Beaten by the IT recession, Justin has come back to his hometown where he’s inherited a small house from his mother. Surely Barry, his old crush and sometime nemesis, is long gone. Jobs are scarce, so impulsively Justin seeks to buy into a pet grooming business. But when he has to visit the local bank for a loan, who sits behind the big desk but Barry?<br><br>Justin’s appearance jolts Barry out of his miserable rut of a life. What if they were to pick up where a brief boyhood attraction abruptly ended? Then his mother’s sudden stroke throws his whole life into a tumbled ruin.<br><br>Juggling business and pleasure can be a complex, risky endeavor. Will Justin resist Barry’s charms and flee again, or will fate give them a new leash on life?

A New Leash on Life

The soft click of toenails on the hardwood floor reminded him there was someone else in the house. The little dog had to be lost and lonely too, and she could not understand, as Barry did, what had occurred to change her life. With a soft doggy sigh, Fancy followed him and then curled up under the desk when Barry sat down and took out a legal pad and a pen. Then he noticed a big brown envelope, stuck far back in that top drawer. He’d gotten a few necessary papers out of the desk in the past, but had mostly left it exactly as his father had the day he passed away, now almost eight years ago.


He drew it out and extracted several sheets of paper. As he read them, the floor seemed to fall out from under his chair. No, it couldn’t be! Why had they never told him? Had Mom recently reread this and left it for him to find? There it was in black-and-white, adoption of an infant by Harold Barnard Barlowe and Marie Catharine Barlowe, an infant they had named Barry Harold.


Chapter 16