She tiptoed to the base of the ladder, hesitated, then began the ascent, planning only to wake him, assure him that the tormentors of his mind weren’t real, that they existed only in a dream.
But halfway up the ladder, a bloodcurdling scream froze her in place. It was the screech of a dying animal, the snarl of a demon from hell. It was the most hideous sound she’d ever heard.
And it wasn’t human.
Chapter Four
The scream rose into a shriek, rumbled into a snarl, was joined by a bloodcurdling pandemonium of yelping howls. Ellie sucked a panicked breath, her white-knuckled fingers frozen around the ladder stiles.
Only when the usually mellow hound dog yelped in fear and dived under the bed did Ellie snap into action, retreating down the ladder at the same time as Samuel’s bulk loomed above her.
He swung down from the loft, leapt pantherlike onto the floor. Clad only in snug print boxer shorts, he dashed across the cabin, bare torso glittering with reflected glow from the woodstove window. His shoulders rippled; his lean thighs flexed as if tempered steel. He was beyond doubt the most glorious male creature Ellie had ever laid eyes on.
After yanking a rifle out from under the sofa, Samuel spun around, finally noticed Ellie standing at the base of the ladder clutching her chest Their eyes met, held. His widened in surprise, hers rounded in utter shock while her heart pounded so hard she barely noticed the animalistic snarls and shrieks emanating from behind the cabin. Intellectually she understood that something terrible was happening on the screened porch, but all she could see, all she could think about was Samuel’s bare chest gleaming in the firelight
He was magnificent, lithe, lean hipped and broad shouldered like the heart-stopping hero of a romance novel. He was also half-naked.
“You’ll freeze,” she stammered like a fool.
Rifle clutched at the ready, he swung around, crouched like a commando, hissed, “Stay here.”
A howl louder than the rest jarred her to the marrow. “My God, what is that?”
Samuel didn’t answer. He was already slinking toward the dark kitchen.
Exhaling all at once, Ellie tiptoed cautiously up behind him while he warily knelt beside the back door. As he reached for the knob, she leaned close, whispered, “Be careful.”
Startled, he whirled around, fell back against the wall. His gaze narrowed. “You don’t take orders well, do you?”
“No, actually.” She flinched, scrambled backward when a thudding crash reverberated the porch wall. The frenetic yelping seemed more distant now, but was still too close for comfort. “There’s something out there,” she announced, wiggling a frantic finger. “An animal or...or something.”
Samuel gave her a withering look. “Gee, really?” Clearly perturbed, he flipped a switch beside the jamb. A thin string of light spilled beneath the door, against which he braced his knee before easing it open an inch to peer out through the crack.
Behind him Ellie wrung her hands. “What is it? What’s going on out there?”
Samuel shifted without comment, cocked his head, presumably to get a better view of the area.
“It’s not a bear, is it? I mean, aren’t bears supposed to be hibernating now?” When he still didn’t reply, Ellie’s fear gave way to curiosity. She bent to peek under his outstretched arm, saw ripped hunks of greasy newspaper strewn across the porch floor with remnants of the wrapped roast scraps. “Uh-oh.”
Samuel turned his head slowly, skewered her with a look. She shrugged helplessly, offered an apologetic smile.
Muttering under his breath, he refocused his gaze through the crack in the doorway. Ellie did the same.
Shredded screening caught her eye, along with several hulking shadows beyond the porch perimeter. One of the shadows ventured toward the torn screen. The animal hoisted its forepaws onto the lower deck wall, turned a pointy-snouted face toward the doorway where two curious humans were watching.
“A coyote,” Ellie whispered. Before the words were out of her mouth, the doglike creature emitted a startled howl as a snarling hunk of fur churned out from behind the porch freezer. The coyote leapt away with a yelp, while a half-dozen shadowy silhouettes scattered in the moonlight, and melted into the night.
The snarling hunk of fur swished around, focused beady black eyes at the porch door behind which Samuel and Ellie were crouched. “Why, it’s nothing but a fat little ferret,” she murmured.
“That’s no damned ferret,” Samuel snapped as the hissing beast bared its teeth, and made a beeline straight for them. He slammed the door, whipped the slide-latch lock into position, and yanked Ellie away mere moments before the snarling creature hit the door shrieking, and tried to claw its way through the wood.
Astounded that an animal the size of a small footstool could be so vicious, Ellie stumbled backward, clinging to Samuel’s arm like a terrified tick. “Do something!” she implored as the kitchen door shuddered violently. “Make it stop.”
“If it gets inside, I’ll shoot it,” Samuel replied with maddening calm.
“If it gets inside?” Ellie swayed at the thought. “Dear God, you mean that creature is actually capable of chewing through a door?”
Samuel shrugged, shifted the rifle. “There isn’t much a perturbed badger can’t do if he sets his mind to it.”
“A badger?” Staring at the vibrating door, Ellie tried to compare her vision of badgers as placid, lumbering creatures with this ferocious wood-eating beast. “I thought badgers were harmless.”
“Badgers are a lot of things, none of them harmless. One that size can stand up to a grizzly, gut a mountain lion without breaking a sweat and hold its own against a pack of hungry wolves. Or coyotes,” he added grimly.
Trembling, Ellie sagged against Samuel’s arm, pressed her cheek to his shoulder. “Will it go away?”
“Eventually.” His muscles rippled warm against her skin. “When it realizes we’re not a threat to its meal, it’ll stop clawing the door and go finish the supper that you so kindly left out.” He swung his head around, gave her a look that could freeze meat. “Perhaps I should have mentioned that the scent of food draws wild animals. Around here, that’s considered a really bad idea.”
Feeling foolish, Ellie flashed a bright smile. “On the other hand, how else would we have this unprecedented opportunity to view nature up close and personal?” Then to her horror, she giggled.
Clasping her hand over her mouth, she struggled to stifle her amusement but the entire situation was just too ludicrous for words. The look on Samuel’s face when that badger had charged them had been utterly priceless. As for Ellie, well, she’d been so terrified that she’d nearly wet herself. Now that would have been funny.
“I’m, ah—” Clamping her lips together, she wrestled the stubborn grin, contritely cleared her throat. “I’m truly sorry, Samuel. I should have put the scraps in the trash under the sink, but I was afraid they would, well, smell bad.”
“Smell bad,” he repeated dully. He stared at her for a moment, then rubbed his forehead, which had puckered into an adorable frown. “Let me get this straight. Garbage offends you, so you place it on the porch, thereby inviting every nocturnal carnivore in the woods to slime the place with personal calling cards that stink a hell of a lot more than rotting meat scraps. Hey, it works for me.”
“I’m so very sorry, truly I am.” She tried to muster an apologetic expression, but Samuel just looked so adorably piqued that she couldn’t fight back a smile. “I’ll be more careful from now on. I promise.”
Samuel scraped her with a look. “Oh, goody.”
Ellie’s heart sank. The last thing on earth she wanted was for Samuel to be angry with her but she couldn’t seem to do or say anything right.
The sound of splintering wood was suddenly replaced by the scuffle of scurrying paws across the porch’s planked floor and the telltale crinkle of ruffled newspaper. Ellie angled a glance upward, reluctantly released her grip on the glowering man beside her. “I guess you were
right. He seems to have gone back to, er, whatever.”
“Uh-huh.” Samuel snagged a chair from the kitchen table and propped it under the doorknob.
“That’s a good idea,” she offered lamely. “Just in case he gets feisty again.”
Samuel heaved a long-suffering sigh, pulled out a second chair, seated himself and laid the rifle across his lap. “I’ll keep watch. You go back to bed.”
Puffing her cheeks, Ellie blew out a breath, rubbed her upper arms through the floppy gray fleece of a sweat suit that doubled as pajamas. The torn neck opening slipped over her shoulder, making her feel even more frumpy and foolish. “I, ah—” An irritable wail emanated from the sleeping area. Ellie sighed. “Daniel’s awake.”
Samuel didn’t respond. His gaze was riveted to her bare shoulder with a smoldering expression so explicit, so sexually charged that her own body responded in kind. Electric energy tingled from her chest to her groin, exploding into white-hot shards that shocked her motionless. Their eyes met, her breath backed up in her lungs. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
Then Daniel emitted another cranky cry, breaking the fragile link between them. Samuel jerked his head, stared at the porch door with forced intensity. His jaw twitched, tightened. “Better see to your son,” he said.
Ellie replied with a taut nod, then hurried away.
Samuel stared straight ahead, flexing his fingers around the stock and barrel of the rifle in his lap, and calling himself six kinds of a fool. The woman had given birth less than two weeks ago, and he was practically salivating over an innocuous peek of bare skin. It was unseemly, boorish and completely beyond the pale of the gentlemanly behavior on which Samuel had prided himself. Clearly he’d been celibate far too long.
There was no doubt about it. It was going to be one hell of a long winter.
Daniel was having a bad night.
Reclining on the loft cot where he’d finally retreated after two hours of sentry duty, Samuel was wide-awake and throbbing, his senses acutely attuned to the sounds of movement and whispered words from the sleeping area below. Ellie was murmuring to Daniel, her voice lilting and melodic, so soft he couldn’t quite make out the words over the dog’s raucous snores.
Samuel was used to Baloo’s nightly nasal noise fest, but tonight the sleeping hound’s raspy snorts grated like a chainsaw on concrete. Samuel’s nerves were chafed raw.
He sat up, swung his feet quietly to the floor and leaned forward, not understanding the compulsion to actually view the crooning woman below him, but indulging it nonetheless. He was amply rewarded.
With Daniel cradled in her arms, Ellie walked to and fro at the foot of her bed, close enough to the woodstove for warmth. She was humming softly, a melody Samuel vaguely recalled from his days at Scout camp.
Then she started to sing very quietly, but her sweet voice wafted up to the loft. “Does your hound dog snore,” she crooned. “Do his nostrils buzz and roar, does it keep you up all night, does it shake the cabin floor?”
A private smile tugged Samuel’s lips. As always, Ellie created her own lyrics as she went along.
“Does it rattle like a buzz saw, and make your eardrums sore?” Her voice softened. “Does your hound—” she bent to lay her son in the cradle “—dog—” she lovingly covered him with a blanket “—snore?” The final note was a whisper as she gently stroked the sleeping infant.
Samuel’s heart melted on the spot. He watched greedily as Ellie gazed at her slumbering child with the serene smile of maternal perfection. Samuel was drawn to her on a visceral level, fascinated to the point of being mesmerized. Ellie Malone was unique, one of a kind, a woman of intelligence and humor and compassion all rolled up in a package so breathtaking and sexy that he couldn’t take his eyes off her, or erase her smoldering image from his mind. She was without doubt a very special woman.
She was also a woman with a secret.
Samuel hadn’t forgotten Ellie’s frightened pallor when he’d mentioned the helicopter, nor had he been fooled by her lackadaisical reply. Despite her insistence to the contrary, Samuel suspected there was considerably more to Ellie’s sudden appearance on his porch than he’d been led to believe. Part of him didn’t care; the rational part, however, did care. He didn’t like being deceived. He didn’t like being played for a fool. But most of all, he didn’t like complications. Ellie evoked feelings in him. Deep feelings. That was a complication. It was also the last thing on earth that he needed right now.
Samuel had his own secrets, secrets that had pursued him to this mountain retreat, secrets that haunted his heart and stalked his slumber. Secrets that would reveal his failures to the world, reveal them to Ellie.
Samuel couldn’t risk that. He laid back on the cot, tucked his hands beneath his head, and stared into the blackness. He’d come here to be alone, to lick his wounds and scrape up the ragged tatters of a life in ruins. Ellie Malone was a distraction he couldn’t afford.
It was time, he decided, for her to leave.
The next morning Ellie awakened at dawn to feed Daniel, then crept toward the screened porch to examine the damage before Samuel woke up. She removed the chair wedged beneath the knob, cracked the door open for a cautious peek.
The porch looked as if it had been bombed. Spilled laundry detergent was scattered from one end of the porch to the other, a segment of screening was in tatters, the floor was littered by tufts of fur and shredded newspaper and smeared with a greasy, foul-smelling substance more noxious than anything she’d ever found in Daniel’s diapers.
It reeked.
Closing the door, Ellie blew out a breath, then squared her shoulders, grabbed a bucket and mop from the broom closet and went to work.
By the time Samuel stumbled to the kitchen in a blurry-eyed stupor, the porch had been swept tidy, all badger remnants had been meticulously scoured into oblivion, and an aromatic batch of bacon sizzled on the old cookstove.
She flashed him a cheery smile, and set a mug of strong black coffee on the table. “Good morning. How do you like your eggs?”
. Unshaven and clearly exhausted, Samuel collapsed onto a chair, propped his elbow on the table, and laid his chin on a fisted hand. “Sunny-side up,” he mumbled, using his free hand to rub his eyelids. “But since all we’ve got left is powdered eggs, that might be a problem.”
Ellie grinned. “Which is why I was hoping you’d say scrambled.”
“You don’t have to wait on me.”
“You’ve waited on me for days.” She felt a pinch of guilt as he rolled his head, flinching, and rotated his shoulders as if working out kinks. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be sleeping on that miserable old army cot. Breakfast is the least I can do. So, what’ll it be?”
He blinked up in surprise. “Scrambled is fine.”
“That’s kind of boring. How about an omelette?”
“Whatever.” He took a sip of coffee, widened his eyes. “Wow.”
“Good coffee, huh?”
“Very good.”
“Temperature is the key. These old stove-top per . colators can be tricky. If the heat is too high, the coffee will be bitter.”
He took another healthy sip, smacked his lips. “I’ll remember that—” His gaze fell on the porch door. “Where’s the chair?”
“I, ah, moved it.” Turning away, Ellie poured a dollop of water into a bowl of egg powder and mixed madly. Behind her the silence was deafening.
“Tell me you didn’t go out there,” Samuel said finally.
She sneaked a peek over her shoulder, flinched at the reproach in his eyes. “I was very careful to make sure our visitor had left first.”
Samuel heaved a sigh, set the coffee mug on the table and shook his head. “Did you at least have enough sense to take the rifle in case the danged thing had holed itself up behind the washtub?”
The thought hadn’t crossed her mind. “Would you prefer the bacon mixed in the omelette or on the side?”
“That’s what I thought. Dammit
, Ellie—”
“Say, I saw some canned mushrooms in the pantry.” She set the bowl down, hustled across the kitchen to investigate. “You do like mushrooms, right? Oh, of course you do, or you wouldn’t have a pantry full of them.” She. grabbed a can from the well-stocked shelves, returned to her cooking station.
From the corner of her eye she saw Samuel glaring at her with his arms crossed firmly across his chest. “Do you enjoy living dangerously?” he asked as she fiddled with the antiquated can opener. “Or are you just a fool?”
She sighed, finished draining the mushrooms, mixed them with the eggs and poured the omelette mixture into a frying pan before turning to face him. “Probably a bit of both,” she admitted. “But the truth is that I created the problem, and I didn’t want you to get stuck fixing it.”
“You should have waited for me to check things out first.”
“And if I had, would you have let me clean the place up on my own?”
He shrugged, almost smiled.
“See how you are?” Chuckling, Ellie returned to her cooking duties, expertly rolling the pan to spread the egg mixture into a thin pancake. “By the way, I repaired the screen with some duct tape that I found in a cabinet but the, er—” she cleared her throat “—the doorjamb is a little, well...”
“Scratched up?” Samuel offered helpfully. “Splintered?”
She angled an apprehensive glance over her shoulder. “Umm, it’s kind of gone.”
He sat forward. “Gone?”
“Only partially gone. The doorjamb now starts about two feet up from the floor. I think he ate the rest of it.”
“Good Lord.”
“I’ll pay for the damage.”
“Don’t be silly.” He wearily rubbed his eyes, softened his gruff tone. “It’s nothing, Ellie. Don’t worry about it.”
“Please, I want to. I feel so bad about, about...” She spun around, lifted a pleading hand, then let it fall to her side. “About everything,” she finished lamely.
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