Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Mabel has a one-night stand with a mountain man who rocks her world in bed but doesn't tell her his name.
The next day, after receiving a threatening note from her neighbors, she discovers she's living next to an extremist cult where the women go in and are never seen again.
After serving, former Navy SEAL Hutch Hutchison is living a peaceful life on his patch in the mountains outside Misted Pines. He's been burned so many times by women, he's happy to train his guard dogs, play his guitar, live remote, and most of all, quiet.
Until he hooks up with a beautiful woman who lives just down the way. And then he discovers she's been threatened by the cult next door.
Hutch's protective instinct sparks, and he decides his next mission is to keep Mabel safe at all costs.
But there's something even hinkier about that cult than Hutch or local law enforcement expect.
As Hutch executes the riskiest mission of his life—keeping Mabel safe at the same time keeping both of their hearts intact—Hutch and the Sheriff's Department try to unravel the mystery of The Lion and The Lamb before it's too late.
Because Mabel is in their crosshairs.
And Hutch is not about to allow her to disappear
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
“Pink Moon”
Mabel
The bar probably had the capacity to fit twenty-five people.
It was the closest thing to an actual hole-in-the-wall that I’d ever seen.
Outside, it looked like a big shack.
Inside was no different.
There was no stone, brick or drywall to be seen. It was all rough wood, even the planks on the floor.
There were three taps for beer, one for cider, and a single shelf behind the bar displaying bottles of alcohol, the closest thing they had to top shelf being Jack Daniels Old No. 7.
Providing heat on this chilly night were a small, cast-iron fireplace in a back corner, walls that kept the wind out (just barely) and bodies.
There were four bar stools in front of the short bar, an entry space that was big enough to allow a few people to stand, four tables with four chairs each (yes, all wood), two-by-twos along the walls with an aisle between, which led up to a miniscule stage mostly taken up with two humungous speakers that were absolutely not needed in this small space.
There was a threadbare rug covering the tiny stage, so big it dipped off the sides, along with a stool.
On which, currently, a man was sitting with his guitar perched on his knee, singing into a microphone.
As far as I could tell, every slow, mellow, bittersweet song he sang was original.
Further to that, he had a silken, smooth baritone voice, and long, graceful musician’s fingers on strong, veined man’s hands.
If you had no imagination and a limited vocabulary, you’d call him blond.
But the rich complexity of his thick, overlong hair, to me, didn’t know whether to be blond, brown or auburn, could not be described by one simple word.
Nor could anything about him.
Well, I guessed one thing could.
He was tall. I could tell that even if I hadn’t seen him standing, considering how long his broad torso was even bent over that guitar, and the length of his meaty thighs and shins.
And he was muscular.
But it wasn’t lean muscle. Nor was it bulky. However, you couldn’t miss the man packed some power.
He had some russet-brown scruff on his cheeks, jaw and chin. It was full, not patchy, but it also wasn’t a beard.
He had a chiseled jaw, sun lines radiating from his dark-brown eyes, and high cheekbones.
He was beautiful.
Simply beautiful.
Robert Redford as Jeremiah Johnson beautiful (obviously without the true blond hair and bushy beard).
And perhaps part of that was why the house was packed, and not just that they came to listen to the moody, broody, sublime music he was playing.
Not that it could get too packed out here in the middle of nowhere, but it was standing room only.
And I knew the hulking lumberjack of a bartender didn’t tend to this many people every night.
Truth, this place seemed like it existed just to be a local gathering hole for those of us who lived up in the mountains on the west side of Misted Pines—a good twenty-minute haul just to get groceries and seriously sparsely populated.
But no one would want to drive that drive into town to have a few drinks and commune.
Though that hulking lumberjack wanted his neighbors safe and sound, and he didn’t make any bones about it. I knew this because there was a sign on the shelf with the liquor that said, I’ll serve you as much as you want, but I’ll also take your fucking keys.