Dr. Keith Walker, DVM, didn't disappoint, a babe indeed.
Based on first appearances alone, Madison probably would've guessed he might have been in his early to mid-thirties, but she supposed, if blessed with good genetics perhaps closer to forty, especially if he'd been employed by her father for as long as Molly suspected.
Whatever his age, he looked damn good, she had to give Molly credit, a man that looked as good as Keith did would probably make almost any woman nervous. Madison put his height somewhere in the neighborhood of six feet, possibly even an inch or two north of there, and he was all lean muscle.
His shirt clung tightly to his broad shoulders and wiry frame, making her mouth want to water. She'd almost bet that under that button-up shirt of his, he owned a six pack of abs and one of those v-lines that led down to his... oh God, she needed to get ahold of herself, and fast! Directing her gaze back up to his face as he walked out to greet them, after locking the door behind himself, Madison noticed how intensely his eyes seemed to bore into hers.
He didn't even notice Molly standing there next to her, but stared directly into her eyes. That penetrating gaze of his, wow! As the sun backlit his appearance, his light-colored eyes seemed to glow. Madison had never seen eyes that color before, so cold, like green ice, and yet, there was heat in his gaze that shot straight through her while he took a second to look her over.
Keith had dark blonde hair long enough that it curled ever so slightly across his forehead, his brows darker and shapely, expressive even, and his eyelashes long, like those of a woman, framing his eyes and serving to make them even more electric than they would have been on their own.
His face was a dramatic combination of angles and contours, his chin strong, his jawline square. And he sported the perfect amount of facial hair to make him look more rugged than pretty. Madison found herself contemplating if he had dimples when he smiled, or if he got little crinkles around his eyes, it took all of her willpower not to drool.
No, Molly hadn't been kidding when she'd called the good doctor a total babe.
Not wanting to be ignored, Molly stepped in front of her, a big sloppy smile on her face. "Good morning, Keith." She beamed.
Though his eyes wavered a few times, Keith finally met Molly's gaze, the hard expression on his face softening ever so slightly. Madison had no clue why, but the way he looked at Molly made her jealous. She didn't want to question it, especially considering Molly's age, as if it made a difference, but she found herself wondering how close Molly and Keith might have been.
They talked for a couple of minutes, Madison blocking out every other word as her thoughts ran rampant, but she somehow managed to catch snippets of the conversation. Molly told Keith that Al had been too busy to bring Madison by and that she'd been asked to show her around some and leave her with Keith. Things Madison had already heard of course.
And Keith asked Molly how classes were going, to which Molly replied with fine, pulling out her cell phone and checking the time.
"Shoot," she exclaimed, looking quickly back up at Keith with a soft, sad, smile. "I really need to get going."
"Don't worry, I'll take care of her," Keith replied, his eyes lighting once more on Madison causing her to flush.
Something about the way he looked at her made Madison nervous. As if he looked right through her.
Molly backed away slowly, one shy smile after another, tucking her hair behind her ears as she repeatedly said goodbye. With a wave, Madison thanked Molly for showing her around, noticing that Keith's gaze never left her face. Probably sizing her up or something.
"You're taller than I thought you'd be," Keith said soon after Molly left, his eyes slowly roaming her body.
"Excuse me?"
Keith didn't answer, giving her a brooding stare, he turned away, pulling out his keys and unlocking the door to the barn. "Are you coming?" He asked over his shoulder when Madison didn't immediately follow.
She cocked her head and huffed a little, everyone here seemed so... strange. Didn't anyone give straight answers anymore? Why all of this evasion?
Madison followed him into the barn, standing close to one of the walls and looking around as he flipped the deadbolt behind her. The Lycan Barn looked different from the others in many ways. They entered into a hall, to her left she found a closed off space that looked like it took up quite a bit of real estate, Keith bypassed the door and continued down the hall.
The barn opened into two distinct spaces with a four-foot wall that ran the length of it in the middle. Wire fencing extended from the top of the wall to the ceiling, and the gate in the center had two separate locks.
Yeah, major emphasis on safety.
The other side of the barn contained a wash station, supplies, and a few travel crates. Madison supposed the connecting room housed feed and any miscellaneous supplies. The sounds and smells, however, seemed similar to the other barns, excited whining, and the strong scent of air freshener.
Keith waited until she walked over to the wall before saying anything, "They're amazing creatures, aren't they?" He asked.
Madison refrained from lacing her fingers into the fencing to touch the large wolf that immediately jumped up to greet her.
She prided herself on being cautious and not immediately trusting an animal she'd just met, no matter how friendly they appeared, but the urge to stroke its thick fur was overwhelming. She turned to look over her shoulder and found Keith within inches of her to her right, their faces a mere breath away.
"He's beautiful," She whispered, looking back at the wolf.
The room beyond the wall maintained some similarities to the other barns with its slanted rubber floors and a single large drain in the middle, it had two watering troughs as well, one on each side, however, she saw no toys, or dog beds, the wolves enclosure completely bare but for those watering troughs. It also had a large rubber flap in the middle of the outer wall for the wolves to come and go as they pleased.
The interior of the enclosure had four animals wandering around in it, the large black wolf still propped against the fence and whining incessantly, and three more. Two of them the typical agouti color of the gray wolf and one mostly white with hints of discoloration.
Keith laid a hand on her shoulder, startling her as she continued to stare into the eyes of the massive animal before her. The other three wolves hung back nervously.
"It's okay, you can touch him."
Madison took a deep breath, slowly reaching into the enclosure and touching a small white half-moon shape on the animal's chest. The wolf stopped whining as she touched him, looking at her intently and panting ever so slightly.
The moment she laid hands on him, a sense of calm she would never be able to explain came over her. The other wolves laid down behind him, they watched her with a tranquil intensity that should have freaked her out, but only made her more comfortable.
She let her fingers twirl in a small circle around the crescent shape for another minute or so before finally taking a step back and nearly bumping into Keith who remained close behind her. He moved to her side quickly, smiling when she blushed.
The wolf jumped back from the fence, sitting on his haunches and watching the exchange between them, the other three remained in their prone positions, the white one whining a little as it quivered.
"What's his name?" Madison asked, breaking the strange silence that had fallen around them.
Keith chuckled, "The woman who owned them really liked Star Wars. His name is Darth."
"As in Darth Vader?"
"Yes."
That made Madison giggle. "And the rest of them?"
"I'm sure Molly already told you, but if not, we have ten altogether in this pack."
"Yeah, she said as much, and that they came from a breeder? Is that right?"
Keith nodded, leading her in the direction of the door they'd passed earlier. It turned out to be a walk-in cooler. Multiple shelves lined the walls stacked from top to bottom with white butcher paper. A wheelbarrow sat in the middle of the room half full of small packages. Keith loaded a few more stacks into the wheelbarrow and pushed it back out, Madison on his heels.
"A little less than a year ago, Robert met a lady in North Carolina that had been responsibly, if you want to call it that, raising wolf-dogs with her husband. She had a pack of twelve. Two males, and five females, all one-hundred percent gray wolf. She also had five dogs, three females and two males, mostly husky or shepherd mixes."
"So what happened?"
"After her husband died, she had a hard time keeping up with it all. She hadn't starved them or anything, they simply needed more care than she could give them on her own and if she turned them over to the county, they'd be put down. Shelters don't often adopt out wolf-dogs, so she sought out your father. He got the proper licensing and brought them all here."
Madison sensed Keith's inner turmoil as he told the story, and she understood. As much as he didn't like the idea of breeding wild animals for profit, he had sympathy for the woman too. Darth seemed so sweet, clearly, she and her husband had spent a lot of time loving and socializing these animals.
"Molly said that three are part dog?"
Keith nodded, parking the wheelbarrow in front of the gate and pulling a garbage can over next to it as he began unwrapping the raw cuts of meat.
"Robert adopted out all the dogs within the first couple of months, if nothing else, the old lady socialized her animals well, despite all the precautions we take here, these animals have never shown even an ounce of aggression. One of the female wolves came in pregnant though, she gave birth to four pups, one stillborn. The old lady told us that a husky mix sired them."
The other six animals came pouring in through the rubber flap as Keith started tossing the meat into the enclosure, making sure each animal got some. Three looked a bit smaller than the rest, one an agouti like the first two, and the other two a mixture of whitish gray. Madison assumed those were the wolf-dogs.
Keith began pointing out the animals one by one and naming them. She'd already met Darth, the alpha male, and none of the others bore his distinct coloring.
"Of the two agoutis, the one with more white on her face is Storm, and the other one is Trooper. The white one is Sky." He pointed to the new arrivals next, "That one over there, the white with the gray points, that's Star, and the gray one with the white and brown is Chewbacca."
Despite herself, Madison had to laugh at that one.
"Chewbacca is the other male, though he's the submissive, and that last one over there, the reddish brown one is Leia. Your father ended up naming the three pups, he stuck with the space theme, but he didn't keep it true to Star Wars," he laughed. "The agouti looking one is Venus, the one with the white socks is Luna, and the other is Mercury. They're all female."
"Have they all been sterilized?" Madison asked, watching with intent as he threw out the last of the meat and the wolves attacked it with vigor.
Keith nodded. "That's the first thing we do with every animal that comes in. Unless of course, they come in pregnant, like Storm."
"Does that happen often?"
"No. But it does happen. We actually have a dog that Robert rescued right before he passed that's due. Molly's hoping she'll hold off until this weekend, because she wants to help, but I'm not sure she's going to wait that long. I had to move her to my cabin this morning, she's panting heavily."
"Is that, is that safe?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean, aren't most of the dogs you guys bring in dangerous?"
Keith smiled as he led her out of the Lycan Barn, having finished cleaning up and locking the door behind them. With the sun shining brightly on his face, his eyes took on that pale glow, and in answer to her earlier thoughts, yes, when Keith smiled, he had little crinkles around his eyes.
He didn't appear to have dimples, but the overall effect? No less stunning. The way the sun glinted off his hair, turning strands of it to gold while deepening the caramel undertones, and his mouth curved, his lips neither too full nor too thin, his smile a dazzling white, it was almost too much for Madison to bear.
Had she ever seen a man more beautiful or masculine than Keith? What a total oxymoron! Madison easily felt the virile masculinity that flowed through his veins, but at the same time, he had such pleasant features that she almost didn't want to tear her eyes away. Like some sort of hypnotic spell, a trance that pulled her under. Deeper and deeper until her limbs simply quit responding.
While every fiber of her being screamed danger, the electrical impulses in Madison's head continued to misfire, rendering her in a sort of paralyzed state. She could do little more than breathe when he smiled at her.
Quite a disconcerting sensation.
Only when he finally spoke again did Madison snap out of it, shaking her head, embarrassed for acting like some sort of star-struck fool!
"Al didn't explain any of this very well to you, did he?"
"Huh? What?"
"The sanctuary, he didn't tell you exactly what it is that we do here, am I right?"
"Oh, um, yeah. He and Molly both told me that my father rescued aggressive dogs and tried to rehabilitate them. Molly said some five dogs are permanent residents."
"Well, that's certainly part of it."
Keith walked around to the side of the barn, appearing a few seconds later in a little red golf cart that kind of resembled a Corvette. Madison laughed, this place seemed full of surprises, and she was eager to see what the actual house looked like.
"Hop on, Molly said she already showed you around the dog barns, so I'll take you on a quick tour of the Pegasus Barn before I start my rounds. We can talk on the way."
Keith pulled to a stop beside her, and Madison climbed in. "This is cute," she teased.
He shrugged, "What can I say, Robert had his moments. He was like a big kid at heart."
"You knew my father pretty well, huh?"
"Yeah, but we can talk about that later. There's a lot we need to go over first." Keith cleared his throat, his whimsical smile fading. "We don't rescue only aggressive dogs here, in fact, we don't particularly target them at all."
"Come again?"
"There are a lot of county and state-run shelters in Pennsylvania, and most of them aren't classified as no-kill shelters. When a shelter fills up or even gets close to capacity, the dogs that are less likely to be adopted are euthanized first. Robert worked with a lot of rescue organizations in the state and surrounding areas, trying to save as many death row dogs as possible. The ones he couldn't place at other shelters came here."
"So this place is kind of like a last resort?"
"Yes, exactly. We work with the dogs, train them, teach them skills, and try to place them. Some have gone on to become service dogs, search and rescue, or work with local K9 units, we've even produced a few movie stars. But there are some, as Molly said that are permanent residents, we call them bite cases. They've had too many strikes against them and can never be adopted out."
"So they'll live here for the rest of their lives?"
"That is the hope. A lot of what happens here in the future depends on you, though."
"What do you mean?"
They pulled up to the horse barn before she got her answer, Keith put the cart into park and smiled in an attempt to cover up his foul mood. Obviously, there was a lot more that Madison still didn't understand. Possibly the "catch" she'd been waiting for.
"We can talk about that another time. Let's go meet the horses."
The Pegasus Barn looked much like any other horse barn, twelve sizable stalls, a feed and tack room, a small office and an attached half bath. She saw five horses in one of the nearby pastures and a couple of cows with some oddly spotted goats.
"Your father has seven horses here, two of which are rescues and Jack is currently working with a local rescue group to get them homes. The other five horses your father bought and the ones out in the field belong to Jack and GeeGee, which brings us to twelve in total. We don't have any ATVs here, Robert said the loudness of them might spook the animals, so we ride the fence line once a week on horseback."
Keith took her to the first stall where a large black horse with feathering on his legs, and one rear white stocking stamped impatiently.
"Jack feeds the horses in the morning and usually leaves the stalls open. GeeGee feeds them at night. I asked him to leave ours stalled this morning because I wanted you to meet them, a couple can be hard to catch without a little incentive."
The large horse placed his head over the stall door, and Madison reached out to greet him, gently rubbing his muzzle as he lipped her. She chuckled.
"This is Tonka, he's a favorite of Tom's."
Each stall had a nameplate on it. The next one read Lily, a pretty little paint, mostly white with a few large brown patches here and there.
"Lily's a good roping horse, don't let her calm demeanor fool you though, she's got a lot of get-up and go." Keith gave the horse a pat on the neck and moved to the next stall. "Have you ever ridden a horse?" He asked.
Madison nodded, "I took lessons in high school."
"Good. This next horse belonged to your father, his favorite, I wanted you to have him." Keith waited until Madison got closer, digging into his pocket and pulling out a sugar cube, "Here, Fury doesn't like most people, but he's a sucker for something sweet."
Madison reached out to take it from him, instantly recoiling as their skin made contact. "You're so cold!" she yelped.
Embarrassed, Keith shoved his hands in his pockets. "Poor circulation," he admitted begrudgingly before acknowledging the horse that poked his big head over the gate to check out the newcomers.
Madison gasped. Fury was big, like Tonka, but his coat a smoky gray color with a jet black mane and tail, that also had subtle streaks of white and gray throughout. Fury easily had to have been one of the most beautiful horses she'd ever seen. He also had a black dorsal stripe and zebra markings on his legs. She noticed a few white patches on either side of his stomach, and his face was what they called bald, or completely white, both of his eyes a sky blue.
Fury nickered to her, shaking his head as he waited impatiently for her to hand over the sugar. He lipped it out of her hand carefully before backing up into the stall and away from them.
"He's so pretty."
"That he is and well trained too. He doesn't always have the best ground manners, but once you're in the saddle, he's a hell of a ride, he'll do whatever you ask him to."
After seeing a bay colt that her father had recently purchased for Jack to train, Keith introduced her to his horse, a leopard spotted appaloosa named Apache. And the two rescues, both sorrel mares.
Madison helped him let all the horses out of their stalls, and they hopped back into the golf cart, Keith driving her up to the house. "You go take a look around, and after I'm done with my rounds I'll check in on you. Okay?" He said, handing her a ring of keys, with a remote for the garage attached.
Nodding, Madison took the keys and headed for the side of the house, back through the garage and into the mudroom.
The mudroom opened up into a utility room that housed a nice washer and dryer setup. There she found loads of cabinets and plenty of counter space for folding clothes, even a laundry shoot that looked like it connected to the upstairs.
She came to the kitchen next, or more aptly, a chef's wet dream. Like something straight out of a showroom catalog, all shiny and new. State-of-the-art everything, and any sort of kitchen appliance she might ever need!
An envelope sat ominously on the polished granite, her name scrawled on the front of it.