by Suzanne Cass
“Only about half an hour to go, then we can set up camp. Tomorrow’s walk is all downhill.”
“Yay,” Stella cheered.
“Thank Christ,” muttered Tony.
Wyatt smiled grimly to himself. Little did they know that walking downhill could be nearly as bad as going up.
Sooner than he hoped, the trail leveled off, and they emerged onto a small plateau. Wyatt was glad he spent his time exploring both mountain ranges around Stevensville. This was part of the Sapphire Ranges, which weren’t as high as their cousins, the Bitterroots, across the valley. Which was probably a good thing for Stella and Tony. At the time, it’d been his version of an escape, fulfilling his desire to be alone. It’d been such an amazing thing to walk free and unencumbered after the confines of being locked in prison for two years. It was his form of healing. Thankfully, Levi and Cat seemed to understand his need to be outdoors and had let him be. He knew that a little way off the path was a natural clearing that’d be a perfect place to spend the night. Other hikers might’ve used this spot in spring and summer, but there’d be no one out here in these conditions. They hadn’t passed a single soul in the entire time they’d walked so far.
There was enough light left to set up the tent and get the fire going. They might even get a beautiful sunset, with a clear sky, only a few wispy clouds on the horizon. Wyatt briefly tossed up whether he should light a fire. If someone was following them, it’d act like a signal in the night. But he knew Tony would never put up with sleeping in the cold and dark. So, he cleared a space in the snow and even found some rocks to mark out a small fire pit.
“I’ll get some wood,” Stella said, marching off into the forest. He was impressed that he hadn’t even had to ask her. She was getting the hang of this. Tony, on the other hand… Wyatt rolled his eyes in the man’s direction. He’d dropped his backpack on the ground and sat down on the nearest log, resting his elbows on his knees, looking defeated and exhausted. Wyatt struggled to find an ounce of sympathy.
But then, as he watched Tony sitting like a rag doll, staring vacantly into the middle of the clearing, the man’s bedraggled condition finally tugged at his emotions. His face was looking a lot worse for wear, and Wyatt flinched away, knowing he’d inflicted that damage with his own hands. Tonight, he’d show him how to make a bower of pine branches and needles to keep him off the freezing ground.
Stella came back and dropped an armload of dead wood next to his ring of stones. “Can you show me how to put the tent up tonight, please? I want to learn how to do these things.”
“You bet,” he said. “Give me a few minutes to light the fire.”
She nodded and took out the bottle, draining the last of the water. Then she asked Wyatt for a pan and filled it with fresh snow, ready to melt for the trek tomorrow. He really should stop being so surprised by this woman and her tenacity. She was amazing. Maybe that was why he liked her so much.
They had dehydrated beef stew for dinner, which tasted like old leather, but at least it was hot and filled them up. Wyatt found a dead log and dragged it closer to the fire. He and Stella sat close together, their knees touching, staring into the flames. Tony had rolled himself up in his sleeping bag on his makeshift bed to stay warm. Pity they hadn’t thought to bring a bottle of rum with them. It might’ve been nice sitting around the fire, drinking and talking. Almost as if they were on a normal camping trip.
“Will we reach the ruined house tomorrow? The place you hid Tony’s diamonds?” Stella asked.
Levi poked the fire with the stick, sending a shower of sparks up through the pine branches. At the mention of his name, Tony rolled over and cracked an eye open, but said nothing.
“Yes, it’s at the base of this mountain, less than a day’s walk. I’ll call Levi in the morning and we can meet him there. He can give us any updates, bring us more supplies, and we can make a decision as to our next course of action.”
“That sounds good.” Stella nodded, but then hesitated. “Do you think there’s any chance we might get to go home? That this might all be over?”
His heart broke at the careful hope he heard her voice. He knew from experience this was probably far from over. Dmytro would not let it be. They’d have to come up with some plan to give him back the diamonds and discover if there were any terms Dmytro might want to negotiate on. Dmytro’s ruthlessness was renowned; he left no one he considered a traitor alive.
None of this showed on his face as he replied, “Maybe, we’ll have to wait and talk to Levi.”
“Talking about this man Dmytro, I’d like to know more about your life in prison, if you’ll tell me. How did you get…get to know him?”
He guessed what she was really wondering was why he’d gotten involved with people like Tony and Dmytro? Where had his life gone so wrong? She had a right to know, seeing as how she was mixed in so deep with all this shit.
She went on before he could frame an appropriate answer. “I know you’re innocent. But how did they get it so wrong?” Her green eyes glowed emerald in the light of the fire, filled with compassion and sensitivity. “Do you mind me asking?”
“I don’t mind,” he said, which wasn’t the complete truth, because he hadn’t spoken of it since he’d walked through those prison doors to freedom. He’d never mentioned it again; outside of his lawyers and the jury, no one knew the full story. But it was time. And maybe, just maybe, Stella might understand. Understand why he’d needed to befriend people like Tony, just to make it through.
Tony’s eyes were closed. He may have been asleep or was possibly still listening to them. Either way, it didn’t bother Wyatt.
“Zoe used to live next door to me. It was in one of those housing blocks, in the outer suburbs of Missoula. I wasn’t always home, because I still liked to camp under the stars whenever I could. The walls are so thin in those apartments.” He poked the stick into the flames again, his mind shifting gears as the painful memories came back. “But when I was home, I could hear what was going on next door. Zoe’s husband, Tyrone, would regularly come home drunk and beat the crap out of her.”
Wyatt tensed his fists on his knees. The noises coming from next door were often what drove him out into the wilds. It was probably going on in more than one apartment in the block, and Wyatt tried to tell himself it was none of his business. Tyrone was an enormous ball of muscle, a bodybuilder and a boxer, and so, while Wyatt had contemplated more than once going over and knocking on the door, telling him to quit it, he knew the outcome wouldn’t be good. Even though he’d never confronted Tyrone, he’d done what he could. He befriended Zoe, hoping to make her life easier in some way.
Stella made a small noise of dismay, but said nothing, just let him continue.
“I got acquainted with Zoe, tried to look after her, you know? We’d drink coffee in the morning together. And sometimes shared a beer in the afternoon, and I would attempt to talk her into leaving that bastard. We got to know each other well.”
Here came the part Wyatt wasn’t proud of. Should he tell Stella? He swallowed hard, gritting his teeth to get the words out.
“We started…sleeping together.” That was one way to put it, and probably mostly correct. He hadn’t been in love with Zoe, he knew that now. But he’d felt sorry for her and when she came onto him, he hadn’t had the courage to say no. He kept his gaze fixed on the flames, unwilling to meet Stella’s eyes, afraid of what he might see there.
“I was trying to convince her to leave Tyrone, but she was so scared. Then she got pregnant. She told me it was mine, and I believed her.”
Stella’s hand snaked onto his knee, resting quietly there. It was a small offer of comfort, but it meant the world to him.
He could’ve made a life with Zoe. They talked about getting a new place, far away from there. They could move in together, have the baby, and he’d find a better job. She would divorce that bastard Tyrone, and he’d finally leave her alone. The fantasy had been real for him for a while, and that’s when he’d convinced h
imself they were in love.
“I found us a new apartment to rent. She was going to leave him, to be with me.” In his mind, they were going to make it. “Then she lost the baby.”
That’d been devastating. Wyatt couldn’t understand how he could feel a connection to something that didn’t even exist yet. Zoe had been less than three months pregnant, the fetus merely the size of a walnut. But he felt the loss like a stake to the heart.
“Oh, no, Wyatt, I’m so sorry.” Stella’s hand tightened on his knee.
“The crazy thing was, Zoe went back to Tyrone after the miscarriage. He begged her to come home, said he’d stop beating her, get some help. I couldn’t convince her we could still be together.”
Why did some women do that? He shook his head in disbelief. Someone had told him later that she may have suffered from battered woman syndrome, which somehow made her feel like she caused the abuse; that if she could be a better wife, then he’d be a better husband.
“I decided to keep the new apartment, but on my last night in the old place, after I’d moved most of my stuff out, I heard Tyrone at it again. This time Zoe was really screaming, and so I went around and knocked on the door. Right before I got there, I heard her screaming cut off. I rushed in, and Tyrone was standing over her. He’d stabbed her through the heart and was still holding the knife. Stupidly, I knelt down to see if Zoe was okay and he knocked me out.”
Stella gave a small gasp, but her gaze remained fixed on his face.
“He framed me, said that I was her scorned lover, and when she lost my baby and had gone back to him, I couldn’t stand it, and killed her in a lover’s rage.”
“No!” Stella covered her mouth with both hands and her wide eyes filled with tears.
“I woke up being handcuffed by the police. Tyrone had fixed everything, he put my fingerprints on the knife, and the police found witnesses who said Zoe and I were having an affair.”
It was the worst kind of betrayal. Wyatt had only been trying to help Zoe, and instead he’d ruined everything. She lost her life, and he’d lost his freedom. If only he’d left things alone, perhaps she’d still be alive. And he would be… What? He’d never have gone to jail, but then again, would he have been able to live with himself if he’d done nothing?
“The cops built a case against me and they sentenced me to twenty years.”
“So, what happened? How did they catch Tyrone?” Her hands still up at her face, Stella spoke through her fingers.
“An undercover cop, working on another case, chanced to overhear Tyrone telling a guy in a bar about how he got away with murder. The cop followed it up, and they arrested Tyrone a couple of months later.”
“And then you were set free?” she asked.
“Yes, I was.”
It sounded so simple. If only it were that easy. He’d never received one apology from any of the police who arrested him, or the lawyer who’d prosecuted him, or the judge who put him away. The justice system was broken, and it’d broken a small part of him, as well. Life since he’d left jail had been a rollercoaster of emotions. Being able to stay with Levi had been godsend, and finding the job at CJ’s had also helped. But Wyatt knew he’d lost most of his self-esteem; he didn’t know who he was anymore. Perhaps that was the main reason he’d agreed to hide Tony’s package. Because he still had a strong connection to his life behind bars, couldn’t quite disconnect himself from the people there and the obligations he felt to them.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” Stella whispered.
“So am I. But what’s done is done.”
“Thank you for telling me the truth.”
He tried to mine her words for their true meaning. How did she really feel about him getting another man’s wife pregnant and then trying to run away with her?
She turned toward him on the log and took off her gloves, then put a hand on either side of his face.
“I can’t begin to understand what you must’ve been through. But I want you to know, I don’t think any less of you.” Her lips lightly brushed his, holding at the corner of his mouth, keeping him on the edge of temptation.
At least, now he had his answer.
“You’re so different to any other man I’ve ever known,” she whispered against his cheek. “But I like that. And I want to find out more. Know you more. Better.”
His breath caught in his throat and something in his chest squeezed agonizingly. Was she saying what he thought she was saying?
He glanced at Tony. The man was snoring quietly.
Stella pulled his face back, her eyes darkening with desire in the firelight. This time when she kissed him, she left nothing to his imagination, her mouth closing over his, hot and demanding. The small sigh that escaped her throat had him going impossibly hard.
“The tent,” she panted. “We need to go to the tent.” She pulled him up by the hand and he followed willingly. He should stoke the fire. And he’d meant to patrol the perimeter of the camp before he went to sleep. But all that evaporated in his need to feel Stella in his arms.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
INSIDE, THE TENT was lit with a soft haze from the glow of firelight. Stella was already reaching for Wyatt’s coat buttons. She wanted to feel his skin beneath her hands. Wanted to delve in and explore those chiseled abs she knew were under his shirt.
“Wait a second.” Wyatt did something with the two sleeping bags, and she gave an impatient whimper. “They zip together,” he said, by way of explanation. Ooh, she liked these clever bags.
Then his obsidian eyes were on her, and he beckoned her to join him in the tangle of bedding. Quickly shedding her coat and hat, she climbed in beside him. It was too cold to get completely naked, but as he tugged her on top of his chest, she felt his hardened body beneath her and she trembled, imagining the different ways she could explore that same body. Her exploration would have to wait for another time, hampered as they were by all their layers. But she could still make this interesting. This was the most alive she’d felt in a long time. It’d started the moment Wyatt had rescued her from her crashed truck. It was Wyatt; he made her feel alive.
She was aware of his cock straining against the softness of her abdomen. She lowered her head and kissed him, her fingers busy lifting his hoodie and the hem of his shirt so she could finally skim her hands over all those steely muscles of his stomach beneath. Burying her nose against his neck, she drew in the smell of Wyatt
With a grunt, he flipped her over, and she lay on her back as he lingered above. He liked to be on top, it seemed. Maybe a little dominant. She liked it. She might also surprise him, because she liked to be on top, too. Her legs went loose, a liquid heat pooling in her belly at the thought. Her hands went to work, unzipping his jeans and helping him drag them down past his knees. It wasn’t easy within the confines of the double sleeping bag, but she managed. Her fingers found the length of him and she stroked, easy and slow. Wyatt gave a soft curse, his mouth devouring hers. His nimble fingers encountered her waistband and soon her jeans and underwear joined his, stuffed down the bottom of the bags. Roaming underneath her shirt, his hands fumbled slightly, then released her bra and was kneading her breasts. She let out a sigh, only half remembering to stay quiet so as not to wake Tony.
She wrapped her legs around his hips. This was going to be quick and debauched and incredibly hot. Exactly what she needed right now.
“Wyatt.”
He stopped kissing her to stare down with those dark, dark eyes unerringly focused on her.
“Have you got…?”
Something crinkled in his hand and she gave a purr of approval as he slipped the condom on. She loved a man who was prepared.
He hovered above her. “Are you sure?” His words were a vibration in her chest.
“Fais-moi l’amour, tout de suite.”
Wyatt didn’t seem to need a translation, he sank into her in one, slow, sensuous stroke.
* * *
Stella opened her eyes with a start. It
was pitch black. Someone was whispering in her ear, urging her to wake up. Panic sank its claws into her belly, and she sat up, backing away from the voice. But this wasn’t her bed back at Stargazer. Was she dreaming? Her head brushed against something soft and she let out a small scream. A hand came up to cover her mouth, and she began to struggle.
“Stella, it’s me. You need to be quiet.”
It was Wyatt. The sound of his voice kick-started her brain, and she suddenly remembered where she was, the disorientation clearing. Of course, she was in a tent, and they were on a mountainside. What was going on? Why had he woken her up like this? Like a thief in the night.
Especially after what they’d shared. Had she and Wyatt really made love earlier? She didn’t regret it one bit.
“Do you promise to be silent?” he whispered in her ear. She nodded, and he slowly removed his hand from her mouth. “We need to get out of here. Right now. Leave everything behind.”
So many questions circled her mind, but the urgency in his voice had icicles running down her spine. Something was terribly wrong. Glad that’d she’d re-dressed after their tryst—it was too cold to sleep otherwise—she grabbed her coat and felt in the pockets for her gloves and hat.
Stella emerged from the tent, following close on Wyatt’s heels. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. The fire had died right down, with only smoldering coals remaining. Which meant it was some hours since they’d crawled into the tent together. Outside the ring of firelight, Stella could see nothing but inky blackness. Wyatt moved swiftly around the fire, picking up Tony’s backpack as he went. Tony’s sleeping bag was spooled on top of his bed of branches, but the man was nowhere to be seen. She was about to ask where he’d gone, but Wyatt put a finger to his lips and then handed her the backpack soundlessly. Wyatt was already shouldering into his own pack, so Stella slung Tony’s on.
Where was Tony? Had he run away in the night? Betrayed them? But why would he do that? He’d end up lost and probably die alone on the mountainside. Even he wasn’t that stupid. And he certainly wouldn’t have left his backpack behind. Had he turned against them for some reason? Was it him they were fleeing?