The other morning, he’d come into the room, fresh from whatever workout he’d been punishing himself with, a red bandana tied around his head. Just thinking about the way he looked made my mouth run dry.
“I felt bad for the chair you were about to mow down.”
I snapped back into the present. Right. I was talking to someone. Or rather, he thought I was paying attention to him, according to the way his mahogany eyes filled with humor.
I remembered the chair and how he stopped me from making a fool of myself and lightly laughed. “Well, I’m sure it’s very grateful.”
I realized he was still holding on to my arm and glanced down. He noticed too and released me. There was a glass of beer in his hand, and he reached out with his free one. “Beau.”
I slipped my hand into his. “Sabrina.”
“Haven’t seen you around here before, Sabrina,” he said. “You here on holiday?”
“Something like that,” I replied vaguely, glancing at the bar.
The bartender caught me looking and started toward us.
“Hey,” Beau said, lightly touching my elbow and making glance back. “Why don’t you let me get you a drink and you come sit with us?”
“Us?” I asked.
He gestured with his chin to a large table toward the back that was filled with a bunch of other guys and a few women between them.
One of them looked a little familiar, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. The second that thought filtered through my mind, my heart began pounding tenfold. Why did I recognize him if he was a stranger? All these people were strangers… Any one of them could be after me.
Maybe that semi-familiar face was one I’d seen in my apartment that night. Maybe he hadn’t died.
Beau shifted, reminding me that he was waiting for a reply. I swallowed down the panic trying to take over and forced a smile. “Oh, that’s sweet, but I actually have plans.”
Beau smiled. “Just one drink? You know, as a thank-you for saving you from the barstool,” he goaded.
The bartender behind the counter stepped close. “What can I get for you?”
Just over his shoulder was a large sign that read “Have ID Ready.” Shit. So much for me having a drink or two. Not that it mattered this second anyway. All I wanted this moment was to get away.
“Just put what the lady wants on my tab,” Beau told the bartender, a note of familiarity in his voice. “She’s going to join me in the back.”
“The hell she is!” Alex declared from behind.
I jumped and spun, startled. The second I saw him glowering close by with both feet planted on the floor as if he were preparing for a throwdown, the crippling anxiety abated. My heart rate actually slowed, making it easier to breathe. Alex might have pissed me off more than anyone on the face of this earth, but I knew I was safe with him.
Not that I’d ever tell him that.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” I started.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Beau?” Alex confronted him, ignoring me.
From across the room, I saw some movement and glanced over to see Liam weaving through the tables with a grim expression on his face.
Beau’s eyes widened. I noticed none of his friends were rushing over the way Liam was. “I didn’t realize she was here with someone… with you.”
“You know each other?” I asked, bouncing my gaze between the men.
Beau nodded. “I’m a ski instructor here. I work with Alex.”
Ohh. I glanced over my shoulder at the group of men he’d invited me to join. That’s where I’d seen the other guy. He’d said hi to Alex as he was showing me around earlier.
Well, thank God he wasn’t someone sent here to bring me to my doom! I let out a long, relieved sigh. It was so audible Alex glanced at me and frowned.
I waved away the look, glancing back to Beau’s table where all of them were watching the unfolding scene nervously. I guess that made it clear who the top dogs were around here.
Liam arrived, shouldering himself into the conversation. “Guys.”
The silence in the room grew thicker. Everyone in the place stopped to stare at Alex and Liam. It seemed everyone was holding their breath to see what would happen.
“I almost tripped over a chair. Beau stopped me,” I said stupidly, feeling as though I were about to start babbling.
“Sounded to me like he was trying to get you drunk,” Alex intoned, not taking his eyes off Beau.
“No.” His eyes widened. “No way. I would never… I just… I didn’t know she was with you.”
“Now you know.” Three small, seemingly ineffective words that suddenly had the power to frost over the entire restaurant.
“Alex,” I said, embarrassment heating my cheeks. “Stop it.”
Beau cleared his throat and glanced at me, then quickly away. “It was nice meeting you.”
“Thanks for the save,” I said.
Alex practically growled.
Liam’s lips twitched. Was he laughing?
I glanced around toward our table where Bellamy was sitting. She caught my look and rolled her eyes. Well, if she didn’t think this was a big deal, then neither should I. Right?
Beau retreated to his table, and the entire place started up again. Only a few people were left watching us with curious eyes.
“You boys causing trouble?” said an older woman with a no-nonsense attitude and clearly no fear at all, coming right up to the three of us.
Liam and Alex both relaxed. “No, ma’am,” they replied in tandem.
My mouth fell open.
“That’s good. I wouldn’t want to have to kick yous out.”
“Aww, you’d never do that to us, Sharon.” Liam charmed.
She chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, yes, I would. I don’t care if you own this place or not. This is my kitchen.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Liam replied like he was good and scolded.
Sharon turned to me, giving me a once-over, then smiling. “Who’s this?”
Alex cleared his throat. “Sabrina. She’s staying with me for a while.”
A look of surprise filtered through her eyes. She leaned forward and whispered, “I got to warn you, honey. This one sleeps with a gun.” She gestured at Alex with a thumb.
I felt my eyes widen. Not because he slept with a gun. I already knew that. My brother slept with one, too. What surprised me was that this woman knew.
Alex groaned. “You answer the door one time with a gun…”
“You do it all the time,” Liam and Sharon both said, amused.
Sharon didn’t wait for Alex to introduce her. Instead, she stuck her hand out to me and did it herself. “I’m Sharon. I’ve been working around here since these two were in diapers. I know firsthand their shit stinks just like everyone else’s.”
I laughed while we shook hands. “Sabrina, and I’m glad someone else knows their real odor.”
Sharon winked at me. “Pizzas for the table?”
Liam nodded.
Alex glanced at me. “You cool with pizza?”
“Definitely.” I nodded.
“Coming right up,” Sharon declared. “Now you boys go sit down and stop scaring all my customers.”
“Then tell your customers to stop hitting on my girl,” Alex muttered.
I gasped and looked up quickly. My girl. Must have been a slip of the tongue. Him taking his responsibility to my brother too far.
Sharon patted me on the shoulder. “Go sit with Bellamy, honey. She’ll show you how to handle them.”
I watched Sharon walk away, stunned by the entire exchange.
“You cool?” Liam asked Alex.
“Yeah. I’m straight.”
“Hey, Brina, how you doing?” Liam asked, once again catching me unprepared. I turned to answer as he swept in and kissed my cheek, giving me a one-armed hug.
“I’m good.” I confirmed, surprised.
He chuckled and headed for the table. I stared after him. “Di
d he just call me Brina and kiss me on the cheek?”
“You’re family.” Alex was flippant, as if it should be obvious.
“No, I’m not,” I refuted.
“You are. And now everyone in this place knows you’re connected to me and Liam.”
I sighed, feeling the stare of too many eyes. “You’re just as bad as my brother.”
“You’d do well to remember that.” Alex warned, his eyes flashing as he glanced back to where Beau was sitting.
I don’t know what I was thinking, how I actually allowed what I said next out of my mouth. Alex put his palm on my lower back and began leading me to our table, and the words just freaking tumbled right out. “I love my brother anyway.”
Alex’s entire hand spasmed against my back. I felt his fingertips curl into the fabric of my sweater, then let go. I felt his eyes. They almost burned a hole in the side of my face, but I refused to look up. I refused to even acknowledge what I’d just said.
Instead, I hot-footed it toward the table and slid into a seat right beside Bellamy, sending a plea into the universe that Alex wouldn’t read too much into what I blurted but knowing damn well he would.
Alex
I spent the next week turning my A-frame cabin into a fortress as security parts and pieces arrived nearly every day. The more secure this place became, the tenser I grew.
When I came home from the army, I’d been a different guy than the one who left. My goofy, lackadaisical attitude was buried under death, bloodshed, and the reality of what this world was really like.
It took a long fucking time to re-shift everything inside me, to pull the more relaxed version of myself to the surface and stuff the shuttered, world-weary me below it. Eventually, I settled on both of those parts residing almost beside each other, never being able to fully bury all the shit I’d done and seen. Instead, I developed the skill of keeping that bit of me hidden unless I was willing to allow someone to glimpse it.
Ever since Mercer called, the tentative balance inside me was tumultuous. Turning what had become a sanctuary in the mountains, a place where the outside world didn’t really have to intrude, into a place that could withstand the kind of people I used to kill… Let’s just say it was encouraging the icy me to push down the parts I’d had to work really hard not to lose.
When I slept, visions of my past haunted me. Screams and gunfire filled my dreams. Sometimes Sabrina was at the center of the grim war dreams. Instead of a faceless, unknown woman, it would be Brina being tortured and abused.
As a result, this place was jacked with more security than it needed. The honest truth was I didn’t need much in the way of protection because my hands were the deadliest thing in this house.
However, with Liam holding down the fort at work, I was stuck in this place with Sabrina day and night. I had to keep my hands busy. If I didn’t, I was going to do something I shouldn’t. Something I wanted to do really, really fucking bad.
Sexual tension and impending-danger tension did not mix well.
I stood at the large triangular window and watched as the van drove slowly away. I waited until it was long gone and then went to do a perimeter check around the property to verify nothing was amiss.
It wasn’t, and I knew it would be that way, but I checked anyway. Those contractors were in my sight the entire time they’d been here, but I wasn’t about to let some stupid rookie move be my downfall.
The muscles between my shoulder blades bunched a little when I went down the hall and opened the bedroom door. Sabrina glanced up from the center of my bed, a scowl written across her expressive and annoyingly beautiful face. It aggravated the shit out of her that I never knocked.
Too bad.
“You can come out now,” I told her, smirking.
She tossed the fashion magazine on the mattress with a huff. “I’m glad this is so amusing for you.”
I watched with shuttered eyes as she slid down over the side of my bed and stood. She was wearing those damn jeans again with a long-sleeved black T-shirt she’d tied into a knot at her hip.
When she moved past, she made sure not to brush against me, which pissed me off. I hadn’t touched her since the night at The Tavern. Since then, we’d just danced around each other. I’d feel her eyes when I wasn’t looking, and I knew she felt mine when she wasn’t.
I was starting to go stir crazy.
I followed her out into the main room, seeing her standing at the window, staring.
“What’s wrong?”
“It looks exactly the same,” she remarked, pointing.
“You thought it would look different?”
She shrugged. “For all the noise those men made putting it in, I guess I expected something else.”
I smiled. “You mean like a giant sign across the center declaring it’s bulletproof?”
She made a rude sound. “Don’t you think that’s going a little too far?”
I echoed her impolite noise. “Considering that just last year, Bellamy was attacked in her own home by a man who shot through the window because there was no other way to get inside? No.”
She gasped and spun, her eyes wide. “Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I had no idea! How scary!”
“That’s not even the half of it.”
Her eyes widened even more, seeming to take over half her face. They looked more gold today, matching some of the foliage outside on the mountains. “What happened?”
“Uh-uh,” I said, moving into the kitchen. “You don’t need to hear about all that. You’re already scared enough without me adding more freakish scenarios to your head.”
“I’m not scared!” she declared, storming into the kitchen behind me.
I looked up from the interior of the fridge. I wasn’t even hungry, and it was too early for beer. “So the other night at The Tavern, when Beau was talking to you, you weren’t having a mini panic attack about being in a room full of potential killers?”
Her breath caught. “How’d you know that?”
“I read you very well.”
“Do not!”
Slamming the fridge door, I stalked toward her, my booted feet not making a sound. I watched her visibly swallow and tuck her hair behind her ears. She didn’t back down, not at all, just stood there and watched me with that twenty-four-karat gaze.
We’d been avoiding each other like the plague, but in that moment, I didn’t give a shit. The strain between us was getting on my nerves, and I wanted to feel something more. Curling my hand around her hip made her body jolt, making a predatory roar fill my head.
I watched her reaction as I forced her backward, keeping my palm anchored on her, feeling the sizzle of the touch. When her back came up against the kitchen counter, I planted my hands on either side of her and leaned in. We didn’t touch, but we were so close our energy did.
“So right now you aren’t anticipating my kiss? You aren’t standing there telling yourself you don’t want it when we both know you want it so damn bad.”
“I could ask the same thing of you.”
I smiled. I liked that she didn’t deny it. And that she didn’t try to run away from me either. It was satisfying to know that being in this house, which I’d never thought of as small until recently, with me was affecting her just as much.
I leaned closer, so close if I moved another inch, our lips would brush together. Her breathing stopped, and her stare dropped to my mouth.
“How about we get out of here for a while?”
Her eyes lifted. Confusion clouded them. “Wh-what?”
I pulled back and smiled. Yeah, okay, it was probably an arrogant grin. “Let’s get out of here.” Reaching between us, I offered my hand.
Sabrina looked between me and my hand, then smacked it away before bolting around me.
I laughed.
She went toward the door where her tall brown boots sat and jammed her feet inside. Next, she picked up a plaid yellow, orange, red, and black scarf to
drape around her neck. I still didn’t understand how that ended up being in a stack of “basics” she bought for while she was here.
I had to admit, though, she looked damned fine wearing it.
“Well?” she demanded gesturing toward the door.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you wanna know where we’re going?”
She snorted. “Like I care. Anywhere but here and with people other than you sounds pretty amazing right about now.”
I chuckled and picked up my keys.
“Can I drive?” she asked.
“If I say no, will you just go hotwire it?”
She shrugged as if she were actually considering it.
“Fine, but if you wreck it, I’m going to paddle your ass.”
“Promises, promises,” she sang.
I blanched, and white-hot need slammed through me.
Sabrina sauntered over, plucking the keys right from my palm. “What’s the matter, Alex? Cat got your tongue?”
My eyes narrowed.
It was her turn to laugh knowingly. “I can play the same games you can,” she quipped before stepping out of the house.
Damn.
Sabrina
The wintry mountain town of Caribou, Colorado, was charming and something I’d only seen before in places like Pinterest and cute holiday movies that played on TV.
The streets were narrow but lit up, and I could only imagine how majestic it would be when it snowed, because even in the fall, it was stunning. The main street was packed with shops lining the sidewalks. There were small trees every few feet with string lights in them that made me want to stay here until it was past dark and I could see them twinkle.
Dry, curled leaves and other more colorful fresh ones littered the concrete and scattered across the road where cars drove slowly, drivers seeming to wave at everyone they passed.
The air here smelled alive, like earth and sun and damp leaves. The bite in the breeze caressed my cheeks, making them sting just a bit, and the tip of my nose was cold. A few shops had large baskets of orange pumpkins sitting outside, and almost every store window was draped in foliage and set up with scarecrows or some other festive decoration.
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