Cameo glanced at Lowe, that shame eating away at her. He wasn’t complaining about carrying her, but he looked strained, his handsome features pinched tightly, and she was sure it was because of her. He needed to rest at least and she needed out of his arms, even if it was only for a moment, until the feeling that she was being a burden and being weak passed.
“Put me down.”
He didn’t acknowledge her, just kept walking.
She pressed her hands to his chest. “Stop and put me down.”
His blue gaze slid to meet hers. “Why?”
“So I can walk. I… You look tired. I’m being a burden.” She hated admitting that. Putting it out there only made her feel weak, vulnerable in a way.
He scoffed. “I’m not tired. Not like you weigh anything. You’re like a feather.”
Soft and easily broken? She knew feathers were really quite strong, but only when they were together, and she was tired and imagined herself as the downy, bendy sort that couldn’t hold up to much.
“Put me down.” She pressed harder against his chest, tried not to notice just how firm his muscles were beneath her palms and the thick layers of his clothing.
He huffed and scowled at her, but he did put her down. The moment he released her, she wobbled on the slippery ground and was forced to put her left leg down. She gritted her teeth and cried out as pain blazed up her shin, turned her head and made her want to vomit.
“Will you just let me carry you?” Lowe snapped as he caught hold of her arm to keep her upright, his grip strong enough that she could lean into it for support. When she risked a glance at him, his face was as dark as a thundercloud. “Believe me, you aren’t a damned burden when you’re in my arms, but you’re a burden when you’re trying to walk. I can’t take seeing you in pain.”
He slammed his mouth shut.
Cameo stared at him, wide-eyed and stunned by what he had said.
He averted his gaze and refused to look at her again, even when she leaned towards him, trying to see his eyes, needing to see in them what he had meant by that outburst. She had figured him for a gentle man, despite his size and appearance, but even the more sensitive men she had known had never reacted as fiercely as he had to the sight of her in pain. Being a ranger had its perils, and more than once she had been hurt in the field, suffering the odd sprain here and the occasional cut there. The men she had been assigned to work with had fussed over her a little, had helped her out so she wouldn’t hurt as much, but not a single one of them had looked ready to pull rank on her or demanded she let them carry her as Lowe had.
None of them had looked furious all because they could see how much pain she was in.
Lowe finally looked at her, and the fury was still there in his blue eyes, a striking need to take care of her that some part of her felt she should find unnerving, maybe even belittling, but the majority of her found oddly appealing.
She nodded and he was quick to scoop her back up into his arms. He turned his profile to her as he started walking again, a troubled edge to his blue eyes that had nothing to do with navigating the treacherous terrain. He didn’t like what he had said to her. Had it made him feel vulnerable? Open to her lashing out at him? Or maybe he was worried she would fear him because he had revealed how deeply he wanted to take care of her?
She wasn’t afraid of him.
He was as large as a mountain and as rugged as stone, and one look at him was all it took to see he could handle himself, but he was gentle and caring too. Kind. He didn’t know her, yet he wanted to take care of her and was helping her. Without him, she was sure she would have died out in the forest, whether it was from cold, an animal attack or the other man finding her.
The other man.
Cameo gazed up at Lowe as he carried her, a thought forming in her mind, one she tried to push out of her head but one that insisted on remaining, lingering, demanding she hear it. He had told her he would help her. If she asked him to help her with her problem, would he do it?
She wanted to believe that he would and that he could handle her trouble for her, but then she remembered that Karl was coming. What if Karl knew about her last location and came here? He wouldn’t come alone. He would come with a few of his men at the very least. The thought of Lowe facing off against one man was worrying enough. The thought of him facing half a dozen turned her stomach.
So, no, as much as she wanted to ask him to help her, she couldn’t. She didn’t want to get him into trouble, feared that she would only end up getting him killed. Her initial plan was the one she would stick with.
She would deal with this alone.
She turned her cheek to Lowe and leaned her head against his broad shoulder, her thoughts weighing her down, pulling a startling reaction from her. She didn’t want to leave Lowe, and she wasn’t sure it was just fear or pain talking. She had the terrible feeling she was starting to like him.
So she was going to do the right thing.
As soon as she was able, she was going to leave.
And she would probably never see him again.
Chapter 6
“You’re awful quiet. You fallen asleep?”
Cameo heard the ‘again’ in that question and roused herself from her heavy thoughts. She tilted her head back. Her gaze collided with Lowe’s as he looked down at her, his head angled towards her.
“I’m awake.” She felt a little silly saying that when he could see it, was staring down into her eyes, his blue ones warm with concern. “Just a little hungry.”
Blaming hunger for her silence was better than admitting that she had spent the last mile or so worrying about what came next, worrying about Karl finding her while she was with Lowe, and worrying about how things might go if that did happen.
“Not far now.” Lowe’s deep voice rolled over her, calming her turbulent mind.
She wanted to rest her cheek against his shoulder and tell him to keep talking to her, to take her mind off the thoughts that plagued her, and the visions of terrible things playing out in her head. She fell silent again instead and just stared up at him as he walked with her, turning his profile to her as he picked his way through the woods.
“You’re not very talkative either,” she murmured, hoping to get him to speak to her.
He shrugged, shifting her in his arms. “Worried about Knox.”
“The storm cleared up. Maybe he’s already back at the cabin.” She smiled when Lowe glanced at her, wanting to reassure him and lift his spirits, hoping that if she could brighten his mood it might be infectious and hers might brighten too.
“Maybe.” He huffed, smiled that killer smile that caused dimples in his cheeks, and slightly shook his head. “He’ll tear me a new one if he is. Suppose I should be prepared for that.”
“Because you came to rescue me.” She didn’t mean those words to come out sullen, but they did. Not only was she being a burden on Lowe, she had separated him from his brother in the middle of a dangerous storm. She almost cursed. If anything had happened to Knox, well, she wasn’t sure what she would do, but she knew she would feel responsible.
“Hey, don’t give me that look. Knox is tough as nails. He’s stronger than a storm, stubborn too. He probably made it back home in the thick of it last night.”
She gave a little shrug, trying to shift the weight from her shoulders. “You’re the older of the two of you.”
“What makes you say that?” He glanced at her, a curious edge to his gaze.
She looked down at her lap as she thought about Nate. “I know the tone. My younger brother was the wild one, and I’m the responsible one. I think I used that tone when talking about him more times than I can count. I always talked about him like he was strong, invincible.”
Lowe flexed his fingers against her knee and ribs, was quiet for a moment before he said, “You’re talking about him in past tense… You lost him?”
She nodded, sniffed to hold back the tears, and picked at the scuffed knee of her trousers.
�
�A long time ago?”
She shook her head this time. Lowe held her a little closer and lifted her higher, and her head fell against his shoulder. She sighed, couldn’t hold it back as she thought about Nate, as she tried to remember the better days when they had been growing up, when everything had been laughter and the occasional falling out with each other.
When the days had felt as if they wouldn’t end and they would always be together.
“There were a few years between us, and it showed at times. Nate always pushed his luck. He was reckless. Crazy at times. He made a lot of mistakes.” She smiled slightly as she remembered the funnier ones, the ones that had made her mad but had really been harmless. She had overreacted a lot of the time, but she had always had a deeply protective streak where her kid brother had been concerned.
“You strike me as the cautious, always have a plan type.” When Lowe said that, she angled her head back and frowned up at him. He glanced at her, and then his eyes darted back to her and held an apology. “I don’t mean it like it’s a bad thing. Hell, out of me and Knox, I think I’m the one who prefers to be in control of any situation. Knox is… Well, at times he’s the sort to light a fire just to watch shit burn.”
She chuckled at that. “He sounds like a handful. Is the age gap between you big?”
“It’s huge.” He gave her a deadly serious look. “A whole… fourteen minutes.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re twins?”
He nodded and shrugged again. “Knox likes to act like the big brother at times, but I’m older than him. He says I muscled him out of the way and he was meant to come out first.”
She smiled, her mood lightening as she tried to imagine another Lowe, a reckless and wild one. She just couldn’t picture it. Lowe had proven himself capable and caring, didn’t strike her as the sort who would start a fire of any sort without it being very controlled and unlikely to spread.
“Are you identical twins?” She studied his face—a face made for Hollywood. She could only imagine how devastating Lowe and Knox were on the local women whenever they rolled into town together.
He slid her a teasing look. “I can hear those cogs whirring in that pretty head of yours.”
Pretty?
He continued before she could pick him up on the fact he had called her pretty. “We’re identical on the outside, but it’s a different matter on the inside. He’s like our father, and I turned out more like Mom. Knox’s hair is darker too, more like Dad’s.”
Cameo settled against his chest again. Twins. She had never met twins before. Just how different was Knox to Lowe? She bet they were more alike than either wanted to admit.
“Your parents must have had fun raising you.” She thought about her own parents. “Mom always said I was the easiest kid anyone had ever had to raise. Whenever Nate did something dangerous, she always used to tell him that she had thought he was going to come out like me, and if she had known she’d have a hellion for a second child, she would have made Dad get the snip. It was just her protective side coming out as anger, but he’d sulk for days and swear he’d change and be better.”
“But he never did.”
She glanced up at Lowe and shook her head. “No, he never did. As soon as she calmed down, he was back at his old tricks, trying to kill himself on skateboards or snowboarding, or off getting into trouble with the local police.”
Lowe gave her a look that said he wanted to ask what had happened to her brother, so she dropped her gaze to her lap and avoided him.
The trees began to thin and Lowe lifted his head.
“And here we are.”
Those words made her look up too and her eyes widened as she stared into an enormous clearing blanketed with snow.
A clearing that didn’t have just one or two cabins as she had expected. There had to be close to a dozen of them, with five of them near to her and others dotted around beside the forest where it started again directly across from her. None of these cabins had been on her map. What kind of secret life were the people who lived here leading? And there were people who lived here. The cabin that stood proud in the middle of the clearing to her right had smoke curling from the chimney, rising into the cold, still air.
Lowe carried her in that direction, skirting along the edge of the woods, towards a pair of cabins that stood with their backs to the trees. Both of them had a single storey below the steep pitched roof and both were raised on pylons, lifted away from the ground. They were identical, although one was older.
They had to be Lowe and Knox’s homes.
“I still can’t believe you live up here in winter.” She stared at the cabins ahead of her and then peered over his shoulder towards a pair that had been built a short distance away, facing the lone cabin that stood in the middle of the clearing. “How many people live here?”
“Three all year. Five most of the time. Sometimes the others come and stay a little while, but mostly it’s the five of us.” He rounded the raised deck of the first cabin with its back to the woods and carried her up the steps. “This is me.”
He set her down by one of the posts that stood on either side of the steps, supporting the overhanging roof. She gripped the wooden railing beside it and stared out at the settlement, still unable to believe there could be so many cabins in one area without anyone marking it on a map.
Cameo’s gaze tracked over the cabin in the centre and drifted towards the woods to her right, trees that it faced, and then backtracked as it caught on something in the deep snow.
“Is that… blood?” She stared at the patch of crimson on the trampled snow.
Lowe was quick to turn and even quicker to leap from the deck, landing in the deep snow. He sprinted through it, kicking it everywhere, and her eyes widened further as she spotted something else.
A brown mound of fur in the middle of the huge patch of blood.
A bear.
Lowe was running right for it.
“Oh my God. Don’t go near that bear!” She hobbled for the steps, fumbling for her bear spray, her heart a jackhammer against her ribs.
Lowe skidded to a halt a short distance from the injured animal, his back to her.
She missed what he said, the distance between them too great for her to hear him, and limped closer, determined to protect Lowe.
When she was halfway to him, he spoke again, and she caught what he said this time.
“I need to move him.”
“It’s a bear. You need to back away. I don’t know what attacked him, but—” Cameo tried to take another step towards him as she readied her bear spray and grunted when pain shot up her leg. She doubled over, clutching her left knee and breathing through the need to vomit.
Lowe huffed as he pivoted to face her. “Let’s get you to my cabin. All nice and toasty like. I’ll deal with him, and then I’ll deal with those fucking cougars.”
He strode to her, swept her up into his arms and carried her away from the bear.
“You can’t shoot cougars!” She glared at him, anger getting the better of her as she thought about him hunting down a creature that had only been acting on instinct, doing what it had to in order to survive. “Regulations state that you need a licence for a start. Do you have a licence?”
She hoped to God he didn’t. While she knew that maintaining the population of predators was important, she never had been able to stomach trophy hunting, and he sounded as if he was talking about taking out more than just one cat.
“I didn’t say I was going to shoot them.” Lowe set her down just long enough to open the door to the cabin and picked her up again, carried her inside without removing his boots.
She stared at the trail of snow he left in his wake as he banked right, sweeping between an old dark blue couch and the small kitchen that faced the deck. He carefully carried her up a set of winding wooden stairs. A window came into view and she looked out of it, trying to see the bear, hoping it was gone, scared away by Lowe approaching it. She couldn’t see far enough to the
right to spot whether it had gone.
Lowe gently set her down on the double bed that took up a lot of the loft bedroom and eased back from her. “Stay here. I’ll be back before you know it.”
She lunged for his hand and grabbed it, stopping him from leaving.
When he looked back at her, she offered her bear spray. “At least take this.”
He curled a lip at the red canister. “I don’t need it. The bear is in no condition to fight.”
She didn’t believe that for a second. Wounded animals were dangerous, liable to attack anyone who approached them. She stared up at him, a tight feeling growing in her chest as she thought about him out there with the bear. Sickness brewed as she searched his eyes, hoping he wasn’t one of those men who thought they could befriend wild animals. She knew all the tales of men who had thought that, who had tried to live with bears as if they were pets, and all of them ended badly.
“What’s that look for?” His expression softened and he eased to a crouch before her. “Worried about me?”
“Worried you’re one of those crazy folks who think befriending bears is going to end well for them.” She couldn’t stop herself from saying that, needed to hear him say that he wasn’t and she was overreacting.
He chuckled, lifted his gloved hand and frowned at it. He pulled his gloves off and brushed his fingers across her cheek.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not the crazy one, remember? I’ll just run the bear off.” He swept his fingers lower, his touch like black magic, soothing her. Or maybe that was his words at work and that earnest look in his eyes that made her feel he hated upsetting her. He stood and turned away from her. “The bear is probably dead anyway. You saw all the blood.”
Rescued by her Bear (Black Ridge Bears Shifter Romance Series Book 2) Page 6