by B. J Daniels
As they made their way to the back door of the cabin, TJ saw that the storm had only worsened. She thought of her sisters and felt horrible for taking off the way she had. She just hoped they were smart enough not to be out looking for her in this. Hopefully Chloe had gotten the message she’d sent.
Back inside, Silas led her to the sink and provided her with soap and warm water that he’d heated on the woodstove in a large kettle. She washed her hands, dried them on the towel he handed her and let him lead her over to the chair again. While he busied himself at the stove, she got out of her wet boots, coat and ski pants. Down to a sweater and jeans and socks, she shivered in the chair until Silas brought her over a quilt to wrap up in. She watched him take her wet things and hang them up on hooks by the door, telling herself he had to be True Fan, and yet...
As she watched him, she told herself that a man who was this thoughtful couldn’t possibly have written those vile things about her. But like her other readers, he probably thought he knew her, thought he knew what was best for her.
The man unsettled her no matter who he was. She reconciled that strange feeling she’d had at the gift shop when their gazes had met. She’d seen...darkness. Something dangerous. Something violent. She tried to shake off the memory. Where had those feelings come from? Worse, because she still felt them, why were they so strong?
She tried not to flinch as Silas pulled up a stool that had been by the fire and sat down in front of her, his expression somber. “How serious were these threats against you?”
TJ debated how much to tell him. If he was True Fan, then he already knew, so what was his game? And if he wasn’t? “One of them suggested I should kill myself and do the reading world a favor. Another said I should die like one of my villains in my books. The latest one just indicated that the letter writer couldn’t let me keep writing these books, that this would have to end.”
He shook his head. “How did this all get started?”
“Why the interest?”
He smiled. “Believe it or not, I’m still a lawman at heart. I like catching the bad guys. But I also admire you and enjoy your books. Since we’re going to be here until the storm passes... Maybe I can be of assistance.”
TJ couldn’t help being skeptical. It came with her personality. Maybe that was why she wrote what she did. She didn’t trust what was behind a smile or kind words. Grandma Frannie used to tell her to lighten up. Like that was possible.
More to the point, she wasn’t sure what to make of Silas Walker. All the evidence pointed to him being True Fan. So was this just him still taunting her?
Looking into his blue eyes, she thought she saw genuine concern. She felt confused, thrown off balance by the man. She remembered how easily he had thrown her over his shoulder and carried her into the house. If he was True Fan...
“It started like any other letter from a fan,” she told him, gauging his expression as she talked. She told him about the first few letters from the person who called him or herself True Fan’s being complimentary, all the time studying his face, looking for...looking for a lie in all that blue. But she saw nothing but sympathy and a growing anger at True Fan.
When she finished he got up from the stool without a word and moved to the woodstove. He seemed to be thinking as he stirred the stew.
She studied his broad back, wondering why he’d been fired from the police department. “Well?” she prodded.
He stirred the stew for a minute or two before he turned back to her. “If you really were purposely pushed into the traffic yesterday, then we would have to assume your True Fan either lived in New York or just happened to be there yesterday. But if you’re right about the paper True Fan is using to write the letters on coming from the same place as I got mine, then...”
She nodded, her heart pounding. Was this where he told her it had been him all along? “True Fan had to have gone to the same garage sale you did. Someone with connections to both New York City and Whitehorse since True Fan also took a photograph of my apartment,” she reminded him.
He raised his gaze to hers. “A fan anywhere in the country could have had a friend in New York snap a photo of your apartment. Also, your near accident yesterday could have been just that. I think your True Fan is right here in Montana.”
“Right where you just happened to be. Right where you just happened to be passing by yesterday.”
He mugged a face at her. “The reason it’s called a coincidence is because they do exist. I had no idea the woman I grabbed to keep her from falling in front of a delivery truck yesterday was you.” He crossed his heart with the index finger of his left hand.
“You’re left-handed.” The words were out before she could stop them.
He looked confused again for a moment before he smiled. “I forgot. Your heroine Constance Ryan always falls for left-handed men. I’m betting there were a couple of left-handed boyfriends in your past.” He turned back to the stove.
He’d be wrong about that. There had been one though—Marc. He’d been left-handed and one of the mistakes she’d made when she’d first started writing was that she’d made her heroine in her ongoing series too much like herself. Write what you know, she’d always been told. She didn’t know anyone as well as she knew herself.
But while Constance Ryan always fell for left-handed men, she was the woman TJ wished she was. Unfortunately the similarities were obvious to anyone who knew her. Constance was a blonde with aquamarine-blue eyes, five foot six, curvy. A woman who loved spicy food and drank her coffee black and by the gallon.
But that was where the similarities stopped. Constance was daring. As a private investigator, she took on cases that others had turned down. She was smart and determined. Even after almost getting killed in every book, she still came back for more.
Constance also loved men—and men loved her. She always ended up curled up in bed with some handsome man. She wasn’t one to stay long with any of them. Constance Ryan lived her life the way TJ wished she could.
But TJ was too much of a prude who’d hardly dated, even at college. Also she believed in happy-ever-after—even if her alter ego didn’t. She didn’t want a string of men. She just wanted that one man who would make her heart pound.
Like this man was doing right now. Only was it fear? Or something just as dangerous, given the two of them were alone, snowed-in deep in the mountains?
* * *
“I CAN SEE why you thought I was writing the threatening letters to you,” Silas said after dishing them both up bowls of hot beef stew with a side of his homemade bread slathered in butter.
He’d pushed his stool over against the wall and leaned against it as he ate. He was glad to see that TJ seemed to have relaxed a little. Outside, the blizzard was still raging. He’d built the cabin to withstand the winter cold so it was cozy inside, but he could hear the wind and see snow piling up at the windows. He wondered if the snow would be too deep to drive out once the storm stopped.
“I’ve been thinking how to go about finding this fan of yours,” he said between bites. Because he’d realized he had to help her whether she wanted it or not. The only way to prove to her that he wasn’t True Fan was to find the culprit. Also, finding the nasty letter writer with TJ definitely had its appeal. He’d never dreamed he would get a chance to even have a cup of coffee with her—let alone spend time in his cabin with her.
“I can’t wait to hear your plan.” She’d stopped, her spoon in midair, to look at him. He could see she was still suspicious. He didn’t blame her. Given the evidence against him, he would have thought the same thing she did.
“It seems simple to me. It all comes down to the old discolored copy paper. Anyone can shoot a photograph of the outside of your apartment—”
“How would they know where I lived unless they had contacts...say, inside the police department?”
He smiled at that as he watched her t
ake a bite of the stew. He could see that she liked it, which made him a lot happier than it should have. Pride cometh before the fall, his father used to say. “You like the bread?”
“You really baked this in that woodstove?” she asked skeptically.
“I did. See that iron box on the top? It’s an oven. This is my first attempt. I’ll get better.”
“It’s very good. I’ve never attempted bread—even in a real oven.”
He smiled, warmed by her compliment more than by the stew. He took a couple more bites before he said, “As to the question of how to find out where you lived...all anyone had to do was follow you home from a book signing. How many have you done in New York and gone straight home afterward?”
She didn’t answer, his point taken.
“As for the push, there were so many people rushing around with Christmas shopping. I got jostled myself just moments before that. I didn’t see anyone push you but I was in a tight crowd of people who were forced to the curb. I just caught you falling out of the corner of my eye, but there were people in front of me, including a woman with a huge shopping bag who could have hit you.”
He watched her lick her lips after taking a bite of the bread covered with real butter. No butter substitute in his kitchen, ever. He could tell she was considering his theory.
“So let’s say True Fan knows someone in New York who could have followed me from a book signing and taken a photo of my apartment from the street.”
“Or she could have even hired someone to do it,” he added, thinking about the private investigative business he’d been working for since leaving the police department. It was amazing to him what people would pay to learn.
TJ nodded, no doubt thinking of Constance, the heroine in her books. “So then it would just come down to the copy paper you both purchased at a garage sale last summer in Whitehorse?”
“August. I also bought this stool there.”
Her gaze darkened to deep sea green. “So it’s someone who lives in Whitehorse.” She shivered and for the first time, he thought she might actually be considering that it wasn’t him.
“I’d suspect it’s someone who knows you and has reason to be jealous of your success,” he said. “Maybe an old rival? An old boyfriend? Maybe even a former friend.”
Chapter Ten
“I still can’t believe you really made this bread,” TJ said as she accepted another piece. Her walk to find his cabin had left her famished.
He grinned, obviously pleased. “For my first time, I think I got lucky, huh.”
“It’s delicious and so is the stew,” TJ said, feeling conflicted. Could she trust this man? Sometimes the way he looked at her with those potent blue eyes, it made her squirm uncomfortably. It was when she glimpsed a dangerous edge to him that she had her doubts. She tried not to think about the predicament she was in—trapped in a cabin in a blizzard in the mountains with a man she didn’t trust.
Common sense told her he had to be True Fan.
But after seven books, she knew from experience that the villain often proved to be the person you least expected—not the obvious one. Of course, that was fiction and this felt more like any real life she’d lived so far.
There was something so charming about Silas because of his easygoing manner. And that he was a little domesticated made him even more appealing. He seemed almost shy around her. She saw none of the anger that had practically dripped from True Fan’s threatening letters.
After months of running scared she wasn’t sure she could trust her instincts, though. Look where they’d brought her.
As she finished her stew and bread she noticed it had gotten dark, although it was hard to tell how late it was since the thick-falling snow still made it fairly light out. She pulled out her phone, hoping for a response from one of her sisters, but there was nothing. She looked at the time and realized with a start that she would be spending the night in this cabin with this man. Her heart began to pound a little harder.
Silas rose to his feet, stepping to her to take her bowl and spoon. “Don’t worry,” he said as if reading her mind. “You can have the bed when you get tired. I have a sleeping bag I’ll drag out. I’ve curled up in front of the fire on the rug more times than I can remember when I was building this place. The bed came later.”
He moved to the makeshift kitchen. Earlier, he’d refilled the kettle on the stove. Now she watched him wash up their dishes in a pan in the sink. He was so self-sufficient. Handsome too in a rough, untamed way that both intrigued her and scared her.
“Don’t you get lonely out here?” she asked, wondering if there was a woman in his life back in New York.
“Just the opposite,” he said without turning around. “I come here for the peace and quiet. Listen.” He stopped what he was doing to half turn to look at her.
She heard nothing but the pop and hiss of the fire in the woodstove.
“Not one siren to be heard. No traffic. No honking taxis. No loud music from the apartment next door.” He let out a sigh. “This is why I love this place. Sometimes I just have to get away from all the racket. Here I get up when I feel like it, I go to bed when I’m tired. I spend my days working on the cabin, cutting wood for the stove, cooking my own meals. When I’m not working, I’m reading. Or attempting to write,” he said with a chuckle as he went back to his dishes.
“I had forgotten what it was like living in Montana,” TJ had to admit.
“That’s right, you grew up in Whitehorse.”
She nodded, remembering sledding and ice-skating in the winter, tubing the river in the summer. She’d forgotten what small-town living was like, the slower pace, the unlimited space, the quiet. “I hadn’t realized that I missed it.”
He turned then to look at her as he dried his big hands on a dish towel. “You must enjoy the glamour and excitement of New York City though. Isn’t that why you live there? You can write anywhere.”
“I did enjoy the city, especially at first. It felt as if it was where I needed to be to have the career I wanted.”
“But now?”
She shook her head. “I hate it. True Fan has ruined the city for me. I don’t feel safe there anymore.” She let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t feel safe anywhere.”
He put down the dish towel carefully and turned to lean back against the kitchen counter. “I’m so sorry about that. It’s another reason we have to find this person and put a stop to it. I would imagine it’s also been hard for you to write.”
She looked away. “You have no idea. Or maybe you do.”
Silas cocked his head. “I know you still don’t trust that I’m not this person. That’s okay. You have to be skeptical to write the books you do—and to be safe. But I promise you I’m going to find True Fan even if you don’t want to help me.” He pushed off the counter. “Hot chocolate or tea?”
“Tea.”
TJ watched him put a smaller kettle on the stove and prepare two cups with tea bags. “I’d like to read some of your book.”
He froze for a moment before turning. “You’re going to laugh, but right now I’m more terrified than when I’m facing down a junkie with a gun.”
“If you don’t want me to...”
“Oh, that’s just it. The thought of you reading anything I’ve written both excites and terrifies me. Didn’t you feel that way?”
She smiled, nodding. “I remember the first time I took a writing class. I just wanted the instructor to tell me I could do this.”
“Did the instructor?”
“No. Looking back, the woman didn’t know anything more than I did about how to have a writing career, even though she’d sold a couple of books. I don’t think she wanted to get my hopes up since by then she knew how hard it was.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that with me. I enjoy writing, so I’ll keep at it hoping I get better no m
atter what you say. But I really would appreciate your opinion.”
Crossing to the typewriter, he reached beside it and picked up a few pages.
“Give me the first chapter,” she said. Aspiring writers always wanted to show her their favorite chapter in the middle, not realizing an editor would never read that chapter if they couldn’t get past the first one.
He brought over a dozen sheets of paper. She noticed the way he held them in those large hands, like he was carrying a bird with a broken wing.
“You don’t have to read the whole chapter,” he said, carefully handing her the pages.
The first thing she noticed was that the pages had been typed with a new ribbon. There were none of the light and dark letters like on True Fan’s.
Silas stood over her for a moment, then quickly moved away to take his coat from the hook by the door. “I’m going to bring more wood in from the porch,” he said. “I suspect the temperature is going to drop tonight. I’ll have to keep the stove going.” With that, he went out the door on a gust of cold, snowy wind.
For a moment, TJ watched the snowflakes that had swept in melt on the wood floor. Then she turned to the pages of his book and began to read.
* * *
SILAS STOOD OUT on the porch in the blizzard smiling like a fool. TJ St. Clair was reading his book. He felt his stomach roil. What if it stunk as badly as he feared it did? What if she told him to use it to start his next woodstove fire? Or maybe worse, he thought, what if she told him it wasn’t bad? That it was good enough that he should keep at it? That he had promise?
He wasn’t sure which was his greatest fear—fear of failure or of success. They scared him in ways his job never had—even when he’d recently been shot. He rubbed his thigh unconsciously, realizing that his limp had been hardly noticeable. Or maybe he’d tried harder for it not to show around TJ.
Silas felt a shudder when he thought of her True Fan. How dangerous was this person? Would they really go through with their threats if pushed too far? More than ever, he was determined to find the person and put an end to all this.
