Free Heart Mates by Mary Hughes Page A

adamant that you’re the Blue to find the heart piece, and she is the seer in the family. So I have to ask you…fall in love with any wolves lately?”
    “That’s taboo.” Even and especially wolves with silver eyes and clever hands attached to all that was tall, dark and umm-hmm . “Maybe Aunt Linda met someone. She’s a Blue. Or Arianna. Can’t be me. I just got my life on track. I’m not messing it up with love.”
    “I see.” His dry tone said he did see, too much. “Well, that’s a problem. Because if it’s not you, who is the Blue I need to warn?”
    “ Warn ?” She screeched to a halt so fast she almost smoked her heels. “Warn about what?”
    “Red script appeared beside the first line of the Quatrain. A warning.”
    “About what?” she repeated.
    “If you’re not the Blue in the prophecy, why should you care?”
    Sophia wished for a smite button of her own. “Because it’s a warning. Everyone needs to heed a warning.” She waited.
    His silence was a pregnant reply.
    “ Arg . All right, because it might— might , mind you—be about me.”
    “Good enough.” His tone was smug, the bastard. “It says, ‘Beware the Hungry Ghost.’”
    “Hungry Ghost? I don’t like the sound of that.” She started walking again, fast, trying to shake off the shivers. “What does it mean?”
    “Not sure. In Buddhism the Hungry Ghost has the appetite of a mountain but the throat of a needle’s eye. A person who tries to fill an emotional need with physical possessions.”
    “Why don’t you just say greedy?”
    He sighed. “Being a banker has really dulled your sense of the dramatic. Can’t you just picture it, a huge growling empty stomach trying to suck empires through a drinking straw of a throat?”
    “You’re a playboy, Daniel. You see nothing wrong with a big appetite.”
    “I was a playboy.” He paused. “Look, just do me a favor, okay? Keep your eyes and ears open for the Heart.”
    “Whatever it looks like.”
    “Sophia…” His tone was a warning.
    “Yes, all right.”
    “It’s important. I think you’re right on top of it. If the wrong person gets their hands on that Key, the world as we know it will end.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Apocalypse.”
    “No joke, Sophia. The red script has ramped up the danger. Your competition is devouringly evil.”
    “ All right .” She hung up, shuddering.
    King wiggled in her arms. The poor, brave dear. Hungry Ghosts and prophecies would have to wait until she knew how badly he was injured.

Chapter Seven
    The sign on the pet store door was turned to Closed. Sophia’s chest shot with disappointment.
    The “OPEN AT” plastic clock said nine. Her phone said seven. Right. What was the world coming to when stores weren’t open at dawn?
    Okay, if not here, the vet. She thumbed up a search on her phone in case Matinsfield had gotten a new emergency clinic for animals since she was here last. But no, the closest was ten miles out of town. Could her car limp ten miles?
    King yipped. He was shivering. Could he last ten miles?
    A light snapped on inside the pet store. Hope surged. She peered in. Movement inside set her heart pumping. She tried the door.
    It was open. She eased inside and set King on the floor. “Hello?”
    Light spilled from a small glassed-in area to her left, about the size of a vet’s examination room.
    “Yip!” King barked the same sharp warning he’d used for Killer.
    She stepped back just as a man glided from the darkness.
    He was all sculpted cheekbones, brilliant black eyes, black hair and sexy mouth begging for a nibble… Her breath caught. If she hadn’t met Noah, she’d have been drooling. As it was she felt uncomfortably hot.
    King’s yip turned distinctly cross.
    “One moment.” The gorgeous man tossed a shopkeeper’s logoed apron over his head.
    Instantly the tug of attraction was gone. As if, by donning the apron, he’d put on an asexual envelope. He became, not a man, but a dog groomer in ordinary jeans and