Retreat

by Jay Crownover

  I was reeling from the fact that he had called me pretty more than once. I would typically discount it as nonsense. I was his client and our rocky interactions thus far probably made him nervous that I was going to tear him and his business apart on TripAdvisor and any other travel site that brought him customers. However, he didn’t strike me as the type to waste words and Lane had already told me the Warner boys only said things they meant because words had weight when everyone could hear what you were saying. The compliment did something to my insides that I was too nervous to examine. I didn’t have room for butterflies. All that space was supposed to be filled up with rock solid resolve so that I never ended up in a situation like I’d been in with Chris again. Regardless, I felt a flutter and it made me panic so I did what I always did when I was challenged and tested . . . I tried to run.

  I took another step up onto the porch and opened my mouth to tell him I was starving but the sound ended on a gasp as I was almost knocked backwards as Sutton came flying around his brother at breakneck speed. He grunted as we both wobbled unsteadily, and he wrapped his hard hands around my upper arms to keep me upright. Like I was a piece of furniture he had accidently tripped over, he forcibly moved me to the side and looked over his shoulder at his older brother who was now glowering at him in obvious warning.

  Sutton swore under his breath and looked away from his brother. “Daye just called me. I have to go pick her up.”

  My attention snapped between the two of them as Cy angrily bit out, “You can’t keep running every time Alexa drops the ball, Sutton. You have responsibilities here.”

  I flinched for Sutton—and yelped a little because the hands he still had wrapped around my arms tightened enough that he was hurting me.

  “I have responsibilities there, too, Cy. One that isn’t going to go away for at least another thirteen years. Daye is my goddamn daughter and it isn’t her fault her mother is a fucking lunatic. She needs me and I’m going. It won’t kill you to get off your ass and do some work that isn’t stapled together.” The hard hands released me, and suddenly he was behind me, which put me, once again, face to face with a decidedly furious Cyrus Warner. His gaze skipped over me, making sure I stayed on my feet, and then it went over my head to where I could clearly hear his brother stomping down the steps behind me.

  “I told you not to let any woman lead you around by your dick. One would think you and Lane would have learned from my mistakes.” I gulped audibly, even though he wasn’t talking to me, it felt like a warning. One that was directed right at me.

  Sutton took his hat off and smacked it against his leg while he shoved his other hand through his hair. It was a pretty bronze color and not at all as dark as the man looming in front of me. “I’m not living your life, Cy, and I’m not living Dad’s. I’ll make my own mistakes, and so will Lane. We aren’t all cut from the same cloth, no matter how badly you want us to be. Now I’ve got to go get my kid. She’s scared and crying because her mom is a worthless drunk who passed out in front of her for the second time this week. She’s hungry, alone, and she needs her dad. You can head out with Lane in the morning. When I have Daye back here and settled in with Brynn, I’ll ride out and relieve you. It’s only a couple of days.”

  There was a tense stare-down that happened over the top of my head. It lasted until I saw Cy’s broad chest move with a deep sigh. He didn’t sound any happier when he relented. “Fine. If you need help, call me.”

  There was a grunt from the younger man and then Sutton was gone, leaving me on the receiving end of that formidable glower.

  “Sorry about that. That’s a conversation we should have saved for another time. Sutton can be a hothead and forgets family business doesn’t have any place in our actual business. Are you okay? He bumped into you pretty hard when he went flying out of here.”

  I wasn’t expecting that kind of concern from him, so it threw me for a minute and I absently lifted my hand to one of my biceps that was without a doubt going to have a bruise on it in the morning. I was fair skinned, so it didn’t take much to leave a mark. “It’s fine. He was obviously upset.” I was trying to play nice just like I told Em I would, but my response seemed to make the imposing man before me even angrier.

  He swore under his breath and pushed off the door so that he was standing directly in front of me. “He’s bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. He put a baby in the wrong girl and he’s been paying for that mistake for five years. That doesn’t give him the right to be careless with our guests. You could have been really injured if he hadn’t had quick enough reflexes to keep you from falling.”

  I flinched at the total lack of sympathy in his tone and cocked my head to the side as I considered him. “So your niece is only five and she’s alone with her mother, who is passed out, which means she is probably terrified and undoubtedly upset.”

  He simply stared at me while I stated the horrifying facts I had stumbled into.

  “And you’re upset with your brother for going to get her out of that situation? What kind of cold-hearted monster would leave a child in those kind of conditions?”

  His amazing eyes blazed down at me and a muscle ticked hard and fast in his cheek as his teeth clenched together. I didn’t know the entire history of what was going on, but this single moment, this split second, did not paint this man I was intrigued by in a very flattering light. He wasn’t a cowboy, and I wasn’t sure what kind of businessman he was, but one thing was abundantly clear . . . he was an asshole. An unfeeling, cold, callous, and cruel asshole. How could any man disapprove of any action that was done in the best interest of a child . . . especially a child he shared blood with?

  I wanted to get away from him and from the strange magnetic pull I seemed to have around him. I didn’t like him, and I really didn’t like the way he made me feel. Like everything inside of me was boiling hot and freezing cold at the same time. My foundation was already rocked and unsteady. I didn’t need this big, brooding man and his unreadable persona doing any more damage to it.

  I went to step around him and into the house when one of his hands landed on my arm, much lighter than his brother’s touch had been. The contact made me feel like I had touched a live wire. Tingles popped and buzzed up my arm and had me whipping my head around to stare at him. He was looking at my arm where his hand rested and I prayed he couldn’t feel the way that simple touch had my blood raging like lava through every single vein.

  “I love my brother and I love my niece. What I don’t love is the manipulative woman who uses both of them to play games. I’m not mad that Sutton is going after his kid, I’m mad that it’s something he has to do in the first place. Custody for Daye has been an ongoing issue since Sutton’s ex got knocked up. I would say the real cold-blooded monster in this situation is the woman who willingly brought a child into the world that she had zero intention of caring for. Daye was a pawn, nothing more and nothing less. It pisses me off that Sutton has no choice but to play the games because he loves his kid and he’s a good dad. I want my brothers to make better choices than the men in our family who chose before them. Lucky in love the Warners have never been.”

  I blinked, and then blinked again, because I was all too familiar with the kind of monster he had just described. I had one of my own hidden not so deeply in my closet. I blew out a breath and plastered a smile on my face to divert any of those old feelings of inadequacy back into the dark where they belonged.

  “Well, this wasn’t at all what I was expecting, but I have to admit that this vacation has been anything but boring so far. I’m actually starving, so if there’s food, let me at it.” It was a blatant attempt to change the subject and I was praying that he would take the soft lob and run with it. He didn’t strike me as the type who wanted some stranger in his family business. His youngest brother had mentioned that Cy considered those of us taking advantage of his property and his wilderness to be just that, outsiders. I didn’t belong in his world and I sure as hell didn’t belong in his personal busine
ss any more than I wanted him in mine.

  I hadn’t seen Chris coming when he worked his way into my life, but there was no missing Cyrus.

  Suddenly he took a step back. The gleam that shown out of his glittering gray gaze dulled slightly and he dipped his chin down in a slight acknowledgement that I had given him an out and he was going to take it. This was business . . . nothing more. “Go on in. I’ll introduce you to the rest of your group and to Brynn when I get back with your girl. There’s eight of you riding out with us in the morning and you’ll be spending the week pretty much in each other’s pockets, so it’s best if you make an attempt to get along with everyone.”

  I bristled a little at his reminder of our first encounter and haughtily went to flip my hair over my shoulder, only to be reminded that it was in pigtails and that it was impossible to look haughty when you were trying to look like a proper cowgirl—or really, when you were me because cute and haughty didn’t really mesh.

  I wouldn’t ever go as far as to say that I typically got along great with other people because that would be a lie. I had a hard time trusting people, and an even more difficult time opening up, so my social circle was relatively small. It was no secret that strangers often found my blunt manner and general disinterest in niceties off-putting. I was not one of the popular kids and had never striven to be one. However, when you spent your days studying people, their spending habits, their preferences, and their triggers, it was inevitable that you figured out what made most humans tick. So I could fake being outgoing and adventurous for a week and maybe, just maybe, some of that faking it would end up being real.

  Now that I knew Cy was going to be going with us on our trip for a few days, at least, I was suddenly much more excited about spending a week in a tent in the mountains of Wyoming. He was a man I couldn’t figure out, a puzzle that everything inside of me was dying to solve. I wanted to see what the complete picture of Cyrus Warner looked like. Maybe I was so desperate to see the whole image because the last riddle I tried to solve had come with a whole lot of missing pieces. It was terrifying when you couldn’t trust your own judgment about what was real and what was fabricated to feel like it was real.

  Chris had ruined my trust and my confidence.

  And somewhere deep down, I had a feeling that if I let him get close enough, Cyrus Warner would have the power to obliterate all that was left of me.

  All I could do was cross my fingers and hope I was fast enough to outrun that kind of devastation.

  Not the Usual Suspects

  If I had been forced to guess what kind of people would book a trip into the Wyoming wilderness for a week, I would have picked middle-aged businessmen who always wanted to live the fantasy that they were John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. I would have picked disenchanted hipsters, those who were bored by everything in metropolitan cities and decided to venture out to get in touch with Mother Nature. I would have pegged women like me and Emrys financially secure and maybe a little lost and definitely overworked, who were looking for something to shake up the status quo. I, however, would not have picked the obviously affluent and well-to-do family that hailed from the Upper East Side who was currently seated across from me at the long wooden dining table. The mom fiddled with the diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist while the plastic smile on her face never faltered. The dad kept glancing discreetly at his cellphone while the teenaged son refused to look away from the handheld video game that beeped incessantly in his hands. I, begrudgingly, wondered what kind of cell plan they had because my phone was a brick with zero bars in this dead zone while they seemed to have no trouble interacting with the outside world. It was like fate was trying to force me to unplug and stop thinking about every single thing that I’d gotten wrong. The teenaged girl in their group was a few years older than the boy, and from the minute Cy entered the room with Em in tow, she hadn’t taken her wide-eyed gaze off of him. I couldn’t blame her; he was impossible to ignore. I wanted to nudge her mother and clear my throat at the inappropriateness of such a blatantly sexual appraisal when Cy was so much older than the girl.

  I also never would have pegged the two other men who would make up our caravan as choosing this place as their first choice escape from reality. Two men who barely spoke to one another, who watched the rest of us at the table with suspicious eyes, and who offered up very little information about themselves when introductions were made. My initial thought was they were a very unhappy couple using this trip and its remote destination as a way to rekindle their romance. But their body language and the stiff way they interacted with one another, as well as with the rest of us, made it seem like they could barely stand to be in the same room as each other, so the likelihood of them being a couple in love seemed slim. Since they didn’t appear to be friends either, I couldn’t really figure out any other reason for two men to be traveling alone together into the woods. It was odd. I think they could tell I thought it was strange because the younger of the two men, the one who was probably around my age, kept giving me a harsh look from underneath furrowed eyebrows. I simply stared back at him until Emrys placed herself next to me with a flourish and a sigh. Once she was seated at the table, all attention shifted to her. Even the gamer boy lost interest in his device so he could make moon eyes my too-pretty-for-her-own-good best friend.

  The vibe around the table was tense and uncertain. I forgot all about grabbing a snack before dinner as I evaluated and assessed, and in turn, weighed and judged. It felt like it was some kind of audition, not just a bunch of strangers meeting for an adventure of a lifetime. Cy’s introductions were brief and to the point. He offered up everyone’s name, the two silent men being Grady and Webb, and the family of four being Marcus, who was the disinterested father, Meghan, who was the distressed mother, and Evan and Ethan, the kids who both seemed like they wanted to be anywhere else. He also mentioned where we were all from before he took a seat at the head of the table and seemed happy to shut us all out so he could be alone with his obviously pensive thoughts. No one offered up any more info than what was given so it made the moments that passed incredibly awkward. I shot Emrys a look that she pointedly ignored. Lane was the only one at the table who seemed able to keep up a steady stream of conversation, but that was a lot to ask of one person when the other nine were clearly caught up in their own noise and issues. Eventually, he heaved a deep sigh, rolled his eyes at his older brother, and excused himself to help the elusive Brynn, the woman the brothers kept mentioning, in the kitchen. I hadn’t met the woman yet, but I was ready to tackle hug her and smother her in love, if the food she was bringing to me tasted as good as it smelled coming out of the kitchen.

  “So, what do you do for a living, Ms. Santos?” That came from the Manhattan dad who was either a workaholic or totally had a girlfriend on the side. His phone pinged every five minutes and he was taking great pains to make sure neither his wife nor his children could see the screen every time he replied. The idea of him stepping out on his family made my skin crawl. When all the lies Chris told came to light I realized I’d spent our entire relationship being the clueless other woman. No one liked a cheater but when you were stupid enough to get your heart broken by one it made you even more judgmental and critical of the way others treated the people they were supposed to love. I decided on the spot I didn’t like the dad, and there was no way in hell I would ever trust him.

  Emrys smiled in her disarming and easy way and I had to stifle a giggle as it made almost every single one of the men at the table shift in their seats. The two non-talkers were definitely not a couple if they were affected Emrys. She was potent and my most favorite thing about her was that she was very aware of her power and the exponential impact she had on people. It was nice that she had decided early on to use her influence for good instead of evil.

  “I work in Human Resources.” She waved a hand in front of her and laughed lightly. “I push paper around all day, pretty much. There’s a form for every other form. It’s endless.”

  She d
id a lot more than that but she would never expound on her own accomplishments and as she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, I knew she wasn’t interested in trying to impress the overly interested father of two.

  “That sounds interesting. I’m in real estate. New York is one of the most competitive markets in the world. I have to be on top of my game all day, every day.” I fought back the urge to roll my eyes as the mom cleared her throat nervously and shifted her fidgety hands from the diamonds on her wrists to the one on her ring finger.

  “Yes, Marcus works very hard, which is why we all needed this vacation. It’s going to be so nice to spend time together . . . as a family.” Her last words were a tad brittle and the teen girl jerked her head to the side with a glare, like she had been nudged where no one could see. I watched as she clearly decided to refrain from saying something smart to her mother, and instead narrowed her eyes at her father who was once again tapping away on his cell. The girl shook her head and switched her attention back to the big man at the head of the table with a wistful sigh.

  It was ridiculously reminiscent of something out of a bad sitcom and this family was straight out of central casting. This vacation was turning out to be one surprise after another. I was becoming more and more invested in seeing how it all played out. This kind of drama and impending tragedy was exactly what I needed to distract me from my own recent failings.

  I swallowed a laugh and shifted my gaze to Cy when his deep voice suddenly broke through the tension surrounding the table. He was looking right at me, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a challenge stamped on his face. “What about you, Sunshine? What do you do?” It should have been an innocent enough question, but like every other interaction I’d had with this man in such a short time, it felt loaded and full of subtext I wasn’t sure I fully comprehended. It seemed like he wasn’t simply asking me what I did for a living or how I supported myself, but more like he was asking what I did as a human being. Like he was questioning my worth and value as a woman. The unexpected nickname threw me. It implied the kind of intimacy and connection I was doing my very best to avoid. It was also ridiculous. I was the least easygoing and carefree person on the planet. I was a storm cloud that ruined picnics, not something full of warmth and light.