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

He sat down on the floor beside Barley and scratched his best friend behind the ears. Barley looked up at him with warm brown eyes, so full of love and trust. “Boy,” Mac sighed. “Families are rough. Sometimes I think the world would be a better place—maybe a hell of a lot less populated, sure—but better if people stuck with dogs rather than each other.”


Barley gave out a single woof. And Mac was glad he understood.12


By the time he got off work on Thursday, Flynn was jonesing for Barley.


The fib he’d told Mac earlier in the week, that he was busy with a show opening, was something he’d come to regret. In fact, things at work were slower than usual, slow enough that Flynn found he was free to leave the office that afternoon around three.


Chapter 48