"So, then you don't look when I take them out. No big deal. Won't think less of you. This food is the shit," I told her after I had tasted - maybe hoovered - everything on my plate. "Do you have any other questions tonight?"
"Um... sleeping arrangements?" she asked, looking almost worried.
Like I'd insist we'd share a bed or some shit. "You can take the bedroom. I'll take the couch. Unless you don't want to be alone. I can drag a cot in there," I added, and strangely, something inside made me sort of hope it was the latter.
"Um, I think I will be okay," she claimed. Claimed, because there wasn't much confidence in her words.
"You gonna eat that or just push it around?" I asked, watching as she poked at the entree, but only seemed to eat the salad.
"Do you want it?" she asked, already reaching to hold her plate up for me.
And, well, I wasn't going to let it go to waste now, was I?
An hour later, she was tucked in bed, though the bed creaked, and I could hear her tossing and turning while I washed up after dinner and made up the couch.
It wasn't until she seemed to finally pass out that I heard my phone buzz from where I left it on the counter.
Ranger: Get ready for your plans to change.
- Could you be more cryptic? There's no fucking TV here. What's going on?
Ranger: Nor'easter. You're about to get dumped on. 12+
- Shit.
Ranger: Plus side, you'd see someone coming from miles off.
- Not helping.
Ranger: Not known for it.
Shit.
Twelve inches in Navesink Bank would blow, but wouldn't make life that much harder. Within a day, all the main roads would be plowed. Within two, all the side ones. Life would go on as usual.
Out here in the sticks?
They might not even bother to plow.
Even if they did, I had half a mile of a private driveway that they wouldn't touch. And I might be in good shape, but I'm pretty sure even I would drop dead of a heart attack trying to shovel that shit by hand.
It would take several days.
After the snow stopped.
Whenever that would be.
I didn't have to wait long for it to start either. A half an hour after I went to the small shed nestled almost in the woods to grab a shovel and a tarp for the firewood, it started.
With a fury.
Fat flakes fell hard and fast, the wind whipping so wild that it was zero visibility even just trying to look out the window.
And it was about an hour after it started that the house went suddenly dark, something in the house announcing the power out with a loud beep.
"Shit," I growled.
A power out alone sucked.
A power out in the woods with a woman you barely knew - and didn't know how you'd tolerate in such a situation?
Yeah, this was going to get interesting.
"Gunner?" her voice called tentatively from off in the bedroom.
And here we go.
FIVE
Sloane
Something woke me up.
You know, when you wake up with a start, heart pounding, knowing it hadn't been a nightmare, but completely at a loss for what in your surroundings could startle you up like that.
My first thought was my stomach. Pain often woke me up. If I went to bed after two glasses of wine without making sure I flushed my system with some water, a blinding headache woke me up sometime in the middle of the night. But I hadn't had any wine. And my head and my stomach - and everything else for that matter - felt fine.
Things came to me in pieces as I lay there.
It was dark.
Pitch.
The kind of dark that hardly ever existed in the city with all the street lights, headlights, store signs.
The bed felt weird.
Hard, where I slept on something that could probably be mistaken for a mattress stuffed with feathers.
The sheets were off too.
A little scratchy and foreign.
Then I remembered.
The threats. The fear. The knife in my stomach.
Packing.
Running.
Asking for help yet again.
Being dragged off to the woods.
With Gunner.
"Gunner?" my voice called, mostly without even thinking. I should have kept quiet. What if the power wasn't just out, it was cut?
What if he found me again?
What if I just let him know where I was?
I mean, not that it would take him long in this shoebox of a cabin to locate me.
Even as I was trying to scramble out of the sheets to, I wasn't sure, hide under the bed maybe, a light appeared in the doorway.
A flashlight turned upward to illuminate Gunner's suddenly very welcome face.
"We're getting slammed with snow," he explained, getting right to the point as I stopped fighting the confines of the bedsheets. "The wind has been whipping. Must have taken down a tree on the lines somewhere. It's fucking March. Who thinks to check the forecast for a storm like this in March?" he added, shaking his head. "It's about to get a helluva lot more rustic from this point on."
"Do you think we'll be out long?"
"In this? Out here? I wouldn't hope for power for three days at least."
Three days.
"That is only a day longer than we planned to stay," I reasoned, trying not to think of all the ways having no power for an extended period of time could affect us.
No heat.
No water since I was sure this cabin had a well because there seemed to be no public anything nearby.
No fridge.
"Three days for power, duchess. We won't likely be able to leave for five. If they plow the main drag, that is. Once this stops, I will get working on the private drive. That alone is gonna take me a few days."
"I can help," I offered, feeling a bit out of my depths.
"Don't worry about it," he brushed me off. "Keep me fed; I'll get the road clear."
That seemed, well, fair.
Perhaps a bit sexist.
But if I were being honest, I preferred staying in and making the meals to going out and lifting heavy shovelfuls of snow.
"I can do that," I agreed, nodding even though he couldn't see me.
Seeming to sense the dilemma, he moved inward, placing the flashlight on the dresser facing the ceiling, letting the room light up enough so that we could see each other.
"We'll be fine here. After twelve hours or so, we're gonna want to move the food outside to keep it cold. We'll keep the fireplace going. This room will need to be closed off, so we will both need to be staying in the common area to keep warm. Stove is gas, so we can light the pilot with matches. Which we have plenty of. And some hurricane lamps and oil for nighttime. It'll be roughing it, but we'll be fine."
"I can... rough it for a while," I said, making sure there was some authority in my voice, even if I knew that I had perhaps been a bit too pampered by things like light switches that actually turned on lights and air ducts that never stopped blowing. I could learn to do without. It was all part of starting a new life, wasn't it? Stepping out of my old comfort zones.
"You're wearing silk pajamas, and you are sure you can rough it?" he asked, eyes going down over my silk tank and shorts.
"Just because I like wearing things that feel good on my skin doesn't mean I can't learn to live without some light."
"You don't match," he said oddly, ignoring my last comment.
He was right.
My shorts had little pink roses with green leaves on a champagne-colored background. My top was deep, royal purple.
"Yes, well, someone would not let me pack my own bags, so I would have matching clothes."
Again, he seemed to ignore what I said. "You sleep with your hair like that?" he asked, eyes scrunched up at my braid that wrapped around my head.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because it looks uncomfortable as fuck. Can't figure out
why you would do that to yourself."
I didn't wear my hair down often. It was just easier to keep it in some sleek updo, so I didn't have to worry about it getting messy or in the way.
"My mom used to braid my hair before bed as a little girl to keep it from getting tangled. I'm used to it, I guess." I left out the part about how she used to rip the strands out with a brush while I screamed, then whack me with the broad side because she couldn't take my whining.
"You got family?" he asked, head ducked to the side. "Didn't see anything about that in your file."
"We've... never been close," I said carefully, knowing that dysfunctional family was like a bruise that never healed, whenever you poked it, it always smarted.
"So not close that they won't realize you suddenly fell off the face of the Earth?"
"So not close that they probably already think I have." His brows drew together at that, some look in his eyes that I couldn't quite make out. "What?"
"You have secrets, duchess, don't you?" There was something odd in his tone, something a mix of curious and thoughtful, and maybe even a hint of worry.
"Everyone has secrets."
"People on the run, they can't have secrets. Not from the person who is in charge of protecting them. That paperwork Quin had you fill out wasn't for shits and giggles. We need to know everything."
"Some questions are invasive," I hedged, not wanting to go there.
"Asking for your cup size and menstrual cycle is invasive," he shot back. "Demanding you tell us about all the people you are connected to is necessary. These people who you might end up missing, and will call, and it will trace back to your new location that I am going to bust my ass to make sure no one knows about."
"I would sooner call Rodrigo Cortez to come and finish the job than call my family," I said carefully, choosing the words so that they would have the impact I needed them to without having to give the details I didn't want to.
"Bad, huh?" he asked, voice doing that soft thing again, and this time, it was making my insides do something odd, foreign. It was making them feel almost... melty? That was absurd, of course, but that was somehow what it felt like.
"Bad," I agreed, barely recognizing my own voice. There was something thick in it.
"Okay," he agreed, nodding, letting it drop. "You want to grab the sheets and pillows, and move out onto the couch, so you don't get cold?"
"But what about..." I started to object, then trailed off when he stormed - I would say walked, but this man kind of always stormed everywhere - across the room, and started stripping the bed himself.
"Grab the pillows and flashlight," he demanded, walking out into the darkness blind.
With that, I did.
To find he had set up a fire already, the light casting the whole living space in a warm, comforting glow and warmth.
"You don't have to do that," I said, watching as Gunner tucked the sheet and blanket under the cushion at the end of the couch.
"Well, your butler isn't here; figure I should step in."
"I never had a butler," I insisted as he pulled the pillows out of my hands. "If I had, wouldn't he have been in your paperwork you are so fond of?"
"Your exes weren't," he shot back.
"Because the paperwork asked for the names of any exes from the past three years."
"Yeah," he agreed, standing up, facing me, doing his arm-crossing thing that shouldn't have been sexy, but I found it so anyway. "You expect me to believe you've been single for three years?"
"Believing implies there is something to disbelieve. Since it is a fact, there isn't."
"Three years."
"Yes, three years," I agreed, not realizing I mimicked his skeptical voice and arm-cross until he chuckled at me, dropping his hands.
"Fine. But Quin meant any kind of relationships with men. Not necessarily serious only. Relationships that never went anywhere. One-night-stands. Fuck-buddies."
"The answer is the same," I said, shrugging.
"You're shitting me. You haven't been fucked in three years?"
He made it sound absurd.
In my experience, most of the women I knew like me who owned a successful business, who were married to it because it meant the world to them, they barely had time to see their friends, let alone make time for men. Hell, I'd had dinner and drinks with a whole table of women like me, and we'd - after way too many bottomless sangrias - all compared brands and types of vibrators since none of us had been laid in so long.
"I've been building a business," I told him, trying to convince myself not to be embarrassed. It was ridiculous to feel insecure that I wasn't having a ton of sex.
"Last I checked, businesses close at a certain point."
"Businesses never close when you are running them. I wake up at two in the morning to write down things to add to my to-do list."
"Christ, duchess. You're wound like a fucking clock."
"I am going to assume that you think the cure to this is me having sex."
His lips quirked up at that. "It couldn't hurt, that's for damn sure. But, actually, I was going to say that the cure is to take a step back. Which, well, is what life is forcing you to do now."
"I am going to assume that starting over means I will have to work just as hard to get on my feet. Whereas before, I just had to stay on them."
"Staying on them shouldn't be quite as hard as it was in Manhattan."
"I'm pretty sure the only place more expensive than Manhattan is San Fransisco," I agreed. It was a fact I knew because I had done a lot of research in high school about where I would finally run off to once I was free of my parents.
San Fransisco was nice, bright, sunny. But not quite the right fit for someone like me.
D.C. Was too political.
Boston was a bit rough for my taste.
And, well, anyone who wanted to claw their way up the ladder, and carve a name for themselves in the world... they went to New York City. That was simply what you did.
So, with just a couple hundred dollars of birthday money from my grandparents in my backpack, that was where I went.
And never looked back.
Because, well, the city was made for people like me. The ones who were focused on their careers, on their growth, on their connections, and their aspirations. And, to be completely honest, money.
Money was a factor for me.
Because broke was something I knew the taste and texture of for a long, long time before I got to know what wealth felt like on the tongue and fingertips.
Maybe that was shallow, to want to be well-off.
But when you went to bed hungry more nights than you did with a full stomach, then you could lecture me about how empty my dreams were for life.
My life had been about chasing the comfort of a full bank account, something that would assure me that I would never again know the feeling of a gnawing stomach with no hope in sight for fullness.
"Well, you can visit San Fransisco by a long train ride if you miss the lavish life."
"I'm going to California," I guessed.
"Carson City," Gunner corrected, almost seeming apologetic.
"Nevada."
"Yeah."
"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head. "Carson City isn't that big of a city. Wouldn't a big city be easier for me to get lost in?"
"Sometimes. But big cities also have something else in common. Big organized crime. If Cortez put feelers out, and men on the street came looking, your neighbors in a city wouldn't think twice about talking about you. A smaller, western town... they'd question why you were asking. Their knee-jerk reaction would be to try to protect you from unwanted attention."
"They won't consider me an... outsider?" I asked, stomach clenching at the idea of not fitting in.
"I wouldn't worry about that. You'd be a single woman in a new town with no family there or big job to draw you to the area. They'd likely figure you were there because you were running from some shithead boyfriend. They'd embrace yo
u. You might have to put a little effort in at first, but you'll get there."
"Does everyone?"
"Who?"
"All these people that you, what did Quin call it?"
"Ghost."
"Yes, all these people that you ghost. Do they all build good lives in their new locations?"
"Honestly, duchess, I have no fucking clue."
"You don't keep touch?"
"I don't," he agreed, but he almost sounded like he didn't want to admit that.
I would be completely on my own.
I mean, to be fair, I was alone a lot.
But I had my people.
I had my name.
All that would be gone.
I would be no one.
I tried to shake the thought, knowing that I had done this before. I could do it again. I had to do it again.
"Okay," I said when the silence hung for too long.
"You'll be fine."
"I know," I agreed.
"Come on," he said, moving away from the side of the couch. "Hop in. I have a cot to set up."
With that, I hopped in, pulling the sheets up over my body as Gunner moved off back into the bedroom, slamming around, then coming back with a folded metal cot, popping it open, then dressing it.
The head of his cot butted up to the edge of the couch where my feet were situated under the blankets. No matter how I tried, I couldn't seem to force my eyes to look away as he emptied out his pockets, tossing the contents on the table. A wallet, a cell, the keys, some kind of small multi-purpose tool. Reaching behind him, he pulled out the gun before suddenly looking over at me, lips tipped up. "Can I trust you not to shoot your - or my - foot off if I leave it here?" he asked, motioning to the coffee table.
"I wouldn't even know how to," I admitted, shrugging. "I won't touch it," I added as he put it down, then lowered himself down on the cot. The creaking sound of the springs was sharp and promised a night of uncomfortable sleep.
"We'll take turns on the couch," I offered. "I will take the cot tomorrow."
At that, his head cocked to the side. "Why?"
The Ghost (Professionals Book 2) Page 5
