Free Animal Nature: A Paranormal Romance (The Animal Sagas) by Susan G. Charles Page B

ask for help – so that’s where I get it,” she chuckled as she mumbled to herself, under her breath. A smile formed on her face as she fought back any tears that may have wanted to share at that moment.
    And then the moment was gone. There was no time for tears right now. And she was about all cried out any way. She took a quick swipe at her eyes so no one else would ever see. The reality of it was that cabin needed work, and major work at that, all totaled – the roof had seen better days, the gutters were down in a couple of places, there were a few electrical “issues” and the plumbing screamed if you didn’t get the water pressure just right when you turned the water on.
    But just add all that to the list – the barn needed work, the garden needed to be tilled and planted, the tractors and dad’s old truck needed repairs, fences were down in a few places, the animals needed to be fed and livestock kept turned up missing quite frequently now – and that was just the top of the list. She stopped thinking about it because the more she did, the more things she added to that imaginary list – and by now she imagined it to be about a foot long.
    She wasn’t sure if the dwindling livestock numbers were due to the animals just simply  wandering off the property through the holes in the fences and their inability to find their way back, or if something more desperate, such as cattle rustling (and chicken rustling, and goat rustling – you get the idea) was going on. The thought of someone actually taking their animals bothered her a lot more than them just wandering off though. She hated thieves like the plague!
    Either way Lynda had to get this situation under control asap or she and Sonya were going to be living out on the streets soon, and she didn’t plan on letting that happen. Her family had owned this place too long and worked on it too hard to have that happen to them now. She would not allow their family home to be taken from them.
    So Lynda had been repairing things as she could – one job at a time. She had already used all the money she had saved up in her 401k fixing everything that she could, first on the cabin and then on the fences. Plus she had to do what she could to stop the livestock turning up missing. So that was her next top priority. That was money just walking off the farm as far as she was concerned. Not to mention food. Food for them and food for their animals as well.
    If it all kept going as it was right now she was thinking of adding a few flock guardians of some kind, maybe a Great Pyrenees or perhaps a Kuvasz, to the family as well to stop the animals going MIA. It might be a few more mouths to feed, but at least that, and maybe a few pats on the head from time to time, would be the only salary these farm hands would expect. Good enough for her!
    As it turned out, the night time bartender job she had now was good for tips most weekends even if many of the customers really pushed her buttons. And that money had come in handy many times over, the past few weeks especially, in helping Lynda keep everything above water. There were a few good customers that she loved seeing every weekend – but they were sorely outnumbered by all the butt-heads who loved to show up and aggravate the hell out of her!
    She often just wanted to yell, “Chill the hell out!” to all the patrons at the bar – but she just kept it all to herself so she could keep the job. She didn’t want her temper and an ill-fated comment to blow it for her now. Most days she really missed her corporate job though. They still sent her some projects to do as freelance work as often as they could since they really hoped she would come back one day. And that was a miracle as far as she was concerned.

Chapter 3
    6 months ago -
    The Seron sisters, as they were known about town, were about as different as two sisters could be. Lynda, the oldest by only six years, was a very to-the-point kind of person. She said what was on