Read Online The Pretender by Kathleen Creighton - Free Book Online

meet them: a shaggy black-and-white dog like the sheep-herding dogs in the movie Babe, bounding and twisting eagerly; and at a much more sedate pace, an old hound with wrinkled face, long droopy ears and sad dark eyes.
    Abby’s heart turned a huge flip-flop; asa child she’d dreamed of having a dog. But, like family photos and heirlooms, pets didn’t often happen for a child in the foster care system. At least, they hadn’t for her.
    She opened the door, and before she could even get her legs out of the truck the black-and-white dog came bouncing joyfully, wriggling into the space offered by the opening door, trying his best to climb into her lap,it seemed, in order to lick her face.
    Breathless and overwhelmed, laughing helplessly, she heard Sage say, “Freckles— down. ” The dog backed away, but hovered, whining and all but vibrating with excitement. “You’ll have to forgive him,” Sage said dryly. “He’s just a people-lover.”
    “It’s okay—really. I like dogs.” She slid out of the truck and dropped to one knee beside the quiveringanimal, murmuring the kinds of baby talk things people say to dogs. She put her arms around him and he took up licking her face where he’d left off, though in a slightly more subdued way.
    Emotions she’d never felt before sizzled and shimmered all through her and threatened to leak out. Careful—don’t lose it now, she cautioned herself. Be strong.
    “He knows better,” Sage said. “But he’syoung.”
    She rose abruptly, brushing at herself, and nodded at the old hound, who was sitting a little way off, panting slightly. “I’m guessing this one’s not.” She went toward the other dog slowly, holding out her hand. The hound sniffed the hand, then gazed solemnly up at her.
    “Don’t really know,” she heard Sage say as she lightly touched the dog’s wrinkled head. “She’s J.J.’s—thesheriff’s—dog. Her name’s Moonshine.”
    Abby squatted on her heels and some impulse made her put her arms around the old hound’s neck. “Hello, Moonshine,” she whispered, and tears came unexpectedly to burn her eyes.
    “He says she just wandered into his place one day,” Sage said. “So he decided to let her stay.”
    “Good thing I did, too, or these two might not be here now.” The voicewas deep, scratchy and Southern, like something out of a Western movie.
    She froze, nerves twanging, heart thumping, nervous as a thief caught red-handed, as Sage called out, “Hey,” greeting someone she couldn’t see. She felt his hand touch her back as she rose, and resisted the impulse to reach for it…cling to it.
    “Speak of the devil.” Sage kept his hand on her back, barely touchingbut somehow supporting, and she turned with him to meet the three people coming down the wide flagstone steps.
    The hound dog, Moonshine, went shambling over to meet them, too, and parked herself at the bottom of the steps to watch them descend, like a sentinel, Abby thought. Alert, now. Standing guard.
    “Sunny, this is Sheriff J.J. Fox, and Rachel,” Sage said, nodding at each in turn.
    The man with the voice like a Western movie star looked like one, too, except for the fact that one leg was encased in a protective blue boot, and he was leaning heavily on a pair of crutches. He was tall and rangy of build, with keen blue eyes and wavy, sandy-blond hair that brushed his collar. The woman, Rachel, moved carefully beside him, both because she was carrying a baby and out ofobvious concern for the man on crutches. She was exactly as Sage had described her: petite, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Except Sage had neglected to mention the fact that she was exquisitely lovely. Possibly one of the most beautiful women Abby had ever seen—which, again, considering the business she was in, was saying a lot. She looked entirely toodelicate and fragile to have borne the baby she was holding in her arms, but Abby remembered Sage had said she was