2

The front offices of the Dragons hockey club were located in a building adjacent to the facility where the team practiced, the Dragon Ice Sports Center, also known as the DISC. People greeted Spencer Corbett as he walked down the hall toward the marketing department. On the walls hung action portraits of some of the most famous Dragons players. He gave a nod to the photo of Jonathan Forsgren, a man Spencer had looked up to as a kid and whose number 11 hung in the rafters of the Dragon Arena.

When he got to Justin Chang’s office, he rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb. “Hey, I got your message. What’s up?”

Justin, Senior Director of Marketing and Digital Media, raised a finger and continued talking on the phone. His desk looked as if a file cabinet had exploded on it. The wall calendar behind him was covered with writing, highlighted circles and Post-its. He looked harried as he hung up the phone.

“Sorry,” Justin said. “I’m swamped. I lost a key guy to the Sharks, damn it, and the Benedict Arnold gave me zero notice. Just handed me his resignation letter and left. I fucking taught him everything he knows and this is how he…” Justin shook his head. “Sorry. You aren’t here to hear me rant and I can’t really spare the time anyway. So here’s the deal. Ever since that At Home with a Dragon video aired, we’ve been fielding a lot of calls from women claiming that you have their dog.”

Spencer leaned against the doorjamb. “Huh. Go figure.”

“Most of them we’re writing off. But one of them, this one, might be legit.” He plucked a sticky note off his computer screen and handed it to Spencer. “Her name is Maggie Hudson. She says she has pictures to prove it.”

“Did you see the pictures?”

“Nope. Not my circus. Not my monkeys,” Justin said, picking up the phone again and punching in a number. “I’m just passing along the message.”


When Spencer got home, he was greeted at the door by Lulu and Blackie. Blackie was energetic. His little curly tail was wagging like crazy. Lulu, despite her age, got up to greet him more sedately, like a grand old duchess determined to keep up appearances.

As he gave them both a dog biscuit, he berated himself for mentioning on the air that he’d found Blackie on the side of the road because now he had a decision to make.

To call or not to call this Maggie woman.

His conscience told him the correct course of action would be to find out if Blackie was really hers and if he was, to return him. If their positions were reversed, he’d certainly want his dog back.

But it wasn’t that simple.

His family had rescued Lulu and her brother Frank, both labs, thirteen years ago. He had a lot of fond memories of those dogs accompanying them on summer camping trips and then later, when he’d moved away, welcoming him home when he went to visit his parents. After his mom and dad passed away two and three years ago, he took the dogs and they’d lived with him ever since. They’d been his little canine family.

But then Frank had developed an untreatable cancer. The loss had hit Spencer hard and Lulu harder. She had fallen into a depression Spencer couldn’t lift her out of. She didn’t seem to want to live anymore. It was a struggle to get her to eat or do anything but look at the door as if hoping Frank was going to trot into the house. He’d told her Frank got sick and wasn’t coming back, but she was a dog. She didn’t understand.

And then, as if by heavenly intervention, he’d found Blackie.

When he’d brought Blackie home, Lulu had perked up and over the next few days, she’d started eating again, wagging her tail. She’d even taken on a motherly role with Blackie, cleaning his smashed-in black face whenever she got the chance, and Spencer felt a spark of hope when he saw that.

But now, Lulu’s renewed lease on life was in jeopardy. Even though he knew Maggie Hudson deserved her dog back, Maggie wasn’t going to die if Blackie never found his way back to her. Whereas, he was pretty sure Lulu wouldn’t survive another companion suddenly disappearing on her.

To call or not to call.

As he headed toward his bedroom for his game day nap, he decided to put off the decision. He’d only just gotten the message this afternoon and figured he could take a day to figure out what he was going to do. The message said Maggie had been looking for her dog for months, so a couple more days wasn’t going to make much of a difference.