Title:
Soldier’s Heart (Wounded Love #2)
Author: Megan
Green
Release Date:
March 29, 2016
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Goodreads
Isaiah Wright is broken. So
broken he's positive he'll never be fixed again. Surviving
every soldier's worst nightmare is enough for him to want nothing more
than to give into the blackness that plagues him.
Emma Nicholls knows pain. Four
years after the devastating loss of her fiancé, she's set up
her own business providing service dogs to veterans in an attempt to put her
own life back together.
Circumstance brings Isaiah into
her life, but neither are prepared for the fire that burns between them.
It's immediate, one broken soul finding solace in another, but
it's also...
terrifying.
His soldier's heart is
surrounded by walls ten feet high. But maybe, just maybe, Emma and her brood of
trainee service dogs can break through and be the light he so desperately
needs.
“I hope you’re
ready soldier, because today, your training
begins.”
A wide grin spreads across
Emma’s face as I approach her, one of the dogs trying valiantly to
wriggle out of her arms. I smile
back.
“I thought I was
here to train.
Not be trained.”
“Well, you thought
wrong. You need as much— if not more— training than any of
these little guys do. Dogs are born with the instinct to learn and perform.
Humans…not so much. You need to learn to work with them as much as
they need to learn to work with you. Otherwise, the relationship will never
fully form.”
I want to tell her
she’s wasting her time. I’ll never have
a relationship with one of these dogs.
But I can see in her eyes how much the idea of
my ‘training’ excites her. So I’ll play
along. For now.
She hands me a whistle and a
little plastic thing with a button in the middle. The whistle I get, but I have
no clue what in the hell this other thing is or what I’m supposed to
do with it. Without any explanation, she turns and lets all five of the puppies
out of the kennel. They bound forward, rushing out into the yard. Maggie slowly
walks out behind them and settles in the shade of a nearby
tree.
Emma stands in front of the
dogs like a military drill sergeant and the picture it paints in my head is
laughable. The puppies tumble over each other, forming no semblance of a line.
It’s like she’s the drill sergeant at a school for juvenile
delinquents. I half expect her to blow the whistle and tell them to fall in line.
Instead, she turns and barks
her orders at me, causing the smile to fall momentarily from my face.
“You sure as hell
can’t do anything from clear over there, soldier. Get your ass over here.”
When I meet her eyes, my smile
returns. All five foot four of Emma smirks up at me, trying to look as
intimidating as she can. But her playful stance gives her away. She’s
trying to put on a show, impress me with her gruff demeanor. But deep down, she
knows she doesn’t have it in her. She’s too damn sweet to
be mean.
I slap my arms straight at my
sides and march over to her. I turn when I reach her, giving her a quick
salute.
“Sir, yes
sir.”
She smacks me on the
arm. “Excuse me? Do I look like a sir to
you?”
No, she sure as hell
does not look like a sir.
She’s in a tight pair of worn jeans and work boots. But the fitted
top she’s wearing hugs all her curves in all the right places,
reminding me every time I look at her just how much of
a woman she
is.
She turns her attention back to
the dogs and I follow suit. I still can’t tell which one is which,
other than Jasper. I remember he has the black collar. And as far as dogs go,
he’s the most tolerable of the bunch. If I have to deal with a dog,
might as well be one who isn’t completely
fur-brained.
She points to the one with the
green collar. “Show me how you’d make him
sit.”
I look skeptically at the dog,
who’s currently occupied with chasing a butterfly. Make him sit.
Right. Like that’s going to
happen.
Megan lives in northern Utah with her husband,
Adam, and incredibly spoiled dog, Tucker. She spends far too much time reading
anything and everything she can get her hands on.
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