Running Wild: A novel

by K. A. Tucker

  I almost groan at the nickname, but it’s the confidence in his voice that amazes me. Aside from volunteering in the Iditarod, I’ve done little more than inspect his kennel. Where is all this faith coming from? It seems almost fraudulent, like he’s lying to this girl.

  And yet my heart swells with gratitude.

  “The only thing I hate more than amputating a dog’s leg is not doing it when it needs to be done. Another vet might tell you that they can try to save it. I’ve seen it happen before. But I can promise you’ll end up right back in this position, after spending double the amount, and Beau will be suffering. The leg has to go.” Sometimes I can be too bullish when it comes to sharing my opinion on an animal’s care, something my father has cautioned me about.

  I take a deep, calming breath. Please don’t be a fool, Rachel. “It’s a major surgery, but I am a surgeon. I have all the equipment here, and I’ve done these types of procedures before. I don’t foresee any issues. But, if you prefer, we can call your clinic to see if they can fit you in. I can bandage him up, and we can help you get him into the car. I can even give him some pain meds to make him a bit more comfortable for the ride—”

  “No, no … Do what you have to do.” She nods with steely determination. “Just fix him.”

  “Good call, Rachel.” Tyler’s heavy sigh echoes my relief.

  She falters. “But will he be able to walk?”

  “Yes. He’ll have three other legs to keep him going. He’ll have to find his new balance, and for big dogs, it’s a bit harder to lose a front leg than a back one, but you’ll be surprised how quickly he adapts.” I stand. “If you’re good with this, then we’re going to prep him for surgery, and I’ll want to keep him overnight for observation. Cory will be out in a minute to get all your information and figure out a plan.” That she hasn’t asked how much it’s going to cost yet—a question that normally comes up immediately—is surprising, but maybe she has resources. It’s probably the bank of Mom and Dad.

  Tyler is up now, too, answering a dispatch call on his radio with a quick code as he trails me. “I have to get a few details from them and then head back to the park to figure out who the hell set that trap and when.” He asks quietly, “You good here? He’s a big guy.”

  A hundred and two pounds, according to the scale. “Yeah. Cory and I can manage him.” She’s in the back, keeping Beau calm on the surgical table.

  “Okay.” He bites his bottom lip in thought.

  The move drags my mind back to the Ale House parking lot. It’s clear to me now that things between us have changed, at least from my perspective. Can he feel it, too? Did he go home, laden with regret for following me out to my truck? If he did, he must’ve worked through it already, because he’s not giving off awkward vibes.

  “Thank you.” He reaches out to give my elbow a gentle squeeze.

  Even such a simple, innocuous touch has my blood racing, my body craving more. But I don’t have time for this. “Yeah, yeah, I have work to do,” I mutter, trying to squash the distraction. “You’ll see yourself out?”

  The crooked grin he flashes, dimples and all, tugs at the corners of my mouth despite my efforts.

  I feel his gaze on my back as I march to the surgical room, shifting my focus to the grim task ahead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Molly’s tired wail drifts over on the evening breeze as Vicki loads her into their truck. My sister has been next door every day this week, moving truckloads of belongings and readying the attic between bouts of vicious pregnancy sickness.

  Their landlord let them out of their lease at the end of this month without any penalties. Oliver thinks it’s because the man lives on the first floor of the duplex, and he can’t handle Molly’s crying anymore. He wants them out as soon as possible.

  Whatever the reason, my parents have had a spring in their step—or in my father’s case, in his crutches—that they’ll have another daughter and a granddaughter back home soon.

  On the off chance that Vicki checks her rearview mirror and sees me perched in my red Adirondack chair on my porch, where I often am in the evenings, I throw up a wave. A horn tuts in answer.

  I smile through a sip of my Coke. I’d kill for a cold beer, or maybe something stronger after the day I’ve had, but a three-legged Bernese mountain dog is resting in the clinic. It’s going to be a long night.

  My task is mostly done. Rachel has a lot of work ahead of her. I feel terrible for the girl. Her only error was allowing Beau off his leash, something everyone does from time to time. That could’ve just as easily happened to Bentley or Yukon. There should never have been a trap set anywhere near that trail and especially not in July.

  My ears catch the sound of wheels rolling over gravel, and I assume it’s Vicki, hopping over one driveway to say hello before she heads to pick up Oliver from work. But it’s a familiar olive-green truck that rounds the bend in the trees and coasts forward, pulling up next to my vehicle.

  My pulse quickens as Tyler slides from the driver’s side. He’s changed out of his uniform and into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. A six-pack dangles from his fingers as he saunters toward my little screened-in porch.

  I regret the oversized gray sweatpants and heavy plaid jacket I threw on, and the haphazard topknot I pulled my hair into, but it’s too late to do anything now, so I hold my casual position, feet propped on a small table. “Twice in one day?”

  The door opens with a creak as he ducks in and holds up the cans. Coors Light. “I won’t judge you for your taste in beer if you’ll let me have one of them.”

  That he remembers what I was drinking at the Ale House means he was paying attention—a rare occurrence for most men I’ve met. Even Jonah forgets how I take my coffee sometimes.

  I try not to read too much into this as I smile and gesture toward the empty Adirondack chair opposite me. “Knock yourself out. I’m on duty until Cory gets here at midnight to take over.”

  “Just the two of you running this whole place, huh?”

  “It’s a small place. And it works most of the time.”

  Tyler sinks into the chair, his thighs falling apart as he yanks a can off the ring. The sound of the tab cracking cuts through an otherwise silent night.

  Every nerve ending in my weary body has come alive. “So, how was the rest of your day?”

  “Frustrating.” He takes a long sip. “No tags or markers on the trap, and it was set maybe fifty feet off a main trail. On top of the long grass, not buried under it, so it couldn’t have been put there too long ago. I think someone was trying to catch a dog.”

  “Asshole.” My stomach clenches. It’s hard to imagine someone doing something so cruel, but it happens, and his theory makes sense. Trapping and hunting is allowed in the recreation area, but not in July. The season for animals needing that size of trap doesn’t start until November. “You call the trappers’ association?”

  “I called them, called Wildlife, called Fish and Game. I called everybody. Spent the evening on the phone and doing paperwork. I doubt we’ll find the sick bastard who did it. Don’t be shocked if you get a call from the paper once they catch wind of this, though.”

  “No doubt. It’s a story.” And more ammo for the anti-trappers. It’s a never-ending battle, between those opposed to all trapping and those who see legal trapping as a right and a way of life. In this case, this trap was illegal, and no one will condone what happened. But still, there will be those who can’t help but point their stubby fingers at Rachel for allowing Beau off his leash, and that will get plenty of dog lovers’ backs up.

  “How is he?” Tyler asks.

  “Sleeping right now.” I hold up the baby monitor screen on the clinic post-op room. “He’s doing well. His surgery was straightforward.”

  Tyler adjusts his position, stretching his legs, setting his boot heels on the edge of the table, inches from my running shoes. “It’s amazing, how you know how to do that.”

  “Yeah, it’s amazing what eight years of school
, a residency, and a few hundred grand can get you.” Though, in truth, I started learning long before I ever sat down for my first lecture in veterinary school, all my free time spent in the clinic with my dad.

  Tyler whistles. “Bet that’s gonna take forever to pay off.”

  “And I’ll end up giving this girl a discount because I feel so bad for her.” Cory said Rachel’s face paled when she gave her the estimate for the surgery, but then she nodded and reiterated that she’ll get the money. “At this rate, I should be done paying off my loans by the time I die.” Even with the help my parents provided.

  “You won’t need to give her a discount.” He digs his phone out of his pocket, and hitting a few buttons, passes me his phone. His fingers graze mine.

  I struggle to ignore the innocuous touch as I study the grid of aesthetic pictures that fill it. “‘Beau the Bear-nese,’” I read out loud, checking the profile. “He has a million followers on Instagram? A million people have followed a dog?”

  Tyler smirks. “And that’s growing by the hour. Apparently, her TikTok profile is just as big.”

  “How’d you find this?”

  “I’m good at getting information out of people. More than I need, usually.”

  He certainly got a lot out of me last weekend. It seems all he had to do was bat those long lashes my way, and now the man knows all my dirty laundry, my biggest vulnerabilities.

  But I’ve seen another side to him, too, one he works hard to hide from everyone else.

  I scroll through the pictures, scanning the quick and quippy captions. I assume Rachel has taken most of these pictures, save for the ones she’s posing in with Beau, looking nothing like the sobbing, frightened kid in my clinic and everything like a confident, sensual woman. “Wow, she even has merchandise.” T-shirts and beanies with caricatures of Beau.

  “She’s smart.”

  “I don’t understand any of this world.” Sure, I opened accounts, but I’m never on them. I don’t even remember my passwords. “Jonah’s wife is all over this sort of thing. She’d be impressed.” Calla not only manages the plane charter business—all the marketing and administrative paperwork, and a website she designed and built herself—and the cabin rental, which is booked well into next year, but she’s also establishing herself as a marketing expert around the area. What started out as volunteering for the Winter Carnival and local farmers’ market is turning into a marketing side hustle that she’s now charging for.

  On top of all that, she still keeps a personal blog alive, posting regularly about her life in Alaska with her yeti. The girl has more balls in the air than I could ever manage, and she hasn’t dropped one yet.

  Tyler nods toward the phone. “Did you see Rachel’s latest post?”

  “No.” I scroll back up to the top. Huh. “She’s set up a GoFundMe page for him.” That has already earned enough to cover the surgery fees plus recovery appointments and therapy. I curse under my breath. “She wasn’t kidding when she said she’d find the money.”

  “I wish I could cover all my vet bills like that.”

  “You can. It’s called sponsorship.”

  “So I have to answer to someone else about my dogs? No fucking thanks.” He sucks back a gulp of his beer, his gaze drifting over the meadow between my place and my parents’.

  I skim through the post to read Rachel’s description of Beau’s tragic accident and her plea for help. “‘Thanks to the heroic efforts of Park Ranger Tyler Brady, who went above and beyond by not only releasing a distressed Beau from the trap but carrying all one hundred pounds of our favorite bear to his truck and driving us to the veterinarian he swears by twenty minutes away. If not for him, I fear Beau might not have survived,’” I read out loud. “‘He is a true hero.’”

  “As if I had any other choice. The dog weighs more than she does.” He studies the can in his grip with intense interest.

  “Something tells me you would have done it no matter what.”

  To that, he says nothing, taking another sip.

  “And in brackets, ‘P.S. Why can’t all park rangers look like him?’”

  He groans, but the little smile says he’s not bothered.

  “‘If I weren’t so distraught, I would’ve gotten his number. Maybe I still can.’ Man, this girl has guts.” Something sharp pricks at my chest at the idea of another female chasing after Tyler … and of one catching him. It’s bound to happen, eventually. “She is pretty,” I tease.

  “I’m old enough to be her father,” he mutters through a sip.

  “Well, yeah, but then she could call you da—”

  “No.”

  I chuckle.

  “I haven’t been interested in girls her age since I was sixteen.”

  “Sixteen?”

  He grins slyly. “I’ve always liked older women. More experienced.”

  “Especially in parking lots?”

  Tyler, mid sip, chokes on his beer.

  My cheeks heat. I don’t know what compelled me to say that just now. Perhaps it’s the fact that we both seem to be dancing around that night as if it didn’t happen. “Make sure you let Rachel down gently.”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose as if in pain, and I laugh. It feels so good to sit out here with someone and laugh. I’m often alone on my porch. “You know this is going to be on the local news, especially when they make the connection.” I click on the comments. “Oh look, someone already has. ‘Is this the same Tyler Brady who won the Iditarod?’”

  Tyler groans again.

  “You’re gonna have to do interviews—”

  “I’m not doing any interviews—”

  “Pose for pictures …” I hand his phone back to him, earning myself another finger stroke that skitters all the way to my spine.

  He watches me swallow a sip of my Coke. “Anyway, it looks like you don’t have to worry about being paid.”

  “Yeah, not going to lie. That is a relief.” I have to pay Cory for seven hours of tonight’s overtime. I can skip paying myself, and I don’t mind, if I’m spending my time sitting out here with Tyler. “How did you end up as a park ranger, anyway?”

  “I’ve always been heading toward this. I spent years volunteering in the parks, and I knew how competitive it would be to get hired on, so I decided to go to college for a criminal justice degree. From there, I worked with Montana Highway Patrol for a few years, gaining experience, before getting hired on with the state parks.”

  “And then you went to Finland?”

  “Then I met Mila. She was in Montana for a month in the summer, visiting her father.” He smiles to himself. “She assumed it was just going to be a vacation fling, but I convinced her to give me a chance to prove it could work. We did the long-distance thing for about four months, and it was hard. I asked her to marry me. She said no at first, because she wouldn’t leave her dogs. So I left everything in Montana and moved to her.”

  It feels awkward, hearing him talk about falling in love with her. But the conversation is important.

  It’s like going through your medical history with a new doctor before they take you on. Uncomfortable, but essential to share vital details that might make a big difference in the future. In this case, it helps me understand the kind of man Tyler is, what he’s willing to give up for the right woman.

  Everything.

  “Their family business was too important for her to leave, and I was willing to do anything to be with her.” He toys with the tab on his can. “That’s the thing with me—when I’m in, I’m all in. It was tough, though. Most people there speak English, but I didn’t speak the language, so getting hired in my field wasn’t going to be easy. I started taking language lessons while helping out on the farm. That’s what they call their kennel. That, or a homestead. It’s nothing like this. It’s a whole tourist attraction, with guided sled tours and snowshoeing, snowmobiling. I learned about mushing and fell in love with it. Ended up becoming a guide, taking people and dogs out for hours, sometimes days, all over
the Arctic Circle. It’s a pretty wild life.”

  He pauses. “After Mila passed, I stayed to help Tero and Anja. The dogs had been training hard with Mila for years, and Tero wanted to race them in the Finnmarksløpet in her honor but didn’t think he had it in him. I needed something to keep me going. So, I decided I would do it. He helped get me to the start line.” He pulls the metal tab off his can. “Mila got me to the finish.”

  “And your talent and commitment to these dogs got you there first.”

  His smile is sad.

  “Then you decided to move to Alaska?”

  “It was too hard to stay in Finland without her, so I started looking at moving back home, to Whitefish. I went for a visit. It was good to see family but moving back didn’t appeal to me. Then I ran into Marshall Deeks in town, also visiting. I’ve known him since I was a kid, volunteering. He told me if I wanted a job up here, he’d make it happen. Even something seasonal, if I wanted to keep racing. Tero and Anja told me the dogs were mine to take wherever I wanted, as long as I cared for them the same way she had. Then Reed called me up, begging me to let him come help, my real estate agent found the farm, which was exactly what I was looking for, and it all kind of fell into place. It seemed like this is how I was meant to move on with my life.”

  And yet, Tyler hasn’t moved on. He may have physically relocated, but his head and heart are still living four thousand miles away and two years ago.

  I curl my arms around my chest to ward off the first hint of a chill. “Is this your plan for the long term, then? Ranger in the summers, musher in the winters?”