Karen Whiddon - Wolf Whisperer

She wasn’t going down without a fight.

Kelly watched as her unwanted visitor opened the car door. Without an umbrella, the tall, broad-shouldered figure pulled up the hood of his jacket as protection against the downpour before striding up the path. She noted he didn’t even flinch as the brisk wind slapped the cold rain at him like a sodden whip. Something about his bearing said military. Great. Another one of those Protectors. The last thing she wanted or needed.

As the stranger stepped up onto her covered porch and lowered his hood, Kelly got her second shock of the day. Even drenched, the man was beautiful. Breathtakingly, stop-your-heart gorgeous. Worse, she’d seen his face somewhere—in her dreams perhaps? She didn’t remember.

To her shock and disbelief, she felt her body stir to life deep inside. While she tried to grapple with this unpleasant surprise, she drew her weapon, pointing it directly at his heart.

“Inside,” she ordered. “Hands where I can see them.”

Dear Reader,

Because I support numerous animal rescue organisations, this topic is very close to my heart. When I wrote The Wolf Whisperer and I learned the heroine Kelly McKenzie was a shape-shifter who ran a dog rescue ranch, I was thrilled.

Every single day, whether on social media or on the news, I hear another horrific story about animal abuse or neglect. This breaks my heart. I do what I can, giving donations when I’m able, and offering my support in other ways. Eventually, I hope to become a foster parent for rescued Boxers with Legacy Boxer Rescue, a fantastic organisation in my area.

As a dog rescuer, Kelly has a big heart. She gives her love and compassion freely, even to Mac Lamonda, a man who is actually her enemy. She never could resist a wounded animal, even one whose wounds are strictly internal. As for Mac, dare he accept the healing she offers, since her people are the ones who have stolen his children?

I enjoyed writing Mac and Kelly’s story and watching them grow as they overcame the obstacles fate placed in their path. I hope you enjoy reading about their journey.

Happy reading,

Karen Whiddon

KAREN WHIDDONstarted weaving fanciful tales for her younger brothers at the age of eleven. Amidst the Catskill Mountains of New York, then the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, she fuelled her imagination with the natural beauty of the rugged peaks and spun stories of love that captivated her family’s attention.

Karen now lives in north Texas, where she shares her life with her very own hero of a husband and three doting dogs. Also an entrepreneur, she divides her time between the business she started and writing the contemporary romantic suspense and paranormal romances that readers enjoy. You can e-mail Karen at KWhiddon1@ aol.com or write to her at PO Box 820807, Fort Worth, TX 76182, USA. Fans of her writing can also check out her website, www.karenwhiddon.com.

Wolf Whisperer

Karen Whiddon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Legacy Boxer Rescue of Hurst, Texas for all you do

to help abandoned and abused Boxers, offering love and

medical care, and best of all, hope. I salute you.

The three-legged dog with one torn ear raised his head, sniffing the air. When he looked at Kelly McKenzie, she could have sworn he gave her a canine smile. Kelly had rescued the mixed breed three months ago from the filthy backyard where he’d been kept, chained to a tree and nearly starved to death.

A bottle of Jack Daniels and ten dollars had been all it’d taken to persuade the mean-faced owner to part with the starving pup. No doubt the fury simmering in Kelly’s green eyes had helped convince him. The guy was lucky Kelly hadn’t shot him. Only the urgency of the dog’s condition and the fact that she couldn’t help any animals if she was locked in jail had prevented that. The rescue, the dog took precedence.

With skill and care and love, Kelly had nursed the abused canine back to health. After all, that’s what she did. Her calling. She rescued hurt dogs, some of them so mistreated that they lashed out in kind, unable to accept or understand love or kindness.

But not this one. This one had wagged his crooked stump of a tail as Kelly’d unchained him from the tree and lifted him into her arms. Normally, a dog of his type would weigh at least fifty pounds. He’d probably tipped the scale at thirty, at most. He’d felt like a bag of bones.

Bringing him first to her vet, then home, she’d tended to him, with the same quiet patience she gave all of her bruised and battered animals. This one she’d named Lucky and he’d responded to food and love—most likely received for the first time in his short life—with a single-minded devotion. Fully healed both inside and out, he’d proven to be smart and sweet and forgiving. He appeared to have completely forgotten his horrible past. Always at her side, Lucky became Kelly’s constant companion.

Or one of them. Glancing around at the six or seven dogs roaming the hilltop near her, she smiled. She always had several rescues she couldn’t let go of and didn’t rehome, because in one way or another, they were part of her. These beloved animals made up her personal dog pack, all the company she wanted or needed.

To say she kept to herself might have been the understatement of the year. But, by virtue of what she was, her solitary lifestyle wasn’t even a choice, it was a necessity. Actually, she’d grown used to it. Truthfully, she was happy and didn’t need anything—or anyone—else.

She stood on her land, with her dogs, watching as the sun began to brighten the horizon, and knew that life was good and full. Here in Wyoming at sunrise, even in late summer, the early-morning breeze skated down off the mountains, snapping at her skin with a chilly bite. If any time of day made Kelly want to wax poetic, sunrise would be it.

Her cell phone rang, startling her. Fumbling to get it out of her pocket, she answered.

“Kelly McKenzie?” The thick Scottish brogue was instantly recognizable even though she hadn’t spoken to her cousin Ian in years. Worse, this call was not only unprecedented, but strictly forbidden. Except in dire emergency.

“Ian? What’s happened?” Kelly asked, gripping the phone. “Is my mother all right?” The last time she’d seen Rose, she’d been grieving over the death of Kelly’s father, while faced with the necessity of sending the rest of her family away for good.

“Your mother is as well as can be expected, considering what’s happened. It’s Bonnie.” Ian took a deep breath, audible over the crackling phone line. “Your sister’s been captured. And no one can figure out who has her or where she’s been taken.”

Mac Lamonda despised driving in the rain. And of course, while on this assignment that he’d had to pull strings to get, right after his plane landed in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and he picked up the rental car, rain had begun to fall.

Big fat drops, the kind that almost hurt when they hit your skin. Cold, even though it was the end of August.

Naturally. He would have laughed at the irony if he wasn’t so damn exhausted. Exhausted and on edge, verging on furiously giddy. Driving in the rain was … bad luck. A frisson of remembrance skittered up the nape of his neck. People died. People had died, and he let himself remember that since, after all, he was on his way to finally start the wheels in motion to regain part of what he’d lost.