Chapter 3
Later that evening, after a long walk home from work, I freshened up with a quick shower and went to bed in my bra and panties. I only ran the air conditioner for an hour or two and usually shut it off before bedtime. Despite the humidity, the days were beginning to get cooler. Thank God.
Trevor was right. The trailer park was creepy. It’s something I tried not to think about, but late at night when I heard rustling noises outside, it made me curl up and pull the sheets over my head. I never thought about stuff like that when Rose lived at home. Things had quieted down since the drug raid last year that took out some big dealer. Now there wasn’t as much traffic at all hours of the night, not to mention loud parties.
The third time I heard a high-pitched noise outside, I sat up with adrenaline pumping through my veins. The intensity of my heartbeat couldn’t be matched as I tiptoed to the front door and grabbed a long knife from the kitchen drawer. I drew the curtain back and peered outside.
The orange light from the lamppost illuminated the area around the barbecue grill and I spotted a shadow moving.
“Oh, no,” I whined. The shadow wasn’t a man-eating alien but a wounded animal. A stray dog limped a few steps before lying down on the muddy gravel.
I threw on a silk robe and slippers, careful not to make any sudden movements as I stepped outside. I crouched down and placed my fingertips on the ground, avoiding direct eye contact.
“Hi there. Did someone hurt you?”
I shuffled forward and he lifted his head, his snout wrinkling as he bared his sharp canines. As soon as I spoke in a calming voice, his savage expression vanished. If it’s one thing I knew about, it was how to placate an agitated animal. Years of practice.
“I’m not going to hurt you, sweetie. Can I just see? Bet I can help, and I have some leftovers inside you might like.” I kept my voice confident and soothing, knowing animals responded to tone and body language.
He was an intimidating creature. His breed resembled a Husky, but fierce, like what I imagined a wolf might look like. From what I could tell, his thick coat looked earthy brown and his face had all kinds of dark markings on it. It was an unusual pattern for a dog, but boy, was he a looker. He was also well fed, which led me to believe someone cared for him and he was domesticated.
“Come inside?” I clicked my tongue three times.
He wasn’t going to be a submissive fella, so I slowly backed up and walked inside my brightly lit trailer. It looked welcoming from the outside, and I’m sure he could smell the cheeseburgers I’d cooked up earlier.
“Come on, tough boy.”
My grandma used to say I was crazy for letting wild animals in the trailer.
Bat crazy.
She’d made me keep them outside, which is why some of them had died. I’d been a fearless child who had a penchant for helping injured animals. Every wild thing deserves tenderness even if it doesn’t want it. The thing is, I’d always been good about reading animals. My dad used to say I was Doctor Dolittle in a past life—that some people were born with more compassion for all of God’s creatures. I felt more connected to animals than I did to people because I understood their basic emotions. I’d once saved a jackrabbit from a feral cat with a voracious appetite, but because I was forced to keep it outside, a red-tailed hawk had dined on him for breakfast the next morning. That had upset me, even though I couldn’t blame the hawk for having survival instincts.
I kicked off my slippers and left the door ajar, breaking off a few pieces of meat and placing them near the door. Either he’d come in or he wouldn’t. The choice was his.
Ten minutes later, a noise startled me. I turned my paperback facedown on the tiny kitchen table to the right of the sink. A steady growl rumbled in the quiet room. Not a menacing one, just the kind that told me he was hurt and too stubborn to admit it. Coming inside the trailer proved he wasn’t aggressive; animals acted violently out of fear, and feral ones stayed away from humans. If he walked up those steps on his own, he had a fearless heart. He wouldn’t be the first dog I had let inside the house. Trevor once suggested that I get a job working in a zoo.
I laughed and told him I already worked in one.
The dog’s toenails clicked on the floor and I got an eyeful of his enormous size. I briefly entertained the thought of locking myself in the bathroom, but decided it wouldn’t be in my best interest to show fear and run. After polishing off every morsel on the floor, he lifted his nose and sniffed in my direction, his tail wagging lightly. I kept my eyes glued to the table so he wouldn’t perceive me as a threat.
“Change your mind?” I asked softly. “Good boy.”
His wet nose glided across my left arm and I shivered. I sat motionless, allowing him to check me out even though a small voice in my head was whispering, You’re a certifiable idiot. You just let the Big Bad Wolf in, whetted his appetite with hamburger meat, and now you’re going to become the main course.
The poor thing limped in a circle and collapsed on his right side. He looked barely conscious, panting the way an animal does when it’s in pain. I circled around him and locked the door.
“Oh, baby. What happened?”
I knelt down and ran my long fingers through his silky fur. His face relaxed at my touch and while I couldn’t see any blood, his front leg was curled in a peculiar position. When I gently lifted his heavy paw and peered underneath, I saw why.
Instinctively, I began humming a made-up melody to keep him calm. Lodged deep in his upper leg was a screwdriver. It made me steaming mad to imagine that someone could have impaled him intentionally; we had sickos in the area notorious for animal cruelty. The brown handle protruded from the inside of his leg and the spike angled toward the back. I bent over to make sure it hadn’t gone into his chest cavity, but it looked clear. His dense fur made a close examination difficult. I couldn’t call animal control because they would only put him down.
My hands trembled and I took a deep breath. I had to pull it out, and that would snap him out of his placid state of semiconsciousness, and he’d be looking for someone to bite.
“How did this happen?”
He refused to answer the question.
I slipped out of my robe and decided the best thing to do was cover his head so he wouldn’t see me when I pulled it out.
Kneeling before him in my bra and panties, I draped my silky robe across his back, sliding it over his face until it obscured his view. I wrapped my fingers around the handle, ready to pull it out with lightning speed. At least I had medical insurance, even though the deductible was outrageous.
“Here we go,” I whispered. Then I did a mental countdown. One… two… three!
In a clean motion, I yanked the handle and pulled the screwdriver free.
He yelped and growled all at once. The wolf flipped onto his feet and the robe fell away, revealing one pissed-off animal. I scrambled backward, holding the bloody screwdriver in self-defense.
He limped forward, tracking blood with each step as his brown eyes locked on mine like a target.
This was it. I was going to be one of those sad-o’clock news stories about a lonely woman found mauled to death in her bra and panties. Then they’d go to commercial and talk about squeezably soft toilet paper.
“I’m so sorry,” I said in a shaky voice, lying on my back as he reached my legs and then my hips. “You had a bad thing happen, and I’m… Please don’t hurt me.”
In that moment, I was either going to be ripped to shreds by an incensed wolf, or I was going to kill an animal to save my life—something I’d never done.
My fingers gripped the handle tightly and I tensed, preparing for the inevitable attack.
Tension mounted.
I couldn’t breathe and kept thinking about my sister.
The wolf lurched forward and fell beside me, resting his chin on my left arm. After two short wags of his tail, his tongue stretched out and licked the bottom of my jaw. I sighed dramatically and stared at the ceiling in relief.
“Just another exciting night in the life of April Frost,” I said, laughing with tears hovering at the corners of my eyes.
That was the night a fierce and beautiful creature walked into my life and changed it forever.
The next morning, I sleepily crawled out of bed and brushed my teeth. I made a mental note to pick up toothpaste on my next trip to the store since I had all but sat on the tube to get a smidge on my brush. My wild encounter the previous evening had slipped my mind and I went about my morning routine. When I suddenly remembered, I burst into the hall and found the wolf asleep in my kitchen.
Just as I’d left him. Lying on top of my grandma’s blue blanket, a bandage wrapped around his wound, which I’d carefully cleaned before going to bed. He wasn’t showing any signs of sickness and seemed to be almost smiling in his sleep.
I set a pan on the stove and heated up a few slices of sausage. If he planned to become a regular tenant, then I needed to pick up dog food from the grocery store.
He still had his eyes closed when I sat down to eat. What a gorgeous animal. His large, heavy paws were crossed in front of him, giving off a regal aura. I’d never seen such an unusual pattern as the dark mask that covered his face. He must have been a mixed breed, because wolves didn’t live in Austin. I’d heard of coyote sightings, but they were smaller and more skittish of people.
“Are you hungry? I’ll share what I have with you.”
His brown eye popped open as if he’d been listening all along. The nose-twitching led me to believe he was famished, despite his indifferent demeanor. But when I held out my sausage, he made no attempt to lunge and gobble it up.
Peculiar.
Lexi sent a message on my phone asking me to hurry my ass up—in those exact words. Which meant I’d overslept.
“Shoot,” I grumbled, scratching my wolf behind his ear. My life was just getting too weird.
***
“April, can I see you for a second?” Lexi tugged the hem of my orange work shirt and dragged me away from a customer. I knocked over a counter display of Pop Rocks, but we both ignored it.
“What’s up?” I leaned against the vending machine and her eyes pretty much scraped me from head to toe. I tried to pretend I had no idea what she was about to say.
But I did.
“You cannot walk around the store looking like you just crawled out of a Vietnam War movie. Don’t you have a change of shoes? It looks like you’ve been to boot camp and then ran through a jungle.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll rinse them in the sink again,” I said, staring at my white sneakers.
Which were now my brown sneakers.
“Look, I have a pair of sandals in my car you can borrow. Austin’s funny like that. He helped me pick out a new car and lately he’s been obsessed with stocking it for every kind of emergency imaginable. Blankets, clothes, bandages, flares, and even food,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “So if an asteroid wipes out the planet, I’m good to go because I have a bag of jerky and peroxide.”
“I think I saw your boyfriend’s brother yesterday,” I said, changing the subject.
“Who, Denver?”
“No. The guy with the motorcycle.”
A smile wound up her face and Lexi flipped her long hair behind her shoulder. “Ah, you mean Mr. Mysterious. Where did you run into Reno?”
“Oh, we didn’t speak. He was walking outside a store.”
“Did he talk to you?”
What she really wanted to know was if I went flying over a newspaper stand or knocked an old lady down.
“No, I was in the car.”
Lexi folded her arms. “What car? You don’t have one.”
“Trevor’s. He’s a close friend of mine. He’s been in the store a few times. You complimented his belt and he liked that. Nobody ever notices stuff like belts and it was one of his favorites.”
“Yeah… I remember now. The belt is probably the first thing I notice on a guy, kind of a habit. He was pretty cool—sexy from what I recall, but polite. You two, uh…” She pursed her lips and her eyes slid down.
“Jeez, Lexi. Can’t I just have a male friend and it not be a thing?” I peeled off my shoes and tossed them to the side. “You better grab those sandals for me; I don’t want to keep our customers waiting.”
Her smile waned. “Charlie made a good choice hiring you, April. Thanks for not bailing on me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I sat on the bench, watching Lexi cut through the store.
When Charlie died, he’d left her a mess of legal documents to sort through. Lexi had e-mailed me some of the files since she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. I’d found the inventory records as well as the vendors he worked with. Over the past few nights—perhaps out of boredom—I’d been examining those files a little closer. There were odd withdrawals in the account I couldn’t find any explanation for. Maybe it was for charity, but it was always the same amount every time. Lexi had been given access to his house to pick up a set of keys and anything else she needed. Charlie had left a comment in his will that everything in the office was hers for the taking. She’d found a ledger, files, and a few extra flash drives I’d copied to my computer. It felt good to know she trusted me—partly because of my education, but mostly because Charlie had always touted that I was going to make waves someday with my skills.
He was the closest I’d had to a father figure in a long time. I’d enjoyed our afternoon conversations in the shop before he started working more from home. Charlie had a great laugh and loved to talk about history. My real dad was the most amazing man I’d ever known, but he’d died in a car accident when I was fifteen.
“I think that’s a sexy look; barefoot really works for you.”
I glanced up at Denver. He smiled at my feet and nibbled on his bottom lip. My first reaction was to pull my legs under the bench since I hadn’t painted my toenails that week and the blue polish was chipping.
I frowned when I noticed his cupped hand holding a colorful assortment of sour candy.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked.
I tipped my head toward the corner of the room and he noticed the dirty pile.
“So you walk to work. No car?”
“The transmission died. At least, that’s what the mechanic told me. I don’t know anything about cars except how to turn them on.”
“Hmm,” he pondered, popping a green candy into his mouth with a sly smile. “I’d say knowing how to turn something on is pretty important.”
Dang, I was staring. I lowered my eyes to his flat sneakers and noticed his legs. He had on a pair of knee-length cargo shorts and jeez, what calves! Denver must have spent time outside because he had a warm tan and strong legs. His frame was average, but he filled out just right.
“Are you here to save the day again?”
“I might,” he contemplated, nibbling another piece of candy and staring at my legs.
“Denny! Lexi said I could have a bag of candy, but I can’t reach the big round ones,” a blond-haired girl whined, tugging at his shirt.
“No hard candy, Peanut,” he said in a firm voice. “What did I tell you about that?”
“But it doesn’t hurt.” She pointed at her new missing tooth.
Denver rubbed a worried look off his face.
I’d met Maizy a couple of times; she was Lexi’s six-year-old little sister with a candy obsession. She was charming and sweet, so I couldn’t help but sneak a piece to her now and again. Maizy appeared so innocent compared to some of the kids who wandered in our store. She sometimes played by herself in a corner while her mom talked to Lexi, and a few times she’d brought in a wand. It seemed a little immature for her age, but I found it endearing. It’s a sad day when children realize magic doesn’t exist and they have to grow up.
“Hi, Miss April.”
“Hi, sugar. You’re getting so tall,” I said with a dramatic gasp. “You grow faster than a wildflower!”
She laughed and ran back into the shop.
“You’re good with kids,” he said, complimenting me.
“Is she okay?”
Denver stuffed his free hand in one of his front pockets. “She banged her tooth hard enough they had to pull it. Good thing it was a baby tooth, but the dentist isn’t sure if it’s caused any damage for when her real tooth grows in.”
I smiled softly. “She seems to like you.”
He shrugged and turned his head to the side. “I look after her. Kids should be protected from the lowlifes in this world. Her dad’s not around, and Austin’s not in a position where he can devote that kind of time.”
“That’s sweet of you to do. I’m sure Lexi’s mom appreciates a little help.”
Denver inhaled sharply and the conversation shifted gears. “One of my brothers is missing. I dropped by to see if Lexi would watch Maizy for about an hour while I look for him. I had to take her to the dentist, but I don’t want to drive her home and have to come all the way back into town. I know you’ve met the twins, have you ever met Reno?”
I chewed my lip. “Guy with the short brown hair who wears sunglasses all the time? Muscular arms and…”
Then I blushed and looked down so fast that my bangs covered my face. My inner monologue started up again. Yeah, tell him just how hot his brother is. Then he might go for you because that’s what every guy wants to hear.
Denver lifted his cupped hand to his mouth and slid all the candy in, talking with a mouthful. He wiped his hand across his T-shirt. “That’s probably him. He’s not a man who falls out of touch, and we’re a tight family who keeps tabs on one another. Seen him?”
“He was at Walgreens yesterday on his bike. Maybe he was at a party or left his phone off the hook. Sometimes I turn mine off when I just want to sleep in.”
Denver sniffed out a laugh. “We all live together and his bed is made up so tight you could crack an egg on it.”
“You all live in the same house?” Lexi had talked about Austin’s brothers, but I’d assumed only one or two lived there, not the entire family.
He slowly ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “Yep. Don’t you live with anyone?”
“My fish.”
“Ah, is that so? Well, I hope he’s a fintastic roommate.”
“Here, April,” Lexi said, tossing me a pair of sandals. “They might be too big for your feet, but that’ll get you through the day. Did you walk all the way up here? I thought you took the bus?”
“I just stepped in some mud is all.”
Maizy ambled in, chewing on a wad of red gum.
“Maze, do you feel like treasure hunting today?” Lexi asked.
Maizy ignored her and Denver shot Lexi a private glare. “You need to give that shit up,” he said with a pop of his brow.
Lexi sighed and began tapping her fingernails against the doorjamb.
“Did Reno say anything to you?” Denver continued.
“No. I just saw him park his bike and go into the store.”
“The f*ck?” Denver exclaimed in frustration, throwing up his arms. Lexi covered her little sister’s ear and had one of those pissed-off smiles that told me she’d tried a dozen times to get him to curb his language around Maizy. “He wants tabs on every single one of us, but he thinks he can just cut loose and…” Denver thinned his lips and made a sharp noise with them that made Maizy giggle.
Lexi didn’t seem as worried about Reno as Denver was.
“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” I promised.
Denver stared privately at Lexi. “Did you invite her?”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “We’re having a house party on Friday. It took some time to settle in, but we wanted to have a big barbecue and throw on some music. You have to come. I know you don’t normally do these, but you’ve been such a big help to me these past few months, April. If we’re going to be running this shop together, then I think we need to hang out. What do you say?”
“Um, I don’t know.” I hesitated. I really wanted to go more than anything, but the transportation conundrum was a real party killer. “Where?”
She fed me the location and I knew I couldn’t go. Buses didn’t run out there and no way could I walk that far. Trevor might not be back by then and who knew if he’d want to go?
“I think I have something planned, but I’ll let you know.”
“I smell bullshit,” Denver sang in a low voice. “If you don’t have a ride, I’ll come get you, but you’re coming,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “Let me know if you see Reno. He’s always forgetting his damn phone, but it’s just not like him to vanish.”
“Sure thing.”
SIX MONTHS_(A Seven Series Novel Book 2)
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