by J. K Harper
Every moment she spent with Cortez felt like the right thing to do.
As they walked under the old-fashioned streetlamps that graced Main Street, which were slowly flickering to life in response to what seemed like an early dark from the heavy, low clouds above, Cortez's hand brushed the back of hers. He looked over at her and gently caught her hand in his. She smiled at him, squeezed his hand, and looked ahead of them. "Okay, fun-meister. What do we do first?"
"Fun-meister?"
"That's your title for right now."
"Hmm. I like it.” He smiled down at her, the low light catching the sheen of dark gold brown stubble on his cheeks. Ooh, she liked that. “I think to start off, we both deserve a little treat. How do you feel about chocolate?"
"How do I feel about chocolate? I feel very good about chocolate. Exceptionally good. Do you mean hot chocolate?"
"Nope. I mean the best damn little chocolate distillery west of the Rockies."
"Chocolate distillery?" She sounded as puzzled as she felt.
He chuckled and pulled her forward. "You've definitely spent way too much time working and not enough time exploring Deep Hollow. I'm going to introduce you to the Silvertip Chocolate Company. Can't believe you haven't been there yet, woman." He gave his head a disbelieving shake. "The Mountain Muffin is great, but they don't do chocolates like the chocolate store. This way."
He was right. She hadn't yet made it to the chocolate distillery—and who knew such a thing existed? Clearly, she'd been missing out—because it was on one of the side streets off the main drag. She'd been so stressed about producing, so focused on writing so she'd be able to pay her bills, get her life back on track, that she really had been single-mindedly marching from the house to the bakery every afternoon, then back to the house again. She really hadn't explored town. Glancing almost shyly at Cortez again as he propelled her into the little store, she remembered his comment when they had first met. Life wasn't all about working. Okay, fine. He was right.
In the store, her eyes widened and her grip on his hand tightened. "Oh, heaven," she murmured, eyes darting around to take in the chocolatey joys of the little store. They were surrounded by chocolate truffles, bars, clusters, ganache, pralines, all sorts of fancy little concoctions. Oh, she'd died and gone to yummy chocolate paradise. But… "Distillery? I still don't understand that part."
Cortez took her shoulders and gently turned her around to the left. "Oh, wow! Okay. Wow." It was an actual distillery. Tall, gleaming pillars connected by a little network of metal tubes hunched above squatting copper pots. A man peered into the one of the pots, adjusted a knob on the side of it, then returned to a pan filled with little chocolates set onto a silver counter.
"So what you're telling me is that there's alcohol in some of these chocolates. What you're telling me is that I've entered culinary paradise?" She thought she might drool at all the delicious-looking little confections on display behind the glass cases of the sales counter.
Cortez nodded, raising his hand at the guy working in little distillery room, who waved back. "Damn right. They've got whiskey, rum, absinthe, liqueurs, brandy, vodka, and they put them into the chocolates through a distillation process. It's all made right here, and it's all really good. What's your pleasure, beautiful?" He grinned down at her. A bone melting smile.
Haley was ready to swoon from the deliciousness of the chocolate spirits in the room and the sexy big man next to her. "Anything. Everything. It's all my pleasure." She laughed. "You're right, Cortez. I admit it. Having fun is good."
"Damn straight it is, woman. Okay. We'll get a sampler. You'll like that."
Two minutes later, Haley was biting into her first ever pear brandy chocolate truffle. One teeny little bite, and she was having a delicious party in her mouth. "Oh," she moaned after the decadent taste that had her closing her eyes in rapture. "This is definitely the best chocolate I've ever had in my entire life. This is one of the best things, period, that I've ever had my entire life," she added, opening her eyes. “Why, it's—”
Cortez's expression stopped her short. He stared at her, his eyes transfixed on her mouth before moving back up to her eyes. He was close to her, so close to her. His scent surrounded her, all big wild man scent, so electrifying. She saw the bright flash of his bear in his eyes. Caught that wild and free streak she had witnessed earlier when he changed into a bear right in front of her, then gone charging up the mountain like he was an entire goddamned army on his own. Ready to protect her from whatever danger growled out there. They stared at each other for a long moment, the rest of the luscious truffle in her hand momentarily forgotten, sensuous energy whispering and twining around them. A slow shiver of anticipation rolled through her, dancing on her skin. Was he going to kiss her?
No, dang it. The moment abruptly passed when from behind the counter the clerk called out in a chirpy voice, "Your sampler box is ready. I'll ring you up."
Cortez blinked and took a deep breath. He gave Haley a searching look, then turned and went up to the counter, paid for the box, and brought it back to her. It was small, but she knew it contained five more delicious truffles, all different flavors. He pressed it into her hands, a smile tugging up one side of his mouth. "For you, pretty Haley. Come on. I'm too restless to sit. Let's keep walking in town, okay?"
"Sure," she said in a dazed voice. He picked up her hand again, his own large and warm and solid around hers. Back out the door into the late afternoon chill, the skies overhead now even more leaden with the promise of the incoming storm. She could almost smell the snow in the air.
They walked down the side street in silence, a comfortable sort of silence like they'd had before. Haley liked it a lot. She glanced at him again, his massive, comforting, arousing presence beside her. What was it about him? She didn't know. He just felt right. He felt so much more right than Justin ever had. She'd never before known how at ease she could feel around a man until she'd met Cortez.
"Down here," he said, steering them left onto another little street. "There's a path that goes by the river, and a bridge that goes over it. There are lights along the path and the bridge. We can walk back up the river on the other side. It'll bring us out at the top of town." He glanced up at the sky. "I'll get you back to the house before it starts dumping snow."
Haley looked around at the postcard perfect little mountain town, the snow on the trees, listened to the burble of the stream she could hear ahead of them. "This is perfect, Cortez," she said softly. "I didn't know what we were going to do when I told you I wanted to have fun, but this is perfect."
"This is pretty quiet and casual. You sure you're enjoying it?" A grin played around his lips.
She smiled back, the taste of pear brandy truffle still in her mouth and a lightness in her heart. "Yeah. Believe me, I'm really enjoying it."
They got to the river path and walked down it to the small pedestrian bridge that crossed over the water. Haley stopped in the middle of the bridge, looking down at the partially frozen creek running just below. "Silvertip Creek, right? It's so pretty.” A content smile curved her lips. “It's so peaceful here."
She watched the water for a few minutes, listening to it run beneath the ice that covered almost the entire creek. The sky felt heavy and still, Cortez felt strong and solid beside her, she felt safe and secure and quietly, simply happy. This moment was precious, and she wanted to hold onto it for as long as she could.
"Haley," he said after another minute. She turned her head to look at him where he leaned against the bridge railing beside her. His eyes studied hers, his face serious. "Why are you here? In Deep Hollow? You've seen me change into my bear. I told you the worst thing about me, and you listened to it and accepted it. But I know there's a reason you're here that you haven't told me. I think you probably haven't told anyone." His voice got quieter. "I don't want to push you. I just want to know your story. I want to know you, Haley."
She stared at him for a long moment, hearing the river gurgle along in the quiet ai
r around them. "No one has ever done that before," she finally murmured. "No one has ever wanted to actually hear my story. Not a guy, I mean." Not a guy I really, really like, she added in her head.
"I do.” His voice rumbled in deep certainty. “Your story is important to me."
The hushed promise of safety, the gentle invitation in his voice, made her decide. Taking a deep breath first, she plunged right in. "I was married for five years before I came here." She said the words softly, carefully watching Cortez's face. His lips tightened, but he just nodded.
"Justin and I met in high school. Got married right after we graduated, even though my parents didn't like him and disproved." She shook her head, remembering. "I should've listened to them. I was only eighteen and so naive. But I thought I was in love. It wasn't actual love, though. It was infatuation, and I was too young and inexperienced to know the difference. I thought he was so smart, so worldly, and I let him control everything about my life. Because I didn't know that's what it was at the time. I didn't understand that he was directing everything.”
She looked at Cortez, gauging his reaction. He just listened, giving her space to talk. She went on.
“I had always been a writer, a storyteller, and he found out we might be able to make some money online doing that. He wasn't a big reader, but he loved watching movies and had a lot of good ideas. So it ended up that he created all the stories, he came up with the plots, the characters and everything, and then I wrote them. We published under his name, because it was science fiction and he said most of the authors were guys. I didn't mind because I wasn't the biggest science fiction fan, and it was also easy for me to write once he told me what to do. I thought I was just writing down his stories and that I didn't deserve credit anyway."
The sky lowered more, deepening the dark around them. The creek gently bubbled beneath the bridge as Haley talked. Cortez hadn't said a word or even moved. A single glance at his face told her he was working hard to keep his tension in. "We did really well,” she went on. “Really, really well. People thought we were wunderkinds, but it's just that we got really lucky. For two years, we made really good money.” Her voice got softer as she talked. It was hard to tell the story, to share how naive and dumb she'd been, but she wanted Cortez to know everything. “We talked about the house we would buy, fancy cars we would get, just how amazing it would be to finally have some money. I could help my parents, we could save for college for the kids we planned to have one day”—now Cortez's face twitched at that, but he still stayed silent—“and we'd be just fine. I was working crazy hard, but he was too. He not only came up with all the ideas, he did all the marketing and advertising, and of course he was the face because it was his name. In social media and everything, he was the one talking about the books like he was the sole author. No one knew we were a team. No one knew that I was the one who actually wrote them. He's really not a very good writer—he just has creative ideas. And I just didn't realize at the time that being the writer, the one who brought life to those ideas, was a very important part of the process. The most important part, really. Without my words, there would be no books."
She caught Cortez slowly curling and and uncurling his fingers, as if fists were ready to punch out of him but he was trying so hard not to. She looked at the dark ribbon of icy water below them as she went on. This part, she had to force out. It still hurt. Not because she missed Justin. Never. What hurt was the realization of how badly she had been played and betrayed.
"To make a long, ugly story short, about a year ago I found out the hard way that Justin was not the person I had made him out to be since I was fifteen years old. I finally saw him for who he really was. He and another writer online had started collaborating, without me knowing. Then he met a woman in real life and they were having an affair. By that point he knew the other writer would be able to write books for him as well as me, or so he said. And he was in love with this other woman he'd met, or so he said. One day when I came home, he had divorce papers ready for me to sign. He was done with me, ready to move on. It totally blindsided me.”
Cortez still didn't say a word. She didn't look at him in case steam was coming out of his ears.
“He said he was really sorry, but it just wasn't fair to me that he couldn't give me the life I'd always thought we would have together. He said he didn't want to hurt me that way. I was sobbing, just completely hysterical with shock. I'd been with this guy since I was a kid.” She huffed out a short, sharp laugh. “But eventually I signed the divorce papers because he wore me down, and frankly, he was just so damned nice about it. So considerate.” The word came out of her mouth in a sarcastic way. “The way he made it seem was like he was just being so kind to me. That he was only thinking of me, not wanting to hurt me anymore. Divorcing me was the kindest, most compassionate option, he said. And I totally bought it."
Shaking her head for the millionth time at how dumb she'd been, she chanced a quick glance at Cortez. His face was like solid granite in the faint light from the lamps on the bridge.
"I figured I'd be okay financially speaking, because I had my share of the money from the books, right?" Another snort of laughter, again short and pained. "No. I was so, so stupid. As it turned out, everything was in his name. Everything. He copyrighted the books under his name, bank accounts that I thought were joint were only in his name, the one car we owned was in his name. Every damn little thing was in his name.” She swallowed. Naked, frightened vulnerability smothered her as she told this part of the story. Such a dumb little girl she had been back then. “I had been so blindly in love that I just didn't realize it. I didn't realize he was an utter monster who'd calculated everything. It took me a long time to understand that he had emotionally abused me for years, so that I thought I deserved nothing and he deserved it all. He left me with nothing. Literally nothing.” She shifted on her feet, half wishing she could just run away, half wanting to finish the story fast so she could see what Cortez would think of her now. “Maybe worst of all, I didn't realize that when I signed the divorce papers that I was signing away my rights. They said I'd never contest him for anything, and I stupidly signed. Probably because I was in shock and I didn't even read them, but that was no excuse. I had to move back in with my parents for six months. Honestly, I was basically comatose during that time.”
These days, she could finally find some compassion for the little idiot she'd been, but it was still hard to expose that foolishness about her. “It was such an enormous shock to realize that not only was he a monster, I had been such a gullible little fool ever since I first met him. But eventually my parents and my best friend, Pix, managed to help pull me out of my own moping so I could try to start living again. I had to take a job waiting tables in the meantime, and it actually wasn't all that awful. It was reasonably good money, and I got to do a ton of people watching. So I was able to save some money, and it reminded me that I still loved to write, and all those people gave me ideas for stories and characters. Especially," she smiled faintly, knowing it was bittersweet, "romances. It was a romantic little restaurant, so there were always people there on dates or celebrating anniversaries, stuff like that. I realized that I always loved reading romance novels, and I am a good writer. My family and my best friend convinced me that even if my own romance had been shot all to hell, I could still write one. Then I found out about this housesitting gig and it was perfect. So,” she concluded with a small shrug, “here I am. And that's my story."
She didn't mention Justin's email from earlier. She didn't want Cortez to look at her like she had a stalker or something. Which she didn't. She just had a grade A asshole for an ex.
A very long silence descended. It was so quiet without her voice now. Just the sound of the stream running beneath the ice. Finally, she looked over at Cortez. His fists were definitely clenched by his sides and his face...Oh, his face. Ooh, yeah. He was mad. Furious. He looked as mad as she'd felt when she had finally, finally woken up and realized how badly Justin had tried
to ruin her life. What a sick monster he was.
In a dark, heavy voice, Cortez snarled, "If I ever meet that ex of yours, there's gonna be a problem. A really big problem, and he's not gonna come out on the good side of it."
Before she could respond, his voice punched out again, ragged and harsh. "Haley, my bear is crazy right now. He's raging inside me.” Cortez looked at her. His eyes roiled with the anger of his bear. “I don't know if I can manage him right now. I don't want you see me completely out of control. Fuuuck," he gritted out, clearly fighting himself. He took a step backward, like he might leave.
Wait. He was going to run away from her? She caught her breath at the gut punch of that thought. No. Absolutely not. She reached out her hands and grabbed his hard fists, gently caressing her fingers over them, trying to loosen them. "Cortez, don't you dare run from me. I trust you, I want to see all of you. I need to see all of you. Justin hid everything from me so I wouldn't know who he really was. I want to see everything about you. I want to know every single thing about you. Please," she whispered, trying to will him into stillness with her voice, her gaze. “Please don't hide from me.”
Her hands moved up his arms, feeling the corded muscles there. Up past his elbows, over his forearms, smoothing them in over his chest. Feeling him through his jacket, and pushing one hand up to caress his neck, his cheek.
His body went from tense to pliable beneath her touch in an instant. With a groan, he caught her hand where she rubbed it against the soft stubble on his face, pushed his face into her touch, his eyes not leaving hers. With his other hand, he reached forward, behind her waist, pulled her unresisting body into his. "Haley," he murmured, his piercing eyes, so bright like they were glowing, searching hers in the dim light. "I'll never run from you. I just don't want to hurt you."
She wound both her hands behind his neck now as he pulled her into him. “You can't hurt me,” she whispered, feeling the truth of those words, then she couldn't speak anymore. He feathered his lips across hers. Soft, oh, he was so soft and tender with her. She opened to him, tasting him with her lips, then her tongue. He groaned again, his mouth moving more strongly over hers, seeking and tasting as if he wanted to swallow her into him whole, meld them together.