“And Declan thought moving you to Montana was the best thing for you?”
She almost said safest, but she changed her mind at the last second. “He thought I’d fit in here. That it was a place I could belong.”
“Did he tell you it snows eight or nine months of the year?”
“He might have mentioned it,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll be an adjustment, but most things are. If it’s this beautiful in the rain, I can’t imagine what it looks like covered in snow.”
He grunted as if to say, “We’ll see,” and then he scooted back his chair.
A nerve had been touched somehow when they’d started talking about the change in weather. And she got the impression he didn’t expect her to last the first winter.
The pizza was gone, and so was the moment they’d shared, but at least the hollow ache in her stomach was gone.
“If you’re up to it,” he said, “The rain has lightened enough for me to get you to the lake house. I thought for a second you were going to fall asleep in your plate.”
“I’m up to it,” she said, thinking of crawling into the first available bed she could find. “I do appreciate the meal and the dry clothes. And I’m sorry I interrupted your work.”
“It is what it is,” he said. “Come on. I’ll drive you over, and we’ll see what’s going on with your car on the way.”
He grabbed his keys and went into the garage, leaving her in the living room alone with Winston.
“Well, Winston,” she said. “It was a pleasure to meet you. Come visit me sometime.”
Winston woofed at her and then went back to his bed. She guessed that was as close to a yes as she was going to get.
Chapter 6
Jayden had to get her out of his house. He’d watched her try to take stock of him, and then her gaze had rested on his mouth and it had been everything he could do to toss the pizza to the floor and take her in his arms.
She’d gasped in surprise—as if she hadn’t expected to feel that level of attraction—and then her gaze had met his and what he saw in their depths made him want to shout in triumph and run in the opposite direction at the same time.
He wanted her—he wanted her in his bed and on canvas. He wanted to know her, and to get her to trust him. And he wanted to take the sadness out of her expression when she thought no one was looking. But he’d learned with Kana you couldn’t always have what you wanted.
Montana was many things—beautiful, majestic, friendly, and wide open—but it wasn’t very forgiving if you didn’t have the wherewithal to take proper precautions. A Holly was about as green as you could get. The snow could be beautiful at times, but it could be brutal and violent at others.
Declan obviously cared for her, and Jayden knew he could trust his cousin. If he and Holly’s father had really been as close as brothers then that’s all it would take for Declan to give her anything she needed. Maybe it was as simple as that. But it didn’t feel simple.
Maybe it was him. He hadn’t even thought of another woman since Kana left. But since a half-drowned warrior had entered his life only a couple of hours before, he knew he’d be thinking of nothing else but her..
Jayden had a stripped-down Jeep he used in the summer months when the weather was nice, but the rest of the time he relied on the Hummer he’d had for years. He was in the car before he realized she hadn’t followed behind him.
“Holly?”
She appeared in the doorway a few seconds later with her bag of clothes in hand. His sweats fit her perfectly, and he grit his teeth at the thought of what she wasn’t wearing underneath. Her hair had started to dry why they’d been eating, and he was pleasantly surprised to see the curls spring up around her face.
“Sorry, I was saying goodbye to Winston,” she said. “He promised to come visit.”
“That sounds like him,” Jayden said. “He’s always making social commitments and forgets he doesn’t drive.”
She laughed, low and husky, and the sound shot straight down his spine. “Maybe you could call him an Uber.”
She climbed into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt, and he took a slow, steadying breath to get his body under control. Then he put the SUV in reverse and backed out of the driveway.
The weather had given them a little bit of a reprieve, but he knew it was short lived. These end of summer storms came in with a vengeance and then blew out with the cooler temperatures of fall. The rain had turned into a soft drizzle, and the sound of the wipers swishing seemed loud in the silence between them.
He was about a mile down the road when he saw the tiny car sitting at an odd angle on the wrong side of the road.
“Good grief,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going to assume that’s your car?”
“That’s it,” she said. “I must’ve gotten turned around. I had no idea I was on the other side of the road.”
“If you’d driven another three feet you would’ve ended up nose down in a ditch full of water. You’re lucky to be alive. I still don’t know how you managed to find your way to my place.”
“I was very determined,” she said. “I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, and then I saw the gas lights lit at the entrance to your driveway. It was like a sign from God. I’d never been so happy to see anything in my whole life.”
“I can imagine,” he said. “Is that a rental car?”
“No, it’s mine,” she said with a sigh. “That car has gotten me all over the United States without a hitch, and I’m the one who did her in just before her final destination.”
“Well, she’ll probably survive once she gets towed out of the muck, but you can have my mom look at it for you. She’ll be able to tell you anything you want to know about cars.”
“Your mom is a mechanic?” she asked, making him grin.
“She’s the best there is,” he said with pride in his voice. “You probably passed her shop on the way into town. Charlie’s Automotive.”
“Yeah, I did,” she said. “Who’s Charlie?”
“My mom. Her name is Charlotte, but everyone calls her Charlie.” But then he looked at the little car again, and just shook his head. “I don’t mean to rain on your parade…”
“Ha, ha,” she said.
“But how many inches of snow do you think this thing can drive through?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” she said. “But I’m sure your mother can tell me. And if I need something else, I’m sure she’ll tell me that too. I’ve got time to figure something out unless we’re going to get twenty inches tomorrow.”
“As long as you’re thinking about it,” he said. “What do you need to get out of your car?”
“I can make do until I can call a tow truck tomorrow. I really don’t want to get wet again, and I’m too tired to do anything with it anyway.”
Jayden hated to break it to her, but she’d be lucky to find a tow truck driver to come all the way out here in the next century.
“I’ll get it,” he said.
“I appreciate it,” she said. “The suitcases with my clothes and toiletries are in the trunk.
He pulled the Hummer up so the back seat was even with the trunk of her car, and then held out his hand for her keys. She passed them over wordlessly.
He zipped up his rain jacket and then pulled up the hood, tying it beneath his chin, and the he got out into the rain, waiting until the last minute to pop her trunk so her things didn’t get wet.
For someone who’d uprooted her whole life and was starting over in a new location, she sure didn’t bring much with her. There was a designer carryon bag with fancy initials all over it and a matching duffel. He grabbed them both and tossed them in the backseat of the Hummer.
There were boxes in the backseat, and two more in the passenger seat, so he went ahead and grabbed them too.
“You travel light for a woman,” he said when he got back in.
“I can’t decide if I should be insulted or not,” she said.
“
It’s just interesting,” he said. “My mom and sisters pack this much when we take a weekend vacation. They’d have a U-Haul if it were anything too long.”
“You have sisters?” she asked.
“Two,” he said. “And a brother. “They’re seventeen, nineteen, and twenty. My parents are pretty excited about being empty nesters after my sister Victoria graduates this year. My dad says he’s going to hang out in his underwear all day, and my mom wants to turn the bedrooms in actual guestrooms with furniture and bedding that don’t smell like socks or have boy band posters hanging on the walls.”
“That does sound exciting,” Holly said.
“MacKenzies know how to party hard.”
He put the SUV in drive and headed back toward the fork in the road. When they passed the big tree, he saw her shiver and he turned down the A/C.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s just that I might have hit that tree a little bit.”
“A little bit?” he asked.
“Maybe your mom can look at that too when I take it in,” she said.
“You said you met Alice and Mac at the diner,” he said. “I can’t believe either of them let you get in the car and drive knowing a storm like this was coming in.”
“Oh, they told me,” Holly said, grinning. “But I decided to go for it.”
“Maybe next time a local gives you advice you should take it.”
“I’m thinking that’s probably a very good idea.”
The walls of the MacKenzie Security compound loomed ahead, and he watched her eyes get bigger the closer they got.
“Is that where the agency is run from?”
He wasn’t entirely sure how much she knew about what Declan did, so he just nodded.
“They don’t have walls that big at the agency in London or New York,” she said. “But they’re well protected. You’d think royalty lived there with all the security measures.”
He didn’t bring up the slip she’d made that she’d seen both locations. She wasn’t British, which meant it was a fairly good odds she was from New York.
“This is where the entire family lives, and many of the agents and their families. Declan doesn’t take chances.”
“It must be terribly stifling to live within walls like that,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“The land goes on for thousands of acres,” he said. “It goes all the way to the mountains and then it becomes a National Park, so it’s impossible to breach from that side. You don’t even notice the gates unless you’re right up on them. But it’s part of the price that has to be paid when doing that kind of work.”
She frowned and he wished he could hear what she was thinking.
“Which house number is yours?” he asked when he turned onto Territorial Drive.
“Number three,” she said.
“That’s the best one,” he said. “You’ve got plenty of space between cabins, but it doesn’t matter since the other two are unoccupied. On a clear day you can see my house across the lake.”
“Oh, how cute,” she said, sitting up in her seat when he pulled into her driveway. “It’s a log cabin. I’ve always wanted to stay in one.”
“You’ve got your own dock, and there’s a skiff and kayak if you want to get out on the water. Though I wouldn’t recommend it in this weather.”
“So noted,” she said. “I can’t wait to see the view.”
“In this part of the country, you’re going to have a view anywhere you go.”
“I bet it never gets old,” she said.
“Never,” he agreed.
“Declan said the keys would be under the mat to the kitchen door.”
“Then that’s where they’ll be,” Jayden said. “Dec doesn’t miss a trick.”
Jayden pulled the Hummer under the portico, but he left it running, and then he started grabbing her bags from the backseat. He had the sudden urge for a beer down at Duffey’s. He’d been working too hard, and if he went back home all he’d be thinking about was her.
She found the keys under the mat and unlocked the door, while he carried in her boxes.
“You look like you’re about to fall over,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m far from it,” she said. “I’ve been driving for a couple of weeks, and there hasn’t been a lot of time for sleep. But now that I’m home…I might sleep for days.”
She opened the refrigerator and stared long enough he thought she might have fallen asleep standing up. But when he looked over her shoulder he saw it had been stocked with enough food to last her a week.
“He thought of everything,” she said, and to his complete and utter horror, her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m just tired,” she said, blinking her eyes rapidly. “And the gesture was so sweet.”
“That would’ve been Sophia’s doing,” he said.
He closed the refrigerator door and put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re all set here,” he said, pushing her gently out of the kitchen and through the house until they reached the master bedroom.
He flipped on the light and had to admit, Sophia and Declan didn’t miss a trick. There were fresh flowers in the vase, the bed was turned back with begging that reminded him of clouds, and there was an electric fireplace against the wall she could flip on with a switch if she ever got cold. If the curtains were open, she’d see a view of the lake, and the other door led to the bathroom.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said.
“Remember how I told you to take the advice of locals?” he asked.
“Mmm,” she said.
“My advice is to go to bed and stay there for a while.”
“Good advice,” she said.
He heard the rain hitting the roof a little harder than it had before, so he gave her a gentle shove toward the bed and watched her fall face first onto the bed. He shook his head and pulled the covers up over her, and then he headed to the bathroom to turn on the light and crack the door so she wouldn’t wake up in complete darkness.
When he was standing at the door to her room with his hand on the light switch, she rolled and managed to open her eyes a crack.
“Jayden,” she said. “Thank you for your help. I think you saved my life today.”
“Get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“What for?” she asked, starting to sound grumpy from lack of sleep.
His mouth twitched in amusement. “Because I want to paint you,” he said.
“Uh, huh,” she mumbled. “A little of this and a little of that. Recognized your work from a show in New York.”
He couldn’t help himself from asking. “Did you like it?”
“Beautiful,” she whispered. “But you can’t paint me. He’ll find me.”
And with that, she drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 7
He’ll find me.
What did that mean? Who would find her?
Declan would know the answer. Of course he would. But getting the answers out of him was another matter entirely.
Jayden did a walk through the house and made sure everything was locked up tight, and then he let himself out through the kitchen door.
He knew he’d caught her in a moment of weakness there at the end, and he should have stopped her from saying anything more. She’d seen his show in New York, and she was familiar enough with his work to recognize it. And then he remembered she’d seen one of his paintings in the guest bedroom.
None of that bothered him. He worked hard at keeping his identity a secret, along with a little help from Declan, but there were people outside his family who knew who he was in the artist world.
What had really bothered him was the three little words she’d uttered at the end. Even in delirious sleep, there was fear in her voice.
She’d said she’d driven all over the country, and he brought the image of her falling into his arms
back into his mind. What had she been through that had made her that desperate? What had she survived to give her the strength and courage she had?
When he got back in the SUV his phone was ringing, and he saw Kana’s name once again lighting up the screen. He let out a sigh. It was time to end the cycle.
“You can’t move forward if you’re holding onto the past,” he said. And then he hit the answer button.
“Kana,” he said.
“Oh, Jayden,” she said, the surprise evident in her voice. “I didn’t think you’d answer. I was going to leave another voicemail.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Well,” she said. “I wanted to see you. I’m doing a shoot in Montana in a couple of weeks. And…well…I miss you. Maybe we need to talk things out.”
He let out a sigh and closed his eyes. Six months ago he would’ve agreed to do it. But it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
“Kana,” he said. “I don’t think so. Living in the past isn’t going to solve anything. I’m not part or your life anymore. And you’re not part of mine. Let’s just call this what it is and be done with it. No visits, and no more calls.”
“You’re angry with me,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I could give it another chance, and move back to Surrender.”
“And it’s still going to snow for nine months, and you’ll hate it as much this time as you did the last.”
“You could paint anywhere,” she said, sounding puckish.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I could. But I choose not to. What we had was great while it lasted. It’s time to let it go.”
His words were met with silence, and he’d decided there was no time like the present to practice what he preached.
“Goodbye, Kana,” he said, and hung up the phone. And then he blocked her number.
And then he backed out from under the portico and headed to the one place he knew he could get his thoughts together and make sense of things.
Jayden’s Hope: MacKenzies of Montana Page 4