“Doesn’t sound like it. Hey.” He reached out, putting his hand on her knee. The jolt of energy was undeniable, and he pulled his hand back quickly, but still craned to look into her eyes. “Your ex-boyfriend is an idiot. Forget him.”
“Believe me, I’m trying.” Casey nudged at the empty wine bottle with her foot. “And before you say anything, I know this is about the worst thing I could be doing for myself.”
“At least you’re taking care of it on your own,” he said pragmatically. “Not throwing yourself at someone else.”
“Right.” Thoughts of straddling him right here on the floor evaporated and Casey bit her lip. “I should take a look at your leg. And you should, you know, put on a shirt.”
“Sure.” It sounded like he was laughing at her. He pulled a tank top and flannel shirt out of the stack and put them on. It was really very unfair how he could go from looking like a J. Crew model to looking like a lumberjack and still be hot, so Casey busied herself with the supplies.
“You’ll need to, uh…turn over.”
He complied with a nod, showing off an ass that made her bite her lip and mutter things about life being unfair, and she set to work, trying to clean the wound as painlessly as she could.
“Huh,” she said after a few minutes.
“What?” His voice was muffled.
“It’s…really not as bad as I thought. I guess it just bled a lot.” Casey poked at it gingerly. Maybe Band-Aids really were going to fix it.
“Yeah.” But he sounded evasive.
“Well, one sec.” She layered the Band-Aids over it and rolled a strip of athletic tape around his calf to keep it all in place. “Uh. There you go, I guess.”
“Thanks. I’m sure it’ll heal quickly.”
“Me, too.” She was really, really sure the wound had to have been bigger than it was. “I’m going to go clean the kitchen floor.”
“I’ll do it.” He reached out to take the towels.
“You need to sleep.” She took them back. “The couch is actually really comfortable. The beds…aren’t so much. And your leg won’t like the stairs.”
“Thanks.” He watched her over the back of the couch as she scrubbed. “Looks like the storm is quieting down.”
“Shame. I like thunderstorms. Better with whiskey than wine, but…it was actually kind of nice for a while. Until the bear.”
There was a silence. Casey turned and looked at him.
“Don’t you even want to know?”
“Right. Sorry. You said there was a bear, though.”
“I thought that was how you got hurt. I guess I just assumed.” But he had said, she remembered, that he knew about the bear. And the wolves.
“I heard there were bears around here,” he said hastily, noticing her expression. “But I didn’t see any. I just…fell.”
“Sure. On your calf.”
“Yeah.”
“In two places on your calf.”
“Yeah.”
“And nowhere else got hurt.”
“That’s lucky, huh?”
Lucky, and a whole bucket of lies. But he didn’t look like one of the idiots who would come up here to try to fight bears, or whatever the fad was with rich guys this week. He looked, in fact, like a man who had nothing to prove.
“You’re not going to tell me why you were out there, huh.”
“…Nope.” He had the grace, at least, to look ashamed.
“Look, is anyone looking for you? Going to come find you…with guns…?”
“No,” he said decisively. “We’re safe here.”
“Good.” Somehow, however, she found it precisely the opposite of reassuring. “Look, you should get some rest. I’ll be staying up for a bit.”
“Looking out the window with the shotgun?” He guessed, and Casey shrugged.
“I’ve already gotten a bear and a guy coming out of the forest tonight. I think I’ll just make sure there’s nothing else coming.”
“There isn’t.” But he yawned. “I am tired, though. I…”
“Nathaniel?” Casey went to peer over the back of the couch. Between one breath and the next, he seemed to have fallen asleep.
“You never said what your name was,” he murmured, trying to open his eyes.
“Casey.”
“Casey. Nice to meet you.”
“And you. Get some sleep.”
She hopped up on the counter to watch the forest. Without the lightning, the back yard wasn’t much more than a mass of black, the occasional tree shining in the moonlight as storm clouds scudded across the moon. Branches were still lashing to and fro in the wind, and occasionally she saw a piece of the ruined picnic table blow across the grass.
A strange night. A very strange night. A wrath-of-God storm, a bear, and a hot man sleeping on her couch. Casey risked a glance over at Nathaniel, now deeply asleep with one well-muscled arm thrown up over his head. Tomorrow, she decided, she was going to find out some answers.
3
The fire was crackling merrily, there was fresh coffee brewing, and she could smell toast. Casey snuggled in under the blankets and smiled. She’d dozed off…where? In the kitchen, she remembered, but that didn’t make any sense, and she certainly wasn’t there now.
She sat bolt upright, spilling blankets off herself.
“Good morning,” Nathaniel said from the kitchen. “It’s a good thing you’re up.”
“Oh?” Casey rubbed at her eyes. “Why?”
“I don’t know how you like your eggs.”
“Scrambled, please. Is the power back on?”
“Not yet. The stove’s gas. I thought we should use up the eggs before they went bad.”
“Right.” Casey stretched, yawning. “Did you go out to get more firewood?”
“Yeah. You really did in that bottom step.” His grin was infectious. “You meant to aim there, right?”
Casey stopped mid-stretch. Last night was flooding back to her now, from the bear, to Nathaniel’s disappearance. Something niggled at her mind and she frowned. They had talked about…bears, wolves. But she was sure she hadn’t told Nathaniel that the bear came into the house.
“How do you know I shot the step?” She asked slowly.
At the stove, Nathaniel froze. Then he said, not looking up, “Well, you have a shotgun there and a step that looks like kindling. Didn’t you say there were bears around?”
“And wolves,” Casey said. She was looking for the same reaction he’d had on the lawn the night before, and she got it; he went still, then had to force himself to keep moving. “Don’t like wolves?”
“Does anyone like wolves?” He asked her. “They’re dangerous, vicious.”
“My dad says not to worry too much,” Casey offered. “I used to get really scared, but he told me wolves don’t seek people out unless they’re starving, or rabid. Our wolves around here are fine, as far as I know.”
“You looked scared last night.”
“Look,” Casey said, stung. She was not a coward. “Last night was terrible. The power went out; I was alone, and that bear came into the house. And not through the glass; he opened the door.”
Nathaniel looked up. He had stopped stirring the eggs entirely, and his eyes were fixed on hers.
“Can I…” Casey looked away.
“Can you…?” His voice was soft as he prompted her.
“I wanted to tell you something. Tell anyone. But it’s stupid.”
“I won’t think it’s stupid,” he promised at once, and to her surprise, he seemed to mean it.
“My sister got chased by a bear once,” Casey explained. “She said bears’ eyes were black, and really cold—like people say about sharks? She said there was no pity or anything. It was going to kill her. Not because it was cruel or anything, but just…that’s what it was. It killed to eat. But when the bear came in last night, it wasn’t like that at all.”
“It wasn’t?” Nathaniel turned off the stove and came to sit on the arm of the couch. His brown ey
es were intent.
“No. It looked…” Casey searched for the word. “Pleading. It wanted help. It was injured.” She shook her head. “I know that’s stupid. Bears don’t ask for help; it didn’t know what it was doing. Maybe it smelled food and it was just scared because of the pain. But its eyes seemed warm. It seemed like it really saw me. Shock, I guess.” Last night, in the heat of the moment, she thought she would tell Jenna all about this. Now she was thinking better of it. In the cold, hard light of day, she could see it was nothing more than craziness to think that she had…what, communed with a bear? The words sounded ridiculous coming out of her mouth.
But Nathaniel didn’t seem to think so.
“That’s why you shot the step,” he said slowly. “You didn’t want to hurt it.”
Casey flushed and looked away. She wanted to sink through the floor at the thought of the confrontation. Sure, advancing had been a smart move. But who tried to reason with a bear? I don’t want to hurt you.
“It was already hurt pretty badly.” For some reason, she felt almost guilty. It was those human eyes, wasn’t it? If a human came in hurt, she would never have sent them back into the woods; Nathaniel was proof of that. But the bear, she had driven away. Which made sense, she told herself. She didn’t know how to fix a bear’s wounds, and it would have killed her before it let her try. Still, the guilt would not leave. “I wonder if it survived.”
“It did,” he said confidently. “Bears are tough.”
“I hope so.” Casey’s stomach rumbled. “Man, I could eat a horse.”
“The eggs!” He leapt off the end of the couch and stumbled, wincing.
“I’ll get them!” Casey scrambled over and sat him down. “And then we should look at your leg. I forgot.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“Well, we should change the bandages, anyway.” She surveyed the eggs in the pan and held back a grimace. They were ruined, but she could hardly complain about food he’d cooked. She scraped the best of them onto his plate and took the rest, carrying plates and forks back to the couch.
“These are awful,” he said, after one bite.
“No.” Casey chewed. And chewed. And chewed some more. “I think they’re good.”
“I’m making more.” He snatched the plate out of her hands and limped off.
“Did you carry me to the couch?” Casey asked him, and he smiled up at her briefly from where he was scrubbing the pan.
“You fell asleep on the counter.”
Now that she thought about it, she could remember strong arms lifting her and holding her close. She had snuggled closer, and he had laughed a little bit—not a mean laugh, a pleased one. She remembered him tucking her in…
She blushed, and looked away.
“Thanks.” She rubbed her face and looked around. The bloody towels were still piled by the hearth. “So how did you get hurt?”
“It’s not important.”
“Well, is someone looking for you?”
That took more thought than she expected, to get an answer. “No,” he said finally.
“I mean, did anyone know you were out here? Someone’s going to worry—friends, family? Coworkers?”
“Nope.”
“Really, I have gas in the car, I could take you—”
“No.” He didn’t yell, but his tone stopped her dead. “They know I can take care of myself in the forest.”
“But if you hadn’t found the cabin…” Casey said.
“I might have died, yes.” He looked up, and his eyes were so calm that she shivered.
“That’s why they’d be worried,” she explained slowly. “They’d be worried you were hurt, or dead.”
“Some things are unavoidable,” he said oddly. He held up a hand to forestall further conversation. “I really don’t want to talk about it. Now; two eggs or three?”
“Two is fine.” Casey frowned and looked away. Her head wasn’t hurting, but everything about Eric was flooding back. Was it too early to start drinking again?
Nathaniel let her think while he cooked. What he was thinking, she could not have said. She stole glances at him sometimes, but he seemed entirely absorbed in the task of whisking the eggs. If it bothered him at all that he could have died, there was no sign of that now.
Casey sighed and tipped her head back on the couch. Where was Eric now? Bad idea, her mind told her, but the thought was like pressing on a bruise. It was Saturday morning; he was probably sleeping in beside…what was her name? Anna. He’d thrown it at her a few times, like he was trying to convince himself that he knew she had a name. Anna and I understand each other. What the hell did that even mean?
“If I give you these eggs, are you going to yell at me?” Nathaniel asked. “You look really angry.”
“Just my stupid ex.” Casey took the plate of eggs. “Sorry. And don’t be all sympathetic,” she warned, pointing her fork at him. “I came up here so I wouldn’t have to listen to all that crap.”
“Which crap?” He asked, mouth full of eggs.
“’Oh, he was never good enough for you,’” Casey mimicked. “’I never liked him, you can do so much better.’ See? Crap. I can’t take that yet. Maybe in a week. Of course, I’ll probably be fired by then.”
“So you’re not going to try to get him back?”
“Hell, no.” Her answer surprised her.
He grinned.
“I don’t mean—I don’t know what I mean. I feel like shit that he ran off with some nineteen-year-old, you know? But I don’t want any part of someone who does that. Not at all.”
“Good,” Nathaniel said decisively. “Don’t waste your time with people like that.”
“Sounds like you’ve been through the same sort of thing.”
“Everyone has, I think.” But he sounded aggrieved. “It’s a terrible thing to do, people know that. And it doesn’t work out. But they do it anyway. There’s no loyalty.”
“We weren’t married,” Casey said miserably.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said at once. “You’re with someone; you should be loyal to them. Respect them. If he didn’t want to be with you, he could have said that and broken things off. Instead he tried to pretend it was true love, right? He couldn’t help himself. It was meant to be.” He shook his head. “Coward.”
“Coward,” Casey said thoughtfully. “I did a lot of bastard and slob last night. I like coward. Maybe I’ll add that one in.”
“Don’t even think about him,” Nathaniel advised her. “Why spend any more time?”
“I…” …Have no good answer to that.
“Casey.” He took the plates and set them aside. “You’re funny and smart and kind, and brave as hell.”
“You’re just saying that because I saved your life.”
“Right. You saved my life. You didn’t hide in here with your gun. You didn’t shoot that bear because you were scared. You’re going to tell me that I barely know you, but I think I know more about you from these few hours than most of the people you know. You’re all those things I said, and you know what? You’re drop-dead gorgeous. Your ex made the biggest mistake of his life.”
“You’re sweet.” Casey was blushing. This was the sort of pity she hadn’t wanted, but it didn’t sound like pity, coming from him.
“I’m not…sweet,” he admitted. It came out a little like a growl, making her shiver.
“Then what are you?”
Instead of answering, he stood, pulling her up after him and enfolding her in his arms. Before she could even react, his lips came down on hers.
4
He meant it to be one kiss—she knew, because he drew back after it with a rueful smile. But his arms did not release her, and Casey didn’t even hesitate before taking his shirt in her hands and drawing him back down for more. His lips were soft but demanding, his tongue parting her lips as he held her close.
The kiss deepened, and Casey heard herself moan. Somehow her arms had come around his neck and she was standing on tip-toe to
kiss him. Her body was pressed up against his, and his hands had slid up under the loose flannel shirt. His fingertips trailed over her back and back down, drifting under the waistband of her shorts.
“Mmmm.” Casey pressed herself close, inviting his touch. Her skin was on fire, and she wanted nothing more than for him to push her shorts down…
What was she doing? Twenty-four hours ago she’d been crying her eyes out, trying to eat a bagel sandwich on the subway, and then heading out of town with a rented car and three bottles of wine. She’d been a wreck. Was this a rebound?
Well, that would fit with the theme of the weekend—but to tell the truth, she didn’t feel like it was. She would have wanted Nathaniel any time he strolled in the door. She was sure he would have been the first person she noticed in any room—and as ridiculous as it was, when he said he knew her after only a few hours, she knew exactly what he meant.
From the words he said to the way he said them, from cooking her eggs to offering to clean the kitchen floor, this man was gold. And Casey should know—she’d seen her share of men trying to be the perfect guy for a night to get into her pants. Something about him said this wasn’t a game to him. He offered to clean the floor because he had bled on it. He stoked the fire because it needed doing, he carried her to bed because she was asleep on the counter, and he cooked her breakfast because it would be nice.
And good God, he was hot. How was he not married?
She supposed he might be. The thought hit just at the moment that he pulled away again.
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why?” She asked warily.
“You’re still sad; we only met last night…”
“No girlfriend, then?” When she saw how offended he looked, she backtracked hastily. “Sorry, sorry. I’ve…met my fair share of jerks. But I should have known you wouldn’t.”
“No, you shouldn’t—” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair; muscles rippled beneath the tank top. “You don’t really know me. As far as you know, I’m just some guy who wanders around forests.”
Endre: Brothers Of The Dark Places Page 10
