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Coming Home to Magnolia Bay

Welcome to Magnolia Bay Book 3

by Babette De Jongh

Genre: Small Town Contemporary Romance

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People and pets find their forever homes in this charming small-town romance from Babette de Jongh featuring:

*A single mom doing her best

*Her young son who needs a helping hand

*An animal trainer who might be the answer to their troubles

*A bustling animal rescue where everyone gets a second chance

*The magic of humans who know how to communicate with animals

Sara Prescott’s eight-year-old son Max wants a dog. But their apartment doesn’t allow pets, and the divorced single mom can’t afford the certified seizure-alert dog Max needs. Instead, she and Max volunteer at the Furever Love Animal Shelter. Max forms a special bond with Jett, a big black bully breed and three-time loser who keeps getting dumped.

Animal Trainer Justin Reed comes back home to Magnolia Bay and visits the shelter to find a dog actor for a TV series set in nearby New Orleans. Justin chooses Jett, but the shelter’s director rejects his application because Jett needs a finally-forever home, not a job with an end date. The shelter’s resident animal communicator proposes a win-win. Justin can use Jett as an animal actor if he also trains Jett as a service dog for Max.

Sara and Justin have no business indulging their mutual attraction. Sara is focused on her son, and Justin will be leaving soon. But Max and Jett have other ideas…

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 Excerpt from Coming Home to Magnolia Bay. The hero’s lost dog, Jett, learns that people can’t be trusted:

Jett reached for the savory-smelling meat, but all he got was a mouthful of air. The man dropped the meat and grabbed Jett’s collar, then whipped the hidden rope around his neck.

Jett tried to back out of the man’s grip, but he held firm, working to tie the rope to Jett’s collar. The big man was strong, but Jett was determined. He had almost backed out of his collar when some instinct told him that the collar was a link between him and his family. He stopped backing up and surged forward instead, knocking the man onto his butt. The light the man held flew through the air, and the rope slipped free.

Jett bolted into the darkness. He struggled through shallow, boggy fields of dark-smelling mud that his paws sank into. Tall plants hid all the landmarks and scent markers and pathways he’d thought he was following. Snakes slid through the marshy watery patches.

Alligators bellowed.

Coyotes howled.

Gunfire cracked.

The quick pop-pop-pop of gunshots happened once, then again. Jett cowered close to the ground until the crickets and frogs started singing again.

He slogged through soggy ground and tall weeds until he saw a light that didn’t come from the sun or the moon. The tall yellow sunburst in the dark sky wasn’t as far up as either of those. The yellow light hung off the side of a tall gray pole. An even bigger light—square and flat with a raised yellow blob and red squiggles in the center—hung between two thick black pillars at the top of the hill where a big white building sat like an upside-down box.

He crept closer, his muddy paws slipping on the steep grassy bank. The air smelled like cars and black roads and the powdery wings of bugs that flew around all the lights. Jett found a shadowed space behind the building where he could hide and rest and decide what to do next.

He closed his eyes and reached out to Max. A shining thread connected them.

But the thread didn’t lie neatly along the paths humans or animals might take to get from one place to another. And while Jett knew a lot about birds, he wasn’t one.

And the line that connected him to Max stretched over a wide, wild, uncrossable river.

Jett closed his eyes and tried to feel his way to Max. But instead, Jett felt Justin reaching out to him. Justin showed him a mixed-up wad of images and emotions and words. It all came at him like a rolled-up ball of twine. None of it made much sense because it was all clouded with fears and thoughts and emotions that Justin still carried from other times that had long since passed.

Humans hung on to those things.

Jett concentrated on unraveling the tangled messages Justin was sending. He came away with only one clear command to hang on to: If Jett would show himself to a trustworthy person and ask for help, they would be able to take him to Justin.

And then what? Jett wondered.

Justin promised that if Jett would come back to him, he would take Jett to see Max.

Jett sat up. He had to find a trustworthy person who was willing to help.

His only problem: There weren’t many of those around.

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Meet the animals that inspired characters in the Welcome to Magnolia Bay Series!

Book Three: Coming Home to Magnolia Bay:

 

This is a picture of my dog Jed, the inspiration for the dog in Coming Home to Magnolia Bay.
All the cats love to snuggle with Jed.

My dog Jed is the inspiration for Jett, the dog character in Coming Home to Magnolia Bay. I
found Jed and his two siblings after they’d been dumped on the side of a country road. I was
driving into town when I saw these little ears popping up over the tall grass as the puppies
bounded toward my car. I could imagine their little voices calling out, “Hey, wait for us!” I pulled
over and got out of the car. At first, I thought, “How cute! They are covered in white spots! I
wonder what kind of dogs they are?” They looked, from a distance, like African Spotted Dogs.
But as they got closer, I realized that those white spots weren’t fur. They were the crusty, smelly
scabs caused by Demodectic mites, also known as mange. I opened the back door of the car
and said, “Get in.” The puppies didn’t hesitate. They boiled into the back seat of my car as fast
as they could. I drove them straight to the vet, hoping they’d take the puppies, since the vet was
(and still is) acting as the local animal shelter. But the vet shook his head. “The mange is too
bad. It takes too long and costs too much to treat. They’ll have to be euthanized.” So, of course,
I had them all vaccinated, bought the first round of mange treatment, and took them home with
me. As soon as the mange cleared up, I found homes for the other two puppies (Jethro and Ellie
May). Ellie looked like a chocolate lab, and Jethro was a handsome two-month-old puppy with a
sleek black coat and a small white blaze on his chest. But Jed had developed a skin infection,
so he was six months old by the time he was ready to adopt-out. By then, he had become just
another solid-black, half-grown dog who nobody wanted. Believe me, I tried. I offered Jed to
everyone I knew. I tried to give him away at least a hundred times. But nobody wanted a big
black dog. So, Jed became my dog. He is, and always has been, a Best Good Boy. But nobody
—not even me—recognized it. Because until I finally fell in love with him after a year of
resistance, he was just another big black dog nobody wanted.

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Magnolia Bay Memories