Small dogs can make big changes… if you open your heart.
Carter Embree always hoped someone might rescue him from his productive, tragically boring, and (slightly) ethically compromised life. But when an urchin at a grocery store shoves a bundle of fluff into his hands, Carter goes from rescuee to rescuer—and he needs a little help.
Sandy Corrigan, the vet tech who eases Carter into the world of dog ownership, first assumes Carter is a crazy-pants client who just needs to relax. But as Sandy gets a glimpse of the funny, kind, sexy man under Carter’s mild-mannered exterior, he sees that with a little care and feeding, Carter might be “Super Pet Owner”—and decent boyfriend material to boot.
But Carter needs to see himself as a hero first. As he says goodbye to his pristine house and hello to carpet treatments and dog walkers, he finds there really is more to himself than a researching drudge without a backbone. A Carter Embree can rate a Sandy Corrigan. He can be supportive. He can be a man who stands up for his principles!
He can be the owner of a small dog.
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon
Cat gives this one 5 Meows with a 2 Purr heat index...
Loved both Characters Loved both Carter and Sandy but Carter the best. He is a civil lawyer working for a firm that walks thin grey lines of ethnicity. His conscious is getting to him when a case comes up involving a dog that was killed by escaping a faulty fence or more so the carelessness of the fence installer leaving the gate open is firm is supporting the fence company. He hates his job lost his last BF because of time. He is quiet but has a good heart…then one day a boy thrusts a box in his hands with a tiny puppy. He takes it to the pet Smart clinic to treat fleas and meets Sandy the vet tech.
I also loved Brenda Carter's co-worker and friend. And of course, Freckles the puppy steals the show.
The story is pretty insta-love as the romance all happens in a couple weeks’ time, but it is so sweet and good. The sex is a bit slower built and sweet just enough to add the element of attraction and appeal to the romance. We also get Thanksgiving and Christmas tossed in and I felt that was just icing on the cake. A perfect pick-me-up story to read.
Excerpt...
Free Gerbils
YEAH. GREG was gone.
Carter Embree gazed around the house and tried hard to find a trace of the man he’d brought home three months before.
Greg’s DVDs and CDs had been surgically removed from the wooden shelves by the entertainment center, and his clothes had been taken from the top of the dresser. His phone charger was no longer plugged into the strip on the meticulously clean gray marble counter in the kitchen.
It’s been fun, Carter, but I should have left the morning after. Trying to be a couple was an exercise in futility—good luck, though.
—G
The incriminating note sat in the middle of the kitchen table, and Carter just stared at it dumbly.
He barely felt the ache in his chest—but the silence was driving him mad.
Body on autopilot, he hung his suit jacket over the kitchen chair and set his briefcase down on the glass-topped table. He’d already left his shoes on the shoe tree in the hallway, and now….
Well, it was after nine o’clock. He hadn’t done takeout, because he hated it for one, and he’d been planning to cook for another. He was starving. Okay. There you go. Refried beans, some cheese, a tortilla—burrito. A trip to the bedroom to put on black pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt and to hang up the suit, which had at least two more wears before it needed a trip to the dry cleaners.
Which was how he came to fall asleep sitting in front of the TV, eating a minimalist burrito, while the Lifetime channel rebroadcast Two Weeks Notice and he dreamed that Hugh Grant would suddenly become dependent on his opinion and want to take him away from it all. He’d neglected to even remove his glasses.
His phone alarm pinged in the charger at six in the morning, and while he was flailing for the thing to make the noise stop, he forgot.
“Greg?” he mumbled. “Greg? I’ve got to go. This case, man… I’m sorry… when it’s over, we’ll take a vacation….”
He rolled from the black leather couch and onto the floor, sliding on the tan chenille throw and ending up sprawled between the couch and the coffee table, for a moment too disoriented to even get up on all fours.
And that’s when he remembered Greg, with the sunny smile and the careless blond hair, and that unspoken promise to take Carter away from his job, away from his ambition, and to make him a better person, a happier person, a person who would put his boyfriend first and not let him slip away.
All that was left of Greg was a slip of paper and the horrible sense of failure in the pit of Carter’s stomach.
Carter ignored the shrieking alarm for once, took off his glasses, buried his face in the carpet, and cried.
He still arrived on time for work.
Angst and pain, Amy Lane Amy Lane has two kids in college, two gradeschoolers in soccer, two cats, and two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with most of the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.
Thank you for the review. The book looks interesting.
ReplyDeletelove the excerpt
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