“I’m not sure my family has ever done anything quite so interesting. But I can understand feeling like they did their best to make things difficult.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll do my best not to make your life any more difficult.”
“Appreciated.”
The coffee finished brewing and she brought him a cup, and when she handed it to him, their fingers brushed and her stomach somersaulted. This was the first time in her life she’d ever been alone with a man. Like this. Alone alone. With no one else around and... No strings or ties or anything that would prevent them from...
He’s a stranger. He was shot. You’re insane.
It was just that she’d never tackled the man thing.
Her mother had made her naturally distrustful of them, and she had given her a lot of strange feelings about sex in her body. Once she had gotten into college, doing well enough to stay on, all of her financial aid had become the most important thing. She had started at a community college, taking entrance exams to get in, because she hadn’t graduated from high school and she didn’t have any test scores.
She had felt like she was on trial the entire time. And then she had managed to do well enough to transfer to another school, but the only thing that mattered was school. And paying for her life. She’d worked full-time and gone to classes. A social life hadn’t even been a thing. Much less dating. She had roommates, and they had been friendly, but even that hadn’t been... Fun, like friendship or anything like that. She had to be too serious. And then right out of school she had landed this job at Four Corners. And it wasn’t conventional. Not the kind of teaching job she had expected, but she had her own classroom, and the pay was great. Especially given that it came with housing. It gave her so much more than she had expected. So much freedom.
And now she was beginning to think about the things that she was missing. Only now that she was secure.
And he was here. And he was so... So handsome. So compelling and dangerous and...
Exactly not the kind of thing a twenty-four-year-old virgin is probably going to be able to handle?
Fine. Maybe. It wasn’t like she wanted to... She’d never even kissed. To jump right from that to... Sex with a stranger. Well that was a little bit crazy. But then he didn’t feel like a stranger. She felt an affinity for him based on what they had shared. About their lives. About their families.
She had watched him sew himself back together. She had cleaned his wound. She had undressed him.
“I have to grade papers.”
“No problem.”
And somehow, for the rest of the day, they managed to work around each other. She graded papers. Drank tea. He slept on the couch. At some point, she got her tablet and watched TV, sitting at the kitchen table. He slept some more.
She made soup for dinner, and she brought it to him on the couch.
She gave him pain pills when he needed them.
It felt strange, and it felt companionable.
And it was a relief when no bad guys came and knocked the door down. Because yeah, she felt a little bit of paranoia. It was impossible not to.
On Sunday morning, she realized that she had to get some supplies.
“We’re going to need some more first aid things, and some food. I’m going to go into town and get it. Stay put. And don’t hurt yourself.”
“I’m neither a child nor a dog,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt myself.”
“Yeah right. I see you getting restless. I would put a cone of shame on you if I thought it would help.”
She decided to go to the nearest store. A little all-in-one market with a weird collection of things specifically tailored to the area. Pyrite Falls was hardly a town. More of a row of buildings. To do serious shopping, you had to go farther afield. But she just needed some vegetables and meat, and the great thing about the little store was that it stocked local fruits and veggies. As far as meat went, she made a quick stop at Garrett’s Watch for that. She also stopped by the community garden at the Sullivans’ for some fruit.
So much of this place was self-contained. It made things easy.
When she got home and opened the door, Clayton was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE DIDN’T HAVE a very good idea of where he was, not yet. He paced around outside the cabin, taking in the scenery. No, he’d gone some hella wrong direction in the dark, delirious from the blood loss. No doubt about that. He hadn’t done himself any favors. That was for damn sure.
He didn’t know where his cabin was. Or his money, for that matter.
And he was already exhausted, winded from walking around for the last half hour.
This was some bullshit. He wasn’t used to being incapacitated. Not in any way. He didn’t like it at all.
He took note of a few things on the outside of the little house. It was in good shape, mostly, but there was a shutter in the back that was hanging, and there was a big stack of firewood that was in want of splitting. He wanted to do some things for Tala. She had gone above and beyond. He didn’t know very many people who would do this kind of thing for a stranger. Hell, he didn’t know anyone who would.
He certainly wouldn’t have. He would have been too suspicious. He didn’t know why she wasn’t, a woman living alone...
He walked back to the front of the cottage, and she came rushing out. “There you are,” she said. “What dumbass thing are you doing, wandering around outside? Get inside.”
He walked in slowly, and she closed the door behind him. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t want anyone to know that you’re here. And there are people around here. Everywhere. The Sullivan sisters just live a few hundred yards down the road. And a lot of different ranch hands live in various dwellings on the property. It’s fifty thousand acres.”
“No shit,” he said. “Fifty thousand?”
“It’s eight square miles. It’s a town in and of itself, like I said.”
“Would anybody have any clue that I was staying with you, or would they just think that I was one of the ranch hands?”
“Well, that is a fair point,” she said. “Maybe they wouldn’t know. But your brother would. If he saw you.”
“I told you. I don’t have a lot of confidence in Jake’s smarts. He thinks he’s cleverer than he is. He also thinks he’s scarier than he is. I’m sure he thinks I ran as far and fast as I could. It wouldn’t occur to him that I’d stop and double back.”
“Where is your brother...based out of?”
“Copper Ridge.”
“That’s not very far away.”