I was accepted. Like one of my brothers.
A tear escaped from the corner of my eye and dripped onto the pillow. I could feel the strange man watching me. The strange man with the strong frame and the amber brown eyes. His penetrating gaze burrowed a hole into the back of my head, as if he was trying to figure out what I was all about without ever asking a question.
Most people would’ve felt uncomfortable in this situation. Threatened, even. But me? I was just happy he wasn’t trying to put me in a dress so I would look presentable during my cold spell.
To some, this was the stuff of nightmares.
But to me? This was a vacation.
Two
Travis
I never got any visitors on this mountain. It just wasn’t something that happened. My family owned most of the mountainous terrain on this side of Kettle, and we had chosen not to settle it. Many people over the years had tried to offer us money for it. Wild sums of money so they could have a piece of territory that hadn’t been developed yet. They wanted to build oil pipelines and string up power lines. Level mountains to create small-town cities with beautiful views so they could charge people exorbitant prices to live there. But my family and I never sold. Not once had we ever caved to anyone who wanted to take our land from us.
It didn’t just give our family solitude, it gave us a priceless thing of beauty. Undeveloped land meant it thrived with wildlife. Animals to hunt and birds to listen to in the morning. Families of bears that roared off in the distance and lush, green lands fit for those who wanted to explore.
But I enjoyed the silence. The silence of underdevelopment.
Not being developed meant there weren’t many roads. And the roads that did wind up the mountains were nameless. While most of my family lived in Florida and lived off the profits gained from the businesses they did run, I settled here. Me and my twin siblings each had a cabin we had built with our father’s money. My father considered it the least he could do if none of us wanted to live in Florida with them. And even though I protested, my father said I could pay it back if I wanted to by working some of the businesses in my spare time.
So, that was what I did.
I worked the couple of summer camps my family had set up in the mountains whenever I could. I helped keep up with who rented out parts of the mountains to hunt in during hunting seasons. I did it free of charge until I had paid my father back for the cabin, then I relinquished the work back to my brothers. They enjoyed all of that shit. Interacting with people and running the camps. They enjoyed getting on the phone and talking with people on what parts of the mountains were perfect hunting grounds for them to rent.
But I hated that kind of interaction. I wanted nothing to do with the people that flooded into these mountains for sports and pleasure.
No one ever traveled this far up the mountain. It was why I chose my cabin to be placed here. Which was why it was odd when I heard a car off in the distance. The lightning became sharper and the crackling thunder got louder. Any second now, I just knew this mountain would be struck by lightning and explode into millions of tiny little pieces. Rivers of water ran in places that had never been rivers before, taking along with it mud and pieces of rock that quickly painted my driveway brown. At first, I thought I was hearing shit. Making up sounds in my mind to distract from how powerful this storm was getting.
But then squealing tires and a loud crash gave me pause.
My mind tried to write it off as thunder, but my heart slammed in my chest. If someone had gotten lost and come up this mountain, they had their pick of ditches to run themselves into. And those ditches would quickly fill up with water, making conditions even more treacherous for them to stay in.
So, I wrapped myself up in as many layers as I could stand before I headed out toward the sound.
I walked for about a mile before I almost turned back. The rain was so thick I could hardly see my hand and it came down in sheets. I almost had myself convinced that I had simply concocted the bullshit in my head until I heard a shrill cry.
Whipping myself around, my eyes landed on a girl scrambling out of her car. She clawed at the dirt, trying to scale the ditch she had found herself in. Her car was tipped up at its nose and water already pooled in the ditch.
Her car would be waterlogged by the time this storm was done.
I was shocked to find anyone on this mountain, much less a shivering young woman. I ran across the road and fell to my knees as I reached for her. She was covered in mud from the waist down and her lips were already blue. I grabbed onto her wrist and pulled her from the ditch, then cradled her close to my body as I stood.
She shivered uncontrollably, and I knew I had to get her somewhere safe. I left her car on the side of the road and started back for my cabin, fighting the icy rain that battered against my face. I hiked us up the road and got us back into the cabin, and with every step I took, the young girl’s shivering got worse.
I set her down on an oversized chair so I could pull cushions off the couch. I laid them down onto the floor, then settled her body on top of them. I grabbed onto every blanket I could reach before I started a roaring fire, then I left to pull the comforter off my only guest bedroom.
It was a room that had never seen a visitor, even though I’d lived here for years.
If I couldn’t warm the young woman up, we would both be in trouble. No doctor would scale this mountain until everything was dry, and from the sounds of the weather reports, it didn’t look like it was going to dry up anytime soon. The last thing I needed was a dead girl on my hands because she got herself caught in some idiotic storm.
What the fuck was she doing up here anyway?
I bent down to tuck the comforter underneath her body, so her own heat wouldn’t escape. The fire was roaring now, blasting the cabin with heat. She rolled over onto her back and looked up at me, and that was when I noticed how beautiful she was.
She had dark brown hair that was plastered all the way down to her shoulders and hazel eyes that sparkled even though her lips were still the lightest shade of blue. She had soft features and porcelain skin that looked silken and warm even as she trembled. It took all the energy I had just to stand up and away from her. To get my body away from hers so she could warm up and get better.
I had been burned like this once before. By a woman with mesmerizing eyes and a thick gravitational pull. She wiggled her way beyond the bars of my heart and ran amok, draining me of my money and demanding so much more. She was a gold digger of the highest proportions, but I loved her still. I loved her with a flame that had warmed the deepest recesses of my mind. She had pulled me out of my hidey hole and had gotten me to explore the world. She convinced me to whisk her away to Italy so we could tour the vineyards and taste the most decadent wines the country had to offer. She begged me to take her to Germany so she could see her first-ever opera on the most prominent classical stage. She talked me into taking a three-week vacation to Bora Bora. All expenses paid with massages and spa services every day and night.
She drained me of my money faster than I could make it.
But still, I loved her. I loved her free spirit and her spontaneity. I loved the minx she was in bed and how I could throw her body around for my pleasure. I loved how tight she was around my cock and how she would let me wake her up with my lips between her legs.
All fairytales have an ending, though. And mine wasn’t a Disney rendition. She burned me hotter than the melting point of steel before she left me shivering in the barren wasteland of the murder scene she had left behind. My heart dripped blood by the time she was finished torturing it, and I vowed I would never allow myself to become that vulnerable again. I would never leave this mountain and I would never venture into town more than I had to. I would never allow my heart to love again after the treacherous ending she put me through.
But it was her eyes that started it all. Those dazzling hazel eyes that sucked me right in.
Just like this young woman shivering by t
he fire I had made.
That wasn’t going to happen again. I was going through too much now anyway to become distracted. Our family land was in peril again. A thriving Washington company, Breathline Energies, was ready to give us any offer we wanted so they could drill some dumbass gas line right through the fucking mountains. Profit was all they were after. More money to line their pockets with no matter what they had to blast out of their way. My father tried his best to communicate that to the company, but they didn’t get the point. They harassed my father and sent scouts into the mountains as well as blasting our family to any media outlet that would listen.
My brothers and I were tasked with watching out, so we could pop off warning shots if we saw anyone.
It was why I had been more alert than usual. It was why I wasn’t so quick to write off the sound of a car. If that company was truly desperate, it was possible they would send some poor fucking soul into the mountain range in this kind of weather just to do some tracking.
Was it possible they sent this young girl? Was it possible she was some sort of a distraction? If she was, then this company was sicker than I thought. But the more I studied her as I sat down in my chair, the more I came to terms with the fact that she wasn’t. She was just an innocent girl who had gotten lost and trapped in a storm she could’ve never predicted nor expected.
The question was, what the fuck was I going to do with her now?
Three
Ava
I laid there in front of the fire as the silence of the cabin overcame me. The rain came down in sheets as the wind kicked up. It howled against the windows and whistled against the top of the chimney, sending bursts of cold air down that had me shivering all over again. I closed my eyes and tried to will my body to stop shaking, but it wouldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, it continued to expand and contract at a rate that was mind-boggling.
“Travis Benson.”
His voice took me by surprise and I jumped. Why did that name sound so familiar to me? I turned over on the couch cushions and looked up at the man in the chair, his eyes cast down toward me. His hands rested on the arms of the chair as his legs relaxed, spread wide for all to see. I felt this warmth overcome my entire body as it slowly stopped shivering, and I decided to blame it on the flickering flames of the fire.
Anything else made things much more complicated.
“Are you thirsty?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m Ava Lucas.”
The man cocked his head, almost as if he was studying me. His eyes danced along my rigid form as I laid on the couch cushions and his hands gripped the armrests of the chair. Was something wrong? Had I said something to upset him?
Shit, was this guy some kind of serial killer?
He didn’t look like one. There was a kindness behind his amber eyes that denoted a sense of compassion. Psychopaths weren’t capable of that, right? I mean I was no psychologist or anything, but I was pretty sure psychopaths weren’t capable of caring. But I had nothing to go on. I had no idea where I was, how far away I was from California, and when this rain was going to let up so I could get the hell out of here.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“Kettle, Washington. Just outside, in the mountainous terrain,” Travis said.
“Great,” I said with a sigh.
“Where are you wanting to be?”
I looked up at Travis and he was still staring at me. He was relaxed in his seat and his hands were now in his lap. Every time I looked over at him, he seemed to grow in size. The flames of the fire casted sharp shadows upon his features, making him look more intimidating by the second. His beard reflected colors of gold and red even though the hair on his head was brown and red. Like the hardwood floor I laid on as I tried to get dry.
“California,” I said.
“Still a ways out from there,” Travis said.
“Figures.”
I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t even fucking run away from home right. Kettle was, what… maybe an hour outside of Seattle? I had run away for all of sixty minutes before I got lost and found myself in trouble. Maybe my father was right. Maybe I was only suited to bear children and keep a home. I couldn’t even take charge of my life correctly when given the opportunity to.
“Any reason why you were scaling the mountains during a storm?” Travis asked.
“Wasn’t intentional,” I said.
“Wrong turn devolves into several. Sounds intentional to me,” he said.
“Well, good thing you don’t know anything about me, then.”
My voice was harsher than I had intended it to be and guilt began to take over. Which was another fun little trait my mother had instilled into me. Even if someone patronized me, I always had to be polite. Anything less than respect for anyone who paid me the time of day was considered grounds for a day-long guilt trip festival party.
“I didn’t mean that as harshly as it came out,” I said.
“You did. But it’s fine,” Travis said. “And to answer your other question, I don’t know.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Your stuff. Your car. We can’t get out there tonight, and there’s a slim chance that we’ll have an opening tomorrow. I don’t know if your stuff is going to be okay. Do you have insurance on the car?”
“My parents do,” I murmured.
“If things get damaged and your insurance company—”
“I know how insurance companies work, but thank you for assuming I didn’t.”
I turned back over onto the cushions and faced the fire again. I felt tired all of a sudden. Like someone had sucked all the energy right from my bones. I allowed my eyes to close as I peeled the blankets back from my body. They needed to dry by the heat of the fire because I sure as hell wasn’t taking them off. I had nothing to put on and I wasn’t about to wear some strange clothes some mountain man with a beard had in his closet. His knees acted like they had a restraining order against one another and there was this playful glint behind his eye.
Like he was somehow enjoying the fact that I was flailing in a new situation.
Shit. Was that a trait of a psychopath?
“I’ll help you with your car in the morning, if it’s safe,” Travis said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Would you like me to help you to the guest bedroom?” he asked.
“I’m fine here,” I said.
“It’s got a comfortable bed.”
“I’m sure it does, but it’s farther away from the front door in case you turn out to be crazy.”
“Fair enough. I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Night.”
I heard him get up from his chair before his movements stopped. His presence loomed over me. Watching me with those bright amber eyes. I slid a little more of the blankets back, trying to get my pants to start drying off. The lower half of my body was still soaking wet and I knew I would never get to sleep until it was dry. Travis’ body cast a shadow over me and I stayed focused on the fire, trying to make it seem like I wasn’t clocking his every move. Finally, he moved, his body making its way for the hallway as I relaxed. I listened as his footsteps trailed off into the distance before a door opened. And when it closed and muted his footsteps, I quickly got up off the cushions.
I tiptoed over to the window to look at the rain. It came down so hard I could hardly see the porch. There was a miniature river running through what was supposed to be the driveway, and I groaned as I remembered the ditch I had turned my car up into. It was going to flood with water, which meant the engine would be ruined by the time the morning came around. And even if I was in some cabin with some burly man with sharp features and beautiful eyes, that didn’t mean he would know how to work on cars.
Chop some fucking wood, maybe. But mechanics probably eluded him.
Thankfully, all of my stuff had been in the trunk. So even if the ditch did flood, my things were safe. The only issue would be if the moving river of water dislodged my car a
nd the tires sank back down to the ground. Water might get in the trunk then, or worse… wash it down the damn mountain.
Lightning streaked across the sky and thunder cracked right after. I jumped and slapped my hand over my mouth, trying to stifle my yelp. This storm was one of the worst I’d ever seen, but with the way Travis had acted, it seemed like a regular occurrence up here. I turned from the window and studied the cabin I was in, taking in its beautiful form.
The living room with the fireplace was illuminated by the glow of the fire. The cherry mahogany hardwood floors went seamlessly from the living room to the kitchen, which was all open and unimpeded by walls. There were bright marble countertops and state-of-the-art kitchenware, which reminded me of my parent’s home.
Whoever the hell Travis Benson was, he had money.
There was a hallway that split the cabin in half. I slowly walked down it, studying the gray-colored walls and the white crown molding. Everything in this cabin was decadent. Not at all like the man I had just encountered. There was a door on the right that had a light underneath it, and I paused as a shadow stood directly in front of the door.
I held my breath as I listened out for Travis. This must’ve been his room. I could see the shadow of his stature underneath the bottom of the door, blocking out the light source as he stood there. My eyes danced along the door as I muted my breathing, hoping to the heavens he wouldn’t open the door and find me standing here.
March Heat: A Firefighter Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 30