by Unknown
“Talon Marshall,” she answered.
And the strangeness of that response brought him up short. Talon Marshall? That was a curious way to address a man when you were getting ready to make love to him.
He raised his head, staring down at her.
She must have seen the question on his face.
“What?” she whispered.
“I think you know me well enough to call me Talon.”
“Talon,” she repeated.
He wasn’t sure why he asked his next question. “Where do you come from?”
The sudden fear that flashed in her eyes was like a punch in the gut. She broke away from him, exited the kitchen, and hurried down the hall. Unwilling to let her simply escape, he caught up and grabbed her arm.
Her gasp was another sucker punch. What was he doing? Forcing her into intimacy? No! He was trying to get to the bottom of a mystery.
“Don’t run away.”
She stood with her face averted.
“What are you afraid of?”
Her body jerked as though she’d been struck. “Everything.”
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said, wondering if it was true.
She stretched out her arm, then let it fall back against her side. “You . . . we . . . were just . . .”
“Yeah. I got kind of carried away. I apologize.”
She swallowed. “It was as much my fault. I shouldn’t have let you . . .”
He wasn’t sure if that was true. He had overstepped the bounds, certainly broken one of his own rules about bringing a strange woman back to the lodge to have . . . He cut off the thought. He hadn’t brought her here to have sex. He had freed her from a fallen tree and rescued her from a storm.
“I’m . . . not myself,” she murmured.
He could say the same thing. Maybe the unlikely circumstances had overtaken them both. Instead of continuing the personal discussion, he changed the subject abruptly. “I was going to make you some hot chocolate. That’s why the kettle was on.”
“What is it?”
“Hot chocolate?”
She gave him that frightened look again, and he wondered why something so innocuous could set her off.
“A warm drink,” he answered. “Haven’t you had it before?”
“I . . . don’t think so.”
He tipped his head to the side and asked the question that had been circling in his mind, “What are you doing here?”
KENNA took a deep breath. So far, she’d made a mess out of this encounter. She didn’t even know about the name part. He’d called her “Kenna,” and she’d responded because that was the name she used, until Vandar’s adepts had added the “Thomas” part. So she hadn’t even thought about what she was saying when she’d called him Talon Marshall. It was right. But it was wrong, too. She hadn’t learned that in her endless lessons. If you kissed a man, you didn’t use both names.
She’d spent two weeks getting ready for this assignment, but a little thing like that had snared her. How many more mistakes was she going to make?
She glanced toward the wall and took a deep breath, letting it out before turning back to him. “I’m running away.”
“From where?”
She gestured vaguely with her arm. “Up in the hills.”
“Why?”
Her fingers curled and she fell back on a phrase she’d learned. “I’d rather not say.”
He gave her a long look, and she prepared to hear him tell her to leave. To her surprise, he answered, “Okay.”
Did that mean he accepted her explanation? Or was he only waiting to ask more questions?
He confused her again by turning and heading back to the kitchen. With no other choice, she followed.
The kettle thing that had scared her was sitting on the stove, mocking her.
“The water should still be hot enough,” he said as he opened a cabinet above the counter and brought down two mugs. A flat envelope with some writing on the side was lying on the counter.
She watched everything he was doing, trying to memorize the actions so she could repeat them if she had to.
Methodically, he tore off the top of the packet, dumped the contents into one of the mugs, and added water from the kettle. Then he stirred the mixture with a spoon.
As soon as the water and the powder combined, a delicious aroma drifted toward her.
Hot chocolate, he had said.
After passing her the mug, he opened another cabinet and took out a small rectangular box with a picture of vegetation on the side. From it he removed a smaller packet, which he put into the other mug, then added water.
None of this was like any food preparation she’d ever seen, and her throat tightened as she tried to absorb the details. Vandar’s men had had no idea of what she would face here.
Talon Marshall stirred his own drink, and she caught a mixture of spicy flavors.
“Why are you having something different?” she asked.
“I don’t eat many sweets.”
“Oh.”
After taking the packet out of the mug, he opened a door under the sink and tossed the wet thing into a tall, square bucket thing.
When he carried his cup to the table, she followed.
Sitting across from him, she took a cautious sip of the hot chocolate. It was rich and sweet and delicious.
“This is wonderful,” she murmured. “You really don’t like it?”
“Family trait,” he clipped out.
She nodded and took another sip.
“How did you get here?” he asked.
She almost choked on the drink and fought to recover. “I hitched a ride . . . from a truck driver,” she said, repeating the story she’d been given. “Then I got out and walked.”
He kept his gaze on her. “Why are you running away?”
“Do I have to talk about it?” she asked in a small voice.
“Not if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“I have to figure out what to do,” she said.
When he didn’t comment, she went on. “If you let me stay here for a few days, I could earn my keep.” As soon as she’d said it, her face flamed, because she realized how he might take that. “I . . . I mean doing work for you. Things around the house.”
As she watched him considering the suggestion, she held her breath. He could let her stay, or he could send her away.
THE storm was over, and from the darkness of the forest, Mitch Sutton cautiously approached the old hunting lodge. He’d tracked the cocksucker here, and now he was going to figure out how to get even with the guy.
Not that anything he could do was going to make up for the missing million bucks. But at least he could make the bastard sorry that he’d ever stuck his shovel where it didn’t belong.
It was dumb luck that Mitch had seen the guy. He’d been about to do a quick check on the stash when he’d spotted two cars coming up the rutted road and stopping. His pulse had started pounding as he’d watched the civilian and the two cops get out.
From what he caught of the conversation, he’d been pretty sure the fucking money was gone. Mitch had circled around and used his binoculars to read the civilian’s license plate. Then he’d faded back into the woods and waited until the coast was clear to check the hiding place, hoping against hope that he was wrong.
No such luck!
He’d planned the gig, and he’d killed Jim Edison to keep that dumb fuck from throwing around wads of cash and drawing attention to himself.
Now . . . it was all gone.
He’d made friends with a chick at the DMV who’d done some favors for him off and on. His first step in his revenge plans had been to take her out to lunch and sweet-talk her into giving him a reading on the license plate.
The vehicle belonged to a guy named Talon Marshall, and when Mitch had looked him up, he’d found where he lived. Right next to the park where Mitch had buried the money.
Well, screw him!
Mitch stayed in the shad
ows of the trees, watching the house. A few lights were on, which meant Marshall was probably still up.
He’d done some research on the guy and found out that he made his living leading tree-hugger trips for city types who wanted to get back to nature. And apparently he went for long walks in the woods where he’d somehow discovered the damn box.
He was going to end up dead pretty soon. But first Mitch had some plans for him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TALON LEANED BACK in his seat, keeping his gaze fixed on Kenna. “What can you do?” he asked.
At first, it looked like her mind had drawn a blank. Then she began to speak. “Keep the house clean. Weed the garden. Carry wood. Carry water. You don’t have to pay me. It can be an exchange.”
Well, that was an interesting set of skills. “How are you at MS Word?” he asked, watching her carefully.
“What?”
“A computer word processing program.”
She seemed to shrink into herself. “I’m not familiar with that.”
Another thought struck him. “Do you have a driver’s license?”
She swallowed. “No.”
From the panic in her eyes, he wondered if she knew what a driver’s license was. Where the hell did she come from, really? With her odd accent and her out-of-kilter fears. She’d made a vague reference to “the hills.” He knew there were rural areas of Pennsylvania where people lived in isolated communities. Maybe she belonged to one of those crazy religious cults where one guy ran the whole show. Or maybe there was a bunch of elders telling everyone else what to do. Was she being forced to marry one of the old men? Was that why she’d run away? Or had she been abducted by aliens and just escaped from the mother ship? Yeah, sure.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-two,” she answered in a quavery voice.
He nodded.
“Can you cook?”
She looked toward the stove. “You could teach me.”
“It’s not my best skill.”
She jumped back in with more suggestions. “I can sew. And . . . make beds. And I know how to make soap and preserve books.”
“Preserve books?”
She flushed. “Well, I guess you don’t do that here.”
The almost desperate expression on her face made his stomach clench. He didn’t know her background. He wasn’t sure he could trust her, and he was worried about his wild, out-of-control response to her. Yeah, let’s not forget about that.
Or was that part of the reason he was willing to keep her close? He hated questioning his own motives. But even if he’d have to watch himself around her, he wasn’t going to toss her out. At least not without proof that she was up to something underhanded.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he said, “We can give it a try.”
The look of relief that flooded her face was almost too much to take. She wanted this. More than she was letting on.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Because he was having trouble coping with his own emotions, he asked, “Do you want something to eat?”
She hesitated, her tongue flicking out to stroke her lower lip.
“You’re hungry, right? But you don’t want to ask for food.”
“Yes,” she admitted in a low voice.
“You don’t have to second-guess everything with me,” he said, wondering if it was true.
He thought about his larder. He had a lot of meat in the freezer and the food he took on camping trips. There was also a stock of canned goods for when he had clients staying over.
“Canned beef soup all right?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I guess you’re not a vegetarian.”
“A what?”
“You eat meat.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“No.”
While he opened a can from the pantry, he noted that she was watching him carefully, as though she had never seen a can opener and wanted to learn how to do it.
He stirred the soup, put some in another mug, and set it in the microwave. This time her expression was wide-eyed, and he was sure she had never seen the appliance before.
“You cook it in there? In the cup?”
“It’s already cooked. The microwave heats it up.”
“Oh.”
When the timer rang after a couple of minutes, she took her lower lip between her teeth. “It does it so fast?”
“Well, it depends on how much you have. With more food, it takes longer.”
“Oh,” she said again, like he was explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity.
He took out the mug with a potholder and set it on the counter, along with a couple of spoons. “Be careful. The mug’s hotter than the soup. Use the handle.”
“Okay.”
After carrying her soup to the table, he poured the rest of the can into another mug. It wasn’t his favorite meal, but he could handle it.
She sipped cautiously. “It’s good.”
“Probably, you’re used to homemade.”
“Yes.”
“You know how to slaughter cattle?”
“I’ve never done it.”
When she didn’t offer any more comments, he leaned back and watched her eat. She was trying not to gulp the simple meal, but he could see she was hungry, and he felt guilty about taking part of the soup when he was only sipping it to keep her company.
Getting up, he found a box of crackers in the pantry, took out half a dozen, and put them on a plate, which he passed to her.
She ate them quickly.
“Finish up. Then you should get to bed.”
Obediently, she spooned up the meat and vegetables at the bottom of the mug.
When she’d finished and looked up, he stood and reached for the crockery.
“I’ve made extra work for you. Let me wash those,” she said.
“No need. I’ll just put them in the dishwasher.”
“The dishwasher. Right,” she said, and he had the feeling again that she’d come from another universe. Or at least an environment without modern conveniences.
Staying matter-of-fact, he showed her how to stack the mugs in the appliance. Then he escorted her to a bedroom next to the bathroom where she’d showered.
She tensed and he wondered what she thought he was going to do—grab her? He took a step back, but because he didn’t want her to stumble around in the dark if she got up in the middle of the night, he pointed out the overhead light switch, as well as the lamp on the bedside table.
Then he left, because he couldn’t help feeling awkward standing in a bedroom with her.
WHEN she’d closed the door, Kenna breathed out a little sigh. He’d left her alone, when he could have continued the heated scene they’d started in the kitchen. But since then, it was obvious that he was working hard to distance himself from the intimacy.
She might have thanked him for that—if she’d felt comfortable bringing up the subject.
There was a door from her bedroom into the bathroom. After stepping through, she used the toilet, marveling at the way she could flush it when she was finished.
Back in her bedroom, she switched the lamp on and off, enchanted by the way the warm light flooded from under the shade at the press of a button. Then she turned off the overhead light at the switch and slipped into the bed. It was wide and comfortable, more comfortable than any bed she had ever slept in. And the coverings and pillows felt soft next to her skin.
She lay there for several minutes, staring around at the room, hardly able to believe that she was really here. In a lodge. In another universe. Then she pressed the switch on the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Well, not quite darkness. A little light came in around the covering over the window.
Wriggling down under the covers, she lay with her eyes closed, trying to come to grips with everything that had happened. She’d fooled Talon Marshall into believing her story about escaping from the hills. No, she should call him Talon. And
had she fooled him? Certainly he knew there was something strange about her—at least from his point of view. Could she keep him on her side?