For the Heart of an Outlaw by T. S. Joyce

Author:T. S. Joyce [Joyce, T. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wicked Willow Press
Published: 2018-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

It was almost dark, and Karis had already cleaned the cabin from top to bottom, put all her clothes from her suitcase into the bottom two drawers Colt had cleared out, successfully ignored eight texts from Jackson, and made three grilled cheese sandwiches. All of this was her stalling like a champ to talk to Ava because, truth-be-told, she was embarrassed for panicking this morning.

Ava had seen her at a weak moment, and first impressions were important. Karis knew she needed to get out of the cabin and face Colt’s sister. And his squirrel.

Puttering air out of her cheeks, she grabbed her favorite blue scarf and made her way out the front door into the cold. Suspiciously, she looked around, but there were no rodent teeth aimed at her neck, so that was a victory. Movement caught her eye, and the little squirrel was up in the branches of the nearest pine, holding what looked like the crust off a piece of toast. She chewed languidly and glared at Karis as she passed.

“Good girl,” she murmured when she walked past the tree without bleeding. She walked backward, too nervous to give that little critter her back. Those little needle teeth hurt! She didn’t turn back around until halfway to the big house.

All the lights were off in Ava and Trigger’s house, and Karis’s sensitive ears picked up some racket coming from the barn, so she aimed her boots through the crunching snow past the big cabin. The barn was old, rustic, and made her smile because it seemed so homey—like everything else on the ranch. Every inch of this place had a lived-in feel. A warmth about it.

Karis made her way past a fenced-in area that had a white horse and a paint, trotting along the edge, blowing frozen breath with every snort. She pushed open the sliding door to the barn and was hit by the fragrant smell of animals and hay. It wasn’t unpleasant. Instead, it was familiar, like the horseback riding camp she’d gone to for a summer when she was a kid. To keep the heat in, she hurried to slide the door closed behind her. The barn was well lit, had a loft above, and a strange, red door with a wreath hanging from it at the back. There was a beautiful black horse in the first stall on the right, but when she went to pet it, the horse did what every other animal she’d met here did and snapped its teeth at her. She yanked her hand away just in time, and he kicked the stall with a boom!

“Beast,” she muttered, her feelings hurt by the hateful creature.

“That’s Harley,” Ava called as she came out of the second stall. She turned around just in time to block a little brown and cream-colored animal’s escape through the open stall door. “No, no, no, you were tired just a second ago, Norman.”

“Is that the baby reindeer?” Karis asked in a pitch way higher and girlier than she’d intended.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.