A Ghost of a Chance Read Online Free PDF

for the local SPCA, and well, the rest was history.
    Of course, things would change now. When she left here, she’d have to find an apartment or place that would take pets.
    But then maybe she would buy her own house with a yard. She certainly had saved enough money from Sebastian Winter’s book sales.
    Ouch, even the thought of the book brought her pain. It wasn’t going well, not at all. Instead of an easy flow of words, it was as though each thought was becoming a labor to get onto the page. It would be so easy just to fall back onto the familiar pattern of horror that Sebastian Winters had been known to produce, but she truly wanted to write something different this time – a tale of redemption. It was an undertaking that was becoming more arduous than she had first imagined.
    Hopefully the new addition to the household would generate inspiration. At the very least, he would be a distraction. She looked down at the trembling little piece of existence that had not moved an inch from the spot where she had placed it. As she picked him up, he looked at her with wide dark eyes. “What am I going to do with you? How about some breakfast while we think up a name to call you?” He nuzzled her with the now moist, cold, black nose. “I suppose that’s as much an answer as I’m going to get.” And she headed into the kitchen with her new companion. “You’re going to like it here Samson. No, that doesn’t quite do it, does it?”
     
    Monica nudged Hallie’s new puppy away from the black leather bag that he seemed intent on chewing up. “Hallie, what on earth possessed you to get this thing? All it seems to want to do is eat everything.”
    “ No, he’s teething. He’s only three months old – just a baby.”
    “ Couldn’t you get something that was already trained? Shew, you mongrel.” She nudged it away with the toe of her black leather pump, which it now seemed intent on nibbling as well. “Do you have any idea how much these shoes cost me?”
    Aunt Marie frowned at Monica. She and Jack stood across the room near the fireplace watching the exchange. “You know, I never understood why she remained friends with that girl. They’re nothing alike.”
    “ Maybe that’s the attraction.”
    “ Yes well, that’s something a man would say.”
    “ Well I. . .”
    “ You know Edward was the same way, so very different from her. “ She cut him off abruptly. He’d noticed Hallie’s short, white-haired Aunt had a habit of doing that when she wasn’t interested in what he had to say. “They had very little in common, but he was the one she had to have.”
    “ Maybe she was looking for something she felt lacking in herself.”
    She looked at him with her uncompromising blue eyes. “Is that what you used to do Jack?”
    Monica continued grumpily, “You know I’ve heard the better pet shops have already started training the dogs before you even buy them. What kind did you say this was?”
    “ He’s a mix, a mutt. I got him from the SPCA.”
    She flung back her blonde hair in exasperation, “You know that’s like going to the Salvation Army for your clothes.”
    Hallie walked over and picked him up, “I think he’s beautiful.”
    And she smiled with adoration as he began biting her index finger in earnest. “And I hear you can find some very interesting things at the Salvation Army.”
    “ You are hopeless.”
    “ And you’re a snob. But I won’t hold it against you. Not yet anyway.”
    “ So what are you calling it?”
    Hallie frowned as she tried to wrench her finger free. “I haven’t decided.”
    Monica leaned back with distaste and crossed her legs, which were well exposed by a slit in her snugly fitted skirt. Hallie had decided long ago that she must have a closet full of these.
    “ So why don’t you call him Sebastian?”
    “ I thought of that, but it doesn’t seem to fit. He’s not a snooty sort of dog. I want a more, well, normal type name.”
    “ What, like Spot?”
    “ No.”