Karly's Wolf (Hollow Hills Book 1) Read Free Page B

verify, but which she knew had to be there. Admittedly, she wasn’t a veterinarian. She’d never owned a pet before—not as a child and certainly not as an adult—but that didn’t stop her from touching every inch of him. She ran her hands up and down his limbs, over his ribs, along his spine all the way to the tip of his drooping tail. Nothing felt broken or swollen, and the dog neither flinched nor yelped. Ultimately, she figured he’d probably be all right once his bumps and bruises, sore muscles, and scratches had a chance to heal.
    The worst injury she could find was on his back leg, the one he’d been lying on in the car (as the crimson smears clearly attested). His entire right flank was matted with blood, but once she’d softened it with a little soap and warm water, patiently working the mat loose to part the thick black fur, all she found was the smallest of cuts. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore.
    “There’s a good puppy.” She gave him a pat and turned the water off. “You’re going to be okay.”
    Head and tail both hanging, the dog stayed exactly as she’d left him while she found a towel and wrapped it around him. He didn’t even try to shake himself off.
    “Poor baby.” He must be one hurting puppy. She dried him gently, giving liberal scritches behind his ears, and did her very best not to make it all feel worse.
    His fur was very long and held a lot of water. It took two towels to get him to a point where he wasn’t dripping a lake’s worth of water into the bottom of the tub.
    “Come on.” Hanging the towels up over the curtain rod, she stepped away from the tub. “Can you get out by yourself?”
    He looked at her, tail still tucked—wet, sore and miserable.
    She opened the bathroom door to make it a little more obvious that the punishment was over. “Come on, puppy,” she coaxed. “Paroling all prisoners.”
    The dog looked from her to the door, and then shuffled closer to the edge of the tub. He crawled out one paw at a time with soft chuffing groans following each hobbling step. He looked so stiff and sore.
    “What a brave boy.” She offered another sympathetic pat. “Come on, I think I’ve got an aspirin in my purse.”
    She made her way downstairs, moving slowly and looking back often to see if he was still following. He was. Each step every bit as stiff and deliberate as when he’d followed her up and into the bathroom. She found a dish in the cupboard, which she filled with cool water and put down on the floor near the wall so he could drink. He didn’t. He hobbled only as far as it took for kitchen linoleum to meet garish orange carpet and then he stopped, and stood there, staring while she started dinner.
    Generic hamburger helper never smelled so good, although that might have been because she was incredibly hungry. She hadn’t eaten all day, not since before Dan had come barreling home with those divorce papers clutched in one hand and his other clenched in a tight fist. It wouldn’t have mattered how they’d been delivered to him, but that they were delivered at work in front of all his cop buddies, and just minutes before she’d been ready to run…
    She touched her bruised eye, prodding tenderly, fully aware of how much worse it could have been. From the corner of her good eye, she saw those yellow eyes watching her. “I guess we’ve both taken our lumps today, huh? I’m very sorry about giving you yours.”
    He hobbled a step closer, his sharp nails clicking on the linoleum. He looked from her to the stove, to the bowl of water, and back to her again. She really ought to find that aspirin and see if she couldn’t ease his discomfort.
    Stirring the brown beef and noodles together, she left the mixture to simmer and picked up her purse, still on the counter where she’d dropped it along with the supplies she’d picked up at the local store. She found a small bottle of aspirin at the bottom under her keys, and shook two pills out into her hand. One she