Her lips parted slightly. She seemed a bit surprised by my question. “That would be nice, but you don’t have to make accommodations for me. I can always ride into town when I have to work on the internet. The library has free internet.”
“I do want to make accommodations for you.” I kissed up her thigh and then her belly. “I don’t want you riding back and forth into town like that by yourself either. Despite what you’ve seen on the surface, Arrow Lake can be a dangerous place. Small town, but there are a lot of people here that aren’t good in the least bit. I want you close to home. Close to me.”
“Understood.”
I’d been elated yesterday evening when she told me that we’d work on building our future together. I didn’t want to face the prospect of living on the mountain by myself any longer. I couldn’t bear the thought of letting the only woman I ever felt real love for walk out of my life.
If she left me, it would be the equivalent of having a phantom limb after losing one of my own. The pain would linger on, and I'd always be turning around expecting to see her walk through a room.
She rose on the bed so that she was sitting, leaned forward, took my face in her hands and kissed me. Her soft sweet lips moved over mine like silk. The way she kissed me did a number on my soul. I was hooked since day one. There was no turning back from this.
“I’m going to go get in the shower to freshen up before dinner,” she announced, grabbing one of my t-shirts and covering her breasts before shuffling off the bed.
“Sounds good to me, sweetheart.” I admired her perky little ass as she moved away. “Are we still making pizza?”
"Yep. Pizza. We'll watch the big game and then see what other mischiefs we can get into." She bent down and grabbed a sundress from her suitcase.
I leaned back on the bed, folding my arms under my head. “Just know that I’ll be having you for dessert.”
“I’ll put a cherry on it for you.” She laughed deliciously, and her eyes shimmered with humor that melted my soul right into a puddle on the floor.
“Are you always this adorable?”
“Only for you. I’ll see you soon, you sexy beast.” She winked and blew me a kiss.
She spun on a heel and began strutting towards the bathroom. I stared at her naked body as she left me in the wake of her gorgeous aura.
A few moments later, I heard the familiar sound of the water hitting the shower basin. I laid there for a moment, wondering what I’d done to deserve this. I sighed and shook my head. I couldn’t think about why or why not right now. I had a promising life ahead of me and my fresh new beginning would start with Tyra.
I got up, walked around the cabin, and tidied up the area before moving into the kitchen to set out the ingredients for the pizza. Obviously the delivery guy didn't come out this far and Tyra and I both had a craving for pizza. I had a blast teasing her and watching her cook for me the other night. I'd do the same tonight, watching her sexy ass move all around my kitchen trying to find stuff and re-arranging a whole bunch of other things as she prepared our meal. She made me laugh. She made me smile. And I was going to make her my wife.
I grinned as I remembered our first encounter and how the conversation had flowed. She wanted a story and I gave her that and more. I still planned on giving her the world.
As I daydreamed about all the possibilities surrounding our future, there was a knock at my front door.
Startled, I dropped a plastic bowl on the kitchen floor. It fell to the ground with a thud and then landed against my big toe. I cursed from the pain but was more perplexed about who was knocking on my damn door. I wasn't expecting any visitors, and I assumed that Tyra hadn't called anyone either. She had already made it clear that her cell phone reception was terrible up here in the middle of nowhere.
No one knocked on my door without giving me a ring first. No one…
Wearily, I walked to my bedroom and retrieved my hunting rifle from under the bed. There was another knock at the door. This time, it was more aggressive. The fist pounded louder in warning. I glanced at the closed bathroom door. The shower had turned off, but Tyra hadn’t emerged yet.
“Tyra,” I called out. “Stay in the bathroom.”
“What?” Her voice sounded muffled behind the door.
“Stay in the bathroom,” I called out again, louder this time.
I ambled toward the door and clutched the knob. I inhaled a deep breath and readied the rifle in my grasp. In an instant, I swung the door open.
I gasped as I came face to face with a blast from my past. I couldn’t believe who was standing on my welcome mat.
It was my brother.
“Peter?” My voice was eerily squeaky. My throat was swollen. I had trouble breathing.
He grinned mischievously. “Hello Saul.”
I placed the rifle at my side, but planted my feet firmly across the entrance, forming a human barricade. I squared my jaw and gave him a once over. I hadn’t seen him in years.
“What the hell are you doing here? How did you find me?” I demanded.
This unannounced visit from my brother was unnerving, to say the least. Peter and I had never been close growing up. By the time I left to pursue my career in MMA fighting, Peter was already established and well-known in several socialite circles. White-collar men who looked down at people like me. I hadn't seen him since we buried our father and went over the contents of his will.
But now, here Peter stood in the flesh, a living link to my past that I couldn’t erase.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
Peter was older than me, but he was reckless. He was no better than I was, and he definitely wasn’t the big brother I looked up to. The only thing we had in common was our shared suspicion that our father had never really loved us. He only kept us around because he was sick and lonely.
Peter opened his mouth and I thought he would tell me why he was standing on my goddamned doorstep, but then he closed it again and peered over my shoulder. His face drained of color and his mouth rolled open in shock. I turned around to determine what he was gawking at. Tyra was standing behind me, wrapped in nothing but a towel.
“Peter?”
“Tyra?”
They spoke in unison. My gaze tore back and forth between the two.
They knew each other?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tyra
“Peter?” I licked my lips and shifted my weight nervously. My palms became clammy and my heart pounded. I darted my eyes back and forth between both men, equally suspicious of me.
“I knew I’d find you here.” Peter’s sneer pierced my soul with agony as he pushed past Saul and into the living room.
Saul was so shocked at the events that were unfolding in front of his eyes, that his grip on the riffle he was holding sagged. He nearly dropped it to the ground as he stared between Peter and me, completely baffled.
He clutched the gun with a white-knuckle grip once he composed himself. He didn't aim the barrel at Peter or me, but his eyes narrowed with mistrust.
“You two know each other?” He asked and pointed to me first, and then shakily to Peter.
“It’s a complicated, long story.” I wrapped my arms defensively around my chest and shot a glance at Peter. My eyes pleaded with him for mercy that I knew would never be offered to me.
“Do you want to know how I found you?” Peter ignored his brother’s question and spoke to me directly. He pointed a prideful, accusatory finger at me. “It was simple, really.” His chuckle shattered my bones.
I didn't respond. I meekly stared at the floor as I wished there was some possible way that I could melt into it and disappear altogether.
“There’s a tracking device on your camera. I put it there when we had our lunch meeting. I had to have some measure in place just in case you went ghost on me and ran off with my money. And you did…" He frowned. "Since you never responded to me no matter how many times I called and texted you, I decided to take matters into my own hands. A
fter all, I've already paid you."
I swallowed hard and dared a glance at Peter as he leered over me. “Okay,” I whispered, still hugging myself just in case I crumbled to dust.
“I want to know what the hell is going on here,” Saul demanded. His thundering voice shook the room worse than the thunderstorms that kept rolling through. “How do you two know each other?”
“We used to date,” Peter blurted out.
I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut, praying for this nightmare to end. “It was one date,” I corrected.
“Oh, and I hired her,” Peter confessed, sending the situation from bad to astronomically worse.
“To do what exactly?” Saul asked in a gruff voice. He wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were locked on Peter as if he wanted to strangle him and watch the life drain out of his face.
“To find you of course! What do you think this is all about?” Peter exclaimed and threw his hands up in the air. “You went AWOL, brother, in case you haven’t noticed.” Then he turned to me. “When I hired you to locate him and try to find out what he had going on in his life, I didn’t actually mean for you to sleep with him! That’s why you couldn’t answer the phone. You were too busy boning him.”
My body was hot with fatal embarrassment. I could have died on the spot. “I didn’t call you because I didn’t want any part of this investigation any longer. You said your brother was a liar and a snake and a cheat. That’s not all true,” I stated, nervously wringing my hands together. I was shaky and numb, on the verge of passing out.
"Well, what does it matter? I hired you to do a job. You should have done it. I didn't ask you to make your own judgment calls. And I certainly didn't expect to find you here naked in his house," Peter jabbed. "You were clever, I have to give you credit. I wouldn't have known that my brother would pick this shack to live in."
“This is about father’s will, isn’t it?” Saul demanded.
Peter spun around and gazed at his brother with a wild, manic expression on his face. “I waited for you,” Peter hissed. “You didn’t keep your end of the bargain. We agreed on something. You were supposed to pick a woman. Any woman. Even one of those groupie sluts who always followed you would have been fine. But nooo…you backed out.”
I gasped and stepped back, clutching the towel tightly against me. "Wait…what?"
Peter closed the distance between him and his brother and continued berating him, “You went ghost and I couldn’t find you. And to make matters worse, the slut I married was a crazy lunatic and I couldn’t last one minute more in that house with her. I divorced her ass quick.”
Saul's eyes blazed with fury. All the muscles in my body froze. I didn't know if the men were going to kill each other, or worse, me. This thing about marrying a slut was new. It was the first time I heard the notion coming from Peter's mouth. I'd been hired to locate Saul and report on his well-being. Peter had told me that he needed to find his brother and he wanted to desperately re-connect with his only known living blood relative. I had no idea there was a side agenda surrounding marriage to their choice of a slut. What the hell…?
Saul turned to me and asked, “Who are you?”
“My name is Tyra Dublin. I didn’t lie about that.”
“Did Peter hire you to find me and to snoop in on my life up here?”
I nodded. “I’m a private investigator. I—”
“You said you were a journalist and a photographer wanting to do research. That’s all fake?”
“Not entirely. I do some photography, but my family has a PI business. We usually only handle domestic cases like cheating spouses and investigating worker’s comp injuries. Saul and I went to the same college. I dated him once. I just wanted to help a friend find a family member. I thought nothing of it. And then when I met you—”
Saul held up his hand. “Enough.” He turned back to his brother. “This is about the money.”
“The trust fund has been stuck in limbo ever since you left,” Peter stated. “And it’s because of you that I can’t receive my portion of the payout. Father wants us both to be married before we can cash out. That stuck-up bitch lawyer wouldn’t budge on the terms. I don’t even know why father hired her. That old goon acts like everything has to be done by the book.”
“So, are you telling me that it’s my fault that I want to marry for love and not to get my share of an inheritance?” Saul fired back defensively.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Peter slapped his knee in frustration as he waited for his brother to see the light. “You don’t have to marry the woman of your dreams, you just have to marry any woman. Get a divorce later. Who cares.”
“You are unbelievable.” Saul shook his head and clucked his tongue in disgust at his brother’s audacity.
“It’s an easy answer,” Peter protested in a gentler voice. “It’s the only answer. You are just selfish." He crossed his arms defiantly.
"How the hell am I selfish?" Saul shot back.
“You know I don’t get my money until you get married!” Peter pronounced. “You left on purpose, just so I’d be miserable.”
"That's not true." Saul objected. "Why do you need the money so badly? You've got plenty of degrees under your belt. Go get a job. Stop these pyramiding schemes. What trouble have you gotten yourself into?"
Peter’s eyes were now blood-shot red. “That’s none of your fucking business!”
“Saul…” I interjected softly. I wanted him to know how much I cared about him. I wanted to pour out my confessions and beg for his forgiveness. I yearned to be wrapped up in his arms once again, safe and protected from the hate of the outside world.
“Stop.” He held up a hand as his eyes sliced wounding daggers at me. “You betrayed me.”
“I tried to tell you. I want a future with you.”
Saul shook his head. “Your secret past could have been anything else and I would’ve accepted it, but this…with my brother…I can’t.”
I saw the hurt in his eyes. Did he think…?
“I didn’t sleep with your brother. We’ve never slept together—”
“Oh, but you wanted to,” Peter interjected. “One of us brothers got between those legs though. She was acting all hard to get when I tried to fuck her.”
I almost threw up in my mouth a little.
Saul lunged for Peter, but Peter backed away in time pressing himself up against the door in the foyer.
“Talk about her like that again, brother, and I will knock your fucking lights out,” Saul warned.
Peter held up his hand. “Alright, alright, little brother. Not so little anymore, I see.”
“Saul, I’m sorry.” My vision was clouded.
In a huff, Saul stormed off, putting some distance between himself and everyone in the room. He paced the living room.
Peter grinned with amusement. “Oh what? Are you telling me I broke up the happy little pretend family? What did you think? That you two were going to live happily ever after in this shack?”
“Get out.” Saul boomed. “Now.”
His warning tone was not to be taken lightly. I glanced at Peter whose eyes had shifted to fear as well.
I scrambled to get my clothes and flustered to put them on with shaking hands. Saul grabbed my arm as I began to stuff some clothes into my suitcase.
“Are you leaving me?” he asked, confused.
I couldn't even look him in the eyes. "I don't know how to make up for this. Maybe this was all a mistake." The tears rolled down my face and I looked away from him.
“Come on, Tyra,” Peter instructed. “Let’s start from scratch. Saul obviously doesn’t care about either one of us. That’s what he does. He runs from family. Leave him now before he leaves you later.” He attempted to wrap his arm around my shoulder, but I wiggled away just in time.
I had to run from the house so that neither of them would see my crestfallen tears blurring my vision.
Peter ran out of the cabin behind me. “Hey! Are you goi
ng to run all the way back to town in a towel?” He was actually laughing. When was he going to take things seriously?
With my cell phone clutched in one hand and my suitcase rolling behind me, I rushed to the edge of the road where I knew I could get one bar of reception. Peter’s BMW rolled up behind me.
“Hey!” he shouted the window. “I’ll give you a ride back to town. Sheesh. You’ll look like a cheap five-dollar hooker in a towel if you walk out on the side of the road like that. Don’t be stupid.”
I wanted to burst into another set of tears, but I had this coming. I just had to get over it and get on with my life.
I hesitated, looking back at Saul's cabin where he stood on the porch glaring out at us. I took one last look at what could have been, yanked the car door open, hauled myself and my things inside, and slammed the car door shut in a huff.
“See? Isn’t that better? I knew you were smart,” Peter exclaimed.
"You're a fucking jerk," I told him, leaning my aching head against the headrest. I couldn't believe how things had flipped upside down in a destructive instant, and Peter was to blame. He'd shattered my entire world by showing up in it. He was a slimy scumbag, and I couldn't believe it had taken me this long to finally come to that realization.
“You used me,” I growled.
“So what?” Peter rolled his eyes as he maneuvered the car carefully back down the mountain. “You needed me.”
His words were like being shot with bullets. Every wound was reopened and stung like a thousand knives stabbing me in the back.
Peter turned to stare at me. His icy expression made my blood run cold. “I should send you back there,” he sneered.
“What?” I asked, horrified.
Peter shrugged with indifference. “You’ve already opened up your legs for my brother. You fooled me good, playing the part of the nice innocent girl. If I knew you were the type to lay on your back and give up the pussy so easily, I would’ve—”
I slapped him hard across the cheek. “How dare you!”
“Ow.” He patted and rubbed his cheek. “Anyway, you should just go marry him. We can get this whole thing solved right now. Why don’t you?”
Kept by the Woodsman: An ex-MMA Fighter Mountain Man Romance Page 10