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

“You didn’t have to give her away—and to a shelter.”


“No worries,” Phineas said cheerfully. “I’m certain someone would have been glad to have her.”


Flynn’s heart ached too, and he didn’t even know the dog in question. Didn’t they euthanize the majority of dogs left at a shelter? He shuddered.


Mac took a step closer to Phineas and lifted his hand a little. “How long ago? Is it too late?”


Mac’s hand dropped. So did his head. “Then she’s gone,” he whispered, barely audible.


“As I said, she was a three-thousand-dollar dog. So you needn’t worry about her fate.”


Mac nodded. “I gotta go.” He moved toward Flynn—and Barley. “Come on,” he whispered urgently to Flynn, taking his arm. Flynn might have been excited a bit by the touch, but he could almost feel Mac’s despair transferred in it. It wouldn’t have been right to derive some sort of erotic charge from it.


“Mac! She’s okay. Really!” Phineas called behind them.


Chapter 40