Soul Scars (Dog Haven Sanctuary Romance) Read online

  SOUL SCARS BLURB

  Lulah & Vince ~ Dog Haven Sanctuary Romance Book 2

  © 2014 Tasman Gibb

  Raised by a gambling-addicted father, dog trainer Lulah Wallis yearns for some security in her life. And everything’s looking good with a job promotion at Dog Haven Sanctuary in her sights, plus the opportunity to buy the modest cabin she calls home. Adding a hot, reliable boyfriend to the mix would see her totally fulfilled.

  Combat PTSD from two tours in Afghanistan has left Vince Marr with a failed marriage and blocked access to his precious daughter. Crippled by flashbacks of the war that came home with him, he’s keeping his head down to prevent anyone stateside becoming a victim of his inner battle Finding a kindred spirit in Calliope, a rescued pit bull, he lets Lulah talk him into training her, together, as his service dog.

  As Lulah and Vince work together, their connection unintentionally deepens. Vince isn’t the rock Lulah hoped for, but she sees enough hope to persuade him to seek help for his condition. For Vince, having someone see the better man he could be is just what he needs to make the effort. Growing friendship ignites a passion neither can resist, but the doubts cast by their deep scars grow along with it—and old wounds are slow to heal. For both of them love is unsafe, and trust is a terrible risk. This time, it might be worth it.

  SOUL SCARS

  A Dog Haven Sanctuary Contemporary Romance

  Book 2

  Tasman Gibb

  Copyright © July 2014 Tasman Gibb

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  ISBN 978-0-473-28725-2

  Kindle Edition

  Edited by Jeri Smith

  Copy edits by Fiona Lorne, Jacy Mackin and Ekatarina Sayanova, Red Quill Editing

  Beta reader Dale Marie

  Cover designer Marya Heiman with Strong Image Editing

  Formatted by BB eBooks

  No part of this ebook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author at [email protected] except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Thank you!

  Let’s keep in touch

  What’s coming next?

  About the author

  Chapter 1

  LULAH DROPPED INTO a chair, propped her feet on the low table, and scrolled through the phone messages that had come in during her last session training the Dog Haven Sanctuary interns. From the office kitchen Marlo called out, offering tea or coffee, but Lulah remained stuck on the first message, her emotions polarized.

  Three short words: Help me, pls.

  “Crappity-crap, we got us a Vince bomb!” Lulah called out. Geez, here we go again.

  Vince Marr was not the guy for her. Not even close. Lulah knew that all the way to the depth of her heart and soul. Still, that hadn’t stopped her spending each spare moment through the morning imagining herself hard-up against totally hot Vince who had promised to stop by this evening and help with her course work.

  “What’s up?” Marlo asked.

  Lulah tapped out a quick Where r u? message and hit the reply button, muttering at the phone. “Can’t help, buddy, if I don’t know where you are.” She rocked back into the armchair. “SOS from Vince.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “In trouble.” She passed Marlo the phone. “But he is asking for help, so breakthrough, maybe?”

  “Or a breaking point,” Marlo replied as she read the short message and handed the phone back. “Where is he?”

  Today, Lulah had no idea where he was, because despite their friendship, when Vince moved into self-isolation mode he never told her where he went. He would arrive at her cabin, his usually steady eyes filled with distress as he asked her to take care of his dog, Calliope, for a few days. When he turned up in that state she couldn’t refuse him.

  Each time he climbed into his pickup and drove away he left her as disillusioned as the dog sitting at her feet. Left her to work through an infuriating mix of anger and sympathy, vowing this would be the last freaking time she’d collude with his can’t cope so I’m shipping out stunt.

  What really annoyed her was that when he fixed her with that pain-filled gaze, her resolve dissolved into a messy heap that saw her step up to help him out, one last time.

  Combat PTSD from his second tour in Afghanistan kept him teetering on the edge of being permanently broken, and if that latest text message was anything to go by, he might have reached his tipping point.

  Despite Lulah spending the past few months training Calliope as a service dog to help Vince with his issues, he had yet to agree that he actually wanted a service dog. He said it would define him as a broken person, dependent, when in reality he expected to improve.

  Except he wasn’t improving. If anything, he was becoming worse.

  Lulah ran her hands through her hair. “You see, that’s the problem. I’m presuming he headed out into the wilderness somewhere, because he looked exhausted when he dropped Calliope to me last night. About crisis-3.”

  “Crisis-3, which is…?”

  “Oh, a three sits around mid-range, so it isn’t too bad. Elevated stress but recently showered and shaved, wearing clean clothes. Still capable of driving but couldn’t ride the escalator in a shopping mall.”

  “Lulah!”

  “Hey, those are Vince’s words, not mine. Anyway, I’m guessing he’s up in the mountains somewhere, but…” She shrugged. “I’m just wondering at what stage we call out a search team. If Vince is in the mountains, he could have fallen, cozied up with a bear, or—” Lulah’s phone rang. She reached for it, and her heart tripped, hoping the caller was Vince. “It’s Dad; I’d better take it. Can you contact Adam and see if he can pin a location on Vince? There’s been no response to my text.”

  Adam was Marlo’s boyfriend of almost a year. Recently, to be closer to the woman he couldn’t walk away from, he’d transferred from his position as a New Zealand police officer to a job at Dog Haven. Perhaps his understanding and experience with PTSD could help steady Vince now.

  Lulah cut her father’s call short and re-entered the office just as Marlo finished talking to Adam.

  “Don’t worry about Vince. Adam’s going to try and locate him. Now, how’s that father of yours?” Marlo asked.

  Lulah dropped into the chair and went back to dragging the fingers of both hands upwards through her short, p
latinum blonde hair, so that it stood on end. She pointed to her head. “Ta-da, Nutty Professor.”

  “Lulah! Your dad. How is he?”

  She smoothed her hair back down, twirling one end. “You see, here’s the thing about men. They drive me freakin’ nuts. They’re unreliable, they break promises, they tell lies, and when their boat starts sinking, they don’t even have the common sense to carry a life jacket. I’m expected to drop everything and turn up with the lifeboat. It’s not enough to be their lighthouse, pointing out the rocks and hazards for them, because they sail about with their heads up their asses, thinking everything is going to be just fine. And even if it’s not, good old Lulah will make it right for them.”

  “Ray’s gambling again, huh?”

  “Yup. Gambling and in debt. And I just told old un-Lucky Ray that I’m not helping him out because he broke his promise to me. I should feel good about standing up to him, so why do I feel like such a cow?”

  “Because being the strong one is so difficult. You did the right thing, Lulah. He’ll thank you one day.”

  “He hates me right now.”

  “That won’t last.”

  Lulah sighed. “Dad and Vince—double-whammy Wednesday.” She checked her phone again then slapped it against her thigh. “Why won’t Vince respond to my text? Hell, he reaches out for help, then nothing! If whatever crisis he found himself in has improved, surely he’d have let me know.”

  “I know this waiting is difficult…”

  “I can’t just sit here. Maybe I should go to his house.”

  “Adam’s on his way there now, and if Vince isn’t there, he’ll phone.”

  “If he’s not at home, how will he find Vince?”

  “Oh, you know Adam, super-powers, secret contacts, and all that. I don’t know how he does it, he just does.”

  Lulah knew Vince had his own super-powers, because occasionally she caught a glimpse. Like magically arriving at the Sanctuary on a day he wasn’t scheduled to be there, bringing a sandwich and some fruit for her, and somehow knowing she’d rushed out that morning and missed packing a lunch. He loved to tease her until she laughed. When he joined in, lighting up a room in a way that drew her like a moth to his very unreliable flame, she could scarcely keep her breathing calm or contain herself to the perimeter of the fourteen inches of physical distance that made them friends. But his darker side, his inconsistency, meant that flame could flare, burn, and hell… “Vince, he’s a no-go guy, isn’t he?” Her feelings for him were such that sometimes she needed the reassurance of a friend she trusted to keep her on her stated track.

  Marlo handed her a mug of tea. “Using your analogy, he’s probably going to need a lifeboat and crew for a long time yet—maybe forever. Judging by what you just said, I don’t think that’s what you’re after.”

  The others at the sanctuary had been wary of Vince—dark, brooding, and blazing hot—but Lulah and he had struck up a friendship that went deep and close in no time. They regularly explored the trails in the parks that bordered the Sanctuary, and she loved the easy way they teased and competed with each other; Vince’s strength countered her agility and knowledge of the area. Recently, dramatic landscape or something like a small, hidden lake on the trail pulled them to a halt, fueling a new kind of connection between them. On those occasions, her heart rate increased as she studied the bow of his mouth and the heat in his eyes, but right when something threatened to snap, one of them would make a joke or a challenge and the moment vanished.

  “He is hot, though. You have to give him that.” Lulah grinned.

  “He’s hurt, is what he is.”

  “Hurt, hot, tempting.” Lulah faked a shiver.

  “Go there at your peril.”

  That’s what she loved about Marlo. That’s why she was a friend rather than a boss, because she never lectured. Instead she threw out a few words that reminded you what you’d vowed in more sane moments. And sometimes her clear thinking made her as annoying as Adam. “You know your problem? You’ve lived with that Kiwi guy for too long. You’re starting to soak up some of his common sense. It’s…icky.”

  Marlo laughed. “Icky? Is that your new word this week?”

  “This week’s word is ‘disconsolate’.”

  “Oh, save me. Drink your tea.”

  Lulah took a sip. “I’m not staying long; I want to be away early today if I can. That assignment’s giving me the usual troubles.”

  “How’s the course going?”

  “Fantastic.” Lulah tried for a look that brimmed with confidence. The coursework was a freakin’ nightmare, if she was honest.

  “Liar.”

  She grinned. Unlike her father, she hadn’t mastered the art of the poker face. “I know the theory. And you know how well I’m doing with training Calliope. What’s a degree, huh? Who really needs one?”

  “You do, within the next two months if you want to apply for the promotion.”

  LULAH RACED THE dogs up the steps to her cabin porch. As usual, they beat her and blocked the door so that she wouldn’t enter without them, showering her with wet kisses as she bent to remove her shoes.

  Home. Her home…almost. It would be hers once she saved the final ten grand to buy it. The promotion at the Sanctuary would give her a better chance of reaching that target before another buyer turned up.

  She grabbed a cold drink from inside and returned to the porch, settling into her favorite hickory rocker. For much of the year she virtually lived on the porch. Out here, she had a small table with a couple of chairs, her bed, armchairs, and the biggest view of one of Washington State’s finest national parks. Why, she’d often thought, would one want to live inside? The porch was great until the snow came.

  She drained her glass and thought about her assignment, but her father and Vince crowded her mind, killing her enthusiasm to open her laptop. Damn her father and his lying. There she was, believing that he hadn’t gambled for the past two years, and now he was back in debt. Lost everything. Not my problem, Dad. This is your mess, and you have to crawl out of it. He told her the debt collectors were threatening him. She thought of his grey eyes, so like hers. How they could look like two inanimate stones perched on his poker face and how they could light up, glittering with joy at treating her to something special, something he’d promised, that on a rare occasion he was actually capable of delivering.

  She moved over to the porch table and opened her laptop. The night was still light-sweater-warm, and she was not taking calls. Not from her father and not from Vince, who sent an SOS message that left her hanging. She opened her essay and stared at the jumble of letters. Hell, this better be worth it, because what took others only minutes took her an age to decipher. Sure, she knew what she intended to write, but she wasn’t confident that what she actually wrote said the same thing.

  The transient lifestyle of a gambler’s daughter had caused Lulah to fall behind in basic reading and writing skills until, by age eight, she attended school only sporadically. The lack of resources in small town, USA, meant she’d been placed, educationally, in the too-much-work box and passed along to the next teacher. Even now, writing essays was a nightmare of mammoth proportions.

  With Vince’s help, her reading ability improved dramatically, but getting words in the right order, from her head to the keyboard, continued to flummox her.

  At the sound of Adam’s car in her drive, she closed her laptop. He greeted the dogs—a chest rub for Joker, reducing the dog to jelly, and a gentle ear massage for Calliope—before covering the porch steps in one big stride. Marlo was lucky to have him. Gentle hands, protective without suffocating her, strong, supportive, hot…not in the UHT, Ultra Heat-Treated way that Vince was, but Adam had casual-sexy down pat.

  “Beer?” she offered.

  He sank into one of her old armchairs. “Love one.”

  Inside, Lulah took a beer from the fridge and poured a glass of wine for herself. What the heck, she could probably read better if she relaxed a bit. Back on the
porch the dogs were mugging Adam for more rubs, and she sent them after a ball before handing Adam his drink, and settling in the chair opposite him.

  “Don’t tell me…Marlo sent you here to make sure I finished my assignment.” They liked to remind her that without an animal behavior degree she couldn’t apply to be the director of service dog training at the Sanctuary. The position was new in a branch of work they would do: training rescue dogs to become service dogs for those with combat PTSD.

  “You wouldn’t let me near your assignment.”

  “Damn right I wouldn’t, buddy. So this must be about Vince. Any contact with him, yet?”

  Adam set his beer beside him on the porch. “Yeah, I found him. He was in a bad way. I’ve settled him back at his house in town, now, and he’ll be out to pick up Calliope tomorrow. If he can’t make that, he’s promised he will phone.”

  “So ‘in a bad way’…what does that mean, exactly?” She watched Adam pick at the label on his beer bottle. “Hello, Adam, Lulah here. Big girl, remember? Don’t sit there sorting your words out to make them all sugar-coated shiny and easy to swallow. I want the truth. What did you see?”

  “You really want to know, huh?”

  “Hit me, hot guy.”

  Adam laughed. “One day, Lulah, your turn of phrase is going to bring you trouble.”

  “Stalling much?”

  “Marlo’s going to kill me.”

  “Actually, I’m going to kill you if you don’t spit it out.”

  He raised his hands. “Okay, Vince was in a bad way. He’d had a flashback and he couldn’t pull himself out of it.”

  “Where was he? Hiking? On the trails?” She looked at Adam, watched him try and fail to slip on that mask that gave nothing away. Then came the strange ticking in her chest that she hadn’t experienced in years; a forewarning that she was about to be let down. Daddy’s started gambling again. Mommy’s angry with Daddy, so she left. Vince…

  “Vince wasn’t in the forest, Lulah. He was taking care of his daughter. Vince is a father, and he’s married.”