AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
W hoever was banging on my door was in for a rude awakening. Angry didn’t even begin to describe the feeling that rocked through me as I blearily looked at the clock and saw that it was just after one thirty in the morning. Sadie was barking her ass off as I carefully stepped down onto the first floor, my bare feet padding along the hardwood.
“Sadie,” I hissed at my german shepherd as she sat in front of the door barking and slamming her front paws against the ground. “Is there a bad guy out there?” I whispered.
My heart started to beat a little faster and I inched the curtain aside, peering out through the side window at the thin silhouette of a man holding something in his hands.
“What do you want?” I called warily through the door.
“Um, I, uh, have an injured dog out here. I don’t know what to do with it,” was the response.
I wasn’t buying it. Not at such a late hour. “Bring it to the vet.”
“It’s one thirty in the morning!”
“Yet here you are knocking on my door.”
But then I heard it. The small, barely audible whimpers of a puppy came through the door and my heart softened a little. Sadie’s tail wagged at the prospect of a new friend and I waved my hand, silently demanding she go lay on the couch. She did, resting her big head on the arm of the couch and watching as I unlocked the door.
“I’m letting you know that I have a trained attack dog. If you try anything funny then she’ll, you know, attack you.”
I could have sworn I heard laughter before he said “Deal.”
I opened the door a crack and flipped the outside light on, watching as a lanky man with shaggy blonde hair blinked rapidly against the sudden onslaught of light. His dark brown eyes met mine and he shot me a glare. “A little warning would have been nice.”
Pulling my bathrobe tighter around me I rolled my eyes and opened the door a little wider. “You know I’m not a vet, right?”
“Yeah, but you always have animals coming in and out of here and you work at that farm.”
Water sloshed against the sides of my home and under the dock my surprise guest was standing on. It was late and the early November chill was wrapping around me. I looked at the man again and tried to place him. There was something familiar about him and it was right on the tip of my tongue…
“You’re that stoner that lives three houses down,” I said, my eyes narrowed as I sized him up.
His jaw clenched. “I’m not a stoner.”
I was about to respond that I’d seen him smoking a joint on his back deck multiple times when a small whimper erupted from the wrapped up flannel in his arms.
I had a soft spot for animals and always had. When I was a child, I was always bringing home injured birds and stray cats. It made Gran want to tear her hair out, but she never made me leave them outside. She always tried to help me help them even when neither one of us knew was we were doing. She told me I had a gift and I never knew what she meant until I was an adult. I had a gift of compassion, something that Gran said the world was severely lacking. She told me to hold it close to me because people would try to take it away.
No one was going to steal my gift.
I reached out and pulled back a corner of the soft red and black flannel to see icy blue eyes and a wet black nose. Dried blood coated the mutt’s fur and the sadness in its eyes was palpable.
“Hi, pup,” I whispered and reached out at the same time the man extended his arms, slipping the puppy- who couldn’t have weighed more than a handful of pounds- into my arms. The dog yawned and hunkered down into the shirt, showing off its forehead and the large open wound that lay close to its floppy left ear.
I shot a glare at the man in front of me and took a step back. “If I find out you had something to do with this I will have you thrown in jail so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
He pointed a slim finger at me. “Hey, I would never do this to an animal and I don’t like the implication that you think I would. It was sitting at my damn doorstep when I got home. What kind of person do you think I am?”
“The kind of person who shows up at a stranger’s door in the middle of the night with an injured dog.”
He opened his mouth to respond and then shut it.
“Listen,” I started and hugged the dog closer to my chest. “Thank you for bringing the dog here. I’ll take care of it. Have a nice night.”
I was in the middle of kicking the door shut when a dirty high top toed its way between the door and doorframe. Sadie was immediately on alert, sitting up on the couch with her black ears pointing sky high.
“I’m not leaving. That’s my dog.”
I arched a brow. “You just said that it was sitting at your doorstep.”
He huffed out a frustrated breath and placed his palms against the doorframe. It was then that I noticed the dark circles under his eyes and his slumped frame. The man, whoever he was, looked as though he hadn’t slept in more than a week.
But he’s beautiful.
I shushed the voice in my head even though I knew it was true. He was beautiful in a grungy, tortured artist kind of way with his slightly curly blonde hair and hollowed out cheeks. A long, straight nose complimented his heart shaped mouth and I could see the dark ink of a tattoo peeking out of the collar of his shirt. He was definitely good looking, definitely dangerous and definitely glaring at me like he hated everything about me.
“I’m not leaving the dog. I found it, it’s mine. I either come in there or I take it back home with me and bring it to a vet in the morning.”
Weighing my options, I looked down at the ground. On one hand, I could let him in and allow him to watch me clean the wounds and figure out the damage so he would know what to do. Or, I could easily hand the dog back to him and wash my hands of the whole thing. After all, it wasn’t my responsibility.
You have a gift, Gran’s voice echoed in my mind. Don’t let anyone steal it from you.
I growled, actually growled, and then took a step forward. “
