by Gayle Keo
She brought her boxes of food into the grubby kitchen which also boasted a wood stove and was glad that she’d packed several bars of chocolate and crackers because she had no idea how to start a fire. City girls used switches and everything was instant. Sure, her gran had cooked on a wood stove but Karen had never taken any notice. She was going to starve, which might help her shift the pounds she’d added after falling into a pit of misery when Brad had disappeared, taking her life along with him.
When she dumped her suitcase on the bed in the larger of the two bedrooms, a cloud of dust bounced off the bed and made her sneeze three times. She checked the smaller bedroom and found it in a worse state than the first. That was when the tears began to flow like a river to the sea. She flopped onto the battered sofa and cried until the light outside became dangerously low.
“Pull yourself together, woman,” she said out loud wondering if it was okay to talk to yourself if no one else knew. “Make a plan.”
She figured lighting would have to be the first priority and then heating. The place was cold and it was getting icier the lower the sun dipped. There was a handful of logs by the stove but she might need more and she did not want to go outside when it got dark. It took her just a few minutes of fumbling until she had safely lit the oil lamp. She felt pretty pleased with herself but when she looked out of the window she saw no sign of the sun and everything was steeped in shadow.
When she’d managed to light a few lamps she stepped out of the back door and into a dark shadowy dusk that reminded her of almost every horror movie that she’d seen. When she heard the distant howl from what sounded suspiciously like a wolf she froze. She knew that wolves were a slight possibility but it hadn’t actually crossed her mind that she could be getting close to their territory. She did not want to live with wolves; hell, she wasn’t even good with dogs and they had thousands of years of domesticity behind them.
She could see the wood shed and the lamp she carried cast a glow towards it but it didn’t brighten the void within. No, it just made it look like a hungry mouth ready and waiting to eat her whole. Karen was really beginning to regret her choices, all of them. The still air was misting in front of her as she breathed and she knew it would only get colder but taking those first steps towards the wood shed was going to take a while.
Eventually, she managed to fill a large bucket with wood and found that, apart from the spooky cobwebs, the shed was actually pretty harmless. Of course, there were tools that could be seen in any good horror movie but she was pretty sure that the axe blade had been used to chop the wood she was now carrying back to the house. Her arms were full, and the lamp was swinging causing shadows to elongate and then shrink rapidly. She tried to ignore the dark space at her back as she hurried to the back door. She wasn’t halfway across the yard when she heard something behind her and froze.
*****
Karen kept running, even when the whoosh of air almost knocked her flying. She didn’t drop her load, she just crashed into the house and locked the door. The wood had spilled from the bucket and the lamp had gone out, leaving the room in near-darkness. She peered out of the glass in the door and struggled to see anything; she heard a scuffle, and she knew something big was moving around outside.
Sitting in the dark on the kitchen floor because she was too scared to move, she went through all the possibilities: raccoon, mountain lion, wolf, bear, yeti, serial killer. None of them put her mind at ease and she quickly scrambled to the front door to check that it was locked. She moved from window to window checking the darkness for signs of movement and then pulling the curtains closed. The night was still and quiet.
The temperature had dropped and she hadn’t even taken off her coat since her arrival. She needed to make a fire, and she really wanted the comfort it would bring her. She remembered how warm and toasty she would feel at her gran’s house with the flames flickering in the fire box. Human beings had once depended on flames and she might be a modern woman but she was more than capable of starting the fire.
When she opened the stove, she screamed because the biggest, hairiest spider swung out on his sooty web and flashed before her face, along with her life, because this had to be a life or death situation. She flapped, and ran, and screamed.
She barely noticed when the door crashed in and a large man stepped in front of her. She continued to hit her ample chest, brushing off spider web and any other disgusting debris that went along with the foul insects. She didn’t stop until he gripped both of her arms and held her still. When she stopped fighting him and looked up, she saw a broad muscled chest about four inches from her nose. The pale chest went on for miles, or at least that’s what it looked like from her angle.
“What in the hell is wrong with you?” the owner of the chest asked, none too kindly.
“Spider,” she replied, breathy and trembling. “It was in the stove.” She tried to point, but she was still locked in position by his thickly muscled arms.
“You shrieked like that for a spider?” he asked, grimacing with his handsome but angry face.
“It was really big,” she said.
He let her arms go, and she nearly fell over flat on her butt. Her legs were still wobbling from the shock and as she stepped back from the naked chest, she realized that her rescuer, if that was really what he was, had no shoes on. The crazy man was half-naked in the freezing winter evening. At that point, she remembered that she was alone and vulnerable in a cabin in the middle of a huge great forest with a half-naked white man, who was pretty but crazy and she had no idea where her phone was or if she would get any signal to call for help. Scrap that, by the time the services could get to her she’d be dead, or half eaten by cannibals, or worse.
“Are you Karen?” the man asked scratching his shiny chestnut hair which looked like it was decorated with twigs.
“Yes,” she replied, flopping onto the sofa.
“I’m Lewis, the caretaker,” he replied and then he turned around and began making a fire in the stove.
“Why are you out in the cold with no shoes or shirt?” she asked watching his muscles ripple across the vast expanse of his back as he worked.
“My cabin isn’t far from here; I heard you scream,” he replied.
“Oh, thanks for coming to rescue me,” she said, feeling stupid.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I came to find out what the hell was going on; I thought some kids had broken into the property. I didn’t think I’d be rescuing a grown woman from a tiny insect.”
“It was not tiny,” she spat.
“It was also dead,” he sniggered.
Great, she was stuck in the middle of the forest for the next few months with a neighbor who walked around barefoot and sexy but who unfortunately already hated her. It didn’t matter, she needed her space. She didn’t think she’d ever trust anyone ever again, thanks to Brad, but staring at Lewis’s bare chest was reminding her that she was still weak-willed and horny. In her defense, she rationalized, he was really hot.
“I’ll get the stove in the kitchen going; all you have to do is feed it wood when it gets low, but not too much,” he said and disappeared into the kitchen where she’d left the logs where they’d fallen. “You might want to clean up the kitchen before you eat anything.”
“I was planning on doing that, thanks,” she replied unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
When he came out a few minutes later, still barefoot and sexy, she watched as he walked to the busted front door to inspect the lock. He was built like a man should be: large, muscular, with a fine spray of hair on his chest and stomach that looked silky and welcoming. He laughed; it was a small bitter noise. He had caught her eying him up.
“Just bolt the door tonight. I’ll be back in the morning to fix it,” he said and then he was gone.
“Damn,” she huffed. “Stupid, crazy fool walking around half naked and expecting a girl not to look.”
She was talking to herself again and it was weird. The cabin was turnin
g out to be a big, fat mistake, and it was making her just as crazy as her new neighbor. She stood up and ran the bolt home and then began to boil water for cleaning. She had a lot to do before she could think about sleeping in the dusty bed. She was just glad she’d bought her own duvet.
*****
Karen kept cleaning until the early hours of the morning. She missed her vacuum cleaner because cleaning without electricity wasn’t quite the same but she managed to get the bedroom clean enough to sleep in, even if the mattress did scare her. She had seen that bed bugs were on the rise and couldn’t imagine a better home for them but she tried to put that far from her mind. It helped that she kept getting flashbacks of Lewis’s naked chest. Of course, that didn’t help her when it was time for her to sleep. That mental image was denying her downtime.
She woke to a loud banging on her door and although it gave her a start she was pretty sure she knew whose fist it was. Sure enough, Lewis stood on the doorstep looking like he wanted to be anywhere but in front of her sleepy-eyed face.
She opened the door and let him in and then went straight to the newly cleaned kitchen to make coffee. She quickly remembered that water had to be boiled on the stove and was surprised to find the stove was still pretty damn hot. She would have to remember not to put her hand on it to test it in future.
“I’m making coffee, want some?” she called but got no response.
He was rooting around in the back of his truck for something and she just watched as he leaned over to reach for it. He was wearing a lumberjack style shirt and jeans that were tight over his nicely rounded behind. She wasn’t quick enough to turn when he spun around and he did that weird snigger thing again. She didn’t want him to think she was interested; she wasn’t but when eye-candy is in your face it would be rude not to look.
Somehow, she had already figured that he wouldn’t like her no matter what she did and she should just ignore him. He lived alone in the middle of nowhere for good reason; he was grumpy and definitely not a people person. She did not need hot man-candy with an attitude further messing up her already messed up life. She was supposed to be getting herself together, not drooling like a teenager over a towering beast of a man. She held the sigh that wanted to escape her lips inside firmly when he bent down, giving her a sweet view. She knew he was doing it on purpose, too.
“Coffee?” she asked forcing herself to move.
“Okay, have you made the list of jobs for me yet?”
“Really? I arrived yesterday just before the sun went down, and you saw what happened after,” she huffed and made the coffee.
“While I’m here, I could do some jobs, rather than keep coming back,” he said.
“The porch swing is broken,” she hollered back at him.
“You need to stay inside when it gets dark; the wolves are not friendly here and, yes, they do attack people,” Lewis said as she handed him a cup of coffee.
“I thought I heard some last night,” she said, shivering. Even though the sun was streaming across the porch there wasn’t much heat to it.
“Stay inside. Get plenty of wood in during the day and lock your doors,” he said.
“My uncle said there’s electricity but it’s off,” she said.
“I’ll have it fixed by the end of the week,” he replied and then immersed himself in the work.
She did as he said. She stacked plenty of wood beside the two stoves and he taught her how to make a fire. She didn’t know if she would remember how to make a fire in the future but he had certainly started a fire inside of her while he was sitting so close. She felt like a bitch in heat and what was worse was that he smelled like something she wanted to bury herself in. A mixture of pine fresh and musky male; that scent was pouring from him and making her head swim. If he had shown any real interest in her she didn’t think she could turn him away. She needed a cold shower which was handy because without the electricity that was all she was getting.
“I’m off home now but I mean it; do not go out after dark,” Lewis said, staring her down with his big brown eyes.
“Okay, I won’t,” she said feeling a little creeped out by his insistence, not that she was going to risk it; animals were dangerous.
She watched him leave and wondered exactly how far away he lived. She wanted to get out and get some fresh air but what he’d said had made her even more wary than her inbuilt city-girl nature.
She thought a walk wouldn’t hurt and she would go in the direction that he’d pointed to when describing himself as a neighbor. She grabbed her phone, even though there wasn’t a signal, as well as a packet of chocolate cookies.
She found a path leading into the woods and followed it. As long as she stuck to the path and didn’t walk for too long she would be fine. She wasn’t worried about animals during the day because she was pretty sure most of the dangerous ones were nocturnal. The sun was shining, albeit without any heat, and the trees were not too thick around the path. She munched the cookies as she walked because she hadn’t bothered to have breakfast thanks to Lewis’s early wake-up call.
The minute she had a signal on her cell phone she would text her uncle and tell him just what she thought of his caretaker. On second thought, maybe not everything; some of the things that were running through her mind were too naughty to even think about but she was doing it anyway. Suddenly she realized she wasn’t on the path anymore. She knew something had gone wrong but she wasn’t sure what it was, not until she fell down a hole.
*****
Lewis was making a sandwich when he heard the shriek. It made his teeth wince. It was her; the beautiful but ditzy woman with the mahogany skin and lips like cherries. He dropped the knife he was holding and sprinted for the door. She didn’t sound too far away and, for the life of him, he couldn’t understand what she would be doing wandering through the woods. Didn’t he already tell her that it was dangerous?
He resisted the urge to shift, opting not to scare her further by arriving in the form of a big brown bear. Bears weren’t the prettiest of shifters but they were definitely the biggest. His bear form was particularly big and, apparently, really scary. He’d frightened many a tourist and chased poachers clean out of the county. He didn’t want to scare the woman, Karen, he just wished she had arrived at a different time, say never.
He found her in one of the traps he’d set around his property. She was sitting at the bottom of a ditch, covered in mud and slime and she wasn’t happy. She was rubbing her ankle and when she saw his shadow block the light; she looked up. Her almond-shaped eyes pulled at his heart and he felt a physical pain inside his chest. Her misery was touching his soul like no one else had before.
He jumped down and lifted her out of the ditch, laying her on the ground before hoisting himself back up. She was silent and he hadn’t expected that. She had a smart mouth and he expected to hear some expletives; when none came, he began to really worry about her. Maybe she’d hit her head or was in so much pain that she couldn’t think straight?
“Let’s get you warm and dry,” he said scooping her close.
She whimpered but didn’t reply and he began the short trek to his cabin. He took her straight upstairs, and she didn’t say anything; she was still and quiet in his arms. He was starting to notice just how curvy her body was and that was distracting him; he nearly took her into the bedroom when he was aiming for the bathroom.
“I’m going to put you down and check you over, I think we need to lose some of these muddy clothes but I can find you something dry once you’ve showered,” he said, putting her down on the lid of the toilet.
Lewis removed her coat and one of her shoes but when he tried to remove the other one she gasped and he could see the ankle beginning to swell. He motioned for her to stay, not that he thought she’d make it out of the room, and ran down to get some ice. When he wrapped the ice around her ankle she hissed through her teeth.
“What made you wander around the forest like that?” he asked.
“I just needed so
me fresh air,” she replied through gritted teeth.
“What’s wrong with sitting on the porch swing that I fixed? I told you the forest was dangerous,” he said.
“You didn’t tell me there were covered gigantic holes in the ground designed to hurt people,” she replied and he was relieved to hear that the smart mouth was back.
“They are not for catching people, well maybe just poachers,” he said and couldn’t help but smile a little.
She glared at him. He wasn’t used to smiling at people. Mostly, the people that he met were poachers or shifter hunters or just idiots. He didn’t like people much, on the whole. The woman sitting in his bathroom was an exception and his smile was so unpracticed that it seemed to be angering her. He wasn’t about to try it again; she’d just have to put up with his regular glower.
He ran the bath for her adding a scented bath oil that had appeared in his bathroom sometime over Christmas, probably something to do with his sister who couldn’t handle her bear’s natural musky scent. When he tried to help Karen out of her clothes she raised her hands out in front of her and it was a clear sign that he was not about to see her naked ass. As a shifter, he regularly forgot about humans and their obsession with covering their bodies. He stepped back and shut the door.
“Damn it, Lewis, I need help,” she called out after a few minutes, along with some decent expletives.
“Let me help you,” he said and this time he didn’t even try to wipe the smile off his face.
“Just help with my jeans, but be careful of my ankle,” she moaned.
He was careful to avoid hurting her but he couldn’t help but let his fingers linger on her skin. First her hip, then her thigh, and finally her calf. She had the finest legs he’d ever seen. They were smooth, soft, and sexy as hell. He tried to avoid checking out the little white panties she wore but he failed and that was a mistake. He was a large man, in every way, and suddenly had a very noticeable erection pressing firmly against his jeans. When he stood up that area was eye level with little Miss Smart Mouth.
