by Lila Monroe
“Do you have the address?” I asked.
Right after I said it, I worried that she wouldn’t tell me, that she would think it was unhealthy to be this fixated on Hunter. That she would pity me, like Paige had.
But Martha just flashed a smile as bright as a shooting star. “Good on you. Maybe you can pull him out of his funk.”
And she handed me the address that she had had waiting on a piece of paper.
I’d thought the fishing place would be nearby, maybe on the other side of the lake that I could see from the manor house, but my GPS told me it was even deeper in the country. I turned on my lights and drove carefully through the rolling hills and deep dark woods that were no doubt lovely and picturesque by day, probably looking like they’d rolled out of a damn Thomas Kinkade painting.
By night, though, it looked like something straight out of a very grim fairy tale, one of the ones where the ending is less ‘happily ever after’ and more ‘and then the last person in the story died in a very bloody, poetically just way.’ They were not doing wonders for my nerves, those rolling hills, and that deep, dark forest.
What the hell was Hunter doing here? He couldn’t really be fishing, could he? I mean, yes, he was allowed to have hobbies I didn’t know about—in the grand scheme of things, liking fishing was a teeny tiny thing compared to some of the things I didn’t know about him—but why was he fishing now? Maybe Martha had misunderstood. Maybe Hunter was putting together his big plan to save the company here; maybe the isolation and serenity helped him think or something.
I mean, it was mostly making me think of urban legends about hillbilly cannibal axe-murderers, but different strokes for different folks.
After about thirty minutes of my GPS’ calm British voice directing me to make this turn or that turn, I rounded a corner and saw the lake. It was larger than the one by the manor, and more wild-looking, its edges rolling and blurring and disappearing into tiny inlets like the fingers of a vast hand. The cabin was tucked back by one of those little inlets, with rough-hewn logs and a blue granite chimney, covered in ivy and moss and looking like it was becoming a part of the landscape itself.
Even in the dark, I could imagine how beautiful it would look by daylight, how the trees would be lit emerald green and the lake sapphire blue, how the sky would stretch on forever, interrupted only by the sight of a bird on the wing.
In a place like this, you could imagine that you were the last person on earth.
Was that what Hunter wanted to imagine?
I parked the car and waited for a minute, gathering my courage. I was doing the right thing. I was.
Now that the engine of my car was off, the silence seemed to envelop everything. I could hear the rustle of the breeze through the leaves, the lapping of the lake water against the sandy shore. A slight slap as those waves hit the dock and the rowboat bobbed off to the side.
Surely Hunter had heard me pull in. Why hadn’t he come out? Was he at one of those curtained windows, just watching and waiting? Was he going to make me come to him?
Well, that was fair.
I squared my shoulders and left the car. Struggled to keep my posture straight and my face pleasantly neutral as I made my way up the path. I took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
It banged open like a gunshot.
“Hunter!”
His name was torn from my mouth in a gasp.
He glowered, leaning heavily on the doorway in a rumpled plaid button-up and jeans that looked like they had seen more mud and engine grease than detergent in the sum total of their lives. He was grizzled and unshaven, his hair mussed and his eyes narrowed.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
And then he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me inside.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I was stunned into silence as I gazed up at him.
Hunter looked terrible.
I mean, he was still gorgeous, you couldn’t change that with a chisel, but he also looked like he’d been drinking for two weeks solid, and had only occasionally remembered to bathe. His eyes on me were furious, but underneath it I saw the unmistakable gleam of lust. Or was I imagining it?
“I asked what you were doing here,” he repeated slowly, his voice barely containing his rage. Even still, I felt my body responding to the heat rolling off of him, the press of his hands against my shoulders, the way our eyes locked.
Words failed me. What I wanted right then was to shove him against a wall and run my fingers down his chest, his tight abs, slip them under the waistband of his jeans to wrap around that thick, hot—no! I was here for a reason, a very important reason.
“I came here to, um…” Speech left me again as I saw his fiery gaze flick down to my lips, then dip lower to my collarbone, my cleavage—God how I wanted him to put his hands where his eyes were—before jumping back up again. He was still glowering at me like I was a Pinkerton agent come to check up on whether he was keeping an illegal moonshine still.
I tried again. “Hunter, I just—” I’m so glad to see you, it’s so good to see you, oh God, are you okay, oh, I wish I could say any of these things out loud and not risk getting shoved back out onto the porch and the door slammed in my face… “We need to talk.”
“Do we now?” he said, stony-faced.
“Yes. We do.”
I pulled away from his grip and his hypnotic eyes and pushed past him, further into the house. It was even more rustic than my cabin back at the estate had been; there was a fridge and stove, but that was about the only sign that this cabin existed in the twenty-first century. Everything else was wool rugs and antlers and animal hides, hand-hewn wooden tables and a lumpy homemade couch. A door off to the right looked like it might lead to a bedroom; I caught a glimpse of more wood.
I pulled myself back to the present; I hadn’t come out here to gawk at his living quarters. “What’s going on at the company? Have you seen the new campaign? You have to have seen the new campaign. How could that have happened? Can we stop it? We have to stop it! How do you think we can—”
“I haven’t seen them, and I have no intention of seeing them,” Hunter snapped. “And I’ll thank you not to bring them up again.”
He strode past me to rummage in the fridge for a cooler, a dented red and white number. He opened it to check the number of bottles, added a few more from a half-empty case on the floor. And of course I definitely did not examine the curve of his ass in those jeans as he leaned over, didn’t have to force myself not to drool. Not for a second.
“How can you say that?” I demanded. “This is your legacy!”
“Not anymore,” he said, grabbing at a bait box, which he balanced on top of the cooler; he picked up a fishing pole with the other hand. “I’m just being practical. Knowing the specifics isn’t going to change one damn thing, so I’d rather not know. Here’s all I need to understand: I lost control, the board outvoted me, and now it’s all over. See how simple that was? Or did you think things would turn out differently?”
He shot a glare at me that could’ve stripped paint, and stormed through the open door back outside.
I followed. “But—”
“I’m done listening to you,” he interrupted. He was making his way to the dock, his strides long, impatient. “I listened to you once before and look where it got me.”
The words hit me like a punch to the throat.
I pushed back at the pain, spluttering, “Fine, don’t take my advice on what to do. But do something. I can’t believe you’re just sitting here doing nothing at all!”
He bared his teeth in what was technically a smile, but looked like it was causing him actual pain. “Oh, I’m not doing nothing. I’ve got plans. Me, the lake, some fishing and beer. It’s golden.”
“Oh, great plans,” I said sarcastically. “Why didn’t I think of that? That’ll definitely save your family name, for sure.”
His jaw tensed for just a second, his eyes opening wide enough that I thought I glimpsed
a moment of true hurt, like a puppy who had been kicked. Then he wheeled around and stomped away down the length of the dock without saying anything.
Damn that man!
I hustled on after him, my sensible heels clicking rapidly against the wood of the dock. I followed him right on into the boat, which he was not expecting. His eyes darted over the side, skimming the surrounding lake water, and for a minute I thought he was going to try to get me off the boat by force.
“You wouldn’t dare,” I said, though we both knew full well that he would. That is, if things were better between us. And then he’d jump in after me and pull me close, his hot tongue searching the corners of my mouth as my legs wrapped around his hard torso—ah, and there my brain went again, malfunctioning with dirty thoughts.
Instead of making my dreams come true, Hunter just sighed and turned away from me, opting for the oh-so-much-more-mature option of pretending I didn’t exist. Which was quite a feat considering how small the boat was.
The muscles in his arms rippled as he rowed us out in the center of the lake. The moon was high in the sky, lighting each wavelet and cat-tail with ethereal beauty. Everything looked gilded in silver.
“This is a lovely place,” I said, trying for a more neutral topic to start with. “Do you come here often?”
“Shush,” he said, still not looking at me. “You’re going to scare the fish away with all your talking.”
Had that man actually just shushed me?
You know what? Fuck neutral topics.
“Why the fuck do you care more about fish than about the company?” I snapped.
His hand clenched tighter around the oar. “I think the bigger mystery is why you’re acting as if you care at all. After all, you told Chuck I wasn’t fit to lead, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t mean it like that!” I burst out, furious and impatient and ashamed all at once. “I mean—God, Hunter, I was so drunk and I was jealous and he was egging me on and even then I didn’t say the things the way he said I did, he twisted them all around—you have to believe me, Hunter, he was playing me, he’s playing both of us right now—”
For a second I thought I saw something soften in his posture, as if he were about to turn toward me. Then he went stiff again. “I’m really not interested in all that,” he said coolly. “You say he twisted things? Fine. I believe you. He did it, and it’s done, and I don’t really care. It’s not my company anymore.”
Impossible. Hunter cared about the company so much. It was in his blood. He couldn’t just turn that off like a faucet.
He couldn’t turn off his feelings for me like that, either—could he?
“How can you not care? We were—we were—”
I fumbled for the words. What had we been to each other? Surely we had been something.
“We were barely anything.” Hunter’s voice seemed to answer my very thoughts. “And then it ended. Now, can you please be quiet? This conversation is putting me to sleep.”
And then that bastard stowed his oars, leaned back against the side of the boat, and pulled his cap down over his face, all set to fall straight to sleep.
He wasn’t actually going to go to sleep on me, was—
He was already snoring.
Unbe-fucking-lievable. I stared at him, so frustrated I was sure there must be smoke coming out of my ears.
Who was this man? It couldn’t be Hunter Knox. Hunter Knox would never be so beat down and defeated, hiding out in a shack and pretending not to care—he was pretending not to care, wasn’t he? It was just an act?
It had to just be an act. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate.
As I stared at Hunter I set my jaw, molding my frustration into determination. This business was his family heritage, his whole world; I needed to get him back up on his feet and engaged in the company—and life—well, and maybe me, too?—again.
If only I had one single idea how to do that.
“Um, Hunter?”
From the other end of the boat, he gave a lazy groan.
“Hunter!” I said more urgently.
He raised his cap just high enough to glare at me through half-lidded eyes. “I knew this silence was too good to be true.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a bitch, whatever,” I snapped. “You can go back to your sweet dreams in a second, but first, tell me: is the sky supposed to be doing that?”
Specifically, the sky was swirling in different shades of purple-black and grey, with faint lightning sparking off in the distance. It had also gone eerily quiet.
Hunter scrambled upright, his hat falling off behind him. “Shit, no. We got to get this boat in to land. Storm’s on the way.”
He grabbed the oars and started rowing back so quickly that I began to get even more nervous. I’d assumed that if Hunter had taken us out earlier, he must have known the forecast wasn’t supposed to get too bad. That he hadn’t was…worrying.
Almost as worrying as the way the wind was starting to whip the waves against us.
Still, Hunter was making good time, and we were almost halfway across the lake towards the cabin before I knew it. I counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder as rain began to splatter down on my face; the body of the storm was still almost twenty miles away.
There was probably time.
Hunter swore. I glanced back over at him and saw him rubbing a weeping blister on his thumb. He was sweating and out of breath, which didn’t seem like him either; he must have gotten out of shape during this retreat.
“Can I help?” I offered.
“I think you’ve helped quite enough,” he said through gritted teeth.
It seemed like at some point I should be getting inured to the hurt, and yet each time he spoke like this to me, the pain lanced into my heart once more. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I managed to keep them from falling.
“How long are you going to keep punishing me for this, Hunter?” I asked, my voice breaking.
“I’m not punishing you,” he snapped. “I’m just doing what’s best for me, and high time I did too.”
“I just want to help—” I pleaded, gesturing towards the oars.
“I don’t need your help!” he practically roared. He blocked my gesture as if I were making an actual grab for the oars, and I wobbled, off balance. I tried to grab at the side of the boat, but at the same moment a wave slapped against our hull, the world spun—
And our boat tipped.
Icy water engulfed me as I plunged into the dark water, shocking every inch of my body, making my muscles seize up and contract. I kicked with everything I had and breached the surface, coughing and gasping for breath, bobbing up and down like a cork in the water, casting desperately about for something to grab onto—
“Ally!”
Hunter’s voice sounded surprisingly near me, and I caught a glimpse of his hand, reaching for mine—I reached out, but the water pushed me away and I slipped under the waves again, my feet not finding the sandy bottom—I surfaced with another lung-searing gasp, caught a glimpse of the concern on Hunter’s face, lit by the moon, before the water claimed me once more—
And then Hunter’s strong arms were around me, my face pressed against his chest; I could feel as well as hear his relieved sigh as he felt my pulse. The muddy scent of the lake and the electrical smell of the storm were overwhelmed by the smell of him, so familiar and comforting. He shifted his position so he could hold onto me while he swam one-handed to shore, and soon we were close enough that I could stand on my own, and begin to slog along with him towards shelter.
“Thank you,” I choked out, my legs still shaking beneath me.
He took his arm from around my shoulder, and it felt like losing a limb of my own. Then he slid it around my waist to hold me upright, and I knew that I wanted him to never let go.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. I almost whispered it, but somehow he still heard it above the rising wind.
“It’s okay,” he said. His voice was equally soft. “I shou
ld have known better.”
I didn’t know if we were talking about the boat or about us, and for that moment, held in Hunter’s arms, I didn’t care.
“Come on,” he said, “we’re pretty close. Let’s head in, get warmed up.”
“The boat—” I protested.
“Will be there in the morning,” Hunter pointed out.
“Not if the storm—”
“I can always get another boat.” There was a rueful tone to his voice. “You’re much harder to replace.”
“Here,” Hunter said, offering me a wool blanket as I emerged from the bathroom in a dry set of clothes. All he’d had on hand for me to change into were a pair of his boxers and an oversized flannel shirt, and I was 99% sure I caught him staring at my bare legs as I made my way across the room.
“Thanks.”
He wrapped the blanket snug around my shoulders and steered me onto the couch, where I curled up under the heavy blanket and tried to stop shivering. Hunter went back to building up the fire. He hadn’t changed out of his wet clothes yet. The cloth clung to the firm muscles of his back, and I was torn between admiring the view and worrying myself sick about him catching cold.
“There,” he said when the flames sprang into life.
“Thanks,” I said again.
What sparkling conversationalists we were.
“I’ll heat up some stew,” he said, clomping over to the freezer.
“Great,” I said.
Well, at least it wasn’t ‘thanks’ again.
Damn. Things had been so perfect for that moment in the water. I had thought that once the tension broke, it would keep breaking, would bring us back to where we had been before this whole mess exploded. But instead the tension seemed to have formed itself right back together, with hardly a crack to show where it had snapped.
Hunter dumped the frozen stew out of an ice cream bucket into what looked like a glorified tea kettle, hung it over a hook in the fireplace, and then sat on the opposite end of the couch as me. I tried not to pout, and failed.