About Change of Heart
Written by Kiernan Kelly
55 pages / 24000 words
ISBN: 978-1-934166-82-6, 1-934166-82-0
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
Veterinarian Dae Anderson has worked hard to make a good life for himself, which is why his boyfriend Jack has to go. Jack is more like a stone around his neck than a help, and while Dae had problems letting Jack go, he knows he has to do it.
Still, things go from bad to worse. Dae has a secret, one that he inadvertently reveals to his vet assistant, Sean, when things go terribly awry. His dual life doesn't faze Sean as much as his vengeful ex-boyfriend. Can Dae and Sean adjust to their newfound attraction and keep Jack from ruining everything for them?
Review
Laura Baumbach, author of A Bit of Rough and Roughhousing, writes:
It’s been four long, lonely months since Dr. Dae Anderson threw his charming, but two-timing boyfriend, Jack, out of his life for what he thought was the last time.
Still hurting over the loss of the only person he had allowed himself to let into his busy, focused life as a small town veterinarian, Dae vents his frustration by running in the isolated back trails and roads of the area. Distracted and upset he lets his natural instincts loose and ends up being hit by a pick-up truck on a dark road.
Dae wakes up a patient in the care of his own clinic with his long-time assistant, Sean caring for him. There he finds out that Sean has a more intimate interest in him then he ever realized. It's amazing what a person will discuss with a wounded animal that they don't feel comfortable to discuss with the person they love.
There are a lot of changes, both physical and professional, occur for Dae. They start a chain of events that alter Dae's unorthodox, if uneventful life. Not all of them are good ones, but fate and love step in and show the way.
Change of Heart is a beguiling tale of a being comfortable in your own skin and finding someone who loves you for who you are, not what you can give them. It was a very enjoyable read that included action, love and a few surprises, with charming, engaging characters. After reading this, you'll think twice the next time you confide your biggest secrets to your furry, big-eyed pet, too.
Sample
Another mile gone and Dae had run out of blacktop. Without his notice the macadam had ended and the road had become a strip of hard-packed dirt. If Dae had been in a better frame of mind he might have realized that the road he’d been running on had devolved into not much more than a logging trail, but his thoughts were still on the aftermath of Jack. The temperature was going down along with the sun, although Dae’s exercise-warmed body didn’t feel the cold. Fog began to rise, obscuring the fields that lined the road and sending vaporous fingers swirling around his ankles.
The light was quickly fading, but Dae didn’t care, focusing solely on the emptiness in his heart and the pain in his feet as he kept jogging, kept pushing himself, kept forcing his legs and arms to keep pumping. Regardless of the fact that full dark would soon be on him and that he hadn’t seen anything even resembling a lamp post for the last six miles or so, Dae graduated from a healthy, steady jog to a full-out run, racing away from the memory of Jack.
Eventually it became too much for him. Running on two legs was not fast enough, not free enough to leave the memory of Jack behind. Barely breaking stride Jack pulled off his tee shirt, managed to kick off his tennis shoes and wiggle out of his running shorts and jockeys. Once naked, he shifted. In the space of a heartbeat where there had once been a man running hell-for-leather down the road, there was now a wolf.
Running faster on four legs than he had on two, Dae’s muscles moved fluidly under his thick, shaggy fur. In his mind he still saw Jack -- Jack’s cocky grin and the tanned face of Jack’s young lifeguard lover lying n their bed. A low rumble started deep within Dae’s chest, and he bared his teeth to the wind as he ran.
It came out of nowhere. For all his keen hearing and eyesight, Dae was so caught up in running away from his pain and the memory of Jack that he never heard the growl of the engine as a pick-up truck, splattered with mud from four wheeling, barreled up onto the road from the fields and slammed into Dae’s body. He felt himself fly up into the air, bouncing off the hood of the truck and cartwheeling across the road.
Dae’s last thought, one that popped into his mind just before his head impacted with the rocky ground at the bottom of the gully at the side of the road and everything went black, was that he had managed to get killed while jogging and that Jack would get the last laugh when he read about it in the paper.
No doubt while Jack was boffing the mortician.