On a bright autumn day, Flynn Marlowe lost his best friend, a beagle named Barley, while out on a hike in Seattle’s Discovery Park. On a cold winter day, Mac Bowersox found his best friend, a lost, scared, and emaciated beagle, on the streets of Seattle. Two men. One dog. When Flynn and Mac meet by chance in a park the next summer, there’s a problem -- who does Barley really belong to? Flynn wants him back, but he can see that Mac rescued him and loves him just as much as he does. Mac wants to keep the dog, and he can imagine how heartbreaking losing him would be -- but that's just what Flynn experienced. A “shared custody” compromise might be just the way to work things out. But will the arrangement be successful? Mac and Flynn are willing to try it ... and along the way, they just might fall in love.

Lost and Found

Mac put a close to their afternoon. “I should get inside. I promised Dee I’d spray-paint the retro aluminum chairs she has out on the back patio. When it was raining earlier, I didn’t think the day was right for it.” He looked up at the sky, then at Flynn, and smiled. “Now it is.”


“Yes,” Flynn was forced to agree. Flynn started back down toward the sidewalk but paused when he got to the bottom and called up, “So when should we do our next visitation with our little guy?” He gave what he hoped was a cheerful and seductive grin.


But Mac didn’t return his smile. Pain was naked on his face, as plain as the constellation of freckles across the bridge of his nose and upper cheeks. “I don’t know,” Mac said softly. He glanced down at Barley, who was straining on the end of his leash to, very obviously, get back to Mac. “It’s hard.”


Flynn felt the smile vanish from his face by degrees. Although he knew exactly what Mac was referring to, he asked, “What do you mean?”


Chapter 32