Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) by Mary Connealy Read Free Book Online Page B

fixing my porch, then get to it. I’m going to get some shoes on and then see how much of my rock garden I can repair.” She stomped around to the door, and as she went to swing it shut, she heard that rocking chair still creaking. Aaron hadn’t moved at all.
    Fine, she’d fix her home herself, even if she had to scare nails back into her porch railing. And if she couldn’t, she’d get things fixed up like she usually did. She’d finagle her sisters into doing it.

    Kylie stepped out of her cabin—her lonely, stupid cabin—to look at her pond. With Aaron gone, and so far out, she didn’t hesitate to step outside in her nightgown. Nearly every night, if the weather was fine, she’d spend a few moments out here and say her evening prayers and do her best to find peace with this lonely life in the wilderness.
    Tonight the loneliness was the worst it had ever been. It wasn’t just that she was utterly alone; it was how far she had to go to be with someone. Her spending time and being held by Aaron today, even her yelling at Gage Coulter, underlined that.
    Her throat ached with unshed tears as she looked at the moonlight casting a bright path across the pond. She would cry until that pond overflowed if she didn’t know what a waste it would be.
    A breeze rippled across the water and fluttered her white gown. Her hair billowed out as she leaned against a corner post on the porch. Aaron had done a nice job of fixing it, once he’d finally started.
    Her head rested against the post.
    “God, this can’t be the life you mean for me to have.” She whispered her words to the wind and hoped God heard them and answered. Some days she felt so far out in the wilderness that even God couldn’t possibly find her.
    That notion was foolish, and it woke up the need to be closer to God in her soul. There was no other way to be close to Him anyway. Before she could focus her prayers, a strange rustling drew her attention to the woods, in the direction Aaron had come from. Coulter had come from that way, too.
    She turned to look, and the rustling stopped.
    It was the silence that sent a chill up her spine. There were always noises in the woods, of course; she was used to that. Foraging critters. Bushes and trees swaying in the wind, branches rubbing and dancing.
    But the way the noise had stopped when she’d turned her head . . . Goose bumps broke out all up and down her arms. She could see nothing in the dark forest that surrounded her home. But someone was out there, she was almost sure of it. She didn’t have Bailey’s and Shannon’s skills, but she was a decent outdoorswoman. That wasn’t the wind and neither was it an animal. Every instinct she possessed told her someone was out there.
    Fear shook her as she realized she was being watched.
    Coulter? Not Aaron . . . no, it wasn’t possible he’d do it.
    Kylie strained to see into the impenetrable black. For just a split second, with the shifting breeze and lifting of a sheltering branch, she saw a pair of eyes reflect the moonlight. They didn’t glow like a raccoon’s or a wildcat’s would. And they were at a man’s height.
    Then they blinked—or did they close?—because they vanished as suddenly and completely as if she’d seen a phantom.
    It scared her out of her frozen state, and she ran for her cabin, feeling as if all the hounds of hell were racing straight for her. She dashed inside. Running footsteps gained on her. She slammed the door and threw the heavy brace to bar it shut. Without pausing, she rushed to the windows, one on each side of the door, and locked the shutters.
    No one could get in now. Her sisters had built the cabin solid. Taking deep breaths, calming herself, the worst of the terror eased. She tried to think! Had she imagined it all? Had she really seen eyes? Or was there some critter in a tree at a man’s height and she’d mistaken it for a man?
    Not all wild things had eyes that glowed in the moonlight.
    Yes, that had to be it.