Harvest Moon (Brook Haven Romance Book 1) Read Free Page A

old
country road that led to town in one direction and dead-ended where the forest got
too dense on one side and the altitude too high on the other. Drake’s place sat
about two miles from the forest, so other than mild traffic to and from his place,
the road was hardly ever used.
    Hooter pointed him
toward what had agitated him. Drake shone his light onto the black asphalt and
found the fox mama. She’d been hit by a car, and from the looks of it, it hadn’t
been that long ago. Drake briefly wondered what someone was doing on this road
in the middle of the night.
    He spent some time
walking back and forth to the barn to get what he needed to move the poor dead animal
out of the road. He put her in a plastic container to bury her later, and then
he went back to see about the kits. They were still there under the bush; they’d
curled up together and gone to sleep.
    Drake opened the cat
carrier he’d brought back with him and with one big hand, he scooped them into
it. They woke up as he did and before he closed the small door and latched it,
they were both howling at him in an extremely annoying, high-pitched way. He
tried making soothing sounds as he carried them back to the house, but they
were agitated and having none of it. As he sat the small carrier down on the
porch, he heard his phone ringing from inside the house. It was almost five
a.m., way too early for anyone to be calling him except Uncle Mac.
    “I’m sorry. Did Hooter
wake you?” Drake answered.
    “Nah, you know I don’t
sleep much. I just wanted to make sure everything’s all right up there.”
    “Hooter found a couple
of baby foxes … their mother didn’t make it across the road.”
    “Aw … ya know I almost
called you about all that racket goin’ on out there.”
    “Um … you did just call
me, Uncle Mac.”
    He laughed. “My legs
don’t work, but my mind still does. I meant before, when that car or whatever
it was kept racing up and down the hill. You didn’t hear it?”
    “No, I guess I was
sleeping pretty soundly.”
    “You must have been.
Sounded like a V-8 to me, and they had to be goin’ over a hundred miles an
hour. They raced back and forth three or four times, and each time they’d get
ready to turn around, they’d smoke the brakes. I think they may have even been
hitting the E-brake.”
    “Did you see the car?”
    “Nah, from where the
house sits, I can hear the road but I can’t see it.”
    “Okay. It was probably
teenagers, but I’ll keep an eye out.”
    “You need any help with
those kits?”
    Drake looked down at
the agitated little creatures, and in spite of himself, he thought about how
cute they were. “I’m not sure what to do with them to be honest.”
    “Well, the first thing
they probably need is some hydration. Maybe you should call Sam. Are you
working today?”
    “Yeah, I’m supposed to
be over at the Harvest Moon Inn at seven.”
    “Well, if you can’t get
ahold of Sam, bring them to me and I’ll sit for ya.”
    Drake laughed. “Sit for
me, huh? So you think I’ve already adopted them?”
    “I know you. You’re too
much like your mama to turn those babies out on their own. The coyotes would
eat them in a heartbeat. This farm used to be a menagerie of the animals my
sister collected.”
    Drake laughed. He knew
that was true. As a kid, he could bring home any stray he found in the woods
and his mother would never turn it away. He looked back down at the bloody back
leg of the injured kit. “Yeah, it looks like one of them may have gotten a bite
before Mama Fox hid them under my bush. She was headed back across the road. It
makes me wonder if there’s more on the other side.”
    “You’re gonna go look,
aren’t you?”
    “I might just take a
peek for curiosity’s sake.”
    Mac was laughing when
he hung up. Drake checked the time again. It was closer to five-thirty. He put
on a pair of thick gloves and reached into the door of the holder for the
injured kit. It began howling and screeching