You Lucky Dog Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF JULIA LONDON

  “A passionate, arresting story that you wish would never end.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Robyn Carr

  “Julia London writes vibrant, emotional stories and sexy, richly drawn characters.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Madeline Hunter

  “Julia London strikes gold again.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens

  “Charming, witty, and warm.”

  —USA Today bestselling author Sarah Morgan

  “It completely charmed me. . . . The chemistry is so delicious. I simply didn’t want to put it down.”

  —International bestselling author Nicola Cornick

  “London’s characters come alive on every page and will steal your heart.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Entertaining. . . . The reader is pleasantly carried along by the author’s instinctive narrative gifts.”

  —The New York Times

  “Few authors can write a book that pulls you into the love story the way Julia London can.”

  —The Oakland Press

  “A novelist at the top of her game.”

  —Booklist

  “Kudos to London—she tackles family issues and weaves them into a special romance that travels a bumpy road to happily ever after.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “The sweeping emotions and down-to-earth protagonists of this fast-paced love story make it a must-read.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  TITLES BY JULIA LONDON

  THE PRINCES OF TEXAS NOVELS

  The Charmer in Chaps

  The Devil in the Saddle

  The Billionaire in Boots

  STAND-ALONE NOVELS

  You Lucky Dog

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Dinah Dinwiddie

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK, BERKLEY, and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: London, Julia, author.

  Title: You lucky dog / Julia London.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Jove, 2020. | Series: Lucky dog Identifiers: LCCN 2020014148 (print) | LCCN 2020014149 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593100387 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593100394 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3562.O48745 Y68 2020 (print) | LCC PS3562.O48745 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014148

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014149

  First Edition: August 2020

  Cover design and illustration by Colleen Reinhart

  Title spread art: Basset hound silhouette © oorka / Shutterstock

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Julia London

  Titles by Julia London

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  This book is dedicated with love to the dogs that have shaped my life:

  Punkin, Nibbles, Pepper, Junior, Junior-Junior (JJ), Bessie, Emmett, Ug, Sam, Sadie, Cissy, Charlie, Hugo, Maude, Sonny, and Moose

  One Day in Austin, Texas

  In a central part of town, a man with demonstrably limited ambition (one only needs to see how much time he spends playing video games), collects the dogs he walks three times weekly. There are seven altogether—two basset hounds, a lab, two medium-sized dogs of questionable heritage, a beagle mix, and a dachshund that struggles to keep up. The man—Brant—loads the dogs into the back of his ten-year-old Toyota 4X4, drives down to the shores of Lady Bird Lake, leashes up the dogs, and walks them on the heavily trafficked Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail. He likes this particular route because there are other dogs and access points for the big dogs to swim (the dachshund is afraid of water). Also, there is a spot just under the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge where Brant usually can sell enough weed to get through the week.

  He’s noticed a new guy hanging around his business location on their last couple of outings, and today the new guy saunters over. When Brant asks what’s up, the new guy says, “I’m visiting in town and looking for a friend.” Brant doesn’t want to ask what that means because he feels like he ought to know. “Cool, cool,” he says. But then another thought occurs to him, an unsavory thought, and he takes a step backward and says, “What kind of friend?”

  “Depends,” the new guy says. “What have you got?”

  Ah. That kind of friend. Still, Brant is mildly confused, because he is not a grocery store and people generally know what they want. But he’s relaxed, because he had a little toke earlier, and this is Austin and everybody smokes weed and everyone is cool with everyone . . .

  Well, except the new guy, turns out. New guy is a cop, which Brant discovers after he makes a pretty good sale and what he thinks is a really funny joke about dogs and weed. That’s when two squad cars roll up and the dogs start barking, and the new guy reads him his Miranda rights. “Come on, man,” Brant complains to the officer who cuffs him. “At least let me call my buddy to take the dogs home.”

  * * *

  In old West Austin, just east of Tarrytown, a woman in a blue sedan in desperate need of an oil change rockets down the gravel drive to a cottage tucked behind a much larger house. The cottage was once a carriage house, then it was occupied by a coven of witches or hippies or maybe even Matthew McConaughey—it depends on who you talk to—and then renovated into sleek urban sophistication by the Californians who bought the property and now rent it out for an outrageous amount.

  Carly has been stuck in traffic and really must a
vail herself of the facilities. She bangs through the door, leaves her key dangling from the lock, and abandons her overstuffed tote bag in the entry. She is trying desperately to untie the strange but fashionable wraparound jumpsuit with the billowing sleeves she is wearing, but in her rush she draws up short and stares into the living area. She doesn’t comprehend what she is seeing. Her eyes simply cannot reconcile the sight of the dog on the couch with her brain. It’s not that she doesn’t have a dog—she does. It’s not that she doesn’t have a basset hound—she does. But she doesn’t have that basset hound.

  That is an imposter basset hound.

  An imposter so miscast in its role that it is on her couch eating one of her expensive throw pillows without an ounce of remorse, as telegraphed by the enthusiastic banging of its tail against the cushions.

  That dog is a mystery, but in that moment, Carly must make a necessary decision. She dashes off to answer the call of nature.

  * * *

  Hours later, on a leafy street a couple of blocks from the woman’s house, in another old West Austin home that has withstood the onslaught of modernization and McMansioning that is going on around town, a university professor bangs through the side entrance with his arms around another university professor he’s had a few drinks with tonight. Though his thoughts have turned to a slushy, boozy mess, he does notice that his dog is in the mudroom with her head pressed in the corner where the walls meet. He notes that her food bowl has not been touched and her favorite chew toy—the longhorn with the two missing horns—is on the other side of the room. This is strange behavior for his otherwise enthusiastic and friendly dog, but Max assumes she is pouting because he is home late. Well, sue him. He watches out for his dad and his brother on top of a full-time teaching job and two massive research projects, and sometimes, a person develops an itch that needs to be scratched.

  One

  Austin, Texas

  What a peculiar phenomenon it is to see something that the brain cannot comprehend. Not something that simply doesn’t make sense in the moment—like that time you saw your mother tiptoeing out of the neighbor’s house in the early morning hours half-dressed and giggling. Or that time your boss handed you a pink slip after you’d helped him reorganize the staff, and you smiled with delight because you didn’t get that you had efficiently organized yourself right out of a good job.

  No, this was different. This was like a weird ministroke, but without a headache or heart palpitation. Carly felt perfectly fine. And yet she could not comprehend how the dog stretched out on her couch could look exactly like her dog and not be her dog.

  It was a basset hound, just like her dog, with a black and brown coat with patches of white, long floppy ears, and ginormous paws and eyes that could look happy and sad at the same time.

  “You’re not my dog,” she informed the imposter. “Where is Baxter?”

  The dog had no answer for her other than a tail that thumped a happy beat against the pillows it had destroyed.

  Actually, technically, Baxter was not her dog. He was her sister’s dog. Except that technically Baxter was not Mia’s dog, either. He was a dog her mother had tried to give one of Mia’s kids for his birthday, but of course things had gotten out of hand, because they always did where her mother was concerned. It was a long, complicated story, and, frankly, when you got right down to it, Carly’s entire family was complicated, and their lives were muddied together, and anyway, that’s how she and Baxter the Dog had ended up in each other’s company.

  Carly had not wanted the responsibility of a dog. Carly was very busy. Carly was going to move to New York City as soon as she found a job there. A dog required attention and care and food, all of which Carly did not have. Nevertheless, she and Baxter had been going along with this arrangement since a tearful Mia had pushed the listless dog like a big sack of flour across her kitchen’s tile floor to Carly’s feet. That was Carly’s first glimpse into life with a basset hound: they were disinclined to cooperate.

  But Carly had pitied the poor creature and had taken him just to spare him the chaos that was erupting around him in Mia’s house. And Baxter did seem to appreciate the rescue. Carly had never had a dog before, so in addition to a dog bed and water bowl, she bought a manual, something like, The Care and Feeding of Your New Best Friend. She read it cover to cover, and was happy to report to no one that in their monthlong acquaintance, Baxter had never once gotten on her beautiful cream West Elm couch. He liked to keep to his corner of her kitchen, near the back door. He liked to press his head to the wall, as if he thought if he couldn’t see anyone, no one could see him. Carly didn’t have the heart to tell him she could still plainly see him.

  He seemed to be okay with her tiny backyard. He liked to sleep a lot, too, and he liked to chew on giant bones. Occasionally, he’d go outside and bark at something only he could see, but then he’d trot back in, mission accomplished. Sometimes, when Carly was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the coffee table, listening to Megan Monroe, the host of her favorite podcast, Big Girl Panties, give tips for how to navigate life when it was pummeling you with lemons, Baxter would come and sit next to her, his butt pressed against her leg, facing away. Carly would absently caress his back while Megan convinced her that she could have it all. Megan said she could have the perfect boyfriend (she would need a boy for that), the perfect home (if she could scrape up the rent), the perfect job (if someone would just hire her already), and still be her. Given the current state of Carly’s life—a complete and utter mess—she felt compelled to listen to every single episode, sometimes taking notes, while Baxter dozed beside her.

  Yep, they’d had the perfect working relationship, and Baxter had never once branched out of his territory and onto a couch, much less taken up pillow eating. Which made him much more desirable than this imposter.

  “Maybe I’m being punked,” Carly mused, and quickly rifled through her mental catalogue of friends in search of the jokester who would pull a stunt like this. But her close friends—Karma, who had just gotten married and was in the honeymoon phase and was never free, and Lydia, an ER nurse working night shifts and never awake—didn’t have the comedic chops to pull this off. No disrespect to her friends.

  Was she in the wrong house? She’d been in desperate need of a bathroom, and a lot of the houses around here looked sort of the same. She’d rushed in without really looking at anything but the dark hole of her tote bag where her keys were swimming. She did a quick scan of the room, her eyes flicking over the built-in bookcases that framed the fireplace, the hand-scraped wide-plank pine floors, the pale blue rug, the cream-colored couch, and the floral armchairs.

  Definitely the right house. Definitely the wrong dog.

  Speaking of which, the dog apparently grew bored of waiting for her to figure it out. It stood up on its stumpy legs on the couch, paused for a good and long downward dog, then slid off, landing with a thud, before confidently trotting over to sniff her legs and lick her shoe.

  “Listen, I don’t know who you are or how you got here but I want Baxter back.” She leaned down to scratch him behind his long ears.

  The dog allowed it and sat to give her a moment to reconsider, its tail swishing hard against the floor and knocking around the balls of synthetic white stuffing that had previously occupied her throw pillow.

  “You’re super cute, but I’m not keeping you. I want you to go home. Who are you? Why aren’t you wearing tags?”

  The dog’s tail wagged harder. It slid down to the floor, rolled onto its back, presenting for a belly rub. That’s when Carly had visual confirmation that this most certainly was not Baxter. This dog was female.

  “Okay, we’ve got to get this situation fixed,” she said, making a circular motion at the dog’s head, “before wrong bassets start showing up at regular intervals around here.” But she did reach down and rub the dog’s belly to demonstrate she could be hospitable, even in the face of disaster
.

  From the bowels of her overstuffed tote bag, still on its side in the entry, the contents partially disgorged, her phone sounded a cheery little notice of a text. “Stay,” she said to the dog.

  Of course the dog didn’t stay. She hopped up and trotted into the kitchen like she lived here and helped herself to big, loud laps of water from Baxter’s bowl.

  The text was from Phil, the photographer Carly had coerced into doing a shoot for her. It said simply, Meet me at five.

  Meet him at five? First of all, five was the worst possible time to meet anyone anywhere. And second, their shoot was tomorrow. Tuesday. Wait a minute . . . Carly looked at her watch. Shit. Today was Tuesday.

  Don’t be late, he added.

  “I’m already late! I’m like a day late!” she shouted at her phone.

  Carly and Phil had worked together at the big advertising firm of Dalworth, Bartle and Simmons. Phil had been an art creator at DBS and had been made redundant in the reorganization, too. With his photography skills and his contacts, he’d quickly transitioned into a professional photography career specializing in headshots and weddings. Carly knew this because she and Phil, and some of the others who’d been laid off, met occasionally for drinks and to complain about the unfairness of it all. (Megan would not approve. Time spent complaining or feeling sorry for yourself is time you could have spent creating your new reality. But as Carly was still struggling to create her new reality, she was up for a little whining from time to time.)

  Carly’s new reality was a tiny little one-woman marketing and public relations shop with a grand total of two clients. Temporary clients, just until she got a full-time position with a firm. Unfortunately, temporary clients willing to take her on between jobs were not the kind to spend a lot of money, and life had become a struggle. Carly knew that Phil felt sorry for her, so borrowing another page from Big Girl Panties, she had used that to her advantage and had asked him for a huge favor.