Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 41327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 207(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 138(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 207(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 138(@300wpm)
On the nightstand sits another Rubik's cube, all the colors perfectly aligned in stripes.
I borrow a flannel shirt that hangs to my thighs and a pair of blue boxers I have to roll at the waist multiple times. When I emerge, he's waiting with a mug of something steaming, his eyes darkening as they rake over my body, lingering where his shirt barely covers my thighs.
"Coffee. Bourbon's in it. That’s all I have besides water and beer." He presses it into my hands, his fingers brushing mine, sending sparks up my arm. "Drink it all, baby girl. Need to warm you from the inside out."
I do, if only to see the approval in his eyes as the words baby girl swirl around and around in my head. The liquor burns a path to my stomach, igniting embers of warmth that spread outward.
"So you're some kind of speed-cubing champion hiding out in the woods?" I ask, surprised to find a smile tugging at my lips despite everything.
His expression flickers, that hint of color returning to his face. He reaches for a cube on the side table, his large fingers deftly turning the sections with surprising grace. Three moves in, he fumbles, the cube slipping from his grasp and clattering to the floor. It bounces, coming to rest between us.
We both stare at it. Then at each other.
I bite my lip to keep from laughing. Not at him—at the absurdity of the moment. Near-death experience, mountain man rescuer with the body of a god and the puzzle obsession of a math prodigy, and here we are, staring at a dropped toy.
He clears his throat, a muscle in his jaw twitching. Then, with deliberate slowness, he bends to retrieve it, movements precise as he sets it back on the table. When he straightens, all traces of embarrassment are gone, replaced by that intense, consuming focus.
"My father said you'd help me." I hold the warm mug between my palms. "He didn't mention you'd save my life first."
His eyes darken to midnight. Something primitive moves behind them, like storm clouds gathering before a violent downpour.
"Hart knew what he was doing when he sent you to me." His voice drops lower, a rumbling growl that vibrates through my entire body. "He just didn't know all of it."
"All of what?"
He doesn't answer. Just looks at me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle with awareness and my thighs clench together. "Rest. We'll talk after."
He strides to the door, shoulders bunched with tension, muscles rippling beneath his shirt. He pauses with his hand on the knob.
"You're safe here." The words seem torn from him, raw and honest. He turns on his boot, mumbling words I barely catch as he goes: "From everything but me."
Then door closes firmly behind him, leaving me alone with whiskey warmth in my belly and a dangerous certainty forming in my mind.
Jack Boone is right. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he sent me here.
I’m just not sure he knew what was going to happen once I got here.
Four
Delaney
He's outside splitting logs like they insulted his mother.
Each swing of the axe lands with a satisfying thud that rattles the floorboards under my bare feet. I can feel it in my teeth, and in my core where he hasn't even touched me yet—but somehow, my body already recognizes him.
Jack Boone is six and a half feet of raw, mountain-wild dominance. Twenty years my senior. My father's best friend, who probably remembers me in pigtails from pictures. The kind of man whose hands could span my waist entirely, who could break me or save me with equal ease. The kind of man you don't walk away from.
The kind you run from—if you're smart.
But I'm curled on the edge of his couch, barefoot, wrapped in one of his flannels that smells like him—like the man who shouldn't want me but who looked at me earlier with hunger that made me forget he's old enough to have raised me. I'm pretending I'm not watching the way his back flexes, how sweat rolls down the line of his spine. How each movement broadcasts strength that makes something primitive in me want to call him names I've never called anyone before.
I’m so freakin’ tired I could fall asleep sitting up, but instead, I'm eyeing his laptop sitting on the coffee table between us, its silver edge gleaming in the firelight. It’s modern sleekness a contrast to the sort of homestead primitiveness that seems to embrace the rest of the space.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I slide the computer onto my lap and open it like a trespasser.
His password is taped to the bottom—a string of numbers and letters I type in with guilty fingers. The desktop appears, sparse and organized like everything else in his life.