My Plus One Has Paws: Calliope Desford, #1

By Brittany Walsh

When Calliope Desford has truck trouble on a dark country road, she runs into some flea-bitten trouble. Now she's being chased by shape-shifting wolves and has a babysitter in the form of Dr. Matthew Whitlock. Worse yet, she was on her way to a wedding and now she has to pretend she and Matthew are dating. Things get even more awkward when she starts to like Matthew. What's a girl to do?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brittany Walsh
• Release date: Aug 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393500834

Book preview

Chapter 1

My truck shuddered, and I stroked the passenger seat gently with my bandaged fingers, I’m going as slow as I can I told the old vehicle. The bright headlights that passed by my grumbling 1970s Ford had stopped giving me anxiety fifty miles ago. I could go faster than my current sixty-five miles an hour, but it would tempt fate.

Each rotation of the axle caused an ominous grinding. I knew from unfortunate experience that if I gunned the engine that shiver would graduate to a full-blown seizure. The truck, a yellow model with a rusted-out spot in the bed, had been a lawn ornament outside my house that morning when I went to my very last day of work at Pets Galore.

My phone buzzed, and I ran my injured fingers across the screen so that the surround sound picked up the call. I couldn’t wait to add horrific burn scars to my list of physical features once my hands had healed. It’d go so well with my red-blond hair and my pine-needle green eyes. I was so pale that the scars wouldn’t be too noticeable if I was lucky. Or they’d discolor, and I’d look like the human version of one of those dogs with speckled paws.

Calliope Grace Desford. My mother sounded irritated, but not alarmed.

Hey Mom, I said, and I looked out at the road in front of me. I wouldn’t tell her what happened if she didn’t ask. I didn’t want to deal with the line of questioning that accompanied her knowing my place of employment had gone up in smoke.

Well, I was just calling to see when we could expect you and Tucker for the wedding, She said, and the acid in her tone when she said his name was audible. My mother hated my boyfriend with the heat of a thousand suns. We’d been together since I was eighteen years old. He had been everything my mom hadn’t wanted for me. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to realize that she was right. He was bad for me. I wouldn’t tell her she was right, but she was, and the realization stung more than I cared to admit.

Momma, Tucker and I broke up, I figured that would put her at ease, she’d been desperate for our breakup, I’m sure she’d even prayed for it a few times.

Broke up? When? How? She was excited. Christmas had come early for her this year, and that made me feel blank. I sighed and shook my head. This was a wonderful thing: for once, my mother and I could agree on something, how bad he was. Even if just the week before I’d been defending his lack of ambition.

Well, I had to come home early from work, and I found him with some girl from the job agency. I didn’t have to say how I found them. My mother was smart enough to figure it out. I sniffed back my tears. It was stupid to cry; I’d done plenty of that already.

Thank god, he was just so awful. He really made you a person I just didn’t know, She replied.

I glanced at the phone in disbelief... had my mother ever known me? Our mutual understanding that we would never understand each other had begun in kindergarten.

Other kids brought home pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up. Their parents smiled and pinned the picture up on the fridge. My mother saw mine, in which I professed my desire to draw pictures and suggested maybe I’d like to be a doctor, or even better -a lawyer- like her.

I’ll be at the wedding. I’m driving to Miami now. I told her.

You’re driving there? Not in that awful truck?!

It’s a vehicle Mom that I own. It’s all paid for, and it runs. That should be enough for you, I said, knowing that this was the beginning of the end of the conversation.

You know, if you’d spent more time working on preparing for life... If you hadn’t been living with your head in the clouds, you would have more than a beat-up old truck. She really couldn’t help it: if we were speaking she had to tell me how I was failing as an adult.

What? I can’t hear you... I just... Mom? Hello? Hello? I could hear her loud and clear, but I didn’t want to deal with her right then. I hit the end button and took a deep, calming breath. It had been a while since I last stopped and some coffee would help me get through this. I wanted to drive through the night, get there before everyone else, and have some time to relax and collect myself before I had to deal with my family and specifically, my mother.

Pulling off the highway, I noticed that a giant sinkhole blocked the ramp. I could see all the neon for the truck stops and everything on the other side of the sinkhole, but there was no safe way around it in my truck. I had two choices: I could get back on the highway, going the wrong direction and pray I wouldn’t be noticed by a state trooper; or I could go down the road I could see which was lined with moss-hung trees that knit together at the top forming a nature tunnel, It was a little like the haunted forest in Snow White… I half expected to see eyes on the tree trunks.

Illegally get back on the highway, or go down the spooky road? I mused aloud to the truck. I don’t want to add jailbird to my mothers’ list of complaints, I reasoned, and I turned down the road, flicked on my brights and began driving. There would have to be a road I could turn down somewhere, right?

I drove for a good five minutes, twisting and turning down the road lined with trees, feeling anxious and out of place. Then my high beams died. Because of course they would, Crap. It was black out there in the darkness where my headlights couldn’t reach.

This is fine. I’ll just turn around, I thought, and I looked around, trying to find a driveway that I could turn into so I could make a u-turn and get out of here, Stupid back country roads. I noticed a turn and took it without thinking, there wasn’t enough room for a u-turn and I couldn’t see far enough to judge whether or not I’d end up in a ditch.

Driving by a burned-out house with a tree sticking out of the roof and an old broken down truck that looked suspiciously like the one I was driving, I thought this might have been a driveway all along.

I could see an opening into what looked like an abandoned cow pasture with an old, knobby tree in the middle of its overgrown landscape. It was beautiful. The moon was big, bright and bathed the landscape in silver light. If I didn’t feel so uncomfortable, I’d probably be enjoying this. My truck seemed to sense the dead truck nearby and died.

I uttered a few of the words you don’t say in polite company. There was no way in hell I was marching around out here on foot, I saw a bear crossing sign earlier, and I had no intention of checking myself for ticks at a truck stop bathroom later. Besides, what was I going to do? I knew nothing about trucks, nor did I have the tools needed to fix a vehicle.

This.. is just fabulous. I picked up the phone, looking at the signal with the ominous slash through it: no signal. I’d either have to get out and walk... or I’d have to sit here until morning and hope that in the night some Leatherface character didn’t come to collect my skin for a trophy.

Chapter 2

I started talking to my truck giving it words of encouragement Come on you know you want to run for me. If you do, I’ll get the good stuff at your next oil change. I said, as if that might make it reconsider it’s current state.

It was as I was whispering fond feelings for my cranky 4x4 that I heard yipping and howling. I looked up, staring out the windshield all I needed to complete my evening was a pack of wild dogs.

Instead, a gold shape ran through the high grass and leaped into the tree. The cat found a high limb and sat down. It looked tense, even from this distance I could see that it’s mouth was open and it was panting. It’s eyes fixed in the direction it’d come from as it’s tail flicked with agitation.

Suddenly I could see why it was so upset as a pack of wolves came charging through the grass to circle the old knobbly tree. As the wolves crowded around, the cat lifted itself onto it’s four paws and arched it’s spine while it’s lips peeled back.

The wolves bounced off the tree, trying to get enough momentum to get up and into its limbs. Each time one got close the cat slapped them hard across the snout causing the canine it slapped to cry and stumble backward.

A silvery gray wolf sat slightly behind the energetic wolves who seemed desperate to get to their prize. It’s back was to me, but I watched as it arched, twisted. I watched fur fall off it’s body, leaving it hairless as the bones moved around under the pale skin. Soon it stood, on human legs. His silver gray fur was replaced by scraggly human hair that hid his neck.

The man was pointing up at the huge gold cat, which looked down at the human as if this was a perfectly reasonable thing to see. If that wolf was human, were they all humans? Was the panther?

I rolled down my window hoping I might hear something, some conversational cues, but all I could