The Luck of the Paw (An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy Book 9) Read online

  The Luck of the Paw

  An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy

  Book 9

  Susan C. Daffron

  Published by Magic Fur Press

  An imprint of Logical Expressions, Inc.

  PO Box 383, Sandpoint, Idaho 83852, USA

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business organizations, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Susan C. Daffron

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.

  ISBN:

  978-1-61038-044-7 (paperback)

  978-1-61038-045-4 (EPUB)

  Digital Edition 1.0 – April 6, 2016

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  Chapter 1 - Edible or Not

  Chapter 2 - On the Road

  Chapter 3 - Wag on Inn

  Chapter 4 - Poodle Issues

  Chapter 5 - Postcard Tour

  Chapter 6 - At the Ranch

  Chapter 7 - Fans and Mail

  Chapter 8 - Getting Answers

  Chapter 9 - Potty Mouth

  Chapter 10 - Old Photos

  Chapter 11 - Secrets

  Chapter 12 - Meetings and Greetings

  Chapter 13 - Karma

  Chapter 14 - Epilogue

  Thanks for Reading

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Books by Susan C. Daffron

  The Luck of the Paw

  An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy

  Book 9

  by Susan C. Daffron

  Synopsis

  After years of lousy luck, karma finally gives Mia Riggins a break. The arrival of a mysterious package of postcards and lottery tickets results in a sudden windfall that makes it possible for her to finally abandon her dead-end job and the dreary industrial area where she grew up. Accompanied by her digestively challenged dog Gizmo, Mia sets out on a road trip to find a new life—preferably a better one.

  While changing a flat tire along the shore of a stunning lake, she meets architect Chris Blanchard who seems oddly familiar. After driving hundreds of miles to escape her past, Mia has managed to encounter the only person in the tiny town of Alpine Grove who remembers her as Amanita, the bizarre “poisonous mushroom girl’ from high school. What were the odds? Probably about the same as winning the lottery.

  The Luck of the Paw is a romantic comedy novel of approximately 79,000 words.

  Chapter 1

  Edible or Not

  “Gizmo no!”

  The small shepherd-collie mix grabbed the manila envelope in Mia’s hand, bolted through the door, and proceeded to heave up more partially masticated garbage all over the postage-stamp-size lawn outside the Airstream.

  Mia wanted to scream. How much garbage could one small dog eat? A Technicolor array of foulness already covered the entire long, narrow floor of the vintage trailer.

  Momentarily stunned, Mia swiveled, followed the dog outside, and grabbed his collar, pulling him back toward the steps in front of the metal door. In the neighboring trailer, Mrs. Grafton peeked out from behind a lacy curtain. Mia looked up and waved sheepishly at her.

  Although the message on the answering machine said Mia’s regular veterinarian was closed for some type of employee training, canine digestive indiscretions didn’t observe holidays. Mia closed the dog into the tiny bathroom at one end of the Airstream and surveyed the damage. With only forty-two minutes to deal with cleanup, walk Gizmo, and get back to work, Mia needed to move fast.

  The floor wasn’t looking too good. On her way back inside, she picked up the sodden manila envelope she’d dropped. Gizmo had torn and eaten half of it, so the contents were leaping out of their nine-by–twelve confinement. Yuck. Picking up the edge of the envelope with the tips of her index finger and thumb, she tossed it into the little kitchenette sink. Right now, she had bigger issues to deal with than junk mail.

  Disturbing retching noises came from the direction of the bathroom while Mia worked on scrubbing the floor and returning the bits of debris to the garbage. What if there was something really wrong with Gizmo? This was shaping up to be Mia’s worst birthday ever. And that was saying something.

  Mia dropped the sponge into the sink and grabbed the phone book. Time to reach out to the 24-hour emergency vet. If Gizmo was seriously ill, Mia had to do something. After an unpleasant negotiation with a churlish receptionist, the woman finally agreed to let Mia drop off Gizmo on her way back to work. It was entirely possible that Mia’s credit card didn’t have enough left on it to actually pay, but she’d deal with the ugly financial ramifications later.

  The trip to the vet was predictably unpleasant, but at least Gizmo was safe and in good hands for the moment. Mia returned to her desk and had just settled in with her headset so she could power through more tedious stacks of paper when her boss, Lenore, walked up and tapped the top of her cubicle wall.

  Mia looked up and slowly pulled off her headset. “I know I was late. I had to take my dog to vote…I mean to the vet.”

  Lenore scowled. “You realize that punctuality is one of our seven key values here at Round House Distributing. We take it very seriously. Being on time reflects your integrity, dependability, and respect for others.”

  “I know.” Mia tuned out while Lenore droned on about the virtues of promptness and employee dedication. You just never knew when there might be a data-entry emergency. Everyone needed to be very, very sure that the carrots and celery were correctly accounted for at every moment of every day. What if one of those rascally vegetables ran away? Or got lost? What would we do? Sheesh. They were distributing vegetables to grocery stores, not analyzing the intricate nuances of nanotechnology.

  Lenore raised her voice. “Mia! Are you listening? You know that we are submitting the Scarlet Nantes for the 1996 taste-test awards.”

  “Of course I’m listening. The carrots taste good and returning late from lunch is bad.”

  The line of Lenore’s red lipstick puckered into a pursed frown. “Are you being smart with me?”

  “No.”

  “You will need to make up those extra minutes tomorrow.”

  “Right. I’ll tell my dog not to get sacked…sick again.” Mia made a serious effort not to roll her eyes. Like that would work. Gizmo wasn’t great at following instructions. The sad truth was that Mia had no business even owning a dog, but when he’d appeared at the trailer park, wandering around looking for food, she’d taken him in. Every once in a while, she’d encounter a battered copy of one of the thousands of flyers she’d put up all over the vicinity. She’d called animal shelters, vet clinics, and notified anyone else she could think of, but no one had claimed him. Now she couldn’t imagine her life without Gizmo’s goofy presence in it, even if his unfortunate habit of getting into things he shouldn’t was likely to bankrupt her.

  After Lenore finally ran out of lecturing steam, she gave Mia one final stern glare and left the cubicle, Mia put her headphones back on, turned up some heavy metal for mood music, and began typing. As the strains of AC/DC surrounded her, the tune “Problem Child” seemed particularly appropriate. It was Gizmo’s theme song, after all.

  After grabbing her time card and punching out, Mia stopped by th
e emergency vet to pick up Gizmo. The good news was that he had a clean bill of health. The bad news was that Mia’s credit card was declined, just as she’d feared. She’d known it had to be pretty close to the limit, but it never hurt to try.

  After quite a bit of negotiating with the receptionist while Gizmo worked to tie his leash around her legs, Mia managed to convince the woman to let her make payments for the remaining charges that couldn’t go on the credit card.

  With a sigh, Mia exited the clinic with Gizmo and loaded him into the back of her 1978 Datsun B210 that she referred to as Dottie. The car was harvest gold, rusty, and slower than a great-grandma wading through molasses. Mia could drag-race cement mixers from a standing stop and lose. The car was embarrassing, but at least the trailer park was close to work, so Dottie didn’t have to work hard. It was a good thing, since sometimes the old car got a little cranky on cold mornings.

  Undaunted by his unanticipated and expensive excursion to the veterinarian, Gizmo was raring to go home. He ran back and forth across the dirty beige vinyl seats from one window to the other, sticking his nose out, enjoying all the scents of fertilizer, dirt, hay, and agribusiness wafting through the windows. The air was probably redolent with pesticides too, although Mia tried not to dwell on that idea.

  The Central Valley of California was full of agriculture, manufacturing, and oil-refining businesses. Everyone always said the area had a peculiar stink, but Mia had lived in Windiberg her whole life, so she never noticed it. As she drove, her thoughts drifted to the subject of money as they so often did. The kitchen cabinet was stocked with a couple boxes of macaroni and cheese, so dinner was covered. But how was she doing on dog food? Did she have enough left to make it to payday?

  It was so annoying that she kept getting turned down for raises. You’d think that after three years, she’d at least get a cost-of-living adjustment. But no. What a bunch of cheapskates. She could apply to receive a discount on bulk carrots though. Unless you were Bugs Bunny, it wasn’t much of an employee perk.

  Sadly, Gizmo would probably love to dig into one of those gigantic twenty-five-pound bags of carrots. He’d eat them. Just like he ate everything. The animal was a walking furry garbage disposal. And yet she loved him.

  Mia looked over her shoulder at the dog’s happy face. He had pretty black and brown markings with a white blaze on his chest. His long silky fur probably came from his collie heritage, but it was hard to say what breed contributed to his ears. She’d named him Gizmo because his ears and dark brown eyes made him look like one of the mogwais in the movie Gremlins.

  After she’d realized Gizmo was staying for good, Mia had gotten him fixed, so it was unlikely he would spawn an army. But giving him a moniker based on a creature that could destroy an entire town might not have been the best idea. Dogs had an unfortunate habit of living up to their names.

  Mia returned to her Airstream, which was located deep within the Edgewood Paradise Estates. The pretentious name was probably designed to make the trailer park sound a lot nicer than it actually was. The word “Edgewood” implied trees, not a bunch of RVs and single-wide trailers jammed right up next to each other on asphalt pads. Mia knew more about the toilet habits of her neighbors than was probably good for her mental health. On the other hand, the rent on her trailer was cheap and the park allowed dogs.

  She took Gizmo for a long walk around the neighborhood with a special tour of the dusty weed-filled vacant lot next door. The hope was that a little extra time among the dried-out vegetation would inspire Gizmo to completely clear out his digestive tract. Sharing two-hundred square feet of space with a dyspeptic flatulent dog was never any fun.

  They returned to the trailer and Gizmo settled in on the long couch that ran along one side. Mia pulled the manila envelope out of the sink, and a pile of postcards fell onto the floor along with a white envelope. She bent to collect the colorful cards before Gizmo could get to them. The postcards were old and many had images of pretty scenery. The photographs certainly weren’t taken in Windiberg because they were full of picturesque mountains, lakes, and evergreen trees.

  With a small shove, she encouraged Gizmo to move down to the other end of the couch so she could sit next to the tiny table. She spread out the contents of the envelope, which included fifty-two postcards and a white letter-size envelope with the words “Good luck” typed on the outside. She peered inside the white envelope and pulled out a stack of lottery tickets. There were a few Fantasy 5 tickets and scratchers. Who would mail her lottery tickets? She stood up and pulled the mangled manila envelope out of the sink. Gizmo apparently had consumed the return address, but it had definitely been sent to her. She turned the large envelope over in her hands and stared at her address, which was typed neatly on the front.

  She sat back down next to Gizmo and looked through the postcards. She flipped over one of the cards and the back said she should see some little town called Alpine Grove. Wherever it was, the place was certainly scenic.

  All of the postcards were addressed to her father back when he’d lived at home, right before the divorce. The postmarks were from the seventies, when Mia had been in third or fourth grade. Each card had a little note and was signed “CA.”

  Who or what was “CA” supposed to be? California? Initials? Did her father have a lover she hadn’t heard about? Her parents’ divorce had been nasty and Mia’s familial relationships took the word “estranged” to a new level.

  When her father had taken her dog away back then, it was unforgivable. He said Rusty was going to a good home, but even as a little kid, she wasn’t naive enough to believe that. Maybe people thought it was silly to be so upset about a dog, but she had felt betrayed and confused. Worst of all, she’d missed Rusty. She cried every night for weeks when she went to bed. His big furry body wasn’t sprawled out on the throw rug where he was supposed to be. One night, she couldn’t stand it anymore and she heaved the old rug out the window during a thunderstorm. It wasn’t the dog’s fault her parents got divorced.

  No one would tell her why her parents split up, but Mom’s new husband was an obvious clue. Mia had detested Howard with a fierce passion and had left the house the day she graduated from high school. That was a day she wished she could forget.

  Mia stroked the silky fur on the back of Gizmo’s ears. “What do you think, Giz? Why would someone send me old postcards?” The dog lifted his head and the tip of his tail wagged slightly.

  It was time to deal with dinner, so she stacked the cards in a pile and vowed to read them later. Deciphering the scrawling handwriting could take a while, and she was hungry.

  Mia set the water to boil on the hot plate, opened the blue box, and pulled out the packet of powdered cheese sauce mix. Gizmo looked on with interest as she drained the pasta and added the margarine and milk to create the sauce. She sat back down at the table and handed him a yellow-orange noodle, which he gobbled down with enthusiasm.

  She took bite of the macaroni and sighed. There was only one box left in the cabinet and she could squeak a couple of more meals for Gizmo out of the bag of kibble. But there was no way she could put off asking for a raise any longer. Tomorrow, she’d talk to Lenore about it. This time for sure. After being late today, the timing wasn’t great, but tomorrow was a new day. Mia would just have to march into Lenore’s office and make her case. It had been so long, and she did her work without complaint. She deserved a raise.

  Gizmo put his head on her knee and looked up at her with his soulful brown eyes. Mia ran her fingertip down his muzzle. Dog food was expensive and the latest veterinary adventure was more evidence that if Mia were brutally honest with herself, she couldn’t afford a dog.

  As someone who could barely feed and shelter herself, did she even deserve a dog? It would be far better for Gizmo if Mia gave up and just found him a new home with a nice family that would give him lots of treats and expensive dog food.

  A tear slid down her face and she leaned down to rest her head on his back. The idea of handi
ng Gizmo off to someone else was too awful to contemplate. He was her best friend in the world. How could she bear to give him up?

  With a final sniff, she patted his back. “I promise that tomorrow I’m going to go get that raise. We’ll celebrate with a big new bag of dog chow. You’ll see. It’s going to be great.”

  Gizmo stood up, wagged his feathery tail a few times, and jumped down from the sofa to the floor, looking expectantly at the door.

  Mia brushed her palm across her cheek to wipe away the tears. “You’re right Giz. I need to stop sitting here feeling sorry for myself. Let’s go for a walk. Everything will be better in the morning. Tomorrow we’ll get up, and I’ll go to work and get us that raise. Just you watch! I’ll be the new me. Eloquent, forceful, and professional. Lenore won’t know what hit her.”

  Gizmo danced around in a circle, enthusiastic about the idea of a walk and more dog food. Mia bent to clip the leash onto his collar. Who was she kidding? Why should this job be different from any other? If history was a precedent, she was going to shyly slink into Lenore’s office, stand there feeling uncomfortable, and then blurt out something completely bizarre or stupid. Lenore would glare at her, say there was no way they could possibly give her a raise, and Mia would finally have no choice but to skitter out of there in extreme mortification.

  She followed Gizmo down the steps and shut the door behind her. Asking for a raise might not be a great idea. Maybe it was best not to rock the boat. Mia had actually managed to stay at this job for a while. It wasn’t very difficult and she was basically comfortable there. Not getting fired for a change had a lot to recommend it. Her stints in retail and food service had shown that dealing with the public was not a good idea. Data entry was boring, but at least she didn’t have to talk to anyone, which was perfect for her.

  Mia looked past the lights of the trailer park toward the huge metal buildings that made up the industrial complex where Round House Distributing was located. Maybe she could find a way to trim expenses even further. How many miles was it if she walked to work? If she sold Dottie, that might give her enough to pay the vet bill. Of course, if Gizmo ate something else he shouldn’t, she’d never be able to get to the vet.