Good Guys Love Dogs Read online

  Dear Reader,

  This is such an exciting time to be a writer! Good Guys Love Dogs was originally published as The Last Good Man by Harlequin Superromance. At the time of its publication, I was thrilled to have another book out for readers who had enjoyed my first book, Truths and Roses. Those were heady days because the ladder to publication was a steep one. I am still grateful to those editors who saw something in my stories worth putting in front of their readership and to those readers who read the book then and wrote to tell me they enjoyed it.

  When The Last Good Man ceased to be in print, I never imagined that I would one day have the opportunity to release it again in digital format. When that became an option, I went back to the original manuscript and rewrote it for a couple of reasons. One, to bring it up to date with all the changes in the world since then, and two, to hopefully reflect my growth as a writer.

  The result is Good Guys Love Dogs, a story about a desperate father who moves his delinquent teenage son to the small Virginia town of Keeling Creek, a place very unlike the New York City life he has been leading. Love takes him by surprise when he falls for Colby Williams, a woman unlike anyone he has ever been drawn to, a small town vet with a heart for animals and a fierce love for a teenage daughter she is also struggling to raise.

  I hope you will enjoy the characters in Good Guys Love Dogs, Phoebe, Mabel, Dillard and Willard Nolen, Luke and Lena and the many ways in which they all force Ian and Colby to grow as people and recognize their love for one another.

  Books are one of the great joys in my life. I hope this one will bring you a few hours of joy as well.

  Inglath Cooper

  www.inglathcooper.com

  www.facebook.com/inglathcooperbooks

  [email protected]

  About Inglath Cooper

  RITA Award-winning author Inglath Cooper was born in Virginia. She is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a degree in English. She has written ten published novels and one novella. She fell in love with books as soon as she learned how to read. “My mom read to us before bed, and I think that’s how I started to love stories. I think I read most of the books in my elementary school library.”

  That love for books translated into a natural love for writing and a desire to create stories that other readers could get lost in, just as she had gotten lost in her favorite books. Her stories focus on the dynamics of relationships, those between a man and a woman, mother and daughter, sisters, friends. They most often take place in small Virginia towns very much like the one where she grew up and are peopled with characters who reflect those values and traditions.

  “There’s something about small-town life that’s just part of who I am. I’ve had the desire to live in other places, wondered what it would be like to be a true Manhattanite, but the thing I know I would miss is the familiarity of faces everywhere I go. There’s a lot to be said for going in the grocery store and seeing ten people you know!”

  Inglath Cooper is an avid supporter of companion animal rescue and is a volunteer and donor for the Franklin County Humane Society. She and her family have fostered many dogs and cats who have gone on to be adopted by other families. “The rewards are endless. It’s an eye-opening moment to realize that what one person throws away can fill another’s with love and joy.”

  Good Guys Love Dogs

  Copyright © 2012 by Inglath Cooper

  Originally published as The Last Good Man

  Copyright © 1997 by Inglath Cooper

  ISBN-10: 0615583318

  To Mac, for the pink Jeep dream

  and

  To Michele, sister, best friend

  Books by Inglath Cooper

  Good Guys Love Dogs

  Truths and Roses

  A Gift of Grace

  John Riley’s Girl – RITA Award Winner

  A Year and a Day

  Unfinished Business

  A Woman Like Annie

  The Lost Daughter of Pigeon Hollow

  A Woman With Secrets

  Songs Co-written by Inglath Cooper

  Emancipate Me

  Shy Flirt featuring Megan Conner

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Ian McKinley had finally made it. Reached the pinnacle. The top rung of the ladder. Tonight represented the crown jewel in the career he’d spent seventeen years of his life building. Thirty-nine, and by most definitions, he had everything. Money. Success. A teenage son. A beautiful fiancée.

  Not to mention, having just brought on board the biggest client ever for CCI Investments of Manhattan, he was a hero to his partners. This party at the Waldorf-Astoria had been thrown for him, the invitation list a who’s who of New York City high rollers.

  Standing here now among trays of champagne and tables loaded with exotic-looking foods, he should have been nothing but exhilarated. Somehow, he merely felt tired. Bone weary with the routine of his life, the predictability of it.

  Every morning he bought his breakfast at the same bagel shop on Sixtieth Street, ate it at his desk with exactly two cups of coffee, no cream, no sugar. Every day he ran six miles at noon. He couldn’t remember when he’d done anything remotely spontaneous.

  But this was the life he had wanted. This was what he’d worked so hard for—to prove a poor boy from the wrong side of Manhattan could make it to Park and Sixty-first. He only regretted that neither Sherry nor his mother had lived to see his success. He’d promised them both he would make something of himself one day. He wondered if they would have been proud of him. But then, if Sherry had lived, maybe he wouldn’t have been quite so driven. Wouldn’t have buried himself in his work. Life would have been more about family. More normal for him and for Luke.

  Did he even know what normal was anymore?

  For the past three weeks, he’d gotten no more than five hours of sleep a night. That might explain his fatigue, except that part of him felt as if he’d been tired for years. He needed a vacation. Away from the city. When was the last time he’d taken one? The last time he’d spent more than an hour alone with his son? Guilt gnawed at him. He would plan something for them to do together. Soon. And he would make sure he kept his word.

  “Why is it you look like a man headed for the gas chamber instead of the man of the hour?”

  Ian swung around to find Rachel looking up at him with inquisitive
eyes and a smile on her lips. “Hey,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a soft squeeze. “A pillow and a bed sound pretty good about now.”

  “I could go for that. Especially since I’ve been getting just a little jealous of the stares half the women in the room have been sending you all night.” She leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth, her right breast pressing into his chest. He waited for the surge of attraction that should have followed her deliberate provocation and decided, when it did not come, that he was more tired than he’d realized.

  “Hey, we can’t have any of that.” Curtis Morgan clapped a hand on Ian’s shoulder. A short man with a receding hairline and an expanding waistline, Curtis was one of Ian’s partners at CCI. “Not until after the wedding, at least. Ms. Montgomery, you’ll have our guest of honor ducking out before I’ve had a chance to make my toast to him.”

  “I suggest you hurry up and do it,” Rachel said with a raised brow. “I’m afraid he’s nearly dead on his feet.”

  “No wonder. You really gave this one everything, Ian,” Curtis said. “Our firm will see the benefit of it. We’re all very appreciative.”

  “Yes. I’m so proud of him,” Rachel said. “Now, if I could just get him to agree on a wedding date. . . .”

  She looked up at Ian with wide eyes that attempted to convey innocence, but Ian suspected Rachel knew exactly what she was doing.

  As methodical about her personal life as she was about attaining senior partnership status at the law firm of Brown, Brown and Fitzgerald, Rachel made no secret of the fact that she thought a marriage between them would be mutually beneficial. She’d continued pressing her case for the past couple of years until she’d finally convinced him she was right.

  Two weeks ago, when Ian asked her to marry him, it had been with the understanding that there was no rush. Both their lives were full, and a piece of paper wouldn’t change things drastically. Or so he had told himself.

  When Sherry died right after Luke was born, he said he would never marry again. Unexpectedly losing his wife at the age of twenty-three was the most painful, life-altering thing he’d ever known. Something inside him simply shut down. For the first five years after her death, he didn’t date at all. When he did start seeing someone, he made sure it never lasted for any length of time, never long enough to let things get serious.

  With Luke almost grown now, he didn’t relish the idea of spending the rest of his life alone. His relationship with Rachel was a comfortable one. It made no demands or even hinted at happily-ever-after and white picket fences. At one point, he’d believed in destiny and people who were meant for each other. A young man’s dreams. He no longer believed in any of that. If what he had with Rachel met the definition of compatibility more than love, he still appreciated her. Smart and beautiful, he personally knew of a dozen men who envied him.

  “So what’s the holdup, Ian?” Curtis asked with a punch to his left shoulder. “You need a reason to leave the office before midnight.”

  A waiter approached them and handed Ian a cordless phone. “There’s a call for you, Mr. McKinley.”

  “Now, who could that be?” Curtis joked. “We’re the only ones who ever bother you at this hour, and we’re all here.”

  Ian shrugged and moved to the window, away from the noise of the party. “Hello.”

  “Mr. McKinley?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Detective O’Neill with the New York City Police Department. Is Luke McKinley your son?”

  Alarm shot through Ian. “Yes, he is.”

  “He was arrested tonight for possession of marijuana, Mr. McKinley.”

  It took a moment for the words to sink in. One by one, they finally did, even as disbelief washed over him. “Is he all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “There must be some mistake. Luke has never—”

  “No mistake, Mr. McKinley.”

  The detective gave him the address of the station and told him where to find Luke. Ian hung up, feeling as if someone had just punched him in the gut. He found Rachel and told her everything he knew. When she offered to go with him, he asked her to stay and explain to the others that he’d had an emergency.

  He caught a cab outside the building, imagining, during the drive, a hundred different scenarios involving Luke and jail.

  When the driver pulled over at the police station, Ian handed him a fifty and sprinted for the door, his stomach churning. Inside, he took the elevator to the third floor. Even at this hour, the place vibrated with purpose. Still dressed in his tuxedo, he got his fair share of stares as he wound his way through a maze of desks littered with coffee cups and mounds of paper.

  From the far corner of the room, a thin man with graying hair and skin that could use a little sunshine waved at him and called out, “You Mr. McKinley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your son is in the room across the hall. Go on in. I’ll be right with you.”

  “Thank you,” Ian said, while the detective went back to his call.

  At the door, Ian stopped and drew in a deep breath before quickly turning the knob. Relief flooded him at the sight of Luke standing by the window with his hands jammed in his pockets.

  His hair, long in front and short at the sides, halfway covered his eyes. His stance screamed defensive, his mouth set in a straight line. “Guess I messed up your party, huh?” he asked, his tone belligerent.

  If Luke felt any fear, he wasn’t showing it.

  “Is that what you meant to do?” Ian asked quietly, not at all sure where to go with this.

  “I didn’t mean to do anything.” Luke shrugged, clearly a rebel with a cause, the origins of which Ian couldn’t begin to guess.

  “They said you were arrested for drug possession.”

  Another shrug. “Big deal.”

  “Big deal?” Ian repeated. “Do you have any idea how serious this is?”

  “It must be if you left your party to come down here.”

  The verbal slap achieved its intended sting. “I know things have been busy lately, but. . . .”

  “Lately?” Luke interrupted with a short laugh. “You’ve been saying ‘lately’ since I was six years old. Probably before then, I just can’t remember so far back. You only have time for work. And Rachel, of course, now that she’s going to be your wife.”

  Bitterness layered the declaration. The vehemence behind it shocked Ian. Luke wasn’t a big talker. For the past few years, getting information out of him took the finesse of a secret service agent. Ian chalked it up to teenage rebellion. The boy had been even less communicative since he’d told him about his engagement to Rachel. He looked at his son now and felt as though he were seeing him for the first time in a very long while. “I think we need to talk.”

  “So pencil me in before your nine-thirty, and I’ll tell you all about how I know you wish I’d never been born.”

  The anger in the boy’s voice hit Ian like a brick in the face. “Why would you say a thing like that, Luke?”

  “Because it’s the truth.”

  “No. It’s not. Son—”

  “If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have died,” Luke yelled. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  Ian grappled for composure. “Nobody could have prevented what happened to your mother. She had a stroke. How could you possibly think I would—”

  “I don’t know,” he interrupted. “Maybe because you work all the time just so you don’t have to be around me.”

  “Luke!” Ian stopped, at a complete loss for a response. Somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, something had gone terribly wrong between the two of them. Staring across at his son, part boy, part man, Ian wondered how Luke had felt this way without his knowing. How long had Luke been trying to get his attention? “Does this have something to do with my marrying Rachel?”

  “I don’t care who you marry. I’m sure you’ll make all the time in the world for her.”

  Ian felt as if someone had just held
a mirror in front of him. He didn’t like what he saw. He thought about the party given in his honor tonight and realized the price. He’d spent the past seventeen years trying to make sure Luke had the things he himself never had as a kid. He’d sent the boy off to a camp in Wyoming every summer and to Austria in the winter with his ski team. In fact, he’d given him everything possible except one thing.

  Time.

  Maybe if he had, none of this would be happening.

  Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have needed this kind of wake-up call to see what a mess he’d made of things.

  Ian sank down on the chair behind him. He raked a hand through his hair and wondered how he’d gone from such heights to such depths in the span of one night. Luke was in trouble. Ian could blame no one but himself.

  1

  Monday morning started like every other Monday morning of this past month. Heaven help her, Colby Williams did not understand the adolescent mindset.

  She shot a glance at her watch. “Baby, why can’t you just wear the first outfit you put on? We’re late. I’ve got to get to the clinic.”

  “Don’t call me that, Mom.” Lena frowned. “I’m not a baby. And the first outfit looked like dogsh—”

  “Lena!” Surprised, Colby stared at her daughter. Lena didn’t talk that way. At least not until recently.

  Lena rolled her eyes and stomped up the steps to change for the third time. “Dog poop,” she called out. “The first outfit looked like dog poop.”

  Critter, Lena’s one-eared cat, pounced up the stairs behind her. From the Oriental rug on the living room floor, Petey and Lulu, reigning house dogs, eyed Lena’s ascent as if they knew it wouldn’t be her last.

  “You’re probably right,” Colby said to the pedigree-free duo, then dropped onto the oversize sage green chair next to the fireplace. She surveyed the small but cozy room with some measure of satisfaction. At least order prevailed in this part of her life. Bookcases lined the wall to the right of the couch, shelves filled with hardbacks collected since her childhood, everything from Beezus and Ramona, which she’d read in the fourth grade, to Gone With The Wind, which she still pulled out on rainy days.