My Wild Ways (Wild Whispers Book 1)

I was sitting in the old truck playing the radio when he arrived a few minutes after me. He was probably in his mid-thirties, but looked older. He had a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his cut-off flannel shirt, and one dangling from his lip.

I smiled and pulled the keys from the ignition, tucking them in between my fingers in case I needed to do some eye-gouging. I’d never had the chance but I sure felt the inclination just then. I stepped out of the truck and pushed the door closed.

“Hi,” I smiled and leaned against the door, motioning to the heaving plastic grocery bags that dangled from both his hands. “Watcha got there?”

His eyes flared but he tried to play it cool and smiled. “Picnic. Nice day for it.”
I blinked, and let the blinking turn to a quick flutter of my doe-like eyelashes. “Looks like a couple of bags of dirt. Do you eat a lot of dirt? That looks more like a shit-eating grin to me.”

“Go home, girlie.”

“Put the bags down and I’ll let you go home.”

His eyes flashed again and he stomped past me and put the bags in the bed of his truck. “Give me the keys.”

I dangled them for a moment just out of his reach, then tossed them into a patch of prickly ash, the metal catching just a glint of mottled sunlight before they disappeared and tinkled through the spiny branches. “Oops.” I brought my foot up in a well-practiced Kung-Fu kind of kick just as he lunged at me, and as the word ‘oof’ blew out of his lips around either side of the cigarette, I punched him in the bridge of the nose. I didn’t wait to see if he fell. I grabbed the bags and ran.

I gently patted earth around the last of the recovered Trilliums and scattered the rest of the dirt from the bags around my feet before stepping carefully out of the patch. I’ll admit I was feeling a little full of myself just then, and imagined the top-heavy blossoms nodding at me in gratitude. Just then I felt a thunk against my skull and I dropped to the ground.

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Katie's view of life doesn't allow for many grey areas. She draws a distinct line at good vs not good at all. But her well-ordered thinking is about to turn chaotic. What she finds in the deep woods she's quickly come to think of as her own will challenge her self-righteous mindset and throw her mind wide open. And that's just the beginning...

Ivan, the object of her youthful obsession has just come back to town, and he's got some surprises of his own. Will acceptance win over hard-headedness? Katie's got a lot of growing up to do to keep the things she loves and earn what she longs for.