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 watched from the porch of his grandma’s trailer as Virginia sped away too fast, gravel kicked up behind her, narrowly missing the mailbox at the end of the drive. She managed to also toot the horn and stick a cigarette-holding hand out the car window while shouting, “Toodle-loo!”


Virginia had seemed to instinctively understand Mac’s need to be alone in the house he grew up in. She had handed him her set of keys and told him she’d come back in the morning, when viewing hours were scheduled. “You get a good night’s sleep, mister. I’ve been to enough wakes for loved ones that I can attest—they’re exhausting. So even though you’re young and fit and probably have more energy than you know what to do with, take Aunt Virginia’s advice and go to bed early.”


He’d nodded and promised he would. And they’d hugged good-bye.


Chapter 61