Bowled Over Read Online Free PDF

closer, and she liked Daniel a lot. He was the kind of man you could depend on, a good friend to have in a crisis. She supposed that what they were doing could be called dating, but she hated to pin a label on what was really just a friendship at this point, at least in her mind.
    Daniel had dropped a medium-sized bomb on her a few days before. His parents, who lived near Phoenix, were coming up to see Stowe House. They were anxious to meet her, Daniel had told her. That meant he had been talking to them about her.
    Also, he wanted to go with her the next time she went over to Canada to meet her Grandma Leighton, the family matriarch. That, along with his consulting her about changes to Stowe House, had her wondering if he was becoming a little too attached much too quickly. She was just seven months out of a serious relationship and wasn’t ready for anything more than casual dating. Joel Anderson had brokenher heart into a million tiny pieces in December of the previous year, walking out on their serious relationship a couple of weeks before Christmas. She was just beginning to glue those shards back into something that resembled her heart.
    Shaking herself out of her gloom, she walked on, keeping pace with the tanker ship as it majestically slipped upriver toward an oil refinery on the Canadian side. One thing at a time, and no point in worrying about things that might or might not happen between her and Daniel. His parents probably just wanted to see his lovely historic house.
    At the end of the park, the walkway descended to the municipal docks and from there to an area of small, old shops, leaning against each other for support like rest home residents. Among them was a bait-and-tackle shop for the fishers who trolled the waters of the St. Clair, and beside it was the Queensville Feed and Tack. She checked her watch. The feed-and-tack shop opened at eleven, and Dani Brougham reportedly was regular as clockwork, their first customer of the day.
    As Jaymie strolled toward the feed shop, an old green GMC pickup skidded into the parking lot, throwing up a spray of gravel, and a woman in jeans leaped out and headed toward the door. Jaymie followed, curious to see if this was her quarry.
    Her guess was confirmed as she followed the woman in, and a guy in overalls looked up, and said, “Hey, Dani, what’s shakin’?” then glanced at Jaymie with curiosity. Jaymie smiled, but kept right on, following Dani Brougham to the back of the shop, where stacks of paper sacks were piled on skids in neat rows. She hadn’t thought of an approach, and everything she considered sounded weird and faintly menacing.
So, you’re Kathy Cooper’s only friend, right?
Or,
Say, Dani, can we talk for a minute about why Kathy Cooperhates me so much?
As it turned out, Hoppy provided the icebreaker by launching himself at Dani Brougham and dancing excitedly round the woman.
    “Hey, little guy! Aren’t you a cutie-patootie?” Dani Brougham had a pleasantly gruff voice, and she continued to talk as she hunched down to scruff Hoppy’s neck until the little dog was wriggling with ecstatic joy. She finally looked up, and said, “He’s a cute li’l tripod, isn’t he? What kind of dog is he? How’d he lose his leg?”
    “He’s a Yorkie-Poo, a rescue dog,” Jaymie said, smiling down at them. “He was found at a puppy mill, just eight weeks old, his leg caught in the chicken-wire cage. It was so badly infected, they had to amputate. I was just supposed to foster him past the surgery and recovery, but…” She shrugged. “That was three years ago.”
    Dani laughed as she stood. “Who could resist, right? I normally like bigger dogs, but this little guy has loads of personality.”
    She had never thought she would find herself liking Kathy’s best friend so much from the very first moment of meeting her. Every circuitous approach seemed dishonest and sneaky. “You’re Dani Brougham, right?” she blurted out.
    The woman’s smile died.