Daring to Fall

by T. J. Kline

  “Nope.” She squeezed one paw gently, peering at his nails.

  “What do you mean, ‘nope’? Trust me, I’m the one who had to climb up there to get him down. I’ve probably still got bark on my butt to prove it.” He almost asked if she wanted to check for him but she didn’t seem like she was in a playful, teasing kind of mood and he didn’t want to push his luck right now.

  She might be adorable with her tiny stature but he had a feeling, if she was anything like her father, her temper matched her rich auburn hair—fiery. The long tresses drew his gaze again. She had it pulled back into a practical ponytail but that didn’t stop it from catching the light coming through the window, making it shimmer. He almost reached out to touch it to see if it would burn his hand but she shot him a knowing smile, her sea-green eyes meeting his.

  “And you have a little drool right there.” She pointed at his chin and looked back at the kitten as if she’d hadn’t just thrown his own words back at him.

  Maybe he was wrong about her mood.

  Ben laughed loudly, startling the kitten and she frowned at him, scooping the little guy into her arm and shuttling him to one of four empty kennels in the corner. “Keep an eye on him for just a second. I’ll be right back.”

  Without waiting for his answer, she hurried out of the room, leaving him alone with the kitten again. Immediately, the little fur ball began yowling.

  “Really? Again with the noise?” Wishing he knew what to do to soothe the animal, he tried to ignore it, wandering around the room instead, looking back at the miserable kitten helplessly.

  It had been a few years since he’d come back to this room with her father after Ben rescued a pregnant opossum that had been hit by a car. She hadn’t changed anything since her arrival after Conrad’s death, which surprised him because most of the town was talking about how she wanted to change everything. Of course, Hidden Falls was a small town and you couldn’t always trust the rumor mill.

  But news traveled fast around town and he usually managed to keep a steady finger on the pulse of the place. Since people assumed police and firemen needed to know all the latest gossip, there wasn’t much that went on that either he or his brother Andrew weren’t the first to hear, whether they really wanted to or not. He’d heard plenty of talk about how she was taking over the operation of the sanctuary from Jake who everyone had assumed would run Sierra Tracks since he’d been Conrad’s right hand. Not to mention the speculations about her qualifications. But looking the way she did, all those curves and luminescent blue-green eyes, he was shocked that didn’t have tongues wagging and men falling all over themselves to get out here. She was beautiful, exotic-looking with her dark red hair and large, round eyes, but there was something in them that seemed to warn him to keep his distance. Which only made him curious about her.

  He’d taken a gamble and just shown up, not even sure the place was open. He’d been worried he’d get stuck with the kitten when he found it locked and no one in sight.

  “Here we go.”

  She came back in with a small bottle and plucked the kitten from the crate. Ben watched the cat begin sucking at the nipple eagerly, letting his gaze stray to the woman feeding the kitten.

  She was so at ease with the cat yet seemed so uncomfortable with his presence. She cast him a quick glance, looking away just as quickly. She looked almost as skittish as the kitten and he found himself wanting to prove she didn’t need to be wary of him.

  Slow your roll, Romeo. You’re here to drop off a kitten and that’s it.

  Ben recognized the logic in his thoughts. He’d sworn off women after his last relationship had ended so disastrously. He didn’t need any women complications and should just get his ass to the station.

  “So, since it looks like you’ve got this all under control . . .”

  “Were there anymore?”

  “More? Why would there be more?”

  “Because this little guy shouldn’t be away from his mother. He’s too young so, more than likely, he was put in that tree. He physically doesn’t have the strength to climb that high yet.”

  “Maybe there was a predator nearby so the mother carried the kitten up there,” he suggested.

  “Which means she left the rest? Where?” She shook her head. “Bobcats usually have two or three per litter so he has siblings somewhere, unless he belonged to someone as an illegal pet.” She shook her head and looked down at the hungry kitten. “I’m telling you, someone put this little guy up into that tree.”

  Her dainty jaw clenched and her brow furrowed with concern. Ben would have to be blind not to see how much she cared about animals but that didn’t mean there was someone out there, shoving cats in a tree for fun. Although, he knew better than most the stupid pranks teens pulled these days. It wouldn’t be the first animal cruelty case he’d ever seen.

  “Why would someone do that, especially if he was a pet? What purpose would that possibly serve?” Ben crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for her to elaborate.

  “I don’t know. But I do know he didn’t get up there on his own. His claws would have been torn up. Because his nails are still soft, see?” She pressed the pad of the kitten’s foot to show him. “But his aren’t which means he didn’t do any climbing.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong about his age.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “I’m a vet. I think I can accurately age a kitten.”

  Ben’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he tugged it out, glancing at the screen.

  You coming in sometime today or what?

  Angie, one of his crew and his ex. He really needed to head to the station but he hated to leave her in a lurch but, if Angie’s text was any indicator, he was pushing the limit of his captain’s patience. Duty called and that didn’t include taking time off to flirt with Conrad Jordan’s daughter, even if she did have some damn sexy curves.

  Ben stopped his train of thought before it got any further down the track. Emma Jordan was a woman with her hands full. He didn’t need any complications. Regardless of how attracted he might be, Ben was old enough to know that curves like Emma’s indicated a need to slow down before things got dangerously out of control. He had enough danger on the job; he didn’t need it in his personal life, even if those turquoise eyes did make him want to let her take the wheel.

  “So, where are you heading now, Emma?” She turned to see Jake, her father’s assistant for the past five years, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen in the barn. “The birds need their first feeding of the day but now the cats are all behind since you’re playing nursemaid.”

  She sighed as she stopped midway across the room. “I know. I’m moving as fast as I can. I had to get our newest resident settled.”

  “The fireman? Or something different?”

  “Ha ha, funny.”

  She saw the disapproval in his face but that wasn’t anything unusual for Jake. He didn’t approve of much about her, never had and probably never would.

  Jake was only a few years older than she was but he’d been a huge help at the sanctuary for her father for the past five years and especially once her father had been forced to slow down after his first stroke last year. Unwilling to give up the sanctuary, he’d leaned on Jake even more since Emma was finishing up vet school and starting her job at the animal park. Jake had been a rock for her father when she couldn’t be there. Unfortunately, she and Jake had entirely different visions for what Sierra Tracks should be. He wanted it to be a strictly rehabilitation facility and, while she agreed that was her priority, Emma understood that they needed to keep the lights on and medication supplies up. Tours and educational programs paid the bills rehabilitation racked up.

  However, she couldn’t deny that, now that her father was gone, he was the only thing keeping this place running like clockwork. Emma wouldn’t have even known the animals’ schedules if not for him. But Jake knew she was dependent on him and seemed to be having a difficult time remembering she was managing this place, not
him. He had no qualms treating her like some pissant annoyance he’d rather do without.

  So far, she’d been able to keep him pacified with an abundance of compliments and praise, reminding him how she couldn’t operate the facility without him, but his disrespect was becoming more blatant instead of less and she had about reached the limit of her tolerance.

  “A bobcat kitten, looks about three or four weeks. I didn’t exactly have much of a choice. He wouldn’t survive if we didn’t take him in. But,” she pointed out, “he looks like a good candidate to be released again.”

  She didn’t miss the dubious raise of Jake’s brows or the way he pursed his lips. He didn’t believe her.

  “Don’t give me that look. Once he’s old enough we can put him into one of the indoor pens and then move him to the bigger pen outside in a few months.”

  “You mean, once he’s a pet?”

  “He’s not going to be a pet.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Sure, he won’t. You’ll have him jumping through hoops or teaching him some tricks before you know it,” he muttered.

  What was it with the men around here today?

  Emma sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm her temper before she blurted out something she’d just regret later. “Why don’t you feed the birds and I’ll do the cats. That way, I can try to get in touch with a few more donor prospects afterward.”

  “And leave me to do the shit work cleaning pens.” She watched Jake sulk out of the kitchen toward the area her father had turned into an aviary, muttering under his breath the entire way.

  Emma clenched her jaw, trying to keep her irritation with Jake at bay as she yanked a bag of raw chicken pieces and a bag of raw ground beef from the refrigerator. Dumping both into a bowl, she separated the mixture and weighed each bowl before adding the vitamins and minerals for each of the three cats on the property. She might not have spent the last three years rehabilitating wild animals but it didn’t mean that she was incompetent. Not only had she grown up helping her father, but she’d been volunteering at zoos since high school. She was the one who’d gone through vet school, not Jake. She didn’t need him getting judgmental because she’d spent the last year working as a veterinarian before taking a job as the head trainer at the animal equivalent of an amusement park. It wasn’t like she’d worked there long, only two months, when her father’s death had changed the direction of the future—both hers and that of the sanctuary—forcing her to quit and return to Sierra Tracks earlier than they’d planned.

  Loading the passenger seat of the golf cart with the bowls, she headed for the cats as they shuffled slowly back and forth in their cages. Buster was vocal, as always, protesting the late feeding, even as she slapped the ball of meat onto the concrete, pushing it into his cage. He pounced on the food, dragging it into the cage and devouring it in only a few bites.

  “You know, you aren’t the only one waiting,” she complained to the mountain lion, the tawny fur between his shoulder blades glistening like golden velvet. He glanced up at her with amber eyes as she slapped another piece of meat to the floor for him. He pulled it closer with a paw, his usual rumbling growl of pleasure sounding deep in his chest. “I didn’t even get my second cup of coffee yet.”

  She slapped the third ball of ground beef to the ground but Buster simply stared at her expectantly.

  “You can have the chicken after you eat this first.”

  He yowled loudly, as if he understood her, and she couldn’t help but smile. In some ways, these big cats were exactly like house pets, if you overlooked the nearly three inch claws and the extra hundred and twenty pounds. Jake might think she forgot she was dealing with wild animals but she would never make that mistake. Her father had taught her to respect all wildlife from an early age. She’d been taught from the time she could walk how to read their body language, groomed to take over this sanctuary from her birth. It was simply part of who she was.

  Buster finished eating the ground beef and she tossed the pieces of cut up chicken, bones and all, into the cage before moving on to their two adult bobcats, Millie and Bob.

  Most of the animals in the sanctuary were there to be rehabilitated and rereleased into the wild so, as a rule, human contact with them was kept to a minimum whenever possible, especially if the animal was a candidate for reintroduction. It was hardest with animals who arrived as babies, like the kitten this morning, because he would need so much hands-on care in the coming weeks.

  But there were others, like Millie and Bob, who arrived later in life with injuries, who could never survive in the wild and needed to be handled as safely as possible because of the human interaction they would be reliant on for care for the rest of their lives. Poor Bob had been the first of the pair to arrive, with a gunshot wound in his front leg that had become infected and required amputation. Millie, on the other hand, had been someone’s idea of a pet, a kitten like the one this morning, that had been mistaken for a domestic cat, until her owner realized she was too big to be handled and tried to surrender her to a shelter.

  Emma fed the pair the same way she had Buster before heading back to the house to prepare the meal for their black bear cub, Wally. As she passed by his cage, he bolted across the pen, leaping from his tire swing. Emma laughed out loud as he landed in his tub of water, unable to help her amusement at his clownish antics. Her laughter died when the water from the tub splashed up through the fencing and soaked her. Wally slid out of the barrel and bounded back across his pen.

  Emma swiped her hand over her face, flinging the water aside. “Thanks a lot, brat. No jam on your bread today.”

  The bear cub leaned backward over the tractor tire in his cage, looking like he was laughing at her. Now she had to go change clothes and was going to be running even more behind. Days like today made her wonder why she’d ever wanted to run this place with her father. Treating cats and dogs was so much easier.

  Chapter Three

  Emma had no idea she was being watched and that was exactly how he wanted it. Cautiously, he slipped through the back door of the facility and into the area she was using as a nursery, housing the bobcat kitten he’d put up in that tree. It was sleeping soundly and he actually felt a measure of relief that the poor thing had survived without any harm. That was actually the last thing he wanted.

  But, in reality, the kitten should have died. It would have in nature if he hadn’t intervened, the way its siblings had after he’d hit their mother with his car while she was running across the road in the middle of the night. After nursing the kitten back to health, he’d realized he could use it as a way to put his plan for Sierra Tracks into action.

  Emma Jordan had no idea what she was doing. She wasn’t qualified, or equipped, to run this place. Just because she was a vet now didn’t mean she knew what these animals needed.

  She intended to reopen it to the public again, to reinstate the special events her father had once held, using the animals as attractions, putting them on display for guided tours and educational programs. Sierra Tracks was supposed to be a wildlife rescue, not a tourist trap. He wasn’t about to let her turn her father’s hard work into an amusement park.

  Ben stared at the headline of the newspaper and wondered for the hundredth time how their small-town paper kept getting these stories.

  Escaped Bobcat Terrorizes Quinn Ranch

  It was beginning to look more like a tabloid, with its sensationalized headlines, than the Hidden Falls Daily. “Terrorize” was hardly the term he would use for what the tiny kitten had done, except maybe to his arm. He rubbed at the surface scratches absently. Hell, most of the people standing under the tree begged him to let them take the poor thing home. Where did any sort of terror fall into that scenario? And, other than Hollister’s rambling accusations, what would make anyone think it had escaped?

  His gaze slid over the piece in the paper. It was obviously skewed, every bit of the article attempting to convince locals that Sierra Tracks was a risk to the community and that, since Conrad
Jordan’s death, there was no one taking care of the animals other than a few overworked volunteers, going so far as to say the new manager was “ruining Conrad’s legacy.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair, the sound of his father stomping dirt from his work boots on the back patio echoing in the stillness. Entering the kitchen, Travis McQuaid headed for the coffee pot, cursing quietly when he found it empty. Ben’s brother Andrew slid his cup toward his dad.

  “Here, take mine. I should get into the station early anyway.”

  Ben stood up. “I should probably head out too.”

  “Thanks.” The patriarch of the McQuaid family chugged the lukewarm coffee in one gulp before looking around the kitchen, empty but for his two sons. “Where’s your mother?”

  “She ran into town. Said she wanted to get her grocery shopping finished early or something.”

  His father jerked his chin at the paper, still in Ben’s hands. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “Which part?”

  “Why on the earth would someone so unqualified come in to try to take over those animals? Either find a place that can take them in or sell the sanctuary to someone else. Conrad knew what he was doing, made sure those two boys and his volunteers knew what they were doing. That woman is going to get someone hurt.”

  Ben’s eyes widened in surprise. It wasn’t like his dad to believe gossip and this article was complete bullshit. From what he’d seen when he’d dropped off the kitten yesterday, there wasn’t an ounce of truth to any of this. Then again, he wasn’t exactly an expert.

  “Actually, that woman is Conrad’s daughter,” Ben pointed out.

  Andrew shrugged. “People have always been critical of the place but it got worse when Conrad started not letting people in a few years back. I did the inspection on the sanctuary last month, when she first took over. I think she’s planning on making some changes but she’d better hurry up before this bad press gets her shut down.”