A Promise Worth Remembering (Promises Collection) Read Free Page B

them lengthened with every passing second. This is Copper. The tiger that slept in your bed until he was old enough to join the other orphaned cats. Save him!
    Her arms flashed over her head and she dove into the water .

Chapter Two
     
    The chilled water wrapped around Bailey, stealing her breath, but she sliced the current with her arms and hands, pulling toward where Copper had gone under and ignoring the water’s biting sting.
    As soon as she reached where Copper disappeared below the surface, she inhaled and dove again. With eyes open underwater, she could just make out his orange glow.
    The current bumped him along reeds. His limp body bounced off cobbles and skidded along the sandy bottom.
    She curled her fingers around his neck, but a slick, red-tinged fog spread through the water. Copper had a large gash along his left shoulder. From the cut fence? A bullet wound?
    He struggled free.
    A shot of adrenaline surged in her muscles—part anger, part fear, part disbelief that she might lose her only semblance of a child. Kicking, she slipped an arm under his ribcage and pulled the cat to the surface. That he let her hold him without resisting proved he’d weakened from blood loss.
    She used a modified backstroke, inhaled fresh air, and battled the river with one thought on her mind—call Dr. James. But could the large exotic animal veterinarian reach her preserve in less than an hour when her vetting needs were usually scheduled well in advance?
    Unwilling to give up hope, she gripped Copper tighter, but the current tugged her like a tether and pulled her toward the space to the right of the rocks where the river plummeted to the falls. Her muscles burned with the strain.
    A tan shape darted across her vision.
    A deer?
    She kicked harder, faster, using her other hand as a rudder to guide them both away from that pull, the Pierce’s side, and toward a large gray mass up ahead.
    But the current pushed against her back. Pushed her like the relentless hunters. Pushed her like Old Man Pierce. Each focused on taking instead of cultivating life.
    An ankle knocked into a slick boulder and sent her twirling through the water, but she didn’t let go of Copper. She surfaced and gasped for breath. She hugged Copper’s stillness and swallowed past the unbearable threat of losing him.
    The slab approached.
    And slipped past.
    Lactic acid build-up became an inferno within her thighs and shoulders. Finally, she grasped another rock’s rough surface. With her free hand, she hauled Copper alongside her body to rest on the dried algae wedge just in time to hear tires grinding over the graveled levee road.
    Raymond…
    Copper lay flat and she used the bottom of her t-shirt to press against his wound to stop the bleeding. She hadn’t abandoned the big cat like her mother had her. Like Jesse and her uncle had in death.
    Like Tucker…
    Inhaling, more like hyperventilating, kept her from crying. And from rejoicing. Once she guaranteed Copper’s return to the preserve and saw him vetted, she’d celebrate. However, with her flattened against the boulder, with Copper nearly drowned, with her throat thickened by what felt like a jagged boulder, she didn’t feel like celebrating.
    Adding to her pain, Copper stared into the Pierce’s land like he’d tasted the mountain that had destroyed two families and wanted more. And finally, the fact Tucker had returned threatened to unleash a decade worth of tears.
    His gangly adolescence had transformed into brute strength and a man closer to two-hundred-and twenty pounds. Though she couldn’t be sure, because of the river between them, he seemed to have added several inches to his six-foot height. A dark shadow settled above his lip and jaw line.
    At the thought of caressing his prickly face, thick arms, and blocky chest, she nibbled her lip. He’d changed so much.
    Dogs bayed in the distance and tugged her from an imaginary reunion with the man she’d once loved. But at least the dogs sounded