She saw it then, loping easily through the wood toward her, open-jawed and long, pink tongue visible, the ears of its great head standing erect. He paused on the edge of her lawn staring at her and Eve's breathing caught in her throat. A wolf! My God…! But no, that was ridiculous! There were no wolves in Big Sur country! He was a dog… German shepherd undoubtedly, the real depths of his beauty hidden beneath the mud and filth dried over hi coat of fur. She heard him whimper, and he own breaths leveled off once more as he began to hesitantly move toward her.

The short-haired, blonde girl in her next to nakedness could only stare at the uninvited caller invading her privacy, her brain subconsciously drawing a crazy parallel between the cruel human-animal who had just walked out on her and the handsome, bedraggled beast moving whiningly across the lawn with undecided steps in her direction.

My God, he was huge… and those eyes, glowing as if they contained all the wisdom of the wild… yet, so pathetic…!

"Well… hello, stranger! Where did you come from…?"

CHAPTER TWO

"Who was that?" Laura questioned, hardly looking up from her canvas as her young, angularly built husband returned from answering the telephone.

"That, my love, was the sexy Eve Novack," Kevin replied, squatting onto the stool before his work as he picked up his palette. "She requests that I please come over in the morning for sketches."

"What did you say?"

"That I would," he answered, leaning back to perspectively observe his reproduction of the President, which was due to appear on a news magazine cover in two weeks. There was still something wrong.