
Nora Roberts
The Search
To
HOMER AND PANCHO,
and all who sweetened my life before them
Part One
Properly trained, a man can be a dog’s best friend.
One
On a chilly morning in February with a misty rain shuttering the windows, Devin and Rosie Cauldwell made slow, sleepy love. It was day three of their week’s vacation—and month two of their attempt to conceive a second child. Their three-year-old son, Hugh, was the result of a long weekend on Orcas Island in the San Juans and—Rosie was convinced—a rainy afternoon and a bottle of Pinot Noir.
They hoped to repeat their success with a return visit to Orcas, and happily applied themselves to the mission at hand while their toddler slept with his beloved Wubby in the next room.
It was too early in the day for wine, but Rosie took the quiet rain as an omen.
When they were snuggled up together, loose and warm from sex, she smiled.
“Who had the best idea ever?”
Devin gave her ass an easy squeeze. “You did.”
“Hang on, because I just had another one.”
“I think I need a few minutes, first.”
She laughed, rolled and propped herself on his chest to grin at him. “Get your mind off sex, Sleazy.”
“I think I need a few minutes for that, too.”
“Pancakes. We need pancakes. Rainy morning, our cozy little house. Definitely calls for pancakes.”
He squinted at her. “Who’s making them?”
“Let the fates decide.”
She scooted up, and in a long-standing Cauldwell family tradition they let the balance hang on Rock, Paper, Scissors—best two out of three.
