Out of the Darkness: a Hope Valley novel

by Prince, Jessica

  Roxanne waved off my concern. “Nah. He had a little visit in the hospital late last night. The guy’s already losin’ half of everything when his wife rakes him over the coals, but he was shown a piece of the video you took where, not only was he naked as the day he was born—and sportin’ a woody about the size of a newborn—but it also showed him takin’ his hand to you. He was told if he pressed charges or spoke of the events that transpired, that tape would be leaked to every media outlet from here to the Pacific Coast. His company can’t afford for that to happen, so he suddenly came down with a terrible case of amnesia. Such a pity.”

  “Are you serious? Who’d Linc send?”

  “Linc didn’t send anybody,” she answered. “Xander took it upon himself to scare the tar outta the man.”

  Xander had gone back to make sure the guy didn’t do anything that could get me or the firm in trouble. All of that after taking care of me in a way I hadn’t even known him capable of. I didn’t give anything away to Roxanne, but the warmth lingering in my chest all morning bloomed until it spread through my whole body.

  I was filling her in on the details of the night before when I heard Bryce’s voice. “Mornin’, gorgeous. That for me?” I smacked his hand away when he reached for the coffee still sitting in the tray. “Shit, sweetheart,” he hissed, pulling his hand back and giving me big, wounded puppy dog eyes. “I know you proved yourself a brawler last night, but what the hell was that for?”

  “Don’t be such a baby, I didn’t hit you that hard. And that coffee’s not for you. It’s Xander’s, so hands off.”

  “That’s for Xander?” he asked, his eyes bulging in bemusement.

  “Yes.”

  “You bought Xander coffee,” he continued.

  “Yeah. That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

  “But why?”

  “Because we’re friends,” I answered, turning to face him and propping my hands on my hips. “And friends do stuff like that for each other. I’ve also bought coffee for Rox before.”

  His handsome features twisted in accusation. “But we’re friends, and you’ve never bought me coffee.”

  “Well, become a member of the sisterhood or race to save my ass from a naked jerk-off and I’ll buy you a coffee.”

  Bryce glanced at Roxanne, both looking utterly confused by my declaration. “I don’t think Xander has any friends.”

  “He does now,” I replied firmly. Then I gave Bryce a pat on the cheek before picking up the scones and Xander’s coffee and starting down the hall.

  As always, he was sitting behind one of the bazillion computer monitors that made the actual control room for Alpha Omega.

  “Morning, big guy,” I greeted as I rounded one of the three long rows and headed for him. Once I reached his side, I hopped up on the desk, tossed him the bag, and set his coffee next to his keyboard.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked, looking at the paper bag like it was a pit viper.

  “What the hell does it look like?” I shot back, crossing my ankles and swinging my legs back and forth as I sipped from my own cup.

  Xander shot me a skeptical look before slowly opening the bag and looking inside. “Two scones?”

  “Two cranberry and orange scones,” I amended. “One for you and one for me. “Oh, I got you a coffee too. Black, right?” I scooted the cup in his direction.

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “As I told you last night, we’re friends now. That’s why.”

  The confusion drained away, and he looked at me with a familiar frustration. “I don’t recall agreeing to that.”

  “Good thing for you, I don’t care. And I already told Rox and Bryce we’re friends, so it’s official now, whether you like it or not.”

  His back went a bit straight as he asked, “You told Bryce?”

  My head tipped to the side in confusion at his tone. “Yeah. He tried taking your coffee and earned himself a smack on the hand for it. Why?”

  The smirk he gave me right then wasn’t quite as potent as the smile he gave me the night before, but it was still far from bad. “Next time, go for the head.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.” Taking the bag from his giant hand, I reached in and pulled out his scone, setting it on a napkin beside his coffee cup before pulling my own out and biting into it. I closed my eyes and let out a low, appreciative hum. “God, these things are so damn good.”

  When I lifted my lids, I saw him watching me with a strange, almost hungry expression on his face. “Xander? You okay?”

  Visibly shaking himself out of his thoughts, he pasted that mask back into place, blanking his eyes and features completely, making them impossible to read. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” Clearing his throat, he picked up the cup and took a big swig. “How’d you know how I take my coffee?”

  “I pay attention.” I arched a brow and repeated the question he’d left unanswered the night before, “How’d you know where I live?”

  “I pay attention too.”

  With a laugh, I hopped off the desk and started out of the control room. “All right stalker. Get back to work. I’ll meet you in reception at twelve thirty.”

  “What? Why?” he called after me.

  “Lunch,” I answered over my shoulder. “I sprang for breakfast. That means lunch at Evergreen Diner is on you.”

  Then I picked up the pace before he could argue and booked it to my office.

  * * *

  Xander

  Fuck me.

  I knew she’d been serious the night before about us being friends, but I didn’t realize she’d go balls to the wall to prove that less than twelve hours later. Though, with her wild, free-spirited personality, I should have guessed.

  If I tried getting out of lunch, she’d see through all my excuses and call me on my bullshit, no doubt about it.

  I didn’t have a choice. I was stuck giving that damn woman what she wanted. And the thing that scared me the most was that I found myself wanting to go to lunch with her, even if that meant facing the crowd at the diner, a place I only went during off hours and always ordered to-go.

  Something shifted between us last night, something profound. After I found out that motherfucker hit her, I’d lost hold of that darkness I tried so hard to keep in check. My mask slipped, and I knew . . . I fucking knew she saw the demons I had swirling behind my eyes.

  That should have been enough to reinforce the barrier between us and harden me toward her, but how she reacted made that impossible.

  She didn’t treat me any differently. She didn’t suddenly turn into one of those soft, clingy women who saw a broken man and wanted nothing more than to fix him. She acted exactly as she always did, giving me shit and being an all-around pain in my ass.

  She couldn’t possibly understand how much that meant to me, and that was just one of the many reasons I knew I was going to give this friendship thing a shot.

  I shouldn’t want to be with her like that. For her own sake. But I’d be damned if I could stop myself. I’d tried my hardest to put on the cold persona I usually wore in her presence. I really did. But when she mentioned telling Bryce we were friends and going so far as hitting him for trying to take the coffee she bought for me, I couldn’t keep it up.

  That flirty bastard had been hitting on Sage from the moment she first walked through our doors, and knowing she chose me over him, even when it came to something as menial as coffee, made me feel fucking incredible.

  The warning bells were going off in my head so goddamn loud I’d had a headache since leaving her house the night before. But when Sage wanted something, she went all out to get it. And for some insane reason, the crazy woman wanted to be my friend, and I couldn’t seem to deny her.

  I wanted her in a way I knew to my dark, withered soul I shouldn’t. There was no way I could ever have her in the way I truly wanted.

  But maybe, just maybe I could have her like this.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sage

  “You kn
ow, you don’t have to look like you’re walking to your execution,” I said, giving Xander a teasing nudge with my elbow as we started toward the diner a few blocks from work.

  I tugged the cardigan I was wearing tighter around me to ward off the chill. The nip in the air was something I’d rarely experienced after eleven years of living in Arizona. After more than a decade in Phoenix, I’d moved to Flagstaff. I was on the path of starting my new life, and I wanted to go where it wasn’t uncommon to experience snowfall, but, in the end, it hadn’t been far enough from some of the toxic people I’d tried to remove from my life, and I hadn’t stayed long enough to get the full fall or winter effect.

  Back in Tennessee, I used to love this time of year. I’d sit on our back porch, snuggled under a blanket, sipping hot chocolate while I watched my dad work on his bike. Being in Hope Valley, where autumn brought chilly temps and the leaves changed from green to beautiful shades of orange, red, and yellow, making the foothills and mountains look like they’d caught fire, I was once again reminded of home.

  “I don’t look like I’m walking to my execution,” Xander grumbled, his face twisted into an unhappy scowl that made most of the people we passed give him a wide berth.

  Stepping in front of him, I lifted my finger and pushed it into the divot his frown created between his eyes. “Really? ’Cause you’ve got these two deep wrinkles right here that say otherwise.” He batted my hand away with a snort, the corner of his mouth trembling as he stepped around me. I sucked in a dramatic gasp and skip-walked to catch up with him. “Was that almost a smile? My stars, Xander Caine, did you almost smile?”

  Schooling his features to erase his humor, his sharp, “No,” came out in a grunt. But that tremble at the corner of his mouth was still there.

  “Liar,” I said with a big grin. He slowed his pace so I could keep up, and we fell in line together. “You know, you really should smile more. You have an incredible smile,” I said, recalling just how profoundly his smile the night before had affected me. “And that dark beard makes it even better.”

  I saw his head twist toward me from the corner of my eye. “You like the beard?”

  I cut my eyes his way for a brief moment. “Are you kidding? I dig beards and long hair. As long as they aren’t scraggly. And yours aren’t scraggly. A lot of men can’t pull off that look, but you’ve totally got it going on.”

  A gust of wind kicked up just then, and I burrowed even deeper into my cardi.

  “You really should get a thicker jacket,” he stated, noticing my shiver. “Once you hit late September, early October, a sweater isn’t gonna cut it.”

  “Yeah,” I replied softly, lifting my face to the wind and breathing deeply, pulling the crisp fall air into my lungs. “It was the same back home. I guess I forgot what it was like to experience seasons when we moved.”

  “You aren’t originally from Arizona?”

  I wasn’t surprised he knew that, seeing I’d listed my old Flagstaff address as my last known residence on my application, but I had to admit I was a little surprised Xander hadn’t done any digging on me. His dislike was so strong when I first started, I was sure he’d use his computer hacking skills to do some sleuthing so he could dig up any dirt and get me fired.

  “I was born and raised in Tennessee until I was sixteen. When my parents divorced, my mom dragged me off to live with her new boyfriend in Phoenix.” For the most part, that was the truth. I just left out the fact that she’d divorced my dad after he was sent to prison. “I grew up in a small town a lot like this called Redemption. Green mountains are in my blood, so you can imagine how shitty it was living in the desert for so long.”

  “Must’ve been a culture shock for you.”

  I shrugged, trying my best not to let memories of my mom cast a dark cloud over the incredible mood the cool weather had put me in. “It was, but I dealt. And now I’ve got my mountains back, so it’s all good. What about you?” I asked, turning to look at him as we walked. “Have you always lived in Hope Valley?”

  His gaze shot back to the sidewalk directly ahead of us, and I got the eerie feeling he looked away to hide his reaction to my question. “No, only about seven years or so. I grew up in South Carolina but lived all over. Haven’t been back there for years.”

  “Did you live all over because you were in the military?”

  His head shot back around, his brows in such a deep V he was almost intimidating. “How’d you—”

  “All the other guys used to be in the service. Doesn’t take a genius to sense a theme. Linc hires ex-military, so I assumed that was the case with you.”

  He appeared to relax at my answer, but there was still an underlying tension that hadn’t been there before I started asking about his past. It was obvious he didn’t like talking about himself, and as much as I wanted to get to know him better, as much as I craved every bit of information about this man as I could get my hands on, I didn’t want to push. Our recent friendship was incredibly fragile. I didn’t want to risk breaking it when it had barely started. I told myself I had plenty of time to get to know Xander; there was no need to rush. Something in my gut told me this man needed someone in his corner. And more than that, the more time I spent with him like this, the clearer it became that I wanted him in my life.

  Sure, I was attracted to him in a big way, but I was off relationships for the foreseeable future.

  However, a person could never have too many friends, right?

  “I hope you’re not low on cash,” I said, shifting the topic a hundred eighty degrees, “’cause I’m not one of those chicks who picks at a side salad then pretends to be full. I want a burger the size of my head.”

  “I’m not sure a burger the size of your head is a fair exchange for a scone and a black coffee.”

  I shot him an affronted look. “Did you taste that scone? That was a little piece of heaven, right there. And even black, the coffee at Muffin Top is the best coffee you could ever taste.”

  He lifted his hands in surrender, that tremble in his lips giving way to an actual smirk. “All right. You win.”

  “I always do.” I gave him a saucy wink and reached out to grab the handle to the door of the diner only to have him brush me aside with a scolding look and pull it open himself. “So you do have manners,” I joked, as I passed through the door he was holding for me. “Color me surprised, big guy. Guess you weren’t raised by wolves after all.”

  “Pain in my ass,” he muttered just loud enough to hear.

  I started for one of the stools at the counter where I usually sat. Sally, the wife of the husband and wife team who owned and operated Evergreen Diner usually manned that area, and I liked hanging with her while I ate. I’d been in enough times to know she and her husband Ralph were awesome. But before I could take a seat, Xander gently grabbed my arm and moved in close, lowering his voice. “Can we sit somewhere else?”

  I studied his face, reading the anxiousness clear as day. “Sure. But are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I just . . .” He looked around the diner like a caged animal about to make a run for it. “Not a big fan of crowds.”

  Those shadows were back in his eyes, the darkness creeping closer to the surface, and I had the sudden urge to lean in and give him a tight hug. But something stopped me, an instinct telling me a show of affection like that wouldn’t be appreciated by a man like him. I could have suggested we leave, but Xander was the most alpha of all the alphas I worked with—and they were all pretty damn alpha—so doing that would have run the risk of bruising his ego. Instead, I shrugged like it was nothing and glanced around for an open table. There was one only a few feet away, but I bypassed it for a booth in the very back corner.

  “Well, hey there, darlin’,” Sally greeted after we sat. “Good to see you.”

  “Yeah, you too. You’ve met Xander, right?”

  She turned to the big man sitting across from me, a flicker of surprise registering across her face before she tamped it down. “Yeah. I know Xander.
Good to see you too, honey.” He mumbled a return greeting, but I could tell he was still uncomfortable, so I did what I could to cut through the tension. “Do you know what you want, or do you need to look at the menu?”

  “I’ll have the buffalo blue cheese chicken sandwich with fries and a water,” he said to Sally in a gruff tone that sounded rude, even though I knew that wasn’t his intention. I hadn’t realized until just then, but what came off as him being a dick was mostly due to him being uncomfortable. I knew there were times with me where he was an asshole just for the sake of being one, but at least now I knew his attitude started because he didn’t do well with new people.

  That answered a lot of questions.

  I turned to Sally with a big, easy grin. “I’ll have the Bigmouth Burger, extra cheese, add bacon, and a side of onion rings.”

  Sally’s eyes went big after I finished giving my order. “You sure you want all that?”

  I pointed my thumb at Xander and winked. “Big guy’s buying, so I’m going whole hog. What I don’t finish I’ll pack up and have for dinner tonight.”

  Sally barked out a laugh loud enough to catch her husband’s attention from all the way in the kitchen. “Woman!” he bellowed as his bearded face popped up in the pass through. “What’re you hootin’ at out there?”

  “Somethin’ Sage said,” she yelled back. “Mind your own business, old man!”

  “Sage?” he shouted in return, ignoring his wife’s insult. “My Harley girl’s here?”

  “Hey, Ralph,” I called, giving him a wave.

  “Hey there, darlin’ girl! Who you got there with you?” He leaned to the side and narrowed his eyes, trying to get a better look at my dining companion.

  “My friend from work, Xander.”

  “That monster of a boy who always looks pissed at the world?” he barked, making my back go straight.

  Uh oh. I glanced at Xander from the corner of my eye to gage his reaction, and what I saw twisted my stomach. He looked anxious and pissed at the same time, but what bothered me the most was the shame I saw.