Page 5 of If You Were Mine
Life rocked.
Seriously.
Sure, life had its hardships and was never truly easy, but sometimes I knew if I just let my face tilt up to the sun, even in a Colorado winter, I’d be able to let life touch me once again.
Because it rocked.
I looked down at one of my best friends and couldn’t help but smile. “You are living up to your name today, because look at that sky.” My loving and adorable golden retriever tilted his head up to follow my gaze, and I knew I had the smartest, sweetest boy there ever was.
Yes, even at four years old, his face had already gone a little white, but he was still my puppy. And I always loved the fact that golden retrievers looked as if they were smiling sometimes or had the saddest expression with those big eyes. I blamed their eyebrows. They were just so expressive.
Lucky shook his head at me, a very human expression on his face, and then rotated his hips back to stretch.
“Oh, big stretch.” I paused, wondering when exactly I was going to stop saying that phrase. However, my cutest boy did just stretch, and he deserved to know I had noticed.
Lucky had been my graduation and birthday present from my big brother, and I had a feeling Joshua had known exactly the perfect puppy for me. Because Lucky was just as exasperated as my big brother when I didn’t do exactly as I was told.
“Okay grumpy Gus, it’s time to head to doggie daycare.”
At the sound of my voice, he wiggled his butt, went to go get his favorite stuffie, which today happened to be a stuffed rabbit from two years ago. He’d been a little spoiled during our Christmas celebrations, but then again, he was my child. He deserved the best.
“No stuffies today. You’re allowed to bring your ball though.”
His ears perked, and he did a little circle dance, before dropping his stuffie and picking up his orange and blue ball.
I rolled my eyes, because I should have said toy. Now that I had said the word ball I was going to have to play outside of the building for a couple of minutes before walking him to doggie daycare.
I was grateful that the Cages had not only rented me the building with my bakery inside, but also the apartment above. Yes, my home constantly smelled like baked goods, but considering I was the owner and head baker, I always smelled like sugar, flour, and yeast.
One day I would have enough saved to get a little home around Cage Lake and be able to let Lucky roam around in a large yard to his heart’s content with ball time and outdoor time.
Until then however, the bakery did host a small outdoor eatery area where pets were allowed to hang out, and I was right across the street from a large park. That meant he could get his ball time off leash, at least during certain times of the morning, and then we’d head out to doggie daycare.
I grabbed my purse, and flashlight, because while the sun was out, there were enough trees that if the ball went where it shouldn’t, it was going to be annoying to find later.
Lucky, still attached to his leash, bounded beside me down the back stairs, thankfully not knocking me off.
As soon as we hit the park, I let him off his leash, and without looking back, he darted towards the corner of the flat area of the park. I rolled my eyes, because he didn’t even have to look at me. No, Lucky he knew I would throw the ball. Because if I didn’t, I would get those huge puppy eyes. And even after four years, I couldn’t say no.
I tossed the ball, and of course it hit a tree, then a limb of another tree, before hopping down right next to Lucky. He looked at me, those eyebrows so expressive I saw the disappointment in them, but picked up the ball anyway. Then he ran full speed towards me before daintily dropping it at my foot.
This went on for another six throws or so—thankfully I hadn’t hit another tree—and after he took care of his business, and I cleaned it up, it was time to go to doggie daycare.
The owners had decided to call it Dog Gone It. I still had no idea why they had gone with that, but if it made them happy, and it made Lucky happy, that was all that mattered.
At least it didn’t have the name Cage in it.
My lips twitched, because my bakery was called Rising Cage.
The Cage family pretty much owned Cage Lake. They had founded it generations ago, and before it had become a tourist destination, thanks to the resort, also owned by the Cages, it had been a mining town. And when the mines had closed, the Cages had turned it into this.
Or at least the past two generations had. They had plastered their name on everything they could, gobbled up any land they hadn’t already owned, and hadn’t quite turned into robber barons.
Thankfully this new generation, the ones that included my friends, were the good sort. They were kind, even while grumpy, and cared about the people in town. They also didn’t want to own everything.
Aston Cage, the eldest Cage, had helped me open up the bakery of my dreams less than a year ago. The town’s original bakery had burned down in a fire and the three built since either shut down or went out of business. The final one had closed while I was in high school, and the town was sorely lacking.
Not everybody would have taken a chance on a twenty-year-old with an associate’s degree. But Aston had. So when I had worked on finishing up business classes to make sure I knew what I was doing, I had begun working on the bakery.
