504 Lovers Ridge: A Cherry Falls Romance Book 18

by Adriane Leigh

“From top to bottom.” I scooped stew into a bowl and offered it to her.

  Her eyes widened before she smiled and took it.

  “Spoons are in that drawer.” I nodded next to the kitchen sink as the odd feeling of having a stranger in the house washed over me. A chill lit along my skin like an arctic blast, my heartbeat thundering to a slow stop as I tried to concentrate on the bubbling soup.

  My vision darkened as old memories danced in my brain. A wedding. A honeymoon. A baby. A funeral.

  My chest ached like it’d been sliced with a serrated edge.

  “This is delicious.” The soft, bird-like quality of my Petal brought me back to reality.

  “Ouch. Shit.” I dropped the soup ladle into the bubbling pot.

  She was on me in an instant, cold tap already on as she cupped my big paw in her delicate hands.

  “You actually smell like rose petals.”

  She grinned, continuing to stroke the now reddening patch of skin on my wrist. “Thank you.”

  She was so graceful, I was so gruff. “Thanks.”

  I backed away from the sink, wrapping the hand towel around my wrist to dry it off. I hid the wince as the cotton grated the fresh burn.

  “Let me.” She scooped the stew into my bowl until full, and then brought it to the kitchen table that I never used.

  She pushed a stack of hunting guides and magazines aside, then made room for herself at the other seat.

  Winchester curled up on the floor near the door, eyes bouncing from me to her before he whined once and stood.

  Poppy grinned, scooping a few chunks of meat out of the pot and onto a plate for my dog. “Give it a minute, it’s too hot for you right now.”

  She patted my dog on the muzzle and he wagged his tail appreciatively. She sat, and his disloyal ass cuddled right up to her thigh as she began to eat.

  “Get out of here.” I nudged him away but she stopped me.

  “I grew up with a dog, I miss having one around.”

  “Why don’t you then?”

  She shrugged. “My place in Cherry Falls is too small.”

  “Winchester will be your friend for life if you give him attention.”

  “Is that all it takes?” She smiled, eyes finally landing on mine and pausing.

  Something beat to life in my chest, heartache blooming so big my rib cage split wide.

  I winced, yanking my gaze back to my spoon before shoveling a bite into my mouth.

  It was hot, my chest, the meal, the way she made me feel.

  I’ll love you forever.

  I heard a faraway voice in my head.

  A shudder cut through my veins.

  This is my vow.

  I gulped, suddenly feeling intense regret that I’d invited this stranger into my home.

  I imagined patching up the drainage ditch right now, just to hustle her off of my property and out of my head, but the rain wasn’t supposed to let up for the next day.

  “Does your hand hurt?” Poppy pulled me from my thoughts.

  I nodded, thankful for the distraction.

  “It hurts more than I can say.”

  “I’m sorry.” She shot up, taking my towel to the faucet and soaking in with cold water. “Do you want some ice?”

  I grinned, enjoying the pleasant way she flitted round my small cabin kitchen. “You look at home here.”

  She paused at the freezer, two cubes in hand. “Um…”

  “I mean, sure, ice—yes. It’s hot as hell in here.”

  Her eyebrows rose before she shook her head and deposited a few more ice cubes into the open towel. She twisted it softly in her small hands and then closed the ice maker and crossed the kitchen to me.

  I was instantly ashamed of the bachelor nature of my pad. I loved the place, I worked hard to make the woodwork sing and the window arches match the peaks of the mountains in the distance, but none of it felt like enough when she was in my house.

  “Thanks.”

  She nodded, dropping to her knees beside Winchester and placing the ice to my wrist.

  “It’s this one.” I set my spoon in the bowl, grinning easily when she rolled her eyes and then broke out into a grin.

  “I tried.”

  “I don’t deserve it,” I replied honestly.

  The air seemed to suck out of the room. She patted Winchester on the head once, then moved back to her seat and resumed eating.

  Everything felt painfully awkward. “I’m awful at delicate things. Precious china doesn’t have a place on the ridge.”

  Poppy chewed thoughtfully, swallowing her small bite and then setting her spoon in her bowl. “Are you calling me precious china?” She scratched my dog on the head. “I grew up hunting and fishing these woods, I bet you I’m a better shot than you are, Maverick.”

  She arched her eyebrow in challenge.

  “Oh really?” I teased. “Guess we’ll see about that come morning.”

  “We will, best of ten makes dinner tomorrow.”

  And with that sentence my heart clambered dangerously out of my chest.

  A tomorrow with Poppy.

  I’d never survive.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Poppy

  The soft, haunting strains of violin music woke me from a dream. Stuck up on the ridge, I smiled softly as I woke and snuggled into a mountain of soft pillow that smelled like leather and pine.

  My eyes shot up, the realization that I was not actually dreaming but living a real waking nightmare pulsed through me.

  Maverick. The storm. The dog. It was all real.

  I rolled in the oversized bed, realizing that it wasn’t the dream that smelled like leather and Maverick, it was me.

  He’d insisted I sleep in his master bed last night, promising he wouldn't be far away on the couch, just one floor away.

  The soft sounds of violin music wafted into my psyche then. Apparently I had not been dreaming of that.

  “No way does a man like that play the violin,” I said to myself, pushing Maverick’s blanket off of me and crawling out of bed.

  I padded across the room and stood at the door. The crack was small, only pure darkness beckoning me. And soft strains of a violin.

  I opened the door, walking barefoot across the smooth floorboards. The loft area opened up widely, moonlight finally stretching through the windows. Most of the silver light was swallowed by the shadows of the evergreens that wintered outside Maverick’s home.

  The soft steady breathing of Maverick, sound asleep on the leather couch below me, drew me in. I imagined what it would be like sleeping next to a man like that, big enough to swallow my body whole three times in the shadow he cast. He was warm but with a wild edge, an amusement in his eyes when he teased me that made my stomach flutter like a schoolgirl.

  I’d never fully understood why exactly my father and Maverick detested each other, but I could see why some men might be rubbed the wrong way by the way Maverick filled up a room. He demanded you take notice, towering over everyone, and with a voice rougher than sandpaper and a beard thick and full.

  More violin music crowded into my brain, shoving out the thoughts of Maverick sleeping below.

  I crossed the loft to the opposite corner of the floor, determined to find the radio that Maverick must have left on before falling asleep.

  Rain dripped down the windows as I passed, my fingertips cool against the panes as I imagined watching the storms come in off the mountains.

  I could almost see a life up here on Lovers Ridge.

  Violent shrieks of a violin pierced my eardrums just as my palm landed on the door knob of a cracked door.

  A rush of cool air washed through me, energy crackling in my veins like rogue fireworks before the door slammed closed against my fist with force.

  “What in the world?” I tried the knob, surprise coursing through me when I realized it was locked.

  No violin music, and a force on the other side of this door trying to prevent me from entry.

  I jiggled at the lock ag
ain, grunting softly when I realized it wasn’t about to budge.

  “What’s going on?” Maverick suddenly towered over my shoulder.

  “Oh.” I backed away from the door like it burned me. “I heard music coming from that room, and then the door just slammed closed—”

  “That room hasn't been opened in decades.”

  “Decades? That’s not possible, it was just open. There was violin music—”

  Maverick’s face was taut with annoyance before he shoved a hand into the pocket of his jeans and plucked out a key. He shoved it into the lock, jiggling it easily and then opening it freely.

  “See?”

  He stepped aside, allowing me entry to the empty room.

  “But…” I frowned, moonlight bouncing off the window at different angles and giving the room a wall of mirrors effect. “The music?”

  I turned, Maverick standing at the doorway, arms crossed and assessing me shrewdly. “Are you fucking with me on purpose?”

  “No, I would never—”

  “You said the door was open, clearly that was a lie.”

  “It was, and I did hear music, and see—” I pointed across the room to one of the sheer white curtains dancing in the breeze— “That window, who opened it if the door was locked?”

  I could see Maverick’s jaw grind to a halt, eyes crossing the room to take in the curtain. “The window isn’t open.” He crossed the room in long strides. “It’s the forced air heating system.” He turned his eyes to me, staring me down as he closed the distance between us. “Does anyone ever tell you you’re dramatic, Petal?”

  The next thing I knew, the roughened pads of his fingers caught my chin, pulling my gaze up to his. I felt like a petulant child. I hated him completely at that moment.

  “Stop calling me that.”

  One side of his grin cracked.

  I inhaled deeply. Leather and pine, rain and evergreen. His scent melted my knees.

  “I should walk home.” I didn’t mean it, even though every fiber of me did.

  His barrel of a laugh echoed through the room.

  A cloud shadowed the moonlight then, forcing the room into sudden and complete darkness. On instinct, I leaned against him.

  His body stiffened, muscles rigid, before he grasped my elbows and pushed me off of his body like I’d singed his skin.

  “Sorry.” I tripped over the syllables.

  He only grunted in reply, forcing me forward through the darkness, escorting me out and then closing the door behind us. “You want water or anything before bed?”

  I shook my head, grateful when the cloud passed literally and the moonlight washed over the hard angles of Maverick’s jaw.

  He was so beautiful it was painful.

  And he seemed in pain, the way he held his spine like steel and forearms like marble—I was more intrigued than I’d ever been.

  “This entire day has been a nightmare,” I confessed out loud.

  “That’s the truest thing I’ve heard all day.”

  A nervous laugh fell over me, and then a hum of pleasure rushed through me when his palm hovered at the base of my back, escorting me across the loft and back to his bedroom.

  His bedroom.

  “I don’t think I can sleep now.” I paused at the doorway, reluctant to be alone as much as I was reluctant to be with him.

  Rain rushed harder outside the windows, only filling my ears as loudly as my own heartbeat when he was this close to me.

  “I'll be right outside the door to keep the ghosts away.” The serious threads of his voice sent more thrills of excitement up and down my spine. I felt zaps of electricity to the tips of my toes when his eyes crawled across my face, landing finally at my lips before blinking and turning away. “Sleep well, Petal.”

  I smiled in the darkness at my new nickname.

  His Petal.

  I was getting used to being on Maverick's lips.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Maverick

  “Sunrise over Lovers Ridge has never been prettier.” I tipped my coffee mug to Poppy, who sat across from me wrapped up in two fuzzy blankets and my thickest wool socks.

  “It’s not so bad once the clouds clear,” she hummed, tipping her mug back and inhaling the hot steam. She smiled. “The best part of waking up.”

  I chuckled, and when she took a sip and her eyes rounded, a shudder coursed through her. “You’re drinking motor oil!”

  “It takes energy to keep a place like this going, an average man’s drip coffee won’t do.”

  She laughed, wiping at a single tear that’d formed at her eyelash. I pulled a soft handkerchief out of my back pocket and passed it to her.

  She took it and dabbed softly at both her eyes. “You’re such a gentleman under all of that…”

  I let her trail off, casting my eyes off the covered porch to the mountaintops that were ringed in clouds in the distance. The sound of drips and the songs of morning birds were the only noises for miles and for the first time with her here, I felt more at home than I had in too long.

  She took her mug back in her hand then, sucking in another inhale before sipping the dark brew carefully. “You're the strongest man I’ve ever met.”

  My shoulders bunched and ached with her kindness. It was so unfamiliar, her words cut like a knife because I’d gotten used to going without human kindness. Once Aspen had left for college, I’d turned into a diehard bachelor...too much.

  “You've known me for five minutes, what makes you say that?”

  “You drink coffee like this.”

  I chuckled, running a hand through my beard. Her eyes skipped to my action, watching intently with her soft petal lips parted. She made me throb everywhere, the thought of what she might feel like when I…

  I gulped, forcing the thought from my mind with a sigh and avert of my gaze.

  “And you live up here,” she whispered. “Lovers Ridge is more like Death Wish Ridge, every winter Dad tells me about some poor fool or another out on this road after dark in a snowstorm or worse.”

  “You were almost that fool last night.”

  She nodded, mischievous eyes rolling once before throwing me a clever smile.

  Petal had me totally wrapped up in her cute pinky finger and she didn't even know it. And the hell if I’d let her know it for that matter.

  “I’m lucky you followed me.”

  “Found you,” I emphasized and she shrugged playfully.

  “I’m so lucky.” She blew me a kiss and it forced my heart to thunder to a halt.

  My head pounded, a sudden lack of oxygen choked out of my bloodstream causing irreparable effects. Pain lodged in my throat and constricted the muscles tightly. I sucked in a violent breath of the rain-wet air.

  “Are you okay?” She was at my side, fingertips grazing my bicep and singing me like an iron brand.

  “F-fine,” I grit, wishing I hadn’t found her after all, not if it meant this.

  “Can I get you anything? Did the coffee burn you?”

  “You burn me.”

  She paused, hands suddenly off of me. I hated that I missed her touch, even though it burned my skin like acid when she did.

  Aspen’s words came back to me the last time I’d seen her at her cafe: go on a date, Dad, you’re losing touch.

  I hated that all the women in my life had always been right, even when they’d taken everything from me.

  “Mav—”

  The way Petal said the word made my brain scream with pain. That’s what she had called me. Lily.

  “I forgot to call the road outage in, your dad will be on my ass if he knows the road is out and I haven’t called it into the road commission—”

  “Mav—”

  I cringed and hunched my shoulders as I ducked through the door, intent on my hunting boots to keep me dry and getting as far away from Poppy’s sweet and reasonable voice as I could. “Please, make yourself at home—I owe you a dinner, I just need to assess the damage on that drain ditch, Petal—”

/>   I cringed then as I said the nickname that I’d grown so used to in my head. I must have been sending her mixed signals. I hoped I wasn’t, but social interaction is my fatal flaw. That’s why I kept myself out on this ridge, far away from the things I hated in favor of what made sense to me, the way the wind ruffled the evergreen needles and the mountain spring tumbled over the cool stones of the riverbed.

  “I'll be back later, P—” I caught myself, waving once then shoving my boots on and walking down the back hallway and out the back door, sleeping bag on my back and Poppy O’Henry cemented in my mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Poppy

  “504 Lovers Ridge,” I read. “I wonder if he made this too.” I slipped my finger along the worn grooves of the wooden sign that hung above the coffeemaker.

  Maverick referred to this place as a cabin, but it was more like a grand lodge. It looked like he’d started from the center of the house and built out over the years, a long hallway led to a large attached garage and shop that he worked in, and the other side of the house led to a large mud room and laundry with an office and second bedroom across from that. And the great room, the center of the house, was earmarked with redwood beams that held up the large A-frame center. A flagstone fireplace anchored one wall, family photos scattering the mantle.

  “So alone for a man with so much family,” I hummed, dragging a finger along the edge of a frame. I gasped when I realized what I was looking at. A photo framed in white pearls that said nuptials, a man that looked like a much younger version of Maverick was smiling with a beautiful brunette in a long white dress at his side.

  They overlooked the ridge with the bay in the background.

  Lily and Maverick - May 4

  “504 Lovers Ridge,” I repeated the sign I’d read in the kitchen. A wedding day.

  “It should be renamed Heartbreak Ridge,” I uttered to myself, a sudden chill sweeping through me as I backed away from the cold fireplace and into the warmth of the kitchen.

  I went to the pantry, intent on making a dinner that would take all day and warm up the kitchen.