Dare to Stay (Puppy Love Romances Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dare to Stay

  By Georgia Beers

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  By Georgia Beers

  Dare to Stay

  Welcome to Junebug Farms, a successful, well-known animal shelter in upstate New York, where every day brings something new—love, stress, heartbreak, warmth—and not just from the animals.

  Since inheriting Junebug Farms from her grandmother, Jessica Barstow’s life revolves around it, and she has no time or energy for much else. Not hobbies. Not fun. Not love--certainly not love. And the new, young, and hip TV reporter who’s been sent to host the upcoming fundraising telethon isn’t going to change that—even though it seems like she wants to change everything else.

  Sydney Taylor has zero desire to cover human interest stories in some Podunk, upstate New York hamlet, but that's where she's landed—for now. So she’ll make the best of it until she can get something bigger. In the meantime, she is assigned to host the annual live fundraising telethon for some local animal shelter. It’s just a job; she doesn’t have time to get attached. And it doesn’t matter that the rigid, keeps-to-herself CEO of the shelter is resistant to anything Sydney suggests. Or that she’s super attractive and sexy. That doesn’t matter at all...

  The third of the Puppy Love Romances by awardwinning author Georgia Beers.

  Dare to Stay

  © 2016 by Georgia Beers

  This trade paperback original is published by Brisk Press, Brielle New Jersey, 08730

  Edited by Lynda Sandoval

  Copy Edited by Heather Flournoy

  Cover design by Ann McMan

  First printing: December 2016

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author or the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-099667746-2

  By Georgia Beers

  Novels

  Finding Home

  Mine

  Fresh Tracks

  Too Close to Touch

  Thy Neighbor’s Wife

  Turning the Page

  Starting From Scratch

  96 Hours

  Slices of Life

  Snow Globe

  Olive Oil and White Bread

  Zero Visibility

  A Little Bit of Spice

  Rescued Heart

  Run to You

  Dare to Stay

  Anthologies

  Outsiders

  www.georgiabeers.com

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a series is much harder than I anticipated, but as I reach out to put the final volume of my trilogy into your hands, I have nothing but fierce pride. I hope you enjoy these people as much as I did.

  Thank you to Carrie and Susan at Brisk Press. I say the same thing every time, but it still holds true: they make a process that could be tedious and stressful easy and painless. This author is very lucky to have them.

  My editors are the best. Lynda Sandoval and Heather Flournoy, I'm keeping you guys. You've been warned.

  I'd have thrown myself out a window long ago if not for Melissa, Nikki, and Rachel. You three remind me every day of who I am and what I'm capable of accomplishing. And you never let me slack off. I owe you big for that and for your friendship. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  This series may be over, but my love of animals—dogs especially—will never end. Love and thanks to all the canines who have touched my life and my heart, and all of those I still have yet to meet.

  Thank you to Bonnie. For everything and so much more.

  Last but never least, thank you, as always, to my readers. It is because of you—your support, your messages, your emails—that I can keep doing this weird, wonderful, crazy, awesome job of mine. You keep reading, I’ll keep writing, deal?

  Dedication

  To everybody who has ever loved or been loved by an animal.

  CHAPTER ONE

  This will never fucking work.

  Change was not something Jessica Barstow handled well, as was evidenced by the paperwork in front of her. The annual telethon to raise money for Junebug Farms Animal Shelter was less than two months away, but as Jessica stared at the headshot of the new reporter Channel Six was sending to replace the retired one, the one who’d hosted the telethon for the past several years and the one Jessica was comfortable with, the same phrase kept echoing through her head over and over and over.

  This will never fucking work.

  Elbows propped on her desk, Jessica let her weary head drop into her hands as she groaned. She needed to relax, damn it, or she was going to completely stress herself out and she usually saved that for when the telethon was closer. She couldn’t dissolve into a blubbering mess of anxiety just yet. It was way too soon.

  Rubbing her palms roughly up and down her face a couple times, Jessica did her best to shake off the feeling of dread she always got when some big shake-up hit her life. At least she wasn’t quite freaking the hell out. Yet.

  A couple of gentle raps at her door yanked her attention away from her misery, thank God. Catherine Gardner stood in the doorway, eyeglasses dangling from one hand, and cocked her attractive head to the side.

  “Well. Meltdown has commenced, I see. You look like crap.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I just call ‘em like I see ‘em, ma’am.” Catherine entered the room and sat regally in one of the two chairs situated in front of Jessica’s desk. She casually crossed her legs and studied her friend’s face. “Talk to me. What’s got you all weirded out?”

  Jessica blew out a big breath, picked up the headshot, and handed it across the desk to Catherine.

  “Wow,” Catherine said, eyebrows rising up into her hairline as she slid on the glasses. “She’s gorgeous.” Jessica didn’t need to look any more; she’d memorized the face. Dark hair a bit past her shoulders—tousled just enough to look sexy, but not enough to seem messy—mesmerizingly deep, blue-green eyes, amazing facial structure with cheekbones any model would kill for. “Seriously. It should be illegal to be this good looking.”

  Jessica allowed a chuckle. As Catherine herself was so stunning, such comments from her seemed ironic. “She’s fine.”

  “She’s fine?” Catherine looked up and studied her. “I know this whole shift in hosts is hard for you, but has it screwed up your eyesight, too? What’s that tone about?” She handed the photo back.

  “I don’t have a tone.”

  “You do, and you know it.”

  Jessica sighed in defeat and looked away. They’d been friends for years and Catherine knew her well; she’d see right through her.

  “Are you nervous?” Catherine asked.

  “About what?”

  Catherine shook her head with a grin. “Why do you fight me
? You know I’ll get to the bottom of this. If you’d just tell me what’s going on, I can offer you my very wise, very sage advice and then get out of your hair, save us both a lot of work.”

  Jessica couldn’t help but laugh, as Catherine was exactly right. “You don’t want to do our usual dance?”

  “Listen, I love to dance with you, but I don’t have time today. My boss is a slave driver and I have nearly a dozen donors to contact before I go home.”

  “As said boss, I take offense to that.”

  “Ha. What’s going on, Jess? Talk to me.”

  Jessica sighed and sat back in her chair. A glance out the window told her how busy Junebug Farms was on any given day, as her office was in the front of the building and looked out onto the large parking lot. It was a Monday, late morning, and therefore rather quiet, the lot peppered with only a handful of cars. Returning her gaze to Catherine, she said, “You’re right. I’m just nervous. I’ve been in charge of the telethon for more than five years now and I feel like we finally had it running like a well-oiled machine, you know?”

  “And having new television talent might throw a wrench in the gears, so to speak?”

  “Exactly. Why did Janet have to retire?” Jessica whined, referring to the local, beloved television anchor who’d always done the Junebug Farms annual telethon.

  “Because she’s in her sixties, worked hard her whole life, and wants to spend time with her family now?”

  “Stop trying to confuse me with logic.”

  “Let me ask you this: does your worrying and freaking out about the new talent do anything to help? Does it make it better?”

  Jessica made a face at her. “No, Miss Know-It-All. It doesn’t.”

  Catherine shrugged. “Well, there you go.”

  “You know, having sex on a regular basis hasn’t made you any more pleasant.”

  “That’s because you’re jealous.”

  “Shut up. I hate you.”

  “I know.”

  They sat grinning at each other across the desk until a knock at the office door interrupted the friendly teasing and Anna St. John, head of public relations at Junebug Farms, stuck her head in.

  The first thing Jessica noticed was the utter lack of reaction from Catherine, which was new. It was as if Catherine had a button in her head that said Pleasantly Neutral Face, pushed it, and all expression just slid right off. She and Anna were exes from nearly a year ago. Catherine had broken up with Anna, and Anna took every opportunity she had to launch digs at her. Over the past few months, though, Catherine had begun seeing Emily Breckenridge, whose family was one of the largest donors to Junebug Farms, and one the animal shelter depended on to survive. Jessica had initially been less than thrilled by the pairing. She worried about the implications, and what might happen to the donations if the couple went belly up. But Emily had shocked her by transferring to a different department in her company so she could continue to see Catherine without raising eyebrows. Jessica had never seen her friend so happy, as evidenced by the fact that she didn’t stiffen up or invent a reason to leave as she used to do whenever Anna walked into the room. She simply remained seated and looked impartial.

  “Hey,” Anna said as she entered the room and approached Jessica. “Sorry to interrupt.” Like most days, she sported her usual jeans, green polo shirt with the Junebug Farms logo, and her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She glanced quickly at Catherine, then down at the open folder on the desk as she said to Jessica, “You wanted to touch base about the next newsletter and e-mail blast and—oh, my God, what’s this?” She picked up the headshot.

  “That’s the new talent Channel Six is sending us for the telethon since Janet’s retired.” Jessica tried not to sound childish and bitter, but she was pretty sure she failed.

  “Isn’t she pretty?” Catherine asked, clearly to stress what she thought Jessica was missing.

  “Um, yeah. She’s also a hell of a kisser.” Anna looked smug as she tossed the photo back onto Jessica’s desk.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Jessica said.

  “Yeah.” Anna looked up at Catherine, a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “I met her about, what? Two months ago? Three? At Sling. She totally picked me up.”

  Jessica made eye contact with Catherine, knowing that Anna’s story—true or not—was told for her benefit. Catherine didn’t roll her eyes, but Jessica was certain she wanted to.

  “You’re sure it’s the same woman?” Jessica asked.

  “Would you forget that face?” Anna bumped Jessica’s chair with her hip. “She was alone at the bar, so I struck up a conversation. She seemed nice enough, but I think she was there for something…specific. Know what I mean?” Anna glanced toward Catherine and winked. Jessica rolled her lips and bit down, smothering a chuckle at the unimpressed expression Catherine now sported, the Pleasantly Neutral Face setting obviously malfunctioning. “We ended up making out in that back hallway near the bathroom,” Anna went on.

  “You didn’t take her home?” Catherine asked, the sugar-coated innocence in her voice almost cartoonish.

  “She decided she needed to go. Which was a bummer.” Anna shrugged. “What’re you gonna do, right?”

  Catherine returned the shrug, complete with wide eyes and a slow headshake that almost made Jessica lose her composure, but she held on.

  “Well, I certainly hope that little tryst won’t affect you working with her when the time comes.” Jessica said it matter-of-factly, but the idea made her stomach churn a little bit. Running a business in the age of social media was no easy feat. Running a nonprofit was even more difficult. She was still recovering from the Catherine/Emily close call that had kept her up nights; she wasn’t ready for another one. When she took over the animal shelter after her grandmother died, she’d never expected that part of her job would be policing the love lives of her employees.

  “Of course it won’t,” Anna said, a tiny note of hurt in her voice. “You know me better than that.”

  So many retorts ran through Jessica’s head then about just exactly how well she did know Anna, but she decided to take the high road. “Oh, good. Well.” She shut the folder on the stunning 8x10 of one Sydney Taylor. “She’ll be here late next week with her producer to meet with us, go over some details, all that fun stuff.”

  “I look forward to it,” Anna said. With a quick glance in Catherine’s direction, she stood, bid them goodbye and left the room.

  When the door had clicked shut, Jessica held Catherine’s gaze until Catherine finally looked skyward and said loudly, “I don’t know!” It was her stock answer to the question Jessica mentally posed every time they had any kind of interaction with Anna: what the hell were you thinking?

  “She’s a piece of work,” Jessica said.

  “She’s a piece of something,” Catherine agreed, pushing herself to her feet.

  “Well, she’s an excellent public relations rep, so I’m keeping her.”

  “Fair enough. Okay. Work to do.” And Catherine was gone.

  Jessica’s gaze was pulled out the window as she sat back in her soft, black, leather chair. She was very careful to make sure the shelter didn’t spend money in the wrong places, so their office furniture was all secondhand, their computers refurbished. But Jessica had splurged on her chair, figuring if she was going to spend more time in that one seat than any place else in her life—including her bed—she deserved to be comfortable. Granted, it didn’t really match the industrial metal desk or the neutral beige of the steel filing cabinets along the walls, but she could sit there for hours and not end up with an aching spine, so she considered it money well spent.

  Returning her attention to the folder on her desk, she opened it again, stared into the mesmerizing blue-green eyes of Sydney Taylor. It was no wonder she was in television; she certainly had the face for it. Brad Hyland had known Jessica for a while now, and he knew how nervous she was to do the telethon without Janet Dobson. “We need to skew younger,” he’d told her. “That�
�s why we hired Sydney, as well as a handful of younger producers and writers. They’ll hopefully help us reach a younger audience.” Jessica let out a snort. Sydney Taylor couldn’t be more than twenty-six or twenty-seven, judging from the photo. How in the world was she going to do what Janet Dobson had perfected over the course of several years?

  They were streaming online as well as on TV, a full six hours, and Brad actually seemed kind of psyched about all the changes, which did help Jessica feel a tiny bit better. Under the 8x10 glossy of Ms. Taylor was a list of past adopters from Junebug Farms. She’d compiled it at Brad’s request, and it was one of the many things they’d go over when they met on Thursday. The adopter testimonials were also the thing that, as far as Jessica was concerned, brought in the most in donations and were the catalyst for the majority of adoptions that took place during and after the telethon. Listening to somebody’s story about finding their soul mate in an abandoned dog or knowing as soon as they looked at the elderly cat that they had to have her, those were the most touching moments, the things that squeezed hearts and pushed people who were teetering on the edge of “do I or don’t I want a pet,” or “should I or shouldn’t I donate some money,” right off the cliff. And not only were they heartwarming, they were success stories. Because, as much as people wanted to think of Junebug Farms as this adorable farm that housed a bunch of sweet animals, Jessica had no choice but to look at it as a business. Her grandmother, the woman who’d started the shelter after she’d retired from her job as a fourth-grade teacher, had taught her that. She would never say so out loud—and neither would Jessica—but when it came right down to it, there was product to move. And product that stayed around too long was bad for business.

  Janet Dobson had understood that.

  It would be interesting to see if Sydney Taylor would.