GOOD GUYS LOVE DOGS
by: Inglath Cooper
Publication Date: June 7, 2012
Summary:
Desperate father Ian McKinley moves his delinquent teenage son to the small Virginia town of Keeling Creek, a place very unlike the New York City life he has been leading. Love takes him by surprise when he falls for Colby Williams, a woman unlike anyone he has ever been drawn to, a small town vet with a heart for animals and a fierce love for a teenage daughter she is also struggling to raise.
But Colby has a secret in her past, a secret she’s not sure her daughter will ever forgive her for. And as for Ian McKinley, he seems too good to be true. If she had learned anything from the one time she had thrown her heart fully into love, it was that it didn’t last.
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At five minutes past five that afternoon, Colby stepped through the front door of the Dippety-Do Salon for her monthly trim. Her basic, shoulder-length cut required little more effort than a nip off the ends.
A bell dinged, announcing her arrival. A waiting area held several chairs and a couple of couches. Magazines littered the coffee table, GQ and International Male among them. Louise Mason, the owner of the salon, theorized that her customers didn’t come here to read about the latest tuna casserole recipe or how to paint their kitchen in less than five hours. Here, women were free to gossip, ogle men’s magazines and generally let their hair down, so to speak. Judging from the fact that the place rarely had an empty chair, Louise apparently had the right idea.
“Hey, Colby. You’re on time as usual,” Louise said, approaching the desk. At five feet ten inches tall, Louise often joked that the only thing that kept her from being a professional model was her looks.
“Hi, Louise. You keeping busy?”
The woman threw a glance at the shop behind her, where hair dryers buzzed and the smell of permanent solution hung in the air. “If it weren’t for vanity, I’d be in the poorhouse.”
Colby smiled and followed the heavyset woman to the back. Louise shampooed her hair and applied an apple-scented conditioner. When she finished, she wrapped a towel around Colby’s head and led her to her station up front.
“So what are we gonna do today, honey?” Louise asked after Colby settled in the chair.
Colby met her hopeful gaze in the mirror. “Just the usual.”
“How’d I know you were gonna say that?”
Louise had been trying to talk her into going the way of big hair for years. “Men like a lotta hair,” she’d said more times than Colby could count. “You walk into a nightclub, and you gotta compete with all those Dolly Parton types. You can’t just let yourself blend into the woodwork.”
Like Phoebe, Louise ranked Colby’s lack of interest in the dating scene right up there with self-administered haircuts and chipped nail polish. It simply didn’t do.
Smiling, Colby said, “I have to give you credit for trying, Louise.”
“Now, Colby, you know I think you’re one of the prettiest gals around. I’d just like to pizzazz you up a bit, that’s all.”
Pizzazz, as Louise defined it, meant frosting and a perm. “Thank you, Louise, but—”
“I know. I know. You like it how it is. I just thought with that new man in town, you might have changed your mind. Let’s see, what’s his name? McKlellan, Mc—” Louise snapped her fingers, searching for the name.
“McKinley,” Ellen Ann Edwards offered up from the next station. “Ian McKinley.”
That name again.
“I shoulda known you’d have it down pat,” Louise said to the other woman with a chuckle.
“Well, why not? It’s not as if someone like that moves to Keeling Creek every day of the week,” Ellen Ann declared.
“You’re right about that,” Louise agreed. “I saw him at the DMV when I was gettin’ my county sticker, and he was in front of me. Didn’t even mind spendin’ my lunch hour standing in line. That is one fine-looking man.”
Ellen Ann’s nod of agreement carried with it a look of wistfulness. She added another permanent rod to her customer’s hair. “I saw him out jogging on the way to work yesterday. All I could do to keep my eyes on the road.”
“Oh, that’s good, Ellen Ann. All we need is for you to run over him.”
Ellen Ann rolled her eyes at Louise. “Somebody said he’s from New York.”
“City?” Louise asked.
Ellen Ann nodded again.
“So what’s he doin’ here, you think?”
“Beats me, but I’m not complaining.”
“Me, neither. If I didn’t already have me a fella, I’d go knock on his door and introduce myself. He’s got a boy at the high school, but nobody’s seen hide nor hair of a wife.”
“Now what would you do with an uptowner like him, Louise?” the customer in Ellen Ann’s chair asked with a giggle.
“I could think of one or two things,” Louise replied with a wink and a nod.
The remark brought on a fit of giggles from the women around them, all of whom had been listening to the conversation.
The woman in Ellen Ann’s chair waved a copy of the National Tattler. “He might find himself a wife here. I just read a story about a prince from some small country on the other side of the world. He came over here on a visit and met some little gal from Kentucky. Married her and took her back to his kingdom.”
“Sounds like paradise,” Colby said, deciding that the women of Keeling Creek had been seriously deprived for too long. All this fuss over one man moving to town. Okay, so he was good-looking. He’d seemed nice enough earlier, but from all appearances, he’d fit in here like the proverbial square peg in a round hole.
“What I want to know,” Louise went on, “is what Colby here thinks of him. After all, she’s the one who’s free and single.”
“And not likely to forget it,” Colby chimed in.
“I can see why you’re choosy, hon,” Louise sympathized. “The bachelor pickin’s are pretty slim around here. You better get in on this one. Cindy Stoneway came in this morning trying to figure out a way to meet him. Last I heard, she’d decided on a flat tire in front of his house.”
“Tell her good luck for me next time she’s in,” Colby said.
Louise brushed the loose hair off Colby’s plastic cape. “Just don’t hold your breath waitin’ for another one like this to land in Keeling Creek. Might as well be holdin’ out for aliens.”
“I won’t, Louise.” Colby shook her head and smiled. “I won’t.”
Author
RITA Award-winning author Inglath Cooper has written 9 published novels and 2 novellas. She fell in love with books as soon as she learned how to read. “When I was a little girl, we had a black-and-white TV with rabbit ears. Needless to say, it didn’t pick up a lot! I spent a good deal of time with my nose in a book. I think I read most of the books in my elementary school library.”
“There’s something about small-town life that’s just part of who I am. I’ve had the desire to live in other places, wondered what it would be like to be a true Manhattanite, but the thing I know I would miss is the familiarity of faces everywhere I go. There’s a lot to be said for going in the grocery store and seeing ten people you know!”
Her passion for writing has most recently translated into songwriting which she considers a natural extension of her love of storytelling.
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