Page 48 of Mountain Rescue
Rachel moved next to him. Bella was flat on her stomach at the entrance to a small cave, and her whine grew louder. She was also wagging her tail, which eased Rachel’s mind. She wouldn’t be wagging her tail at danger.
Dallas squatted and peered into the cave. “Too dark to see.” He pulled his phone out of his sweats pocket, clicked on the flashlight, and shined it into the cave. Bella belly crawled forward, disappearing until only her wagging tail was visible.
“Well, well, well,” Dallas murmured.
She tried to see what was in there, but Dallas’s body was blocking her view. “What is it?”
He leaned his upper body inside, then came back out, and in his hand was a tiny gray-and-white kitten. Bella hopped around him, her gaze glued on the little thing.
“How in the world did that get in there?” she said. “Where’s the mother?”
“Don’t think there is one. Look how skinny it is.”
Poor thing. It really was skinny. “Do you think the mother brought it here, then something happened to her?” She glanced around. “Like a bear or mountain lion?” She made a mental note to google bears and mountain lions in North Carolina.
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Well, we can’t leave it here.” She almost laughed. She’d come here to hide out, and so far, she’d collected a starving kitten, a traumatized dog, and a hot SEAL cowboy.
Bella jumped up and put her paws on Dallas’s waist, then tried to take the kitten from him.
He chuckled. “I don’t think Bella would let us leave it behind even if we tried.”
The kitten found one of his fingers and tried to suckle.
“Aww, it’s hungry. What is it, a girl or boy?”
He turned it over so they could see the kitten’s belly. “Looks like we have a little boy.”
She tried not to feel all fuzzy warm inside at thewebut failed. Bella, still with her paws on Dallas’s waist, licked the little guy. The kitten wiggled his tiny body until it was upright again, then stuck his nose against the dog’s. Bella gently took the kitten in her mouth, lowered her paws to the ground, and then headed back the way they’d come.
“Shouldn’t you get the kitten back before Bella hurts him?”
“Nah. She won’t hurt him. Kittens and puppies are used to their mamas carrying them around like that. It probably makes the little guy feel safe.”
They followed Bella and her newly adopted baby back to the main path. When they reached the trail, Dallas scanned the area around them. “We should come back tomorrow to check and make sure there’s not a mom or other kittens around.”
“What if we can’t find the cave?”
He walked to a good-size rock that she wouldn’t be able to lift, picked it up, and set it at the beginning of the path. “We’ll look for this.”
Just watching him do that while barely flexing a muscle did something to her girly parts. Was she that shallow that brawn made her want to jump his bones? Well, she’d be lying to herself if she tried to pretend she hadn’t wanted to explore whatever this was between them since he’d kissed her—since before that, really.
“My grandmother called this afternoon,” she said, scrambling for something to talk about other than how much she couldn’t stop thinking about Dallas and sex.
“She okay being at the ranch?”
“Ha! She’s in heaven. She said your cowboys are hotter than the ones at the other ranch.” If they all looked like him, June would definitely be in heaven. She grinned. “Maybe you should warn them to lock their doors at night.”
“And spoil all her fun?”
She laughed. “I’m just kidding. She won’t sneak into their rooms at night... I don’t think.”
“Your grandmother actually sounds like a fun woman.”
“Most of the time.” There were times she was over the top, but June had reached an age where she could get away with her antics. “Apparently she and Carter have a flirtation going. She asked him to send her a picture of himself without his shirt on. He sent her a picture of Dwayne Johnson.”
“That’s funny because TG is a dead ringer for The Rock, except he has twice as many tattoos.”
