by Lexi Blake
Bill looked to Pam, who shrugged as though to say, Live and let live.
Nell felt herself flush. Her mom lived in her own world. It was seemingly harmless. When she was younger she’d loved the stories her mother had told her, but as she grew she realized how much her mom’s disconnect could cost them.
“Well, Moira, then we need to look into this.” Bill gave Moira a smile. “Don’t worry about a thing. Perhaps for the time being you would feel more comfortable here in the community. We’re gated and have lots of security. You and your daughter are more than welcome.”
Her mother breathed an enormous sigh of relief. “Thank you, Bill. You are such a gentleman. I would feel safer staying here.”
Yes, her mother’s differences had cost them much, but not in Bliss. Tears sprang to Nell’s eyes. She loved it here. No one tried to throw her mom in a home. They let her work and sell her gorgeous pottery in the galleries in town. They let her be part of the community.
Nell blessed the day her mother had met Pamela Sheppard in radiation therapy. Pam had convinced Moira to come home to Bliss with her. Pam had gone into remission. Her mother had not. Nell took a long breath. Nothing was more important than her mom. “Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it. Mom has been worried. Whoever broke in didn’t actually take anything. They just destroyed a bunch of furniture.”
Furniture she would find hard to replace. Her mom had used every last bit of their money to buy their cabin by the river. Nell thought seriously about finding a job. Her writing career was going to have to get put on hold. It wouldn’t be hard. Idealistic, environmentally sound romances did not seem to be selling right now.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a bear, hon?” Pam asked. “Sometimes they get in, and they can make a real mess.”
“It wasn’t a bear. It was Torin, I tell you. He’s found me.” Moira shook her head as though she’d known it would happen all along.
Torin was apparently their tormentor. Yes, she’d heard many stories about the evil faery. “I don’t think it was a bear.”
“It wasn’t a bear, Mom,” Callie agreed. “Bears don’t spell as well as this person.”
Callie was right. Everything on the message the man had left behind had been properly spelled, if slightly vulgar. Bears rarely left behind personal messages. It was one of the things she liked about them. “He wrote a message on the wall.”
“What did he write?” Bill asked, his brow furrowing in consternation.
Nell frowned. She hated this part because she was pretty sure that message hadn’t been left for her mom. “Die, bitch. That’s what he wrote.”
“Did he?” Henry’s voice was ice cold.
Nell had to turn around to answer. “Well, yes. Why would I lie about that? It’s not exactly something I want to talk about around town.”
“Why are you here and not at the sheriff’s office?” Henry leaned negligently against the wall, but there was nothing casual about the look on his face. “This sounds like a criminal act. You should involve the authorities.”
“Sheriff Bryant was fishing,” Nell explained. “And his deputy was on a call.”
“Rye is working a traffic accident,” Callie said. “He’s the deputy. I would really rather Rye look into it than the sheriff. Sheriff Bryant is real close to retirement, and he doesn’t expend a whole lot of energy, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t,” Henry replied. “If the sheriff isn’t doing his job, he should be replaced by someone who will.”
“That’s a very narrow-minded view.” Nell was a little surprised at his judgmental attitude. Maybe he wasn’t the man of her dreams. The man of her dreams would be a bit more tolerant.
“On what planet, sweetheart?” Henry shot back.
“Uhm, Henry, you’ll find things work a bit differently here than the rest of the world,” Bill explained. “The sheriff was voted in, and he can’t be voted out until the end of next year. I’ll put it to you in a way you should be able to understand. Think of it as Sheriff Bryant having tenure. He can’t be let go because he takes the odd day off to go fishing. We take fishing damn seriously here in Bliss.”
She chose to ignore Henry’s glare at that statement. She’d allowed her hormones to rule her very excellent brain. He was obviously like other outsiders. He was judging them, and she wouldn’t tolerate that. No matter how nice he looked. Or how pretty his eyes were. Or how broad and masculine his shoulders happened to be. She wasn’t going to fall for a Neanderthal.
She turned back to Bill and the problem at hand. “So, do you think you can help us? I know you can’t find this guy, but maybe you could help us make the cabin safer for when we go home.”
“I’ll find him.”
Nell was forced to turn again because Henry had said the words, and he’d sounded so very, very sure of himself.
“You want to handle this? I thought you were on vacation,” Bill said, a silent moment passing between the men. “I wouldn’t like for Nell or her mother to be hurt.”
“I’ll take care of them.”
Those five words from Henry Flanders seemed to settle something in Bill Hartman’s mind. He reached over and gripped Pam’s hand, bringing it to his lips. “Then it’s settled. What do you say we go and get some lunch, dear? Henry will take care of the problem. Moira, why don’t you join us? Nell can show Henry the cabin.”
That hadn’t gone the way she’d planned.
Her mother stood up. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. They could still be out there waiting for my Nell. I should go with her. I can trade my life for hers if need be.”
And that was her mom in a nutshell. Nell sighed and walked across the room to hug her. “I’ll be fine. It’s only an hour or so and then I’ll be back here. I’ll bring back your books for you, and then we’ll settle in for a while. It can be like a vacation.”
A vacation where she found a job because her mom’s pottery sales wouldn’t cover fixing up the cabin. She would have to see what she could get for her laptop and pray someone was hiring around town.
“I don’t know.” Her mom looked Bill’s way.
“Henry can take care of her,” Bill said.
“Nell, grab your coat, and we can be on our way,” Henry said. Well, ordered really. He seemed to be a very bossy sort of man. Likely because he was a teacher. Teachers often had to take control, though Nell’s favorite teachers had always been the freethinking ones. Her favorite teacher of all time had been Mrs. Joyce, her eighth grade English teacher, who brought a net to class so she could catch dangling participles. Of course, she’d also taught grammar through interpretive dance.
Maybe she could find a teaching job.
“Nell?” Henry was staring at her.
Yes, he was far too bossy for her tastes. She would simply have to survive the afternoon. She would take him to see the cabin and then head into town to talk to Teeny about where she might be able to pawn her computer. And her necklace. It was a silly thing, a little silver snowflake with the words “You’re One of a Kind” engraved on it. It had been a gift from a friend. She always touched the necklace when she felt down, a way of reminding herself of the words. Now she would have to pawn it. She sniffled as she walked to where she’d hung up her coat.
Henry stood talking to her mom. He’d leaned in, whispering something to her. Her mother stopped, her pretty face settling in a confused mask.
“Will you really?” she asked.
Henry’s face was the same polite blank it had been the whole time. She wondered what it would take for the man to smile. “I promise I will.”
A bright, sunny smile replaced her mother’s previous gloom. “Excellent. I like you, Henry. Take care of my girl. She’s very important to the world, you know.”
She could feel her skin flush with embarrassment. “Mom, please.”
“I can see that.” Henry grabbed his own coat and held the door open for her. “Shall we?”
It was too bad he was so bossy and obviously believed in a patriarchal socie
ty worldview because he was quite handsome. She walked out the door wondering what he would look like if he would just smile.
Chapter Two
“What did you say to my mom?”
He didn’t look back, merely expected Nell to follow. It was time to start her training, and part of her training was to follow him when he decided to lead. During most of the brief time of their relationship, Bishop would be perfectly fine with trailing after her and allowing her to make most of the unimportant decisions. She could choose where they ate and what they did for fun. He couldn’t care less about what movies they might see. All of those daily things would be left to her.
But when it counted, when the chips were down and things got dangerous, he would be in charge.
“I told her I would take care of you.” What he’d told her had actually been more about taking care of anyone who thought they could hurt Nell while he was on watch. He’d actually said something more like he would rip the testicles off the fucker and ram them down his throat if he thought to touch her. Moira Finn had seemed suitably impressed.
Somehow he didn’t think Nell would be. He rather thought she would give him a lecture on proper masculine behavior in the modern age and how it didn’t involve deballing his foes. It was obvious that Nell was one of those bleeding-heart types who would let the whole world go to hell because she didn’t want to get her hands dirty. He couldn’t stand the type.
And he still wanted her. His cock had been hard as a damn rock since she’d walked in and looked up at him with those innocent eyes. All he’d been able to think about since that minute was getting her under him. The women in his world were typically cold and just as ruthless as he was.
Nell Finn was soft and seemingly innocent. Oh, he was pretty sure she wasn’t a virgin. No one was that innocent, but her lack of a hymen didn’t mean she was worldly.
“I don’t actually require taking care of, but thank you for putting my mother at ease,” she said primly as they walked out into the snow. It had blanketed the mountain in white. Nell pulled her knit cap down, covering her ears.
“Tell me something, sweetheart,” Bishop started as he moved toward his SUV, a rental that had luckily come complete with snow tires. “Which bitch do you think he was referring to? You or your mother?”
It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t following him now. He turned, the snow covering his boots. He’d been working in South America for too long. The cold was foreign, alien. He was used to almost junglelike heat.
Nell didn’t seem to have the same problem. She stood in her galoshes, that lovely body swallowed up by her parka. The cap on her head practically devoured her as well, covering most of her hair and ending in two knit balls hanging to her shoulders. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t attractive. So why did his heart do a weird shaky thing? She was adorable.
He didn’t do adorable.
“That was rude, Henry. I’m not a bitch, and it’s mean of you to say it.” Her words were quiet, not a real hint of anger in them, but he could feel her hurt.
Damn it. He didn’t need this. He needed to completely rethink his position. She was one of those heart-on-her-sleeve, fall-in-love kind of women, and all he was looking for was a nice long fuck. So he should back off. He would solve her problem and then she could go her way and he would go his. Surely there were women in this town who just wanted an orgasm.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t actually calling you a bitch. I was making a bad joke about what was written on your wall.”
She stared for a moment as though trying to decide if he was being truthful. “Okay. I’m being touchy. I didn’t like you calling me that.”
She started to walk again, crossing the distance between them. Fuck, she was pretty.
“You shouldn’t like anyone calling you that.”
She shrugged. “You get used to it.”
“You get used to it? Who the hell routinely calls you vulgar names?” The thought pissed him off. He’d been told this was a nice town, not a town where young women were routinely verbally assaulted.
“Oh, lots of people. Mostly at the places where I protest,” she replied.
“Protest?”
“Yes. Protesting is an important part of our political process. In the last week, I’ve organized or attended five different protests, though one probably shouldn’t count because it was completely spontaneous. Max Harper killed a wolf. I protested him. Vigorously.”
Bishop had to work to keep up with her. “Why did he kill a wolf? Is he a hunter?”
She shook her head. “No. Although I’ve heard he hunts, too. He’s a rancher, and apparently this poor wolf was very hungry.”
Bishop stopped, his hands going to his hips. “Nell, he has the right to protect his property.”
Nell turned back to him, a standoff. “And I have the right to protect the earth. He didn’t even try to save the wolf. And he wasn’t apologetic. He was all tough guy ‘I killed one of nature’s blessings and that makes me a man.’ He used a telescopic rifle. The wolf didn’t have a chance. If he wants to prove his big bad manhood, he should take the wolf on without weaponry. Then maybe I will be impressed, though likely not, since I don’t think wolves should have been taken off the endangered species list. I protested that, too.”
Wow. She could talk a mile a minute. “I think if the wolves want to survive, they should evolve and start creating weapons of their own.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you just wait, Mister. When all the predators are gone, fluffy adorable bunnies will overrun the earth. When they eat every vegetable known to man, you’re going to be hungry.”
She strode past him. Yeah, he didn’t need to get involved with a crazy idealist even for a few brief days. She would turn his vacation into a hell of lectures and dumb ideas about kindness saving humanity. There wasn’t any actual humanity in most humans. They all paid lip service to the idea, but when the chips were down that’s when the claws came out. Sheltered Nell thought she could save the world? Well, he’d done a hell of a lot more than she had to protect her ability to protest.
He stared at her as she walked by, wishing he could see the sway of her hips under all that likely cruelty-free fabric. His brain might understand that she was a bad idea, but his dick wasn’t as evolved as his brain.
His dick simply wanted her.
She walked right up to the big-ass SUV he’d rented, and she stood by the passenger door, obviously waiting.
“How did you know that was my car?” There were at least fifteen cars in the small parking lot.
She patted the hood. “Oh, this is absolutely the vilest, most gas-guzzling, earth-killing car out here. It was a good bet it was yours.”
That ass was begging for a spanking. He could picture her over his knee, that round ass in the air, muscles clenching because she was so damn nervous. He would wait, hold off because the anticipation of pain was a part of the process. And then he would give it to her. Hard. Fast. Unrelenting. She might cry a little because at first the shock of the sting seemed like real pain, but he knew how to turn that sting into an ache. He would start fast, but end slow, his palm resting with every sharp slap so the heat would sink into her muscles and make its way to her pussy. Wet. She’d be wet within moments. Her pussy would swell, praying for some attention, but he would focus on her ass.
God, he wanted to fuck her. He wanted to use his cock on her pussy as much as he wanted to smack her ass and let her know who the boss was. What was wrong with him? He liked sex, craved it at times, especially when he was coming off a bloody op, but it was the sex he craved, not a particular woman.
“Are you okay?” Nell stood staring at him like she was the tiniest bit worried he was going to go crazy.
Of course, she’d likely run if she knew exactly what he was thinking. The question was—would he catch her? He wasn’t sure. He made the safe play and held up his keys. “Found them.”
He opened her door.
“I can open my own door.”
He fel
t his eyes narrow. “You know, I would like you a lot more if you would stop pushing this modern ideal that simply because a woman can open her door or stand instead of sit, that a man shouldn’t be polite and open it for her or give up his seat. It’s a politeness. It makes me feel good, and you’re ruining it for me.”
She stopped, biting into her bottom lip. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Yeah, that had been a good way to play her. Oddly enough, it had also been the truth. “Some men enjoy being courteous to the women they meet. Women aren’t incapable. They’re just far more beautiful inside and out, and I want to honor that.”
“You think I’m beautiful?” She flushed and covered her mouth. “I can’t believe I said that out loud. You were talking about all women.”
“I was talking about you.” Whether or not he gave in, she should know she was beautiful. “Now get in and let me take a look at this problem of yours.”
She allowed him to open the door and settled into the passenger seat. “Okay, but I should warn you, it’s pretty violent. It might be upsetting. You’re a college professor. I can’t imagine you’ve seen much violence. This is the nasty side of the world.”
He walked around the car shaking his head as he got into the driver’s seat.
When he closed his eyes at night, he saw all of the bad things of the world in his dreams. Lately he’d begun wondering if he wasn’t one of them. He’d stared into the abyss so fucking long, he’d become a part of it, slowly sliding inside until he didn’t remember what he’d been before. He could tell her stories that would shake her faith in humanity. “Oh, I think I’ll find a way to handle it. I’m sure if it frightens me that you’ll take care of me.”
It was a laughable thought. Though not, it seemed, for Nell. She gave him a bright smile and reached over to touch his arm. “I will. I’ve been in the activist world long enough to know how bad it can be out there, but it’s worth it. We have to fight for the world we want.”
