“Just saying it’s an awful big cabin to occupy by your lonesome, brother. I’m telling you, it’s not all bad out here.”
“It’s really not,” I told Darryl.
“Listen, you got me out here didn’t you? Let me have my damn cabin.”
Vaughn and I shared a look. I’d been the same not long ago. Baby steps.
A wisp of smoke broke out of the wood. Vaughn leaned back and started fanning.
“Now that,” Darryl said, crouching next to him,“I wouldn’t mind learning to do.”
“Na, I can’t share this. It’s an old family secret. Probably one of the few left to be proud off.”
“Or..,” I said, “you can just look up this ‘secret’ online.”
Darryl tapped at his phone. “No reception.”
“Not now, dummy.”
The fire started cracking the wood. The winds blew the smoke away from us, but the heat felt stuffy in the warm morning. Vaughn gutted the fish and started to roast it, but I looked around the low rolling hills and could almost imagine this place hot with canon smoke and filled with confederate flags and hundreds of other grimy campfires. This had been where the rebel army had broke Sherman’s march to the sea. Now it was just rolling greens. Crazy to think how swiftly the ugliness of the past might be wiped away.
The two men talked behind me and seasoned the fish. The winds shifted and brought the salty, spicy aroma straight to my nose. I forced down the hunger gushing into my mouth and sat down by the flame.
“Is that enough?” I asked. The fish had felt big in my hands, but they looked like guppies skewered up one after another on the stick.
“Just getting y’all in that war mood,” Vaughn said. “This is a far sight better than what those soldiers had to eat, union or confederate.”
“Yeah, and they didn’t have soap or toothbrushes either,” I said. “I’ll take a pass on walking in their footsteps.”
“Gotta know the past to understand the future. Didn’t you tell me that?”
Vaughn’s eyes danced with the flame between us. He’d taken me to the place his mom had died. My family had lived not too far away at one point. The gas station woman had come hobbling out at us, but the livid look on her face washed away after seeing me. She waggled her shoulders and headed on back in, but Vaughn chased after her and asked her something. She nodded and he came back slouched. Apparently his brother was coming around more than ever. This was the only bit of news he had about his family. The two men had cut him off as clean as a guillotine.
“You two can have my cut,” Darryl said. “I’m not in a sushi mood.”
“Not with that empty cabin,” Vaughn chuckled.
Darryl flicked him off, but that set Vaughn laughing even harder. “Brother, you gotta stop serving em up easy.”
Darryl’s lips fumbled with words. I threw an arm across my brother’s back. “You could have at least asked her to come.”
“It’s way too soon,” he said. “We had one good date. I don’t want to blow it by giving her cabin fever.”
“Wouldn’t be the one blowing anything,” Vaughn said.
Both of us stared death at him now. Darryl was right. His first date with Tara had gone well, but she was a traditional sort of girl, especially with a guy like Darryl. I’d cashed in so many favors to pull that one off.
“I’m glad she ain’t around to hear this nonsense,” Darryl said. “Can’t force open a girl like that.”
I moved away from him, suddenly hot with the memory of just how easily Vaughn had forced me open. Well, different strokes for different folks.
“Aubrey would be willing to go just about anywhere with you,” I offered.
“I’ll keep it in mind in case I need a rebound.”
“Just more fish for us,” Vaughn said. He took the stick off the spit, broke it in half and handed one part to me. I brushed back the burnt scales and peeled off rich, oily chunks of meat. I didn’t know what river fish this was, but we were just about at the ocean now, so it could have come upstream. The fire crackled and I savored each juicy bite. My appetite roared after the night before, but this was a good start.
Darryl ate from a sleeve of crackers. I offered him some fish but he just shook his head.
We tossed the remains near a compost heap, then washed up and refilled by the fountains.
“Good to go?” Vaughn asked, shaking off the water he’d poured over himself. I got a bit lost in the gleaming white muscles until he snapped his fingers in my face.
“I’m ready,” I said, pulling on my floppy summer hat. “But you guys can’t walk around here toplesss. There’s kids.”
Darryl and Vaughn exchanged looks. “There’s moms,” they said, and burst out laughing.
A few minutes later we set off, them in jeans and tees, and me looking posh in my blue dress and southern belle hat. The trail went off quite a ways, but first we headed through the preserved battlefield.
The mounds I’d seen from the distance were little more than rumps of earth up close. The boys looked to be barely containing the urge to make breast rubbing motions over the contours. Some of the hills had doors and some of those were open for visitation.
Vaughn and I went into one and looked over the fake confederate model huddled by toy ammunition stores and tin cans of food. The guy’s mouth hung open as if he were hearing Union shells rain down around him.
“Would this hold under a direct cannon hit?” I asked.
Vaughn prodded the cracked mud ceiling. “No, definitely not against some of the artillery the North had by the end. They had early versions of what the Prussians used against the French in Europe.
“Wow. Learned that or knew it?”
“That’s not from classes.”
“Then you should be teaching them.”
He shrugged, still exploring every inch of the little space. He’d sat in on a couple of my classes at school. I’d offered to pay for him to take them for credit, but he said I’d done enough already. Besides, training was going to interrupt anyway.
Training. It was just ten weeks, but the air felt colder thinking about how this was my last full day with him for that long.
“Why’d you think this guy held out?” I asked, eyeing the shell-shocked mannequin dozing on the straw pile. “Why wouldn’t he just run?”
Vaughn glanced back at me. “You asking me if he was a true believer?”
“I guess.”
He gave the guy a pitying shake of the head, all the much sadder given how much he looked like could be the guy’s brother. “He might be. Or he might just be stuck with people who won’t let him live without the cause. He might be too scared to run. Too scared to do anything until it’s too late and he’s canon fodder.”
I’d meant to change the topic, but fresh panic seized me. I threw my arms around Vaughn’s waist. “Promise me you’ll run,” I said. “Promise me you won’t get lost in a cause that ain’t good.”
Vaughn’s broad chest rumbled with laughter. “Jesus, Darlin. I’m joining the National Guard not the damn Navy Seals. A few laps, a few shots at a wooden board and I’ll be right back here with you. They’ve got no wars to send me to.”
I felt silly and safe at the same time. Sure, there was no war now, but there could be. That would hang over our heads, but Vaughn had insisted he serve. He wanted to be a real soldier after living under the shame of the fake name for so long. I couldn’t stop him.
“Besides,” he said. “You might recall I was all up in a lost cause until recently.”
He held me away and smiled that crooked smile down at me.
“At least it wasn’t likely to get you killed,” I said.
“No, but I would have wasted my life, and that’s even worse. Don’t worry, if they ever need to send me out, I’ll be fine. If I’m in danger, I’ll do the same thing I did before.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll remember your face and find my way back to it.”
I ran a hand along that high chee
k off his. He nuzzled into it with a kiss, then bent down into me and delivered a searing one to my lips. It burned away all my fears even in this dank, dark cave.
Vaughn’s arm slid around me, and he turned me towards the entrance. “I’m done here,” he said. “You?”
Darryl waited outside for us. The blooming forest trails and the bright blue sky waited. So did the rest of our lives together, more vast and full of possibilities than the past that had brought us here.
I grinned up at him. “Let’s go.”
Thanks for Reading!
I hope you enjoyed this series. If you’d like to get a quick reminder when my next book comes out, sign up for my newsletter. You’ll get updates on releases and sales once a month or so.
If you want to get in touch directly, you can reach me via e-mail:
[email protected]
Or use Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/PaigeNotaroAuthor
Love you all,
Paige
Other Books:
If you are itching for more while you wait for the next book, check out some other great reads from myself and from my friends.
******
Black and White (Storm’s Soldiers MC)
MEAGAN:
I knew that boy was trouble the moment I laid eyes on him: shaved head, leather jacket, tattoos leaking out onto his neck like warpaint.
I've just now left behind the storms of my past, and he is no fluffy white cloud to land on.
But one wicked smile from him, and I'm shivering, longing for something I should never want
Maybe just one night. Yeah, one rough night to shake me free.
That's all this was supposed to be...
VAUGHN:
The girl had my attention from the moment her dark eyes found mine. She shouldn't have been my type, not by a long shot. But opportunity presented itself, and I gave in to weakness.
Only one woman ever had my heart and she was ripped from this world not long after giving birth to me. This girl though, she won't leave my goddamn mind. I can't keep myself away from her lush embrace.
This goes on, the truth will find us - burn me to the ground. Cause my family and I run with the Storm's Soldiers - the roughest bunch of white separatists south of the Mason-Dixon.
And this girl's a lot of things, but she sure ain't white...
******
Uncaged
GEORGIA:
I just wanted to escape my past. Instead, I was kidnapped and sold to a monster in Mexico. The creep wants me to give myself to him willingly, and his methods are working. But then, he takes me to an underground arena and I see a man who knows what it means to fight back.
They call him deadly, but to me, he looks like life.
Those muscles could set me free in more ways than I dare dream.
If only I could reach him.
ANDRE:
In this town, I reign supreme. Even Cartel kingpins fear my strength. They drown me in riches to see it on display.
I know the truth. I'm nothing more than a mutt rolling around for treats, chained here by the weight of my past.
Then I met her - the broken pixie who saw me as a man to trust.
I thought freeing her would mean my redemption.
She might just turn out to be my salvation.
******
Break Me Open (Desert Wraiths MC)
When Katie Phillips is caught witnessing a motorcycle club shooting, she doesn't expect to be protected by the gunman himself. He's got a powerful body and otherworldly blue eyes, but he's not just a bad boy. He's plain bad.
So why does she feel so safe in his arms?
Ghost will do anything for his biker club. They're the only family he's got after being kicked out of army special ops. But seeing Katie stirs something deep inside. Being with her gives him the purpose he's been lacking in his life of sin.
To keep her safe, though, he'll have to protect her from his own club.
With a rival MC declaring all out war and the damn FBI rolling into town to sort out the mess, it's not exactly the best time for romance. But trouble only seems to bring them closer. Which means making a choice: ride away from the town they know and love or bring Katie deeper into Ghost's outlaw world to protect each other.
Clear (Storm's Soldiers MC Book 3) Page 6
