Only By Your Touch Read Online Free PDF

a quarter mile long and very steep.
    Slowing to a stop at the front end of the breezeway, Ben treated the child to his most intimidating glare. That alone was usually enough to send peoplerunning. Not this kid. He swung off his bike and lowered the kickstand.
    Looking scared half out of his wits, the boy gulped and said, “My name’s Jeremy. I need your help.”
    The silent-glare treatment wasn’t working. Ben spread his feet and planted his hands at his hips. “If you’re selling magazines, forget it. I can’t read.”
    “I’m not selling nothing.”
    The kid’s lips looked a little blue. Ben told himself it was a trick of the light. “I don’t like people trespassing on my property. Turn that bike of yours around, and get off my ridge.”
    Damn it. With 160 fenced acres, a man was entitled to some privacy. Ben didn’t want any locals up here. Every blasted time, they saw something they shouldn’t and carried tales back to town.
    “Go on!” he barked. “Get off my land, I said.”
    The tremors that racked the child’s body gained force to become a violent quaking. Ben’s throat thickened with shame. He could scare off adults and teenagers without a qualm, but a small child was different. He felt like a first-class jerk.
    As frightened as the boy clearly was, he still didn’t run. He had more backbone than a lake trout, Ben decided with reluctant admiration.
    “I rode my bike a long ways. If you’re still mad ’cause we stole your land, I’m real sorry, but I’m not leaving until I talk to you.”
    “Fine, then. Spit it out, and then make tracks.”
    “My puppy Rowdy’s dying. I brung him to you ’cause the lady at the feed store said you know a lot about curing animals.”
    Ben’s studied the child’s freckled face. He placed him now. It was the kid he’d seen at the store yesterday. A picture spun through his mind of the mother. She was a looker with a wealth of auburn hair, big,wary brown eyes, and a tidy figure. Since his divorce, Ben didn’t often notice women, but he’d given her a second look, much to his self-disgust a few minutes later.
    This child had cowered behind her when Ben had approached them in the dog-food section. Since returning to Jack Pine, he’d grown used to the gossip. Oh, yes, he’d heard the stories—about witchcraft and random murders, with him feeding the human remains to his critters. The stories were so preposterous and sick that he had long since decided not let them bother him. It carried a harder punch when a child cringed from him, though.
    What kind of mother allowed her child’s head to be filled with such tripe?
    To hell with it. Like he gave a rat’s ass?
    And yet, deep down, he actually did care a great deal, especially when he saw how deep-rooted the distrust of him really was. The boy had eyes like his mother’s—big splashes of liquid brown fringed with dark lashes. Something about her had appealed to him in a way no other woman had in years. Several times that morning, he’d caught himself thinking of her—and how good she had looked in khaki slacks and a form-fitting green knit top that showcased her sweetly rounded breasts.
    Ben shifted his attention to the pup that lay so still in the towel-lined handlebar basket. He hated to see the kid lose his dog. But, hey, it wasn’t his problem. If he helped this child, he’d be signing the death warrant of almost twenty other animals, his cougar, Methuselah, included.
    Three months ago, a power company employee had driven up to Ben’s place to read the electric meter and seen Ben walking the cougar on a leash. Less than a week later, Deputy Bobby Lee Schuck had paid avisit to Cinnamon Ridge with two game wardens in tow. Caught off guard, Ben hadn’t had time to hide the animals in his outdoor hospital, which had been behind the house at the time. Several convalescents in cages had been confiscated. The only reason Methuselah hadn’t met with the same fate was because Bobby Lee hadn’t thought