by T. S. Joyce
“It wasn’t a date—”
“Oh, for crap’s sake—it was. You wore ten pounds of eyeliner and a shade of lip gloss I thought I’d never be able to get you to wear. He’s a jerk for standing you up. You look hot.”
Hadley just froze there, squatted on the floor, staring at the roses. “If he didn’t show up, it’s because he doesn’t want me to know—”
“Colin Cross.”
Water splashed all over her boots and she yelled, “Shit!” as she rushed to turn off the hose. “Colin Cross? The mountain man?”
“Yep,” Vona said, gripping the edge of the counter behind her.
“Colin, the one who paid for my lunch last month? The man who then ignored me and never even nodded to me on the street after that?”
“One in the same.”
Hadley stood up, soggy and bewildered. “Why would he stand me up? And how did he find me online?”
Vona shrugged and looked worried. “I don’t know, Hadley. I think maybe I messed up by setting up that profile for you, though. This wasn’t how I imagined your dating life would go, and now you got hurt.”
“Don’t apologize for that, V. You were just trying to help.”
Hadley stared out the window at the post office where he usually came with a pile of boxes. Colin Cross. Huh. She didn’t know whether to be angry that he’d lied about living in Sheridan or happy that Bearman28 was the man she’d been thinking about. He had to know who she was, right? The coincidence was too big that he’d paid for her lunch, then found her online a few days later. Why hadn’t he introduced himself the dozen times he walked near her store?
Why not just ask her out like the other guys in town?
“Vona? Did your friend happen to find out where he lives?”
Vona narrowed her eyes. “That sounds like the beginning of a terrible idea.”
****
Hadley pressed harder on the gas to get over a steep embankment on the worn, dirt road. In front of the car, evening shadows stretched across the road, highlighting the late hour. This was how all the scary movies started. She’d always thought horror movie girls were entirely too stupid for getting in this exact situation, and now what was she doing? Meandering uninvited up to a recluse’s mountain cabin. She clutched a little tighter to the Mace Vona had insisted she bring.
As she crested a hill, a cabin came into view. It was small, but the yard was tidy, and the leaves raked. A log sat to the side of a porch with an ax sticking out of it, and piles of chopped wood were lined up neatly against the house. To the right of the log structure was a shop that was even bigger than the home. Light illuminated the doorway from the inside, so she parked and picked her way carefully toward the shed.
Heavy metal music blared from an old radio plugged into an outside outlet, and when she approached the open door, she froze. Colin was standing with his back to her, muscles flexing against a filthy, gray thermal sweater. His shoulders rippled in rhythm to his hammering on metal, glowing gold against an old anvil. Sweat and dirt trickled down the back of his neck where his dark hair had been cropped short. The rhythmic clang, clang of his hammer was offbeat against the music, slower, and he turned and dipped the hot metal into a bucket of water until it sizzled and steamed. With his back still to her, he pulled something off a tool bench and seemed to study it.
Maybe this had been a bad idea. He obviously liked his privacy up here where he could clobber metal and fix things. She was way overstepping the line by stalking him up here.
But…
She couldn’t just leave and not say anything when she was this close.
“Colin?”
He spun fast and fixed his eerie eyes on her, and when she looked down, he was holding a knife. With a screech, she lifted the Mace and sprayed. When a cloud of pepper spray filled the space between them, he cursed and dropped the knife. “Geez, woman. What did you do that for?”
Her eyeballs were on fire. “Owww,” she wailed as she rubbed her eyes and tried to rid herself of the irritant.
She dropped the Mace and fell to her knees as her eyes watered and burned.
“This way,” Colin said, lifting her by the ribcage like she weighed nothing at all.
An old-fashioned pump sat ready on the side of the house, and he jacked the handle until water poured into a bucket. Desperately, they both splashed their faces, rinsing their eyes.
Finally able to stomach the pain and keep her eyes open, she looked at Colin and snorted a laugh. Clamping her hand over her mouth, she murmured, “Oh my God, this is so not funny.”
His eyes were all red around the edges, and she could only imagine what kind of eye make-up mishap was happening on her face.
Colin huffed a laugh, but bless the man, he seemed like he was trying to keep it in. “You maced me.”
“I maced us both. I thought you were going to stab me.”
“No.” Colin leaned back on his folded legs and flung water from his fingertips. “I make knives. I’m a blacksmith. I was just holding the one I was working on, and then you sprayed us.”
“Oh. Well, Vona said you might be a serial killer, so I was prepared. And maybe a little on edge.”
His shoulders were shaking now as he rubbed water from his beard. “This is not how I imagined this would go.”
“You stood me up, Bearman.”
He drew up short and frowned. “You know?”
Tilting her chin up primly, she said, “I have people. Why didn’t you show up today?”
His look darkened, and he dropped his gaze to a pile of stones near the corner of the house. “Because you deserve better.”
“Damn straight, I do. I’ve never been stood up in my life.”
“No, not that. I mean, you deserve better than me.”
“Oh.” She straightened her spine and wrung water from her sweater. That sounded serious. His eyes were so beautiful when he allowed her to see him like this. “Your eyes are an unusual color.”
“Oh, shit,” he looked around frantically, but she reached out and grasped his hand.
“No sunglasses unless you need them. I don’t mind.”
His gaze dipped to their clasped hands, and he squeezed her fingers. “Okay. No sunglasses.” When he lifted his eyes back to hers, some emotion she couldn’t understand swam in the depths there.
“Swear you won’t hurt me,” she rushed out.
His jaw clenched, and his eyes blazed. “I’d never hurt you. Not on purpose. I swear I’m no serial killer, or whatever you’re scared of.”
“Then why do you live way up here by yourself?”
“Who says I live by myself?”
Oh. Perhaps she’d been mistaken. “I asked around town about you.”
He had every right to be mad, but a flattered smile crooked the corner of his lips. “You did?”
“Of course, I did. You paid for my lunch, and I’d never seen you before, and I wondered why you did that. But you ignored me every time you came into town afterward, which makes no sense because you found my dating profile. And how did you find it, anyway?”
“We should dry off. You’ll catch a cold. Here,” he said, standing and offering his hand that was calloused and streaked with ashes and water.
She hesitated just as her fingertips were about to touch his palm. Not because his hand was dirty from the toil of his labors, but because touching him felt dangerous in some way she couldn’t understand. Shaking her head to ward off her silliness, she pressed her palm against his and allowed him to pull her upward.
He was strong, stronger than she’d anticipated, and she fell forward against him with the force. He gripped her upper arms as her hands landed against the hard planes of his chest. His torso rose and fell under his ragged breath as seconds ticked by, and still she stood frozen against him. She shouldn’t feel safe around this sort-of stranger…but she did.
His heartbeat was strong and steady under her hands, and he looked down at her with eyes gone round, as if she’d startled him as much as she’d sta
rtled herself. His nose was straight and masculine. He lowered his dark eyebrows in an unspoken question, making his snow-colored eyes look even brighter.
“Do you wear the beard to hide from people?” she whispered, but regretted the words as soon as they’d left her lips. That was none of her business. Whatever had possessed her tongue to go speaking without permission needed to stop, and now.
With a gentle grip on her arms, he pushed her back from him, and she could see him closing down. His gaze hardened, then drifted over her head toward his cabin. “You wouldn’t like the way I look without it.”
The words cut something ugly into her middle. How could he say that? It was obvious she couldn’t stop staring at him. “You don’t know that.”
He dragged his attention to her and took another step away, then placed his hands behind his back. His formality stung. “I don’t like the way it looks.”
“Okay. That’s different then.” She frowned, trying to understand why a man with a physique that would draw any red-blooded, man-banging woman’s attention would want to hide behind a thick beard. From what she saw of his face, he was the handsomest man in all of Buffalo, maybe Wyoming. Hell, maybe the whole damned world, and he was up here in the mountains, avoiding relationships with other people. He didn’t seem like a particularly shy man, so what gave? “What happened to you?”
He huffed a breath as a muscle twitched under his eyes. She fought the urge to touch it and calm the stress there. His eye color seemed to blaze even brighter, but it had to be a trick of the setting sun that ghosted the horizon.
“Maybe you should go,” he gritted out.
“Or,” she said boldly, “you could invite me to stay for dinner and make up for standing me up for our coffee date.”
“It wasn’t a date.”
The words stung like a slap to the face. Gasping at the pain, she drew back. “It was to me.” She spun on her heel and stomped toward her car with as much dignity as she could muster, sopping wet and likely with a serious set of eyeliner-smeared raccoon eyes.
“Wait,” he drawled.
When she turned around to lay into him, he stood there, looking so lost and uncertain, the words clogged her throat. He ran his hands roughly through his short, black hair. “Will you stay for dinner? With me?”
Straightening her spine, she said, “I’d love to.” Her socks made undignified sloshing sounds in her boots as she marched past him and up the front porch stairs.
Hadley had expected a typical bachelor pad. Old grease-stained pizza boxes and dirty clothes littering the floor. Perhaps a musty smell and muddy boots tossed haphazardly by the door. What she saw when Colin leaned over her and opened the door to his home was as unexpected as raindrops on a sunny day. His cabin was small, but immaculate. A coatrack adorned a small entryway, which opened up to a living area with a couch and a recliner. A flat screen television had been mounted on the wall above a stone fireplace, and the kitchen sat ready for someone to cook in it across the den. She walked slowly past a hallway that seemed to lead to a bathroom and a single bedroom, and yelped when a streak of motion ran across the toe of her boot.
“That’s Boomerang,” Colin said, watching her like he was studying her reaction to his home. “The cat’s all feral, but he comes in through that make-shift doggy opening on the back door there, see?” He pointed. “He likes to take his meals inside like he’s fancy, but still won’t let me touch him. He just likes to tear around the house like he’s bat-shit crazy at three in the morning to drive me nuts.”
A patchy-furred calico cat hunched in the corner of the room and offered her a feral hiss as she walked by. “Boomerang is a girl.”
“What?” he asked.
“She’s a calico. See her mottled fur? All calicos are girls. It’s in their genetics to be female.”
He frowned and ran a hand down his beard like his mind had just been blown. “No wonder she’s always pissed off. I’ve been calling her a him from the day she dropped her first rat at my doorstep.”
“Ew. Why would she do that?”
Colin gave her an empty smile. “Because she’s begging sanctuary in the territory of a predator.”
His words made no sense, but maybe that’s what happened when a man spent too much time out in the woods. Perhaps he imagined himself a predator. She wouldn’t be rude and point out there were a whole heap of predators more adept to defending territory than some blunt-nailed human.
But when she turned around and noticed those unnatural eyes on her, the way the ash and water and sweat had streaked his face and made it fearsome looking, the way his thick muscles pressed against the damp fabric of his sweater, a shiver rattled up her spine.
If it were a competition between him and one of the soft men down the mountain in Buffalo, he’d win top predator with little effort.
Chapter Three
Hadley burrowed into the oversized navy-colored sweater Colin had tossed her before he disappeared into the bathroom to shower. It smelled like him, crisp and masculine, with undertones of metal and ash. He’d probably worked in this shirt before, and the thought brought a pool of warmth to her middle. Oh, she’d witnessed sexy men before, but the sight of Colin working in his shop was a thing of beauty. The graceful arc of his hammer, his triceps flexing as he held the hot metal in place, his profile, eyes focused and jaw clenched as he dunked the glowing metal in water.
She sank onto his couch and sighed heavily. She was in trouble, and it was all sexy, muscly-armed Bearman Colin’s fault.
The tap sounded through the closed door of the bathroom, and she tried not to fantasize over what his body looked like under that showerhead with the jets of hot water bouncing droplets off his perfect skin. As water ran rivers down the curves of his chest, over each mound of his abdominals, and down, down…
With a growl, she clicked the power button on the remote that sat on the cushion beside her and turned up the volume on a riveting episode of Beginner’s Curling. She crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring the squishy sound her bra made, and glared at the television as she tried to reclaim her mind, which she’d obviously lost.
Eventually Boomerang-the-girl-cat perched on the arm of the couch and stared at her with eerie gold eyes. The critter didn’t even blink. Thoroughly creeped out, she moved farther down the couch.
The bathroom door opened, and Colin made his way across the hall with a fuzzy white towel around his waist.
Her imaginings of his shower time didn’t touch reality. One, because he was even more cut that she’d imagined, and two, because his skin was crisscrossed with shiny, silver scars.
Shocked, she jumped up and followed him. “What happened to your back? What did this to you?”
Colin turned, his eyes wide as he backed into his room. Hadley followed. This had to be part of the secret of why he’d chosen to live away from civilization. The scars looked gruesome, and she couldn’t imagine the pain he’d gone through to get them, but his uneven skin wasn’t the most shocking thing about him now.
He’d trimmed his beard until only short, designer stubble remained. He was so handsome her knees buckled against any forward motion.
“Animal attack,” he said in a gruff voice.
She was staring. Not at his tensed muscles or at the enticing trail of light hair that traveled from his naval into his towel. She was staring at the perfect claw mark that stretched from his neck to his cheek.
“This,” he said low, “this is why I keep the beard.”
She approached slowly, afraid he’d try to escape her. She stretched her fingertips until they touched the short whiskers across his jaw. And carefully, she traced one of the long, curving scars on his face. “You said I wouldn’t like the way you look without the beard hiding your face.” She swallowed hard. “You were wrong.”
His nostrils flared, and his eyes flashed brighter than she’d ever seen them. He looked as if a storm, churning and dangerous, was brewing inside of him, but when he approached and lowered his lips to hers, th
ey were gentle and soft. He pressed his mouth on hers and sparks lit up her insides, making her feel unbalanced enough to grab his arms. Holy roman candles, a kiss had never felt like this before—like she was falling.
He shifted his weight, and drew her waist closer with a firm grip on her hips. She could feel his long, hard erection through the material of her clothes and his towel, and a soft, helpless noise wrenched from her throat. The thought of him between her legs filled her with desperation to be closer to him.
At the brush of his tongue against her lips, she leaned into him more until she was soaking up his warmth. She parted her lips and stifled the urge to moan as his tongue touched hers. He tasted divine, like mint toothpaste. His whiskers tickled her chin, but she didn’t care much about that right now.
Looping her arms around his neck, she pulled him close and closed her eyes tighter. This man had given her a gift. Did he even see it as that? He’d shaved his beard for her, left scars that obviously bothered him exposed because she’d mentioned it. Maybe it was a test to see if she could really stomach the marred side of his face, she didn’t know. All she knew was it made her want to be even nearer to him. Made her want to know everything about him.
Made her fall for him even harder.
The cotton of her shirt bunched in Colin’s steely grip, and he tugged it over her head. Then he pulled at the band that held her hair in a ponytail and freed it with a slow smile. Easing back, he trailed his gaze the length of her collarbone, then down to her breasts, still trapped in her bra, which suddenly felt tight and uncomfortable. She’d blame it on the wet, chafing feel, but really, it was her scandalous hormones telling her to ditch the bra and free the boobs.
And right now, Colin and her hormones could have whatever they wanted.
As if he saw the yearning in her eyes, he reached behind her and unfastened her bra with one hand. Snick. It fell away from her arms, and he cupped the fullness of her in his calloused hands. Arching back, she sighed as he kneaded her. God, she should’ve known a man who forged blades would be good with his hands.