The Hero I Need: A Small Town Romance Read online

  “What kind of trouble are you having?” he asks, his eyes twinkling in the dim light.

  At the moment, breathing.

  Next up, peeling my eyes off him and finding the willpower to mutter more than a squeak in reply.

  His jaw is square, his nose straight, his hair short, but not too short. And his mouth, that smile, it’s—

  It’s officially too much to handle.

  I huff out a loud breath to stop a heavenly fantasy from forming and get my thoughts back to hell. Because that’s where I’m actually at right now, blundering around an isolated parking lot in the middle of the night with a strange man and a not-so-well concealed monster in my trailer.

  Fun times.

  “The battery. Um, I think that’s it,” I rattle off, having to clear my throat to continue. “The light just started flashing while I was on the road, but then it stayed on and my truck up and died. Now there’s just...nothing. Not even the battery light. No power at all.”

  He nods and glances around me like he’s heard it a hundred times, gazing into the cab of the truck before he makes a sympathetic grimace.

  “Sounds like the alternator.”

  “Oh, of course!” I say, just a little too eagerly because I’m that hard up for good news. “Uh, how’d you know?”

  I wonder if his sympathy is for the broken-down truck or the fact that I’m alone.

  I’m not alone, though, nor am I afraid. Hurt paw or not, Bruce is the best protector a girl could ever have. He’s been as defensive of me as I’ve been with him since day one.

  Call it a twisted kinda love at first sight.

  “Well, don’t know for sure till I take a closer look,” he tells me, “but what you described sounds like what happens when an alternator craps out.”

  “An alternator,” I repeat, nodding as if I totally get what that thingamajig is.

  “The alternator,” he corrects, amusement sparking in his eyes. “There’s usually just one unless you’ve got a real special ride.”

  I nod again like I knew that. “I guess I’ll have to fix it. No big deal, right?”

  “Replace it,” he says, reaching up to stroke the dark scruff on his chin. “You’ll need a new one, or a rebuilt unit, possibly, if we can dig one up for you.”

  Uh-oh.

  Something tells me all this talk about digging and fixing means I’m gonna be here awhile.

  Not. Good.

  “Where were you headed?” he asks.

  “Wyoming. Close to Sheridan.” I flinch as soon as the word falls out.

  It’s not quite a lie, but it was a half-baked plan at best.

  Yes, there’s another big cat refuge there. A legit one with zero ties to Exotic Plains that I need to get Bruce to before infection sets into his paw.

  But I sure as heck don’t need to be broadcasting it to a complete stranger. I don’t even know if this guy is an employee here, though his shirt is a pretty good hint he is.

  “Hmm. I’d offer you a jump to charge up your battery, but that would only give you enough juice for a short hop. Not all the way to Bowman, which is a few towns over before you cross the state line.”

  “It wouldn’t, huh?”

  “Nah, but I know a damn good mechanic. He could probably replace your alternator tomorrow, if you can handle staying in this little town overnight.” He offers me an easy smile I wish I could return.

  “Tomorrow,” I whisper, holding my breath.

  He might as well have said next month or next year.

  By tomorrow, Priscilla and Niles will definitely know I’m gone. They’ll have the hounds out in force looking for me and the wonderful creature they consider their property.

  “Yep, he’s good at what he does, won’t take him long once he gets the part,” the stranger continues. “You got stock in that trailer?”

  With my mind spinning with all the reasons why tomorrow will be a total disaster, I nod.

  “Is it a two-inch ball with your rig?”

  “Excuse me?” I bat my eyes, trying to unhear him talking dirty.

  What ball? Did he mean bull? In the trailer?

  His question ignites my greatest fears—like facing major jail time for stealing an exotic animal without ironclad proof I had to. Seeing him looking at me expectantly, I do the only thing I can.

  “Yeah, it’s a bull,” I lie.

  “Bull?” He cocks his head, adorably confused.

  Isn’t that what he meant? If I had a bull? Or did he say ball? That wouldn’t make any sense.

  Gah, I’m confused.

  “That’s what I’m taking to Wyoming,” I continue, biting my tongue. “A bull.”

  He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  I’m closer to a straitjacket than he knows.

  “You misheard me. I asked if it was a two-inch ball on your truck,” he says, fighting back a chuckle. “The hitch, I mean. They’re usually a two-inch, but some are bigger. Two and five-sixteenths.”

  Oh. Well, at least I’ll have plenty of time to relive this embarrassing conversation when I’m sitting in prison.

  I’m a flipping zoologist and still don’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

  “I don’t follow. Why do you want to know?” I venture.

  “Because I have a two-inch ball on my truck. We can unhitch your ride, pull it out of the way, and then hitch my truck up to the trailer to get that bull moving.”

  It’s official. My brain is a stress-fried omelet.

  He might as well be speaking a foreign language.

  “Come again?” I whisper.

  “Miss, you sure you’re okay?” For a moment, he sighs, giving me a long look. “So I can give you a ride to Dallas. There’s a bed and breakfast here where you can spend the night. They also have an exercise area for stock when needed.”

  “Oh, sure. Stock,” I whisper meekly. I’m too dumbstruck by the situation to even lie anymore when I know I’m about to be busted.

  “You’re lucky you hit a rough patch here. This is cattle country. And horse country. Even a little bit of goat country, too, besides being pumpkin and oil country,” he says, chuckling at an inside joke that goes over my head.

  His sense of humor, sticking pumpkins in there is just odd, but his laugh is nice. Wholesome and real enough to make me smile back through my rapid-firing panic brain. Or maybe I grin because I’m SOL and there’s nothing better to do than smile at a handsome stranger who’ll probably be the dude to call the cops on me.

  He sticks out a hand bigger than my head.

  “Grady McKnight. The pleasure’s all mine. I own this joint. I just locked up for the night and was about to head home when I noticed you.”

  For some unholy reason, I shake his hand.

  It’s warm, solid, weirdly comforting.

  Just like him.

  “Willow,” I breathe. “Willow Macklin.”

  “Mighty nice to meet you, Willow.” He releases my hand and steps away. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a look at that hitch and make sure it’s the right size.”

  I’m rubbing my palm on my thigh, dispelling the tingling shock left by his hand, when his last sentence clicks in my mind. The word hitch makes sense. And so does how close he’ll be to Bruce while looking at it.

  Crap.

  I can’t show my true stripes. Not like this. Not ever.

  “No!” I shout, running toward him. “Actually, I do mind!”

  2

  Tiger Thief (Grady)

  The panicked shout from that seriously pretty down-on-her-luck stray has me spinning around, but it’s the growl—no, the fucking roar—behind me that turns my blood ice-cold.

  What the hell?

  It came from inside the trailer.

  A thousand monster movies and dinosaur flicks whip through my brain. I’ve never heard any bull make a racket like that in my life, a feral, full-bodied rip in the night.

  Before I can even think about checking the trailer, along with my sanity, she’s on me.


  Little Miss Bad Luck grabs my arm and her soft-blue eyes are bright. Scared.

  “Mister, please...” she whispers, a dry rattle sliding off her lips.

  I straighten, instantly realizing that whatever’s in that damn trailer, she doesn’t want me to know about it. Which tells me I need to know right now.

  Her hold on my bicep tightens fiercely as I step closer and peer between the slats, half expecting to see a pack of velociraptors inside.

  Even if it’s not a dinosaur, my mind stumbles, trying to process what I’m seeing.

  Maybe those bikers smoking a roadie out back before they left around closing time hadn’t been puffing on some run of the mill pot. I’d gotten a lingering whiff when I’d carried out the trash.

  Was that shit laced with something? A hallucinogen?

  Because I’ve got to be frigging hallucinating.

  The monster cat head staring back at me is as broad as my chest. Two flinty pissed-off green-gold eyes blaze like bonfires in the night. A powerhouse of a body, muscle and sinew and bone layered with princely pumpkin-orange and a latticework of licorice-black stripes.

  Something pings off the metal wall of the trailer—its tail—thick and heavy as a knotted rope.

  Then the beast peels back its lips, showing knives for teeth, and lets out another low snarl like a twister descending on a cornfield, promising destruction.

  Holy shit.

  The girl—Willow—a fitting name because she’s willow-like, thin but not skinny, with shapely legs, makes her move. She jumps up on the tongue of the trailer beside me, making us eye level.

  I glance at her, willing my heart to beat normally again, and then look back to the trailer as she puts her face near the slats.

  As soon as the cat sees her, those deadly lips uncurl, and an odd, almost soft purring starts. The rumble could rival a boat motor, but it sounds...calmer?

  I’m gonna hope so.

  “He has a sore paw.” She glances at me, her mouth in a tight frown, as if she’s talking about a pint-sized puppy.

  “Sore paw?” I repeat, my tongue like leather.

  She nods slowly.

  Dumbfounded, I stagger away from the trailer, pressing my thumbs into my eyes and swallowing a groan. Is this real life?

  “Jesus, lady...you can’t be hauling a wild tiger around in a trailer in these parts,” I grind out.

  Words I thought I’d never say.

  “Oh, he’s not wild! He was born and raised in captivity his whole life. And I’m a zoologist,” she says cheerfully, flashing me the world’s most awkward thumbs-up.

  Yeah.

  Like that explains everything.

  Like I’m supposed to smile and thank her for this unexpected trip to crazy town.

  I suck in a deep breath and try to pick my next words very carefully.

  “I don’t give a shit what you are, Willow. Pardon my French,” I grunt, hating how her eyes flash, trying to soften the blow. “This is North Dakota cattle country. Even the odd mountain lion plays havoc on livestock around here. If that damn thing got loose, he’d chew up a whole herd in no time.”

  “Okay, I know you’re freaked out, but look...” She jumps off the hitch. “He’s not a mountain lion. He’s a Bengal tiger, and he won’t eat any calves. He’s never so much as hunted a bird. The only beef he gets is already dead and butchered and comes from me. And I promise you, letting him run wild is the last thing I’d ever do. I take good care of him. He isn’t dangerous. Hand to God.”

  She lifts her slim fingers for emphasis, her hand shaking in the darkness.

  Sighing, I tilt my head back, looking up at the stars, begging somebody up there to explain what in Hades is happening down here.

  Also, why somebody decided to choose me to deal with this hot mess.

  Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen plenty running my bar. I’m no stranger to weirdos of all stripes: UFO cranks, crystal healers, aging hippies who never got the memo the summer of love ended, and folks who think they’re secretly cloning Richard Nixon on Mars.

  I’ve had to deal with everything from crackpots to crackheads since the day I bought the Purple Bobcat. Yet none of it’s ever come close to this.

  Crackpot doesn’t begin to describe a woman who thinks a five-hundred-pound Bengal tiger isn’t dangerous. This woman is clinically insane.

  “Okay. Look,” I say gently, pulling my phone out of my back pocket. “I don’t know what’s going on here or why you’re trucking him around, but lady, I can’t have a tiger on my property.”

  A tiger. Part of me wants to burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all.

  “Grady, wait!” She moves like lightning, lunging for my phone, those blue eyes spinning. “Who are you calling?”

  I wonder if I can eyeball some sanity into her if I just stare hard enough...

  I can’t stop thinking about the shitshow coming if that behemoth escapes and heads for the ranches around these parts.

  Holding the phone out of her reach, I swipe the screen.

  “Sheriff Wallace. It’s not like I’m happy about it, but he’ll know what to do with this—”

  “Oh, no! No! You can’t.” She grabs my wrist with both hands like a vise, still clinging even when I lift my hand higher in the air. “Please, if you’ll just hear me out—”

  “I’ve heard all I need to, and seen it too,” I grumble.

  Willow doesn’t seem to be the reasoning type.

  Big surprise.

  Her feet, covered in her knee-high boots, are dangling off the ground, but she still refuses to let go of my wrist.

  “Please. Grady, I’m begging you!” Her voice cracks and there’s a jerky sniffle. “If they find out he’s here, they’ll...they’ll kill him!”

  Apparently, him means the tiger.

  She has my attention, unfortunately.

  I pause. “Who? Who wants to kill him?”

  “Really awful people. They’re abusive traffickers, and I can prove it, but before I could do anything I just...I had to get him away,” she whimpers, rubbing at her reddening face with her free hand.

  I can’t believe I’m listening to this. Maybe the sight of a damsel in distress plays my heartstrings like a fiddle, but—

  Fuck.

  No.

  I can’t let her sob story talk me out of common sense, or law-abiding citizen territory. Time to shut this down.

  “If somebody isn’t treating him right, then that’s more reason to call the sheriff,” I say.

  “You can’t! Y-you don’t understand,” she whispers, digging her nails into my skin, those teary eyes locked on mine and whirling. “If he finds out, your sheriff will call the closest cat sanctuary and...that’s where I took him from. That’s the place he can never go back to.”

  “Took him?” My brows go up. “You’re telling me you stole this tiger?”

  She doesn’t need to answer, her face says it all.

  “I...I didn’t have a choice. I rescued him.” Her face droops, framed in brown-haired silk.

  Tired of holding her off the ground with one hand, I lower my arm till she’s standing evenly again. My gut tells me I shouldn’t dive deeper into this madness, but there’s no denying I’m intrigued.

  What motivates a brunette pixie like this to run off with a tiger?

  She mentioned abuse. What kind?

  More importantly, how did she manage to get this quarter ton Bengal beast as far as she has without anybody up her butt about it?

  I hold in a sigh and lay my hands on her shoulders, gentle but firm.

  “Two minutes, Willow. That’s what I’m gonna give you to fess up and tell me what’s really going on here, or we’ll both be telling it to Sheriff Wallace.”

  “Okay, okay, I...” She pulls out of my grasp, rubbing her face, inhaling several deep breaths before she turns to face me again.

  I watch her pull the hem of her oversized sweatshirt down over her black leggings, suddenly bashful.

  “Clock’s ticking,�
� I remind her, pointing to my old-school watch.

  “Okay! So, we’re not just roaming the highways for fun. We’ve only been on the road for a few hours. I’m taking him to a sanctuary in Wyoming. A good one. A legit one,” she rushes out. “He’ll be taken care of properly there. Not sold for his fur and everything else.”

  Her voice cracks on that last remark. Unshed tears in her big blue eyes shimmer in the overhead light, but I refuse to let crying make her case.

  “Yeah? And how’d you wind up being his chauffeur?” I ask, leveling my best court-is-in-session look on her.

  She huffs out a breath, planting both hands on her hips. “I stole him, all right? That’s what you want to hear. I admit it, and I’m not sorry I did.”

  Her feistiness is too real. I fight back a smile.

  If she’s a crackpot, at least she’s an honest one.

  “Look,” she says, pointing at her truck. “I have money. A credit card with unlimited spending and a debit card with more than ten thousand bucks in my bank account. I’ll give them both to you for your pickup truck. I’ll drive away and you can forget I was ever here.”

  Now, I chuckle. Forget her and that illegal cat?

  I think it’d take more than a few blows to the head to wipe that from my memory.

  Of course, I don’t tell her that.

  “What a deal. My sweet new ride that’s under a year old for a beat-up Dodge that doesn’t even run, ten thousand bucks, and a credit card I’d never tap if my life depended on it? Woman, I don’t think so.” She has no earthly clue who I am, and it’s not the kind of dude who’d ever agree to any of that.

  “Please? You’re right about the clock ticking...in a few more hours, they’ll realize I’m gone. Then they’ll come looking,” she whispers it so darkly a chill rides up my back. “I need to get far away by then, over the state line at least.”

  “Away from where?”

  Willow hesitates, then lets out a sigh.

  “Minot, okay? The more miles between us and that town, the better.”

  “Only a couple of hours from here,” I say, rubbing my chin. “You’re telling me you only got this far before your ride clunked out?”

  She throws her hands up in the air.

  “I know!” Grasping her chestnut-brown hair with one hand, she lifts a long lock off the back of her neck, spinning it nervously around to brush her cheek, just like she had earlier. “I can get you more money. Enough so you can buy another new truck. Anything. Grady, please. I swear, I’m good for it. I’ll even throw in a reward for helping me.”