Rival Forces Read Online Free Page A

in any way to men. Harmonie Kennels wasn’t meant to be hers.
    Well, she had it, even if it was by default. Her half brother Law, whom she’d known only slightly at the time, had refused his father’s legacy. He’d signed over the hundred pastoral and wooded acres bordering the Blue Ridge Mountains to her and walked away.
    Even so, she’d fought harder than anyone would ever know to be worthy of this legacy. But it was a burden, too. This place, these acres, the business was an all-consuming life. Her trainers got to go home for the holidays to families and friends, parties and traditions. Harmonie Kennels was all she had in the world.
    Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Yard.
    Too bad if she wanted more. She knew what it was to have so much less. Maybe wanting to be loved was asking for too much.
    So she’d screwed up. She wasn’t one of those women who needed a man to feel complete. She wasn’t like Georgiana. She’d never known what it felt like to be so in love her brain stopped working because her feelings had taken control.
    Liar. She felt her face catch fire as her conscience called bullshit. She had been in love once before. Kye McGarren.
    Yardley did a mental head shake. Where had that thought come from? She must be more shook up than she thought. McGarren was her first romantic failure.
    She wasn’t good with people. She was good at being a boss. Everyone looked to her to be strong, make the hard decisions, make it work. She was respected and admired. The only ones who gazed at her with unguarded love and appreciation were her K-9s.
    At the moment, Oleg was rotating his head back and forth between her and the road ahead, as if he needed to keep an eye on both. Unlike most of her K-9s, he preferred to keep his distance from his handler. He’d been bred for protection. His job, safety of the pack. She supposed they were a lot alike.
    She reached out to brush a hand over Oleg’s tall ears. That brought his attention back to her. In his gaze, which she knew better than to hold long, she saw that he accepted her as his alpha. But he didn’t adore her, as every other dog she worked with did. “You’re my male challenge of the moment, are you, big fella?”
    Or maybe she was losing her touch.
    Suddenly she was angrier than she could ever recall being. She hauled back and put everything she had into the toss that sent her phone arcing into the undergrowth on the hillside. On Monday she’d get a new phone with a new number. And go back to her life.
    â€œScrew love!” And screw Kye McGarren, wherever he might be, and the memories of a time when she’d wanted more.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    Kye swallowed the last of his extra-large Styrofoam cup of coffee. It was lukewarm, revealing the oily dregs from a convenience store pot that needed cleaning. The liquid hit his stomach and spread acid burn like napalm. Even so, he regretted that it was his last gulp. After a final working day on the slopes, he’d spent New Year’s Eve on a red-eye flight from Salt Lake City to Washington, D.C.
    Being a big man, flying coach middle seat wasn’t his favorite way to travel. But he really couldn’t have asked the six-year-old at the window to change with him. Not when she’d been face-glued to the miracle of darkness outside and offering a running monologue about its “awesomeness.” On the other side of him the girl’s mother, with a three-month-old in her arms, needed the aisle. Lily, down in luggage, had more room in her crate.
    No worries. He’d plugged in his headphones, turned up the volume, and tried to forget that he was wedged in like tuna in a sardine can.
    All in all, an IV drip of Red Bull would be welcome about now.
    Kye glanced over at Lily, who occupied the kennel beside him on the seat of the rental car. He reached between the bars with his fingers and scratched her snout. “I know this isn’t our usual