Hot Dog (2 page)

Anxiously I scanned the yard. Blood I can deal with, even broken bones. It's the unknown that makes me quake.

I spotted Davey immediately. He was standing by the driveway. His body was angled toward the street, and he was gazing back over his shoulder at the house, waiting for me to appear.

Quickly I cataloged all visible body parts. Everything seemed to be intact. Indeed, my son was smiling.

Relief washed through me, followed improbably by irritation. While I was happy it was a false alarm, I'd have been happier still with no alarm at all. I pushed open the storm door, dropping a hand to catch Eve before she scooted out.

“What?” I demanded.

“Look!”

Davey waved grandly toward the street. For the first time I noticed that my ex-husband's cherry red Trans Am was parked along the curb. Pulling in behind it was another vehicle, a white dually pickup truck towing a horse trailer.

My first thought was that the driver must be lost. Our neighborhood is more suburban than rural: small cozy houses tucked side by side on quarter-acre lots. We're fortunate to have wide sidewalks, plenty of trees, and not much traffic, but still, there's no place around here to keep a horse. Or even to ride one. Then I saw Bob walk around the side of the truck and confer with the driver as she parked.

For the second time in less than a minute, my stomach clenched.

“Isn't this the greatest?” Davey crowed. “Dad got me a pony!”

H
e had to be kidding.

A pony?
No way.

Oh I understood the concept readily enough—small equine, shaped like a horse, useful for riding and eating grass. But what I couldn't seem to wrap my brain around was how that was supposed to apply to me and my family. What could Davey possibly want with a pony?

Like every child he'd had the occasional photo-op pony ride. But he'd never demonstrated any desire for riding lessons. Until Faith had arrived, we'd never even had a pet. Some people—notably my Aunt Peg—might say that we were still learning how to be responsible dog owners. So what did that say for our ability to deal with a pony?

“No.” Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to me, so I repeated the word for good measure. “No. This is
not
happening.”

Aunt Rose gave me a pitying look. Outside, Davey was already running toward the trailer. Not only that, but the news seemed to have zapped like radar through the neighborhood. Other kids were beginning to appear.

“We can't take care of a pony,” I said firmly. Like my opinion mattered. Like anyone was even listening to me. “We have no place to keep it. We have nothing to feed it.” I spread my hands helplessly. “The whole idea is impossible.”

This was
so
Bob. Leap first, and ask the practical questions later. Or never, if you could get away with it. His grand gesture would make him look like a hero, while I'd end up being the bad guy who had to send the pony back to wherever it had come from.

Leaving Faith and Eve locked in the house, I strode down the steps and across the yard. The woman who'd been driving the truck had gotten out and disappeared around the back of the trailer. Judging by the clanking noises I heard, she was unhooking the ramp. Several kids, Davey among them, were clustered in an excited knot by the sidewalk. Bob came across the lawn to meet me.

“Hey, sorry I'm late, but this is pretty cool, huh?”

“Cool?” My tone indicated pretty clearly what I thought of that description.

Bob slowed, then stopped. His grin faltered briefly, then returned full strength. My ex-husband had charm to spare. He not only knew it, he was an expert at using it to great effect.

What he often lacked, however, was the maturity to see both sides of an issue. Thick, sandy-colored hair, so like his son's, ruffled in the April breeze. His dark brown eyes found mine with a beguiling gaze. There'd been times in my life that I'd have given him anything when he looked at me like that. Fortunately, they were long past now.

I blinked and looked past him. “Bob, what's inside that trailer?”

“Wait until you see. I bought Davey a present. Every kid in the neighborhood is going to be jealous.”

I tipped my head to one side, wondering why he seemed to think that was a good thing. “Bob—”

“Hang on a minute. Let me get Pam over here. She'll explain things.”

Pam, presumably, was the woman who'd been driving the truck. Bob jogged back to the trailer, helped her finish lowering the ramp, then brought her over and introduced us. As if that was going to help.

“Nice to meet you,” Pam Donnelly said. The pleasantry sounded perfunctory, but then I'm sure I didn't look very pleased to see her either.

She was an athletic-looking woman in her mid-twenties with a purposeful stride and a long braid of thick, dark hair that hung down the middle of her back. Pam rubbed one hand down the side of her jeans before offering to shake. Her nails were cut short and her grip was firm.

“Bobby has excellent taste. He picked out a wonderful pony for your little girl.”

Bobby?
I leveled a glare at the man in question who was doing his best to look as though everything were going according to plan.

“Little boy,” I corrected.

“Huh?”

“Davey is a little boy.”

“Oh yeah, right.” Pam glanced over at Bob and smiled. “He's going to love Willow. Let me just go and get her out of the truck.”

“Wait!” I cried. “Bob said you were going to explain.”

“Explain what?”

Good question. Did I dare answer
everything?
Probably not.

“Pam runs Long Ridge Pony Farm,” Bob said. “Maybe you've seen it?”

I thought for a moment. The name sounded familiar.

“I'm about three miles north of here,” Pam supplied. “We've got ten acres and a little barn with a bunch of ponies. I do some breeding, give riding lessons to local kids, and run a camp in the summer.”

“That sounds like fun,” I said, forgetting for a moment that I was talking to a woman who was about to unload a pony into my driveway.

“Yeah, it is.” Pam grinned. “I met Bobby a couple of weeks ago at the Bean Counter.”

The Bean Counter was my brother Frank's coffee bar, a project he'd been involved with from the initial construction phase to a successful opening eighteen months earlier. Since Frank wasn't known for his perseverance, or his work ethic, I was delighted that he'd finally found a career he wanted to devote his life to. Not only that, but the Bean Counter had utterly defied my expectations and become a popular hangout for area singles, a gathering place for teens, and
the
place for anyone in North Stamford to grab a gourmet snack on the go.

It sounded as though Pam's farm and the coffee bar were in the same neighborhood. Since Bob lived in the other direction, however, I wondered what had taken him all the way across town for a cup of coffee.

“That was a stroke of luck,” I said.

Bob caught my ironic tone. “Actually, that's something else I need to talk to you about.”

My gaze flickered toward the trailer, then back up to the steps of the house where Aunt Rose was watching the proceedings with amusement. Behind her, both of my Poodles had their wet black noses pressed hard against the front window. Their chagrin at being denied a place in the afternoon's festivities was obvious, yet another issue I'd have to deal with shortly.

That made three problems and counting. How could there possibly be something else?

“Excuse me,” said Pam. “I'll just go and get Willow out of the trailer while you two talk.”

“Great idea,” said Bob. He turned and watched her walk all the way back to the curb. My ex, the king of the delaying tactics.

“Bob, what's going on?”

Slowly, he brought his attention back to me. “It happened pretty much the way Pam said. She and I met a couple of weeks ago. We got started talking and one thing led to another. She invited me out to her farm, and when I got there, all these kids were running around having a great time. It made me think about the things I missed out on in my own childhood. Growing up in the city—”

“I thought you liked the city.”

“I do. But I used to watch Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger on TV, and I really wanted to be a cowboy.”

Yeah, right. I'd known Bob for years. This was the first I'd heard of any unrequited cowboy fantasies. The current bout of nostalgia notwithstanding, I'd be willing to bet he'd outgrown them by the time he was five.

“Anyway, you know how it is with kids these days. They're all growing up way too fast. There I was at Pam's place watching children who weren't in front of a TV, or playing video games, or hooked to a computer. They were laughing, and dirty, and outside in the fresh air just having good old-fashioned fun. So I put two and two together and came up with—”

“Four,” I admitted. The picture he painted was pretty appealing.

“Not that Davey doesn't already have a lot of great stuff going on in his life,” Bob said carefully.

As divorced parents who'd been living apart, with only minimal contact since our son was less than a year old, Bob and I were still learning how to do the parenting thing as a team. For Davey's sake, both of us were determined to make the new living arrangement work; and so far, we'd managed to keep things running fairly smoothly. Of course this was the first time—ever—that Bob had made a major decision about Davey's life without consulting me.

If I ranted and raved, I could probably make him back down. Or I could just hang loose for a little while and see how things were going to play out. Bottom line, was I mature enough to be ready to give up some control over my son's life?

Out on the street, Pam was backing Willow down the ramp. A bushy white tail appeared, followed a moment later by a golden palomino rump. The pony was of medium size, her back standing level with Pam's chest. Her white mane was just as thick as her tail, and a silvery forelock hung down over her dished face from between two tiny ears. Her eyes were big and brown, and she had a star on her forehead as well as high white stockings on both hind legs.

Calmly the pony continued her descent until all four hooves were on the road. Immediately she was surrounded by excited children. I held my breath, afraid she might spook, but Willow merely flicked her ears at the attentive horde and began nosing pockets for treats.

“Oh my,” I breathed. “She's adorable.”

“Isn't she? Davey's going to love her.”

Yes, he would, I realized sadly. For a few minutes, I'd been so distracted by the utopian vision Bob had created, not to mention the pony herself, that I'd forgotten all about practical matters.

“Unfortunately that doesn't change the fact that we don't have any place to keep a pony. Nor do I have any idea how to take care of one.”

“That's the great part,” said Bob. “You don't have to do a thing. Pam just brought Willow over here today for fun. After Davey has a ride around the neighborhood, she'll load her back up and take her back to the farm. Willow will stay there and Pam will take care of everything. A couple times a week, I'll take Davey over for riding lessons.”

“It sounds as though you have this all worked out.”

“I do,” Bob said earnestly. “Trust me.”

Trust him? Now there was the rub. Trust wasn't something I came by easily. A defense mechanism to be sure, but one that had served me well when I remembered to use it. Unfortunately, where men were concerned I hadn't remembered nearly often enough.

Ah well, I thought. Once more into the fray.

“All right—”

“Excellent!”

“Just one thing.”

Bob's celebration stopped mid-stride.

“What was the something else you were going to tell me a minute ago?”

“Oh, that. It's more good news, actually.”

Pardon me for thinking I'd had about as much good news as I could stand for one day.

“Frank and I are going into business together.”

“You . . .
what
?”

“I'm buying out his partner's share of the Bean Counter. Now that I'll be staying in Connecticut permanently, it seemed like a good idea to line up a job. With the coffee bar being such a success, Gloria had been talking to Frank about cashing in her share. She wants to retire to Florida and take her profits with her. Frank and I sat down last week and ran the numbers.”

Of course he would do that, I thought. Bob was an accountant. Or at least he had been until he'd moved to Texas and taken a share in a wildcat drilling company in return for bookkeeping services. Who would ever have expected that his oil well would actually come in?

“It looks like a sound investment to me,” Bob was saying. “And Frank likes the idea of keeping the business in the family. Who knows, another year like this last one and we might even start looking to expand.”

“Expand?” I said weakly.

It was all a little much to take in. Not that long ago I'd despaired of my little brother ever finding a job he would stick with long enough for benefits to kick in, not to mention a woman he might see for more than two weeks in a row. Now suddenly Frank was not only married to a wonderful woman named Bertie, he was also, apparently, turning into something of an entrepreneur.

“Melanie.” Rose tapped me on the shoulder. “Could you give me just a minute?”

“Sure, Aunt Rose,” I said guiltily. The poor woman had been standing in front of the house waiting for me for the last fifteen minutes.

“About the Dachshund puppy . . .”

Of course, the puppy.

“I'll be right back,” I told Bob. Rose and I went inside. “Let me get you a crate. I have a little one in the basement that I used for housebreaking Eve last fall. It should be just the right size.”

On the way, I gave my aunt a crash course in puppy management. We covered feeding, teething, crate training, and basic discipline, with Aunt Rose nodding thoughtfully as each new topic was outlined. I'd seen my aunt in action before. Now that she knew the fundamentals, I had no doubt that she'd turn the little Dachshund into an upstanding member of society in no time.

“Call me if you have any questions,” I said as I walked Rose out to her car. Over by the curb, Pam was putting a saddle on Willow's back while Bob led the kids in a game to guess the pony's name. “I'm sure you'll do fine.”

“Yes, we will,” Rose said firmly. “You know, I've never had a dog before. I had no idea they could be so endearing.”

I smiled, enjoying the notion of my very proper aunt being wrapped around the tiny paw of a Dachshund puppy. “Have you given him a name yet?”

“Not a real one. Because, of course, he isn't ours. Peter and I have just been calling him Dox for short.”

I stowed the crate in the back of her car. “Good luck.”

Aunt Rose cast a meaningful glance toward the melee at the curb. “You, too.”