.”

  “Well, it was really selfish of me,” she said, “but I did the en suite first. So now this guest bath needs the vanity set and the tiling done,” she added, “and then it’s pretty good to go.”

  “Show me the en suite.” As he headed across the hallway, he realized that the master took half the upstairs, and the other half comprised the two smaller guest bedrooms sharing that guest bathroom. As he walked into her bedroom, he whistled. “I forgot how big this was.”

  It had a big arched ceiling and huge semicircle windows on both sides. And she had a massive queen bed in the center, piled high with bedding. It looked so damn inviting that he had to stop and stare for a moment.

  “Problems?” she asked from the corner. He turned, looked at her, motioned to the bed, and said, “Damn, that looks good.”

  “I didn’t even remake it this morning,” she confessed. “Normally I do. I just tossed the covers today though.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been traveling for a little bit too long,” he said, “and that looks pretty damn fine to me.” He walked over to the open en suite bath and stared. “Wow.” A huge walk-in shower, with three sets of jets and a bench seat, sat next to a big bathtub, very similar to the other clawfoot tub, only a step higher. Plus, all the tiling been done halfway up on the walls all the way around. “Damn, you do good work.”

  “It took a lot of man-hours,” she said. “I only finished it about two months ago.”

  “There’s no only about it.” As he turned, he looked and said, “Hardwood floors, right?”

  “Yes. I stripped and refinished them before I moved in the bed,” she said. “I stayed in the spare room until I had it done.”

  “Is this room done then?”

  “It is,” she said. “These windows are already doubled. They were cracked when I bought the place, so I had to repla
ce them. Those are all new. And I haven’t done anything about upgrading the insulation in the roof yet,” she said, “but I might.”

  “Where’s the attic, and is it something you can do yourself, or will you need to spray it in?”

  “The attic is just a cutaway access hole right now, but spray in would be easier for insulating it,” she said. With that, they headed back downstairs, going room by room, as he noted things that needed to be done and things that they could do without. As he stepped into the original kitchen, he said, “You’re such a cook that I figured you’d have redone the kitchen first.”

  “I wanted to live in it and to figure out what I wanted first,” she said. “And I was pretty stressed after the divorce, so I wanted my bedroom done to give me that sanctuary to go to when life got to be too much.”

  “How’s work?”

  “It’s okay,” she said. She was a paralegal, and her days at work were the complete opposite of what she did at home. “It’s just always so stressful with all the court-mandated deadlines and the fear of making a single typo that can undo a whole contract.”

  “It’s that type of job, isn’t it?”

  “It is. The lawyers make the big money, and we do all the grunt work,” she said with a laugh. “I should have finished law school.”

  “You should have,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “No more of that I-told-you-so stuff, please.”

  “Nah,” he said, “besides, you already know. I told you so.”

  She laughed at that. “Right,” she said, “that was your one and only freebie.”

  He grinned, refilled his coffee, and stepped back out on the porch. “Damn, I love this place.”

  “Me too,” she said. She walked up, poked her arm through his elbow, and said, “I’m glad you’re here for a few days.”

  “Maybe a little longer,” he said, “but, if I’m an inconvenience, I can go to a hotel.”

  She stared at him in shock. “No way,” she said. “Besides, I need help here.”

  He laughed. “From what I can see, you’re doing just fine on your own.”