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Footprints on Her Heart

By Tabitha Bouldin

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Chapter One
His life had become something from a horror film, only without the blood and gore. Okay. Maybe he’d watched a few too many slasher movies.
Trent Raines slammed the tailgate closed and swiped a hand over his sweaty forehead. One hundred and three animals. Ninety-eight dogs and five cats. Two Dobermans, a Labrador—
“Trent?”
His attention snapped up from the red paint baking in the harsh Hooper Island sun and landed on the blonde making her way across the animal shelter’s parking lot. “Kara? What are you doing here?” He’d called her…right? Told her not to come in today. He massaged his temple. Everything in the months after the hurricane swam in a fuzzy haze of clean up and rebuild.
Kara Parker’s blue eyes widened, and she froze, halfway between him and her yellow bicycle parked against a leaning loblolly pine. Her hands clenched around the backpack strap perched across her right shoulder. “Mel called and asked me to stop by today. Something about you needing help.”
Mel called Kara, and now his website designer and photographer planned on helping him ferry a hundred and three animals from the mainland back to Forever Pals? His head ached with an intensity that left him reeling. He had a number of employees willing to help with this mission of mercy, but the idea of Kara joining him hadn’t crossed his mind. Even after working together for a year, he barely knew her.
“I’ll go.” Kara’s lips turned down in a frown. Wind whipped across the empty lot, blowing her pink wraparound skirt against her black leggings. Attraction clinked against civility, magnetizing each other into words that tumbled from his lips.
“No, wait. I’m sorry.” He raised one hand and pressed the other to the truck, letting the heat burn some sense into his fraying emotions. “You surprised me. I thought Mel was coming.”
Kara strangled the strap, her shoulders lifting as she inhaled. Blonde strands danced around her face as they escaped the loose ponytail she always wore banded at the base of her neck. Uncertainty pinched her lips even tighter. “Something came up. Zeke’s grandmother…I think.” She gave a delicate shrug. “Honestly, she talked too fast for me to keep up. Except for the part where she said I should be here today to help you. That there were animals in need of a home.”
Home. Trent cast a look around the fallen trees ripped up and tossed about like a child’s toys during a tantrum by Hurricane Arley. The squat green building, his animal shelter, the only one on any of the Independence Islands, had escaped the majority of the hurricane’s fury. But his animals? He hated to think about the trauma and fear they’d experienced. To add on another hundred animals? He had to be crazy. What choice did he have? He’d made a promise.
The fingers of his right hand traced the line of scars along his left arm, deep gouges and grooves that lay stark and repulsive against his tanned skin in the harsh sunlight. He didn’t need to look to see them. The image never let itself drift far away.
“Are you okay? You look a little sick.” Kara stepped closer.
Trent jerked, hands dropping to his sides where they spasmed into fists. “Fine. I’m fine.” And he did not want to make this journey with Kara. She’d be too much of a distraction. His attraction to her already risked crossing the “Do not cross” line he’d drawn when he swore to make up for letting his desires get the best of him and ruin everything he’d ever had. “Thanks for coming to help, but I can manage on my own.”
“You’re going to ferry a hundred and three animals from the mainland to Hopper by yourself?”
Her incredulous expression and crossed arms raised his hackles. If he had them. Funny how he now understood the expression. “You think I can’t?”
“I think you’re a fool to try when I’m perfectly capable of lending a hand. But you know what, if you don’t want my help, do it yourself.” She turned again, muttering something that sounded like “masochistic idiot” under her breath. “Good luck driving a truck full of animals and your pick-up at the same time.”
“Fine.” Trent threw his hands into the air, then laced them on his head, over the ball cap that would keep the autumn sun from frying his eyeballs. “You can come.” This is a test, isn’t it, God? You’re testing my commitment to my promise.
“Oh, you’re going to allow me to accompany you.”
Trent grimaced. He’d poked the bear this time. Normally quiet and demure, to the point he wondered if Kara even had a personality. This version stalked toward him with all the poise and fury of a woman who’d rather slap him than help him. He deserved that. She’d done nothing to earn his rancor. And apparently, this kitten had claws.
“Will you please come with me?” Politely spoken, the words scratched an itch, a desire to let someone help. A feeling he didn’t recognize until too late.
At his quiet tone, Kara halted. Her head tilted, reminding him of a beagle pup questioning the sudden change and searching for an answer out of reach. She would ask questions now. Demand to know why he’d changed his mind. Want to know why he floundered through this conversation like a puppy learning to run and tumbling over its own feet.
“Okay.”
Before he could process the single word, Kara had opened the passenger truck door and slid onto the seat after dropping her backpack to the floorboard. Trent shook his head, attempting to clear out the buzzing sound left behind in the ringing silence. Just like that?
He moved toward the driver’s side door, feeling ages beyond his thirty years. “You have everything you need?” He motioned toward her khaki-colored canvas backpack while slamming the door.
Kara nodded and scraped her hair away from her face, tucking it back into the band, where he knew it would only stay a matter of minutes before returning to flutter around her face. “I don’t need much.” She spoke with certainty but twisted her fingers together in her lap before shoving her hands under her thighs.
“Road trip rule number one.” He cranked the engine while fiddling with the radio knob until heavy bass throbbed against his backbone. “Driver controls the radio.”
Eyes closed and head leaned against the seat rest, Kara smiled. “Road trip rule number two. Passenger decides when to stop for food.”
Trent laughed, the sound dry and rusty from disuse. “Deal.” Holding out one hand while the other steered them out of the parking lot, he gripped Kara’s smaller hand and tried to ignore the way her delicate fingers felt against his calloused palm.
Road trip with a woman he knew only through work to bring back animals from a place he’d avoided for ten years. This had the makings of an epic disaster. Ignoring the plan to relocate animals from the mainland was easy in the aftermath of a hurricane and a deadline that seemed far into the future. Now that the time loomed ahead, his palms grew slick on the steering wheel.
“I’m hungry.”
Kara’s voice drew him back from the winding trail his thoughts wanted to travel. Hungry…already? His own stomach grumbled and pinched. “Yeah, food would be good.” No sense trying to argue when the gurgles told the truth. He hooked a left onto Palmetto Drive, pointing them away from the ferry’s landing point.
“Um, Trent, where are we going?”
“We don’t have time to drive over to Merriweather. Granny’s won’t be open anyway. We have enough time to swing by my house and grab snacks. Real food once we reach the mainland.” Rolling the window down, he rested his arm on the sill and tapped restless fingers in time with the beat pulsing from the radio.
One hundred and three animals.
One hundred and three chances to repay his debt.
Broken trees lined the narrow road, their branches reaching toward Trent’s truck. So much devastation and destruction for their small islands. It could have been much worse. Trees would regrow. Lives lost were irreplaceable.
Taking another left onto Summerville Road, Trent let the steady rumble of engine and music lull the initial panic into something manageable before taking one last left turn and pulling into his sandy drive, sending the truck pitching side to side and Kara’s hands out to steady herself as a particularly nasty bump threatened to knock her head against the window.
Kara sucked in a breath when his little bungalow came into view.
Compact to the point of being ridiculous, what did she think of his tiny home? He killed the engine and glanced at his unexpected companion. “Home sweet home. Come on.” He slid from the truck, hesitating over the desire to rush around and open her door.
“Women are like rubies, Trent. They are precious and should be treated as rare jewels.” His father’s words, spoken countless times, settled hard and cold against Trent’s heart. How many times had he been handed snippets of wisdom, only to cast them aside as worthless and without measure? How often had his dad sat by his wife’s bedside, watching her waste away, wretched pain contorting her? Through it all, his dad never wavered. Never gave up on God, while the pain of it all settled in Trent’s heart, cold and heavy as an anvil.
God, I’ve so much to make up for.

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