Million-Dollar Bride by Karen Toller Whittenburg

Author:Karen Toller Whittenburg [Karen Toller Whittenburg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459274808
Publisher: Harlequin

Chapter 8

One minute the farmyard was as peaceful as a Rockwell painting. The next minute it erupted in a torrent of noisy activity straight out of the Keystone Cops. Mack barely had time to realize the back door of the house was opening before he was under siege by a squeaking hair ball that flew around his ankles in a frenzied blur of nipping and yapping. Behind him, the chicken coop came alive, as chickens were startled out of their roost and into a crescendoing squawk by the yellow dog, which had found a way under the chicken wire and was now having a whopping good time in the henhouse. The porkers snuffed and snorted at being rudely awakened, and Mack let out a choked “Ow!” as the hair ball got a grip on his toe.

As he leaned down to rescue his extremity, he heard a whissssttt and felt something streak through the air across his bent, bare back. A pinging sound came from the tin roof of the pigsty, and with the snarling wad of fur clamped in his hand, he straightened and spun around in alarm…as a second whissssttt snapped past him at hip height.

“Hey!” he yelled, but his protest was no match for the barking yellow dog, the squawking chickens, the snorting pigs and the faint but fearful sound of a rifle being cocked.

“Get out of my henhouse, you yellow son of Satan!”

Whisssttt! Ping!

A BB gun, Mack thought as the pellet zinged past him and struck the tin roof of the chicken coop. Some damn fool was shooting at him with a BB gun. “Hey!” he yelled again, whirling to face the shooter.

Whisssttt! Ping! “I’m gonna teach you a lesson you ain’t never gonna forgit, you mangy chicken thief!”

Whisssttt! Ping!

“Stop! Don’t shoot! I’m holding your dog!” He pitched his voice above the fray and self-protectively lowered the yapping Yorkie into service as a fig leaf and shield. “And I’m not a chicken thief.”

There was a moment of reckoning, a cease-fire hardly recognizable amid the barnyard frenzy and then the cold, calculating click of the cocking lever.

“You put Mr. Silk down, stranger, or I swear I’ll shoot your eye out.”

Mack looked down and met a ferocious, beady-eyed glare. “Mr. Silk?” he said skeptically, and the tiny dog with a topknot bared his teeth, growling like a grizzly bear.

Whisssttt! This time the pellet zipped past Mack’s ear, but missed hitting either of the outbuildings.

“I ain’t whistling Dixie, stranger,” the woman called in a voice that meant business. “Now, put my dog down.”

“I will,” he said quickly. “I’ll do it, but first I need to tell you—”

“You ain’t in no position to bargain, Mister. Put him down!”

Mack debated for maybe half a second, while Mr. Silk’s growl grew into an ominous rattle. Then, holding the dog a careful distance from his all-too-vulnerable body, he bent to set down the Yorkie. But the closer they got to the ground, the fiercer the growl became.

“I’m not going to hurt you, fuzz ball.”

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.