A Promise Worth Remembering (Promises Collection) by Cyndi Faria Read Free Book Online

reluctance she didn’t want to admit, she eased back and he unfurled his arms. She glanced down to see Copper’s eyes had a glazed look. Her body snapped straight and her tummy squeezed. She’d ignored her prized tiger. “I need to call Raymond, so he can help me get Copper back.”
    “I’ll drive to the house and call him myself. But I don’t want you to worry about Copper too much. He’ll be okay.”
    As Tucker bent down to inspect Copper’s wound, she caught a glimpse of Tucker’s pant leg still hung up on the back of his boot.
    Her head spun. She’d loved Tucker too hard. Like Copper when she’d called out to him, she’d distracted Tucker to the point he’d nearly died. Or so she assumed by the severity of his scars. Her existence seemed to ruin people’s lives. She’d ruined her mother’s life, or so her mother had claimed. And she’d always felt like a burden to her uncle. Had she caused Jesse’s motorcycle accident by distracting him while she drove behind him in her car?
    She glanced at Kissing Rock on the opposite side of the riverbank. Sitting there so steady. Had for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. Safely grounded in the past.
    Copper chuffed at the other tigers that now brushed up against the fencing across the river. Then he padded to stand beside her near the embankment edge.
    The hole was someplace close to where she’d first seen Copper’s paw prints. Hidden by the thicket, but the other cats could escape at any moment. They’d follow Copper’s scent. Near her feet, the shallow water exposed a clear trail of hop rocks leading to the other side. Her backpack with the fence repair tools still lay tucked up against the Rock . In two minutes, she could cross the river. Copper would follow her across the step-stone path. “I have to find and fix that opening in the fence before the other tigers find their way out.”
    “What if you fall? What if Copper falls?” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Let me drive you.”
    His grip tightened, as if in doing so he’d convince her to stay. But she’d never persuade Copper to get inside Tucker’s SUV. Truck’s bed or Jeep maybe, if she drove, but never inside a box. “No. We’ll be fine. Besides, I’m better off alone.”
    “Nobody is. And you’re not. I’m here.”
    One of the tigers disappeared behind a thick wall of brambles.
    “I have to protect my tigers. I’m all they have.”
    She hobbled from rock to rock, her ankle stinging with each step, and Copper followed until the river surrounded them on all sides. She took another step and her foot slid across the slick algae boulder. Her leg waffled like her indecisive mind. Which way did she go?
    A tigress poked her head out of the brushes on the river side of the preserve, but Bailey clapped, clapped, clapped and the cat darted back into the sanctuary.
    Her twisted stomach and swollen throat and blurred vision didn’t distract her thoughts. She couldn’t protect her tigers—not a single one. She didn’t deserve to run the preserve, when every move she made seemed to put their lives in danger. Over her shoulder, she glanced back to Tucker, her future, then turned back to the Rock , her past.
    Ahead were fewer stones to hop onto, though from her memory there had been so many more rocks—a connective path—but that path was an illusion. Instead, she’d landed herself and Copper on a three-foot diameter island.
    Tucker’s voice reached her. “Damn, you’re just as strong-willed as I remember. Like me, a survivor that just keeps going. But doesn’t know when to turn around or go a different way.”
    A dead fish, grey and thick with bloat, floated under Copper’s belly, and then headed toward the rapids that led to the falls.
    She didn’t want Copper to end up like the fish. Tucker had loved her once, at least that’s what she’d read in his gaze and heard from his lips. That same expression had graced his face today. What if going another direction—bridging the feud