From The Ashes. Sharon Mignerey

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СКАЧАТЬ that.” She rolled her eyes and grinned. “I’ve been there more than once myself.”

      “To the point you royally screwed up your life?”

      He’d meant the question to be a rhetorical one so he was surprised when she nodded.

      “Hard to believe. You look—”

      “Looks can be deceiving,” she said, her smile fading. “Let’s just say that I’ve too much experience—” the smile came back, rueful and directed at herself “—you know, that thing leading to good judgment—and plenty of practice with the Serenity Prayer.”

      Though he was curious, he didn’t ask about the circumstances. But he wanted to. He liked her. In their all-too-brief meetings, all those reasons for not getting involved lost importance.

      “That matter-of-fact way you talk about being responsible for your own stuff,” she added when he caught her glance, “you’d be surprised at how rare that is.”

      He grinned at how neatly she had turned the subject away from herself. His own lack of responsibility had been a point of contention between him and his grandfather for years. Brian was trying hard to rectify that, so her observation pleased him. “Maybe the world wouldn’t be in such a mess if more people did.”

      Even more, he liked that she hadn’t turned all clinical on him about how little he saw. One more thing that made her easy to be around, made him aware of her as a woman. Too aware. Once more, he reminded himself this wasn’t the time to get involved with anyone.

      “Tell me about your foundation.” She threw the tennis ball for a couple of the dogs, grinning as the big sissy-looking poodle in the red sweater flew into the air to catch one. “Why is it named the Beanstalk Gang?”

      “Because it was my favorite story when I was a boy,” Brian said. “I think we’re all given the equivalent of magic beans somewhere along the way in the form of opportunities—which are usually disguised as hard work—or advantages, like a talent to sing or play ball or be great with a computer. It’s what we do with those things that count. But, the story is also cautionary. Jack followed a calling by climbing up the beanstalk, but he also caused himself a lot of trouble by stealing from the giant. I think it’s a reminder that kids have to learn responsibility and let go of thinking they’re entitled to anything. My grandfather always told me that for every privilege there’s an equal responsibility.”

      “The work you do there…you sound like you love it.”

      “It’s what I’m supposed to be doing,” he said simply, meaning it. At one point, he hadn’t been able to imagine his life after football. Then a high school buddy who was now a teacher had told him about all the trouble the school had begun having with gang violence and vandalism, something he traced back to the suspension of after-school programs after funding was cut. That conversation had sparked Brian’s imagination, and when he’d realized that he had the money—and fund-raising ability—to do something about the situation, he’d thrown himself into the project, more satisfied with the charity work than he’d been about anything else in his life. Making such a confession to anyone, though, made him sound like some self-righteous do-gooder, and that wasn’t the case at all.

      The newspaper article that had been in the paper last week was mostly accurate, a nice change for him, and it had done exactly what he had hoped in raising awareness—and money. The foundation Web site had received ten times the number of hits since the article, and the donations had gone way up.

      He turned his head to look at Angela, not knowing what else to say that wouldn’t make him sound like some self-aggrandizing celebrity calling attention to himself.

      “I feel that way about training service dogs,” she said.

      The fact that she didn’t pry a bit surprised him. Pleased him.

      They didn’t talk for a couple of minutes while they continued to play catch and fetch with the dogs. Angela was good company, quite unlike the women he used to spend time with. He had liked girls with flash, second only to playing football. When he was younger, the key to success with both sports and girls was being bigger, stronger than the other guys. He’d known taking steroids was wrong, but at the time he’d had the misguided idea that the end justified the means. Twenty years later, he was paying the price.

      Forcing his attention away from those gloomy thoughts to the dogs playing in front of them, he sized up each one. The poodle in the sweater kept coming into his line of vision, and Brian decided it was a good thing the dog was wearing a sweater. Otherwise, he would have looked like a seventy-pound rat. The most alluring dog of the group was Polly, the dog he had met yesterday, even though he knew she was being trained to help someone else. He also really liked the golden retriever and the Lab mix.

      With effort, he returned his thoughts to the topic Angela had started. “The work of the foundation—that’s the thing that drives me,” he finally said. “I have a few months left before most of my vision is gone if I’m lucky, days if I’m not. In the meantime, I want to get as much set up as I can.” He looked around at the dogs, able to imagine all of them except the poodle as his guide dog. “Is there a chance I could have one of these dogs?”

      She nodded, a smile making her eyes light. “Polly, Bailey and Checkers are being trained for hearing-impaired owners. Gatsby and Jasper are being trained for the blind. Gatsby is already spoken for.”

      “That leaves Jasper,” he said.

      “It does. Why don’t you call him?”

      Brian did, and the prissy poodle in the red sweater came to sit in front of him.

      THREE

      “He has purple hair,” Brian said, looking at the dog, who stared right back at him with dark, intelligent eyes. He had the fleeting impression that the dog was sizing him up—and that he might come up lacking.

      “Disgusting, isn’t it,” Angela agreed cheerfully. “He just had a haircut, so most of it is gone. You should have seen him when he first got here. A full continental cut and purple from his head to the pom-pom on his tail.”

      “So he’ll be white when the last of this is cut off?”

      “Yes. His previous owner thought he was a fashion accessory, not a dog.” Angela came to stand next to Brian, the top of her head just at his shoulder. “Imagine how humiliating it would be to be dyed purple so you go with an outfit, then taken to a function where you’re supposed to act like a stuffed dog.”

      “Sounds bad.”

      The dog appeared to wink, which made Brian grin, though he still couldn’t believe that Angela saw him with this particular dog.

      “It gets worse,” Angela assured him. “This was an outdoor affair, a fashion show. There was a close-by bolt of lightning and a huge crack of thunder. Jasper’s owner screamed and dropped his leash. Rain started falling in buckets, and Jasper, exercising good sense, headed for the nearest shelter—the buffet table.”

      “That couldn’t have been good.”

      “It wasn’t,” Angela said, glancing at him. “The hero of our sad tale—”

      Unable to resist, Brian teased, “Would that be tail with an i or—”

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