The Stranger

by Anna del Mar

  “I...” Her fingers softened against my palms and her gaze found me. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “You did most of the groundwork,” I said. “We just followed your lead. That sleeping disorder of yours is a liability, sure, but it’s also an incredible asset.”

  She considered the idea. “I never thought about it that way. You may have a point.”

  “While we’re at it,” I said, “I might as well tell you. Your stepmother is raving mad at me.”

  “Why?”

  “I may have implied that she was behind all of this.”

  Summer grimaced. “You’re in deep trouble. I told you she wasn’t involved.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” I said, “she didn’t break anything else. Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”

  “A little sucking up goes a long way with Louise,” Summer said. “It won’t be easy. She’s as cantankerous as they come. But, given time, you’re likely to grow on her, Erickson.”

  I laughed. Summer flashed me a crooked little smile, but her eyes glimmered with that haunted expression that got my gut churning. I could almost hear her brain working inside her skull.

  “Seth?” She hesitated. “Why did you come after me? After I left you that note, and handed over your board meeting notes to Alex? And don’t you dare give me those lines about keeping your promise or providing suitable shelter. Knowing you, all of that was just the means to an end.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “You’re right. I had another good reason to come all the way out here. I wanted to ask you a question.”

  “You flew through a superstorm, ditched your beloved helicopter, and risked your life to ask me a question?”

  “Yep.”

  “You are unbelievable,” she said. “The most obtuse man on the planet. You know that?”

  “I’m dense, that’s true.”

  She fixed her eyes on me. “So?”

  I had to fight the lump blocking my throat. “I guess Alex forced you into doing his bidding.”

  “He wanted to pay me for your notes, deposited money in my account, but...”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Give me a chance here. I want to come clean. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Tammy.”

  “I talked to Tammy,” she said. “She told me she asked you not to tell me. I don’t like it, but I understand that lying to me wasn’t your first choice.”

  “In hindsight, it was a very bad idea,” I said. “Also...”

  “What?”

  “That vase your stepmother broke?” I winced. “It was a pricey one. I lied to you because I didn’t want you to obsess about it.”

  “I don’t obsess—”

  “Oh, yes, you do,” I said. “You obsess about people and things all the time. You’re easily consumed with worry.”

  “Tammy said the same thing.” She puffed a long breath. “Maybe you guys are a little right. Alex told me about the vase. Knowing Astrid, I should’ve been able to figure it out on my own.”

  “I’m sorry I lied to you twice,” I said. “I know you must have felt betrayed. But still...why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you at least give me a chance to explain before you went off with Alex?”

  “Seth?” Her green eyes studied and caressed my face at once. “I couldn’t call you because I didn’t have the means. Alex took my cell. But most importantly, I wanted to go with Alex.”

  “What?” I frowned. “Why?”

  “To find out what he was planning,” she said. “To figure out how he meant to trap you.”

  “So you went with Alex for me?”

  “Of course, silly.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Summer.” I grappled for words. “The things you do.”

  “I wasn’t going to let him hurt you,” she said, sticking out that little stubborn chin of hers. “I just...wasn’t.”

  The thaw raged through me, out of season and yet complete. Every frosted part of me warmed and melted. I lowered my lips to her mouth and kissed her. My body’s reaction confirmed that my skeptical, fucked-up mind had had to work through the possibility of Summer’s betrayal, but my body had never believed it.

  “I have to admit that I was mad at you for lying at me,” she mumbled against my lips. “And the picture frightened me at first. It really threw me for a spin.”

  I frowned. “What picture?”

  “The picture of me? On your dining room table? That first night?”

  “There were no pictures.” I’d made sure of that. “I deleted the footage from the security cameras.”

  “But Alex hacked the security company’s deleted files,” she said. “He managed to retrieve one image. He paid big bucks for it. He swears this is the only copy.”

  She pulled out a thumb drive from her pocket. I took it from her and crushed it in my fist. It was, of course, a symbolic gesture, but it helped combat the revulsion in my gut. Later on, I’d make sure the gesture became reality.

  “I hate that you had to live through this again,” I said.

  “So you know?” she said. “About Sergio and all of that? Your investigators found out?”

  “You told me,” I said. “When I asked you. In your dreams.”

  “Oh.” Her lips compressed into a grim line. “I...I had a hard time getting over that.”

  I squeezed her shoulder. “I know.”

  “But something else happened when I saw the picture.” Her mouth relaxed and hints of a smile matched the light that returned to her eyes. “Later. In the plane? I remembered that night. I remembered everything.”

  My heart tripped. “You did?”

  She nodded. “I was at ease in the picture. I was happy and I wanted you. What happened that night was beautiful. From the very beginning, I trusted you, in my dreams.”

  And I had trusted her.

  “So,” she said. “Are you going to ask the question you came to ask?”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “When you wrote the word ‘gone’ on that note you left on my pillow, did you really mean it? Were you going to leave me—I mean—Alaska?”

  “Yes.”

  The storm outside roared, even more ferocious than before. The turbulence inside of me matched nature’s violence. The space in the helicopter squeezed around me, suffocating me even if it was minus twenty degrees outside. I could handle pretty much anything, but the notion of Summer gone from my life scared the shit out of me. I fathomed I could hear the RPG coming at me.

  “You must understand,” she said. “Alex offered to take me to my sister, who, in my mind, was at the verge of catastrophe. I never intended to take his bribe, but he offered me a lot of money for your notes. Greed offered the perfect screen for me to snoop.”

  “I get it,” I said. “You had to do everything he said.”

  “Yeah, sure, maybe.” Her lips twitched. “Kind of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wrote that damn awful card,” she said. “But I added the reason why I was leaving, so you’d know I wasn’t just copying Gina’s actions.”

  In my fury, I may have missed Summer’s intent.

  “And I did copy the board meeting notes as Alex requested,” Summer said. “I left them out of order in your drawer so that you knew something was amiss. Although...”

  “What?”

  “I made a few changes during the process.” She smirked. “Have I told you? I’m really good at cut and paste.”

  I stared. “What?”

  “Did you really think I was going to give Alex any advantages over you?” Her eyes cut through me. “No way. Look in your bathroom’s trashcan. You are not the only one who can think contingencies. I faked those notes as best I could. And I did a damn good job, if I can say so myself. He got nothing useful from me.”r />
  Christ but she was brave. And smart. She’d betrayed me only to protect me. And yet, I was fixated on the one thing that mattered to me.

  “But when it was all said and done,” I said, “were you really going to leave?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I was going to get on that plane and fly first class to Miami, fuming all the way and cursing the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  I’d asked for it. I’d had it coming.

  “And then,” Summer said, “as soon as I got to Miami, I was going to turn around and board the next plane to Anchorage, economy class, mind you. I was going to hurry back to Alaska, give you a piece of my mind, and ask if I could hang out with you, at least for the winter, that is, if you still wanted me to stick around.”

  I stared at the woman before me as if she was a mirage. Had she just said what I thought I heard? She wanted to stay in Alaska. With me.

  “I love you, Erickson.” The radiance in her eyes exceeded the aurora’s epic glow. “I love each molecule of your DNA, even if you share it with a complicated group of people. I’m willing to take on the full genetic package, whatever that entails. Mind you, I come in a complicated package too, and I don’t really know how much winter Summer can take. So proceed with caution and be prepared for sudden changes. I might have to travel often to get my vitamin D.”

  Summer loved me. She’d said so. She was willing to put up with me, with my family. She was staying in Alaska, at least for the winter. I smiled, but inside, I whooped with joy. She was staying year-round, she just didn’t know it yet.

  “Baby?” I kissed the top of her head. “If I have to move to Miami and travel the world chasing after the sun, I swear, you’ll never lack for vitamin D.”

  The music in her laughter made my heart dance. What was happiness but a promise made to last and a light at the end of the darkness? I hugged Summer close to me. She’d brought my heart out of hibernation and restored me back to life. Life made total sense when she was around.

  Summer burrowed into me, settling in for the long wait. She was exhausted. Eventually, her eyes closed, her respiration evened and she fell asleep in my arms, dreaming, I hoped, of our future together. A white layer of snow covered the helicopter’s windows, but I caught a glimpse of our reflection in the glass, two bundled figures connected to each other by our embrace. Or by pure stubbornness.

  Lucky. That’s how I felt. Fortunate to be alive and a little on the cold side. Comfortable, instead of burning inside. Smooth-skinned, cool and healthy.

  Some days, life was a cross-eyed bitch. But on a day like today, that fucked-up bitch compensated for all the crap she’d piled up on you and offered you a cup of coffee and an olive branch. It gave you a break, a prize, a reprieve, a chance. It hoisted you from a sinking wreck and deposited you exactly where you wanted to be, at the top of your world, transforming the future into a flight path full of hope.

  The reflection in the window shifted to show the image of my parents and Uncle Ben, laughing and playing cards at the lighthouse. The guys drifted into the picture—Shawn, my copilot, Jonesy, my flight engineer, and Danny, he was there as well. My friends took their places at the table and joined my family. The sorrow squeezing my heart eased. It was a slight shift, a barely imperceptible lift of the soul, but it made life tolerable. As the vision in the window faded, I knew I wouldn’t see them again until I joined them in that eternal card game.

  I was cool with that.

  Meanwhile, it was time to live again. I didn’t need the sun to feel the warmth inside. After all, I had Summer in my life. I’d chased her here. I would chase her to the ends of the earth, because some people pursued their dreams while asleep, but others, like me, chased their dreams while wide awake.

  * * * * *

  Look for TO THE EDGE, the second book in Anna del Mar’s erotic AT THE BRINK series, coming from Carina Press in November 2016.

  To purchase and read more books by Anna del Mar, please visit Anna’s website here or at www.annadelmar.com.

  Acknowledgments

  My list of people I wish to thank remains a constant, which speaks loads about the amazing folks who’ve partnered with me in this thrilling journey. Thanks to Kerri Buckley for her brilliant editing work on The Stranger. She made sure the voices in my head matched the voices on the page. Thanks also to the talented professionals at Carina Press who contributed with their work and enthusiasm to The Stranger’s final form. As always, my thanks to Nancy Cassidy, who trudges through my manuscripts with such wisdom. Gratitude to my family who support me with their love and special thanks to my hubby, who puts up with me, even when my mind is thousands of miles away.

  And finally, thank you, the reader. We writers are an odd breed. We work long hours to tell our stories to readers we’ll seldom get to meet. And yet the reader is always with us, a welcomed companion in all of our adventures. The mere idea of you enjoying a single word I write, smiling at a line, or lifting an eyebrow at the end of a paragraph powers my efforts and becomes the greatest reward. So thank you for coming along on my journey and thank you especially for giving my novels a chance.

  Coming soon from Carina Press and Anna del Mar

  To learn about kink, she had to learn the ropes. Yet she never expected to be so compromised she’d need rescuing. And by him. The first man she’d ever loved. The ex-navy SEAL who’d broken her heart.

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  TO THE EDGE

  Chapter One

  My first attempt at submission went from failure to disaster in a whiff. An odd scent teased my nose and rattled my nerves. A prickle of uneasiness crept up my spine. I craned my neck, trying to figure out where the smell was coming from, but I couldn’t see much beyond the narrow slits of my sequined velvet mask.

  Note to Blog: Velvet masks may shield, tease and entice, but visibility sucks.

  I heard a small sound, a swish maybe? It came from my right somewhere, from the hallway that led to the powder room. I tried twisting my body around in the cage, but I could barely move. My arms were fastened above my head and my ankles were strapped to the bars near the floor. I sniffed the air again. The smell seemed fainter. Maybe it was my imagination, trying to shock some common sense into me and put an end to today’s little experiment.

  I was alone in the old house. My companion had left some twenty minutes ago, to find himself some coffee in town, he’d said. He’d left me cuffed in the cage so that I could reflect on my irreverent conduct. Right. Good luck with that, buddy. The truth was that he probably needed the caffeine boost in order to tackle a handful like me.

  I let out a little groan. Sure, this was crazy, no two ways about it. Reckless my mother would say, risky and not exactly consistent with my usually sane behavior. But honestly? I had suppressed my life for others’ sake long enough.

  But this? A seditious little voice nagged in the back of my mind. I tried to quiet it down, but maybe, just maybe, I’d pushed the edge a little too hard on this one. God, the things I did in the name of freedom.

  The tight leather corset dug into my ribs. My arms ached. My legs were tired and my feet were beginning to cramp in the impossibly high heels.

  Note to Blog: Kink garb isn’t exactly comfy.

  Good God. I was actually going through with this. Me. Clara Luz. Attempting something so far out of my comfort zone, not to mention my family’s much-touted moral rectitude. I slumped in my bonds. Was I really so freaking desperate?

  A week and a half ago, Annette Collins, the legendary editor of RelevantSex.com, had presented me with a unique proposition. Annette had been my advisor in grad school and as such, the only person who knew about my online adventures. From the beginning, she’d followed sextattle.com, the sex and romance blog I published—anonymously, of course.

  It wasn’t as if I was particularly versed or gifted in these oh
-so-very-fascinating subjects. On the contrary. My relationship IQ measured pretty low on the success scale. But the blog wasn’t so much an advice column as it was a forum. Discussion questions came in through an unfiltered inbox, I posted them under different categories, and people talked about them. I was good at research, so I mostly shared facts and links to helpful resources. I followed the old adage: those who can’t do, teach. Or, in my case, share online.

  Initially, the blog had been an experiment, a grad school project that went unexpectedly viral. But after graduation, the blog transformed into a labor of love, a means to connect with people and the only possible way in which I could pursue my own journey, separate from that of my illustrious mother. These days the blog had a very respectable reach, solid advertising revenues, and an expanding market that had caught Annette’s eye. She’d made me an excellent offer to merge my blog with RelevantSex.com.

  The catch?

  Annette wanted a trial run, a main feature to woo the editorial board and test my range, a fresh, raw take on the topic of sex and submission, a personal account of my first exploration of kink to tantalize her readers.

  “It’s a fascinating subject,” she’d said during our meeting at LeMond’s Cafe in Adams Morgan. “Look at the movies. Look at the novels. The public is fascinated by kink, domination and submission. Your readers will be too. An exploration is totally relevant.”

  “Then why don’t you assign someone who’s already on staff at RelevantSex.com?” I didn’t have any wisdom to share on the topic, zero, zip, nada. “Or better yet, why don’t you tackle it?”

  “Because I might be biased on the subject.” She fastened her glimmering green eyes on my face. “Whereas you, my dear, are sure to bring a fresh perspective to our readers.”

  Her naughty smile activated my Spidey senses and ignited my blush. I wasn’t a prude by any means, but kink? Yep, I’d bring a fresh perspective for sure. As to Annette, any lingering questions I may have had about the extent of her personal kink exposure were fully answered when she plunked down a long, comprehensive list of potential interview sources and references on the table.