A month goes by. Then another. Thanksgiving comes and goes. Teaching keeps me busy during the days, and Sloane, Mojo, and my art keep me busy at night.
I started painting again. Not the meticulous landscapes I used to do, but abstracts. Bold, violent slashes of color on the canvas, emotional and unrestrained. Landscapes are all about what I see, but these…these are all about what I feel.
I won’t show them to anyone. They’re more like spiritual vomit than art. I assume it’s a phase that will pass, but for now, I’m into it.
It’s way cheaper than therapy. Works better, too.
David’s letter had me unsettled for a while, but by the time December arrives, I’m in a place where I’m grateful for that one last piece of contact. That final missive from beyond the grave.
I’ve finally accepted that he’s never coming back.
Sloane was right: he had an accident. He went hiking that morning and lost his footing. The trails were rough. The terrain, steep. The canyons of the Sierras were carved by ancient glaciers cutting through granite, and some of them dive four thousand feet down from the peaks.
No matter how experienced he was in the wilderness, it couldn’t save him from that one narrow stretch of rocky trail that crumbled under his weight and gave way, sending him tumbling down into oblivion.
There’s no other plausible explanation.
It took me five years to accept, but now that I have, I feel…well, not exactly at peace. I’m not sure I’ll ever get there. Accepting, maybe. And grateful.
Grateful for everything we had, even though it wasn’t destined to last a lifetime.
My lifetime, anyway.
And if every once in a while I’m sure I feel someone watching me, I chalk it up to having a guardian angel looking out for me from above.
The only other alternative is that I’m suffering from paranoia, and I’m really not prepared to deal with that.
When my doorbell rings two weeks before Christmas, it’s six o’clock. It’s dark outside, snowing steadily, and I’m not expecting anyone, so I’m surprised.
I’m also just about to take cookies out of the oven. One more minute and they’ll be done, two and they’ll be burnt to a crisp. The oven hasn’t been replaced since the house was built in the sixties, and I’m pretty sure it’s possessed by the devil.
I hurry to the door, pulling off my oven mitts. When I get the door open, I’m distracted. I’m also looking down, so the first thing I see is a pair of big black boots dusted with snow.
I look up from the boots to see more black: jeans, shirt, wool overcoat with the collar turned up. The eyes staring back at me are a shade lighter than black, but they might as well be for how darkly they burn.
It’s Kage.
My heart plummets to somewhere around my kneecaps. I say loudly, “You.”
“Yes. Me.”
His voice is that same low, lovely rumble, a velvet stroke along my skin. The man should get a second job as a DJ on a porn radio station, if there is such a thing.
When I only stand there staring at him like a lunatic, he says, “You dropped your oven mitts.”
It’s true. My cheery red Santa-and-reindeer Christmas mitts lie discarded on the threshold between us, dropped in my shock at seeing him.
At least I didn’t swallow my tongue.
Before I can recover from my surprise, he leans down, sweeps up the mitts in one of his big paws, and straightens. But he doesn’t give them back to me. He stands holding them like they’re a prized possession and he’ll only hand them over for a steep price.
“You’re back. I mean, you’re here. What’re you doing here?”
Not exactly neighborly, but I thought I’d never see him again. I thought I’d never have to deal with the hysterically shrieking hormones his presence always ignites.
Gazing at me steadily, he says, “I had business in Vegas. Thought I’d drop by and say hello. I just got in.”
“Drop by? Vegas is an eight-hour drive from here.”
“I flew.”
“Oh. I thought I just heard on the news that they stopped all the flights into Reno-Tahoe International due to bad weather?”
“They did. Just not mine.”
He looks at me with such intensity, my heartrate skyrockets. “Why not yours?”
“I was flying the plane. I ignored the call to reroute.”
I blink at him. “You’re a pilot?”
“Yes.”
“You said you were a debt collector.”
“I am.”
“This is confusing.”
“I’m a lot of different things. It doesn’t matter. The point is that I stayed away as long as I could. A little bit of fucking snow wasn’t about to stop me from getting here.”
That sends a jolt of electricity straight through me.
I want to pretend I don’t know what he means, but I do.
This beautiful, strange, magnetic man has just informed me that he’s thought about me as much as I’ve thought about him, that he tried to fight the urge to come back here from wherever he went, and that he thinks returning is a bad idea for whatever reason, but has resigned himself to it nonetheless.
We stare at each other until I regain my senses and invite him in out of the snow.
I close the door behind him. He makes the room feel crowded because he’s just so big. I wonder if he has to custom order all his furniture. And clothes. And condoms.
Best not to think about that now.
We face each other in my small foyer made even smaller by his bulk and simply look at each other.
Finally, he says, “Something smells like it’s burning.”
“That’s just me thinking. You never put your house on the market.”
“No.”
“You said you’d put it on the market within a few weeks after you left.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
His voice drops. “You happened.”
Surely my gulp must be audible. I will my hands to stop shaking, but they ignore me.
He says, “You never called.”
“My roof never leaked.”
The ghost of a smile lifts the corners of his lips. It vanishes when he says, “What happened with Deputy Dipshit?”
“We haven’t talked since that day you nearly ripped off his head.” I pause. “Did I ever thank you for that?”
“No thanks were necessary. It’s a man’s job to protect—”
He cuts off abruptly and mutters, “Fuck.” Then he looks away and says gruffly, “I should go.”
He’s uncomfortable. I’ve never seen him uncomfortable.
It’s oddly appealing.
I say softly, “You can’t just show up out of the blue and leave ten seconds later. At least stay for a cookie.”
His gaze slides back to mine, and now it’s heated. “I don’t want to keep you.”
He says it like that’s exactly what he wants to do: keep me.
If my face gets any redder, he’ll think I’ve burst a vessel.
Then he backtracks. “You’re baking cookies?”
“Yes. Well, they’re probably hockey pucks by now because my oven’s a piece of junk, but I’ve got another batch ready to go.”
“You bake?”
A prick of irritation makes me frown at him. “Why is that so surprising? Do I look like I’m incapable of operating a kitchen appliance?”
“I’ve never met a beautiful woman who bakes.”
I find that even more irritating. Because one, I don’t like backhanded compliments, two, skill with baking has absolutely nothing to do with a woman’s looks, and three, he makes it sound like beautiful women are draped all over him wherever he goes.
Which they probably are, but still. I don’t like the idea.
I say tartly, “And I’ve never met an eight-foot-tall debt collector who launders money through real estate and flies a plane into a closed airport during a snowstorm, so we’re even.”
He grins. It’s breathtaking. He says, “Six-foot-six. Are you the jealous type?”
I think about it. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a man do something to make me jealous. Are you the type who enjoys making your girlfriends crazy by flirting with other women?”
In his pause, I sense an ocean of darkness.
He says gruffly, “I don’t have girlfriends.”
How are we standing closer? I don’t remember moving, but my feet must have a mind of their own, because suddenly, we’re only inches apart.
Holy Ghost of Christmas Past, this man smells divine. My heart beating madly, I say, “Are you married?”
Staring at my mouth, he says, “You know I’m not.”
Yes, we’ve already discussed this, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t acquire a Mrs. Dangerous Alpha since I last saw him a few months ago.
“Work keep you too busy?”
“Something like that.”
“Hmm. So it’s only one-night stands for you, then?”
His gaze drifts back up to mine. He takes his time, looking over my features, until our eyes meet again.
It feels like being plugged into a socket.
In a throaty voice, he says, “No one-night stands. No girlfriends. No anything since I first laid eyes on you.”
We stare at each other in blistering silence until the smoke alarm starts to scream.
Because my nerves are already stretched thin, I jump at the sound. Then I run into the kitchen. It’s filled with smoke. Coughing, I pull the door open and wave away the smoke that billows out into my face.
Behind me, Kage says, “Move.”
He’s thrown his wool overcoat onto a kitchen chair and put on the oven mitts. The tight black short-sleeved T-shirt he’s wearing shows off his impressive collection of tattoos and muscles, so much so that I have to look away so he doesn’t catch me gaping.
I step aside and let him grab the baking sheet with its smoking, blackened cookies from the demon oven, then watch in admiration as he calmly closes the oven door, hits the fan button on the top of the range, and sets the baking sheet onto the stovetop.
“Trash?”
“Under the sink.”
As the smoke gets sucked into the fan, he opens the cabinet under the sink, pulls out the trash can, and grabs a spatula from the crockery pot on the counter. Then he scrapes all the burnt cookies off the cookie sheet into the garbage.
“You should use aluminum foil to line the pan. It makes for easier cleanup.”
Maybe he watches The Food Network in between beating up his boxing bag and flying through snowstorms and going around being ridiculously sexy.
I say drily, “Thank you, Gordon Ramsay. I’ll be sure to try that next time.”
He pauses for a moment over the trash, then returns the empty cookie sheet to the stove, removes the oven mitts, and tosses them onto the counter, and turns to me.
Approaching me, he says softly, “Interrupting me is one thing that will get you taken over my knee, beautiful girl. Sass is another.” He looks at my mouth and moistens his lips.
Can you faint and still be standing up?
Equal parts alarmed and turned on, I back up until my butt hits the kitchen table. Then I stand there, wide-eyed. He prowls closer and closer until we’re nose to nose and I’m staring up into his eyes.
He’s silent. Waiting. Giving off heat like a furnace.
I blurt, “He’s a Michelin-starred chef, though. So it was really kind of a compliment.”
Seeing my anxiety, he murmurs, “Please don’t be afraid of me. I told you I’d never hurt you. That was the truth.”
I’m breathing like I’ve just run a timed sprint, so it’s a little hard to answer. “It’s not fear. It’s nerves. You’re very…”
I can’t think of a good enough word until I remember what Sloane called him the night we met. “Undomesticated.”
His smile comes on slowly. “Now that was a compliment.”
“It’s what my girlfriend called you that night at Downrigger’s when you told me you weren’t a knight in shining armor.”
“Your girlfriend the confident brunette?”
“That’s the one.”
He tilts his head and considers me. “Did she tell you she hit on me when you went to the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“And that I wasn’t interested?”
“Yes. And to be honest, neither one of us could believe it.”
“She’s a pretty girl. But there are a million pretty girls in the world.” He lifts his hand and lightly touches my cheek. His voice softer, he says, “There’s only one of you.”
I exhale, hard, and close my eyes. “You’re killing me here.”
“Tell me to go, and I will.”
“I really don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I told you I didn’t think a fling would be good for me.”
“I don’t want a fling.”
When I open my eyes, I find him staring down at me with such intensity, it takes my breath away.
He murmurs, “I want everything you have to give, Natalie, for as long as you want to give it to me.”
Knees, don’t you dare give out on me now. Sounding as desperate as I feel, I say, “We barely even know each other.”
“We know enough. And we’ll know more the more time we spend together.”
When I don’t respond, he says, “But you’re going to have to make the first move.”
I blink so slowly, I’m sure it looks comical. “Wait. What?”
“You heard me.”
“You don’t consider everything you’ve said to me since I opened the door to be making the first move?”
An amused smile curves his lips. “Fair enough. You’ll have to make the second move, then. I won’t pressure you. It’ll be on your timetable, not mine.”
“It?”
“Us.”
He says it like it’s an absolute. An inevitability. As if he’s been to the future and had a good look around, and now is back here just waiting for me to get on board with the program.
If there’s one thing I really dislike, it’s being taken for granted.
Staring him right in the eye, I say, “Sorry in advance if this insults you, Romeo, but if your arrogance were nuclear energy, it could power the entire universe.”
After a beat, he throws his head back and laughs.
It startles me so much I plop right down onto the kitchen table.
He laughs and laughs, his broad chest shaking, his hands clutching his stomach, until finally he sighs and looks down at me, shaking his head.
“You’re adorable when you’re angry.”
“Don’t make me kick you in the shin. I’ve got a temper, just so you know.”
Leaning down to brace his arms on the table on either side of my body, Kage gazes deeply into my eyes.
“Good. I want you to speak your mind with me. Tell me when I’m out of line. Kick my ass if I need it. Because one thing I can guarantee you is that I’m not an easy man. I’m definitely gonna piss you off.”
I smile sweetly at him. “Really? Shocking.”
“Smartass.”
“One hundred percent. I guess that’s something you should know about me. Also, since we’re being so open and whatnot, I’m not sure how I feel about the whole ‘take you over my knee thing.’ I don’t like the idea of being spanked.”
“What if I could guarantee you’d like it?”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “That is so something a man would say.”
He smiles. It looks dangerous. “We’ll table it for the time being. Any other pet peeves I should be aware of?”
His eyes are so filled with lust, I can barely concentrate. “I’ll make you a list.”
He chuckles. “I’m sure you will.”
We stare at each other until he leans closer and puts his mouth near my ear. He whispers, “You still have my number?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good. Use it.”
He inhales against my neck, makes a sound of pleasure low in his throat, then straightens and grabs his coat off the back of the chair where he left it.
Then he leaves as abruptly as he appeared, closing my front door behind him.
When Mojo wanders into the kitchen a few minutes later, yawning, I’m still sitting where Kage left me, feeling my heartbeat in every part of my body, feeling the slight brush of his lips against my neck on every inch of my flesh.
