Alone With You (Cabin Fever Series Book 1)
Page 16
SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY
Enjoy this excerpt from LOST WITH YOU, Book 2 in the Cabin Fever Series
CHAPTER ONE
“C’mon, Bessie, hold on for me.” Casey Michaels winced as the van lurched over a rut in the dirt road. “The cabin isn’t far now, unless the GPS has gone wonky.”
She glanced at the dashboard clock as worry stirred. She’d been driving for six hours. The rusty van shook like an old washing machine. Her lower back ached and her calf had gone tight from pressing the gas. She flexed her hands over the steering wheel and mentally willed Bessie to stay in one piece just a little bit longer. She couldn’t afford another broken axle or overheated engine, like when she’d covered the off-road races in the Mojave Desert last month. She had a tiny window of opportunity to interview this guy for her latest assignment, and she was already two hours late.
A flash of sunlight caught her eye. She hit the brakes and peered through the trees to a glint of sunlight off the hood of a Jeep. The cabin beyond it, amid the pines, looked like something out of an Abe Lincoln theme park. Her editor hadn’t given her much information about Dylan MacCabe, other that the guy lived in the middle of nowhere, and tomorrow he would set off on a canoe adventure into the Adirondack wilderness.
This place had to be his.
Nudging Bessie into the shallow tire-furrows that wound between the trees, Casey pulled her sputtering van to a park beside the Jeep. If the man matched the setting, he’d be full-bearded, decked in plaid, and honed by years of hewing logs. She shut off the van to a series of sputters and coughs and reached behind the seats to drag her laptop case off the pile of all her worldly possessions. The van was so hot she had to kick the rusty door open.
She called out, “Mr. MacCabe?”
She stepped onto the porch, but heard no response from within the cabin. The inner door yawned open, but that didn’t mean he was home. She never used to lock the door of her own rural home, either. A prickling threatened behind her eyes, but Casey willed it away. Now was not the time to think about all she’d lost.
All she'd given away.
Cupping her hands against the battered screen, she searched for signs of life amid the plaid couches, braided rugs, and table covered with books and papers, but pulled away at the sound of a sharp, distinct thunk. Hopping off the low wooden porch, she ran a hand over her travel-mussed hair and the creases of her skirt and headed around the side of the building toward the sound. She turned the corner to a view of the hacked-up remains of an enormous tree trunk.
Casey scuffed to a dazzled stop. In the midst of the carnage stood a man of six-feet and more, sporting gray office slacks and an oxford button-up shirt…while hauling up an axe. The cotton of his shirt strained across massive shoulders. He twisted slightly at his belted, narrow waist. With an economy of movement, he hurled the head of the axe down with whistling swiftness. Even with a tie flying loose from his shoulders, Dylan MacCabe riffled up images of Greek statues of Olympic athletes come to life.
The axe split its target before she found her voice.
“Mr. MacCabe?”
The man’s head shot up, blond hair bright in the sunlight, as he shoved a split log out of his way with a foot.
“I’m MacCabe.” He pinned her with a Viking’s marauding gaze. “You lost?”
“Not anymore.” She forced one foot in front of another, her heart hopping like a rabbit in her chest. “I just found the man I’ve been looking for.”
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About The Author
Lisa Ann Verge is the critically acclaimed RITA-nominated author of eighteen novels that have been published worldwide and translated into as many languages. After a brief gig as an environmental chemist, she started her career writing emotionally intense romance about hot men and adventurous women, and now she also writes life-affirming women’s fiction under the name Lisa Verge Higgins. A finalist for Romantic Times’ book awards five times over, Lisa has won the Golden Leaf and the Bean Pot, and twice she has cracked Barnes & Noble’s General Fiction Forum’s top twenty books of the year. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband while trying to keep tabs on her far-flung adult daughters, who never fail to make life interesting.
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