by Elle James
When she realized her body was pressed up against his, her cheeks heated, and she was glad it was dark outside. “I’m okay.” Anne steadied the light, aiming the beam at the inside of the shed while standing back as far as she could, afraid another animal might dart out.
Still chuckling, Jack reached inside and flicked the switch that killed the generator’s engine. “It’s just that easy. You flip the switch in the opposite direction to turn it on.”
“I think even I can figure that out.”
Jack closed the door and took her hand, squeezing her fingers gently. “Come on, I think we’ve had enough excitement for the evening.”
Anne leaned into his arm, flashing her light around the ground, afraid of what she might see and more afraid of what she didn’t see.
Once they were back inside the cabin, Jack dropped the wooden brace into its slot on the wall, effectively locking the door from the inside. Nobody on the outside would be able to get in without breaking down the door. Without the generator, the cabin was dark, except for the flashlight. Jack found a battery-powered lantern on a corner shelf and turned it on. “You can turn off the flashlight now.”
Anne did so and fitted it into mount on the wall and turned to stare at the bed that took up the majority of the small room.
“If you’ll grab the footboard, I’ll grab the headboard, and we can move these two beds apart.” Jack took up a position at the headboard.
Anne stood by the footboard, bent her knees and grabbed the wooden footboard.
Jack gripped the headboard. “On three, we’ll move it toward the table. One…two…three.”
They shoved the twin bed, which happened to be a little heavier than Anne had anticipated, toward the table. The cabin, being so small, didn’t give them much room, but it gave at least a foot of space between the two twin beds. It wasn’t much, but it was as good as it could get. If they moved the table over any farther, it would block the bathroom door. As it was, what little furniture there was inside the tiny cabin barely gave them room to move around.
“We’ll push them back together during the day,” Jack said, “to make it easier to get around in here.” Jack glanced down at his watch. “Are you going to stay awake and read?” he asked. “It’s already past ten.”
Anne blinked. “Really? The sun only went down about thirty minutes ago.”
“Up here in Montana, the days are longer in the summertime than down in LA or San Diego.”
“The sun comes up pretty early. I’m used to getting up early. I worked as a waitress with the breakfast and lunch crowd. I had to get to work by four-thirty in the morning.”
Jack grinned. “The sun comes up early but not quite that early.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t wake you up.” She was good at moving around quietly. Derek had had a habit of staying up late at night and getting up halfway through the morning. Anne had valued the time when he was asleep. It was the only time she could be alone with her thoughts without being judged for every little thing she did.
Not that Jack would be that way, and she suspected that he would wake up about the same time she did. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’d be willing to call it a night.” Her escape from San Diego, the attack in Vegas and the all-night drive to Montana had taken their toll on her.
Jack nodded. “Me, too.” He carried the lantern over to the beds and set it down between them. He tipped his head toward the light. “Just in case something goes bump in the night, it would be nice to have the lantern handy.”
She nodded. “Thank you. The different noises might take some getting used to. I’ve never actually slept in a wilderness environment.”
Jack nodded.
With nothing else to do, she waved toward the beds. “Which one do you want?”
“I’ll take the one closest to the door,” he said.
Which left her with the one that was closest to the wall. She sat on the edge, pulled her shoes off and dropped them on the floor, shoving them beneath the bed.
Jack sat on the side of his, removed his boots and stood, his hands going toward his belt.
Anne’s eyes widened.
“Sorry,” he said. “I usually sleep in the nude. Just for you, I’m wearing boxers.” He dropped his jeans and stepped out of them, laying them over the end of the bed. True to his word, he wore boxers, a modest navy blue that hid everything except for his muscular thighs. “You aren’t planning on sleeping in your jeans, are you? Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do. If you’d like something more comfortable, I have a pair of sweats.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay, I’ll wait until the lights are out. I can sleep in my T-shirt.”
The beds had been made up with thick down comforters covered with patchwork quilts. The potbelly stove had the cabin nice and warm. As the fire died down, the cabin would get cooler. The comforters would keep them warm.
Jack laid down on top of the quilt and leaned over. “Ready for lights out?”
She nodded.
He switched off the lantern.
Anne couldn’t help the little bit of gasp at how dark it was inside the cabin.
Immediately, the light came back on.
“What?” Jack said. “You okay?”
She nodded. “I just wasn’t expecting it to be quite so dark.”
“We could leave it on, but then we’d go through all the batteries before we leave.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You can turn it off.”
This time when he turned off the light, she didn’t gasp.
She sat on the bed, her eyes wide, trying to take in any light that she could possibly find. No matter how hard she tried to make her eyes adjust to the darkness, it didn’t get better. It was pitch black inside that cabin.
After a few minutes of trying to adjust, she eventually gave up and reached for the button on her jeans. She flipped it open, unzipped slowly and slid them down her legs. The cooler air felt good against her skin. She slipped her legs beneath the comforter and lay back against the pillow, trying to relax, which was hard to do. Every time she heard movement from the other bed, she twitched.
Suddenly, a soft green light glowed in the darkness. Jack lay on his side with his hand touching the face of his watch. “You okay?”
She pulled the comforter up to her chin and nodded. “I am.”
The green light blinked out, and they were back to pitch black.
“I’ve lived in the city all my life,” she said. “Even on the darkest night, there was always a light shining through a window from the street outside. Either that or the glow of the city lights was enough if there wasn’t a streetlight to break up the darkness.”
“Being out in the country away from all the electric lights can be disconcerting for the first time.” Jack’s voice spoke softly in the dark. “I remember the first time my dad took me camping.” He laughed. “We were sleeping in a tent. The clouds blanketed the sky, blocking out all the stars and the moonlight. All we had available to us were our other senses. The sense of smell, our hearing and touch. I swear I heard everything, even the ants crawling across the outside of the tent.”
“Really?” Anne said.
“Well, maybe not the ants,” Jack admitted. “But other, bigger bugs and whatever critters were wrestling around in the leaves outside the tent. It had me so scared I plastered myself against my dad’s side and didn’t move for the rest of the night. I believe he woke up with a backache. But since I lived through the night, I figured it wasn’t quite that bad. Still, it took the rest of that camping trip for me to relax before going to sleep.”
“Your dad was really patient with you.”
Jack chuckled. “Most of the time. Especially when I was small and learning. When I was a teenager, he kind of lost some of that patience, but I kind of deserved that. Especially when I wrecked the family’s car after dropping my date off at her home. I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been, going faster than I should have. I was lucky I didn’t kill
myself. I think my dad’s patience was thin that night more because of what could have happened. Thankfully, I came out unscathed. The car…not so much.”
“Must have been nice to have somebody to lean up against in the darkness,” Anne murmured.
“Look, if it helps, you can hold my hand. No strings, no obligations.” He punched his watch again, and the soft green light came on. He reached his arm out and laid his hand on the bed beside her. “It’s up to you,” he said softly.
“That’s it?” she said. “Just hold your hand?”
“That’s it.” His lips thinned. “I’m not Derek.”
She gave him a weak smile, and tears welled in her eyes. She brushed one away that slipped down her cheek, cursing her hormones. Then she reached out and slipped her hand in his.
He curled his fingers around hers gently. If she wanted, she could pull her hand loose quickly with very little effort.
The green light blinked out again, and she relaxed in the dark, holding Jack’s hand. For a long time, she lay awake wondering what it would have been like had she met Jack before she’d met Derek. She felt some kind of chemistry going on, at least on her side, that she’d never felt for Derek.
With Derek, she’d been starving for somebody in her life after she’d lost both parents. Her high school friends had all moved on, gotten married, left California or moved to smaller cities. She’d had to stay where she could take advantage of mass transit, since she hadn’t owned a car. She couldn’t move out of the city, or so she’d thought, until she caught a ride in the back of the cab of that tractor trailer rig that had taken her all the way to San Diego. That experience had been completely out of desperation.
As she held Jack’s hand, she sent a prayer of thanks to the heavens that he had been her neighbor in that apartment complex. And she also prayed that one day she could repay his kindness, and maybe, just maybe, he might see her as something other than a victim of her own poor decisions.
Chapter 13
For Jack, the second day at the cabin set the pace for the rest of the week. He rose with the sun, dressed quickly in the cool morning air and went for a morning walk with Anne along the riverbank.
They didn’t try to fish that early. Instead, they climbed the banks, and sometimes the hills, surrounding the area. Mostly, they enjoyed the blue skies and the bright yellow sunrises. Most often, they walked hand in hand.
He told himself it was just to keep her from falling and to allay her fears, especially after that first night. The more he held her hand, the more he wanted to. He wouldn’t ask more of her, knowing she had been in an abusive relationship. She needed time to learn that she could trust other men.
As the week wore on, the end of their time there at the fishing cabin loomed. As much as he would have liked the fishing vacation to continue, Jack knew it was quickly coming to an end and that had him scared.
The isolation of the cabin, which kept them off the grid, seemed to be doing the trick. They hadn’t had a surprise visit from Derek, and they’d had no need to use the satellite phone. They had plenty of rations to see them through the rest of the week and into the next.
Jack had shown Anne how to fire his rifle and handguns. She’d target practice against the riverbank. By the third day, she was becoming a good shot and seemed comfortable with the rifle as well as the handguns.
By the middle of the week, they were both getting pretty adept at casting, and Jack had finally caught his share of fish. None of them equaled the size of the one Anne had snagged the first day. It didn’t matter to him. It gave her great pleasure to tease him about it.
The fact that she had relaxed enough to tease him made him happier than catching fish. And seeing her smile every morning made him want to see that smile every day for the rest of his life.
Frankly, that scared him the most.
He was quickly losing his heart to this woman, who probably had no intention of getting back into another relationship, especially after her disastrous life with Derek. And hadn’t Jack promised himself never to marry as long as he was a Navy SEAL or get involved into a long-term relationship either?
Anne needed a man to be around in her life on a full-time basis to protect her. He would be fooling himself thinking he could be the one to do that, if he even had a chance with her. He would be doing a disservice to both of them if he allowed himself to get involved with Anne.
If they took the relationship as far as marriage, he’d end up deployed and be gone for months on end. Anne would be alone with assholes like Derek to take advantage of her. She had no family to go home to. No siblings to give her a hard time or to love her when she needed it. No parents to back her up or to be there when she was in trouble.
Yet Jack couldn’t stop thinking about what a future with Anne would be like as he stared at her standing in her hip waders, her sandy-blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail, her arms swinging fluidly so that the line looped behind her and then flew in front of her into the water.
She was graceful and beautiful. He could just imagine her like Sadie, with a baby on one hip and a toddler by the hand. She’d make a great mother. Seeing her hold baby McClain and talk with Emma made Jack long for something he hadn’t longed for since his wife had left him.
He’d told Anne that not every man was like Derek. That he wasn’t like Derek. If he let himself believe it, the same held true for women. Not everybody was like his ex-wife. Anne certainly wasn’t. She’d handled being alone when she’d run away from Derek.
Jack could be mobilized three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. No. It wouldn’t be fair to any woman.
Then again, he could quit and go to work for Hank. He’d have more time to spend with a wife and children.
An image of his team popped into his mind, one where they were gathered around the dinner table in Wolf’s house, laughing and joking, and then another image of his team storming a Taliban stronghold where each man looked out for the other while focusing on their mission. Those men…his team…were family to him. They counted on him being there just as he counted on them having his six. He’d joined the Navy SEALs to make a difference in the world. It was his passion.
Anne cast her line in a smooth, flowing motion and turned to smile in his direction. The sun was well on its way down, headed for the peaks of the Crazy Mountains. The afternoon rays caught her hair, turning it into spun gold. The smile on her face lit her eyes and made Jack question his decision to stay in the Navy.
Anne’s smile dipped. “Something wrong?” she asked softly so as not to disturb the fish.
Everything, he thought. He shook his head. “Not at all.”
“Are you ready to call it a night?” she asked. “We have plenty of fish for dinner and for breakfast in the morning.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I guess I’m done.” He reeled in his line, gathered their string of fish and waited for her to join him on the bank of the river.
“I think if my dad had ever gone fishing, he would have liked it,” she said as she joined him.
“Especially if he had gone with you,” Jack said. “You are a natural.”
Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink. “I think I’m just lucky,” she said. “But I do like the grace and beauty of fly fishing. It’s not as simple as it looks.”
He nodded and fell in step beside her as they walked up to the cabin. “I’ll start the generator.”
“I’ll go first in the shower,” she said.
That was their routine. He cleaned fish, she showered, she cooked, he showered. They sat down to dinner together with a candle burning between them.
As Anne walked beside Jack, she was quieter than usual.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I miss him.”
Jack’s chest tightened. “Who?”
She looked up into his eyes. “My dad. He wasn’t always around. Though he was a computer geek, there were times he had to go off to other locations to help install software or hardware or troubleshoot
bugs. My mom and I missed him when he was gone, but when he was there, he made up for lost time.”
“Did you ever resent his work?” Jack found himself holding his breath waiting for her answer.
She smiled. “No. Mom and I understood. He loved what he did, and he didn’t love us any less.”
Jack let go of the breath and the tightness in his chest. “Your mother never wished that he could stay home and be with his family?”
“I’m sure she did, but she never let on to my dad or to me. She just made every day with him a good day and cherished their moments together. Though they were older when I was born, they were a very loving couple. They kind of set the bar for what I expected from a relationship.” Anne snorted. “I don’t know why I didn’t see how Derek fell far short from that bar.”
Jack’s fist tightened around his fishing pole. “He manipulated you. You needed someone in your life. He recognized that and took advantage of it. You couldn’t have known until it was too late.”
They’d reached the front steps and sat down beside each other to peel the hip waders off. Jack was done first and rose to hang the fish on the hook on the wall. Then he bent to help Anne get her boots off.
He hung their waders side by side on another hook on the outside wall and tipped his chin toward the cabin. “You’re first in the shower.” He went around the side to turn on the generator, and then gathered the fish and took them to the cleaning station that was set up on the front corner of the cabin.
He’d gotten good at cleaning and filleting from past experience but even better over the last couple of days. They should be tired of eating fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But any meal with Anne was good.
As usual, by the time Jack was done cleaning the fish, Anne was out of the shower and preparing everything for the fish to be cooked. When he walked in, he noticed that she had a pie tin filled with cornmeal, had stoked the fire and had a cast iron skillet heating on the potbelly stove.
