Roommates Box Set #4-6

8. Carter

8

CARTER

“You sure about this?” Tristan asked as I set my laptop on the worktable in the center of the cabin. Our guest was nowhere to be seen. She’d been quiet during lunch and had retreated to her bedroom immediately afterwards.

“Sure. It’s the least we can do for the woman we spent half a day rescuing.”

Tristan rolled his eyes. He knew me well enough to ignore statements like that, although I occasionally shocked the hell out of Drew. “We had to,” Tristan said. “It was the only way to see if she was as hot as you claimed she was.”

I smirked. “And?”

“Yeah, you sure called it. Damn.”

That last word was drawn out, which was unlike him. Usually, he was Mr. Business. Not stuffy, no way I’d be best friends with someone like that, but… focused. That was a good word. Usually, nothing got between him and his goals, but apparently, this new girl had.

Speaking of being business-minded, Tristan put his hand on my laptop. “You know you can’t use this as an excuse to slack off, right?”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “I do most everything on my phone anyway.” It was true. I did my best thinking when I was moving, like during my morning run or a hike through the woods. Or a drive up the coast. My phone was always with me, so that’s what I used for work. “She won’t be able to see my stuff, will she?”

Tristan grinned. “I thought you said it was mostly on your phone?”

“Yeah, but there are probably some things in my browser history that would send our young guest running for the ice-covered hills.”

“Good point. But Drew set it up so that you won’t be able to see her stuff and she won’t be able to see yours.”

I must not have looked convinced, because Tristan elbowed me. “You don’t think she’s a corporate spy, do you? Maybe some rival company sent her up here with a mission to throw herself under a tree and seduce us once we pulled her out. Damn, we fell right into her trap.”

The seducing part I was okay with, but she didn’t look like the type to engage in corporate espionage. Then again, there was something she wasn’t telling us. I’d searched for Sierra Brogan online and there wasn’t anything about her. At all. Now, I was all for wasting less time on social media, but seriously? Absolutely nothing on her? She was definitely hiding something.

Almost as if she’d heard my thoughts, the door to the bedroom opened and she emerged. I never would’ve guessed that anyone could look that hot in Drew’s sweats, but she managed. She nodded at us but would’ve passed by in silence, probably on the way to the bathroom, if I hadn’t spoken. “Here. Tristan said you needed this.”

I handed her the silver computer and she took it gingerly, with the quietest “thank you” imaginable. Shit, you’d think I’d passed her a plate of Brussels sprouts or something gross like that.

She looked up long enough to catch my expression. In an instant, her demeanor changed. She straightened up, looked me in the eye, and said in a voice that carried across the room, “I really appreciate it. Whenever you need it back, just say the word.”

What the fuck? Her green eyes gleamed with sincere gratitude, her cheeks had a rosy pink glow on them, and hell, even her ponytail looked fuller and bouncier. What had happened to the mousy girl from a moment ago? “Will do,” I said, still trying to figure her out.

Tristan appeared oblivious to the change in her. “Drew made a new profile on it, so you don’t have to worry about anyone seeing your writing. Good thing you had it saved in the cloud.” She’d mentioned that at lunch when Tristan and Drew questioned her about her work.

“Sounds great.” She grabbed the charger and carried it and the laptop back to the room, closing the door behind her. Guess a working computer was more important than a bathroom break.

Tristan gazed absently in the direction she’d disappeared in. “She sure is gorgeous.”

“Yeah.” And a mystery—one I was determined to figure out. “Is Drew still upstairs?” He hadn’t slept too well on the couch last night, so he was taking a nap in Tristan’s room.

“Yeah. We should probably wait until he’s up before making plans for the video call tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. I’m going to go for a run.”

Tristan laughed. He knew how badly I wanted to do that, but it would be like trying to jog over an ice floe. But there were other ways to work up a sweat.

By the time I got all my gear on, Zeus was dancing in front of the door, eager to join me. He had no problem on the ice. I grabbed the axe, and we walked out into the Ice Age.

There was plenty of wood stacked inside next to the fireplace, but it couldn’t hurt to cut some more. Zeus explored nearby while I split logs. It was a skill I’d learned as a boy. We’d spent a few weeks every summer at a family home up in the woods.

It felt good to stretch my muscles. I worked out every day in the cabin—we all did—but it wasn’t the same as being out of doors, feeling the fresh air as I pulled it deep into my lungs. It was where I did my best thinking, but right now, I was focused on the wrong thing.

Sierra.

She didn’t make sense, and that gnawed at me. While Tristan was Mr. Business, I was the ideas man in our venture, and usually the main problem solver. While Sierra wasn’t exactly a problem—at the moment—she was a mystery that needed solving.

The first question was what the hell she was doing up here in the first place. These cabins weren’t cheap, not by a long shot. What kind of young woman, especially one who claimed to be a writer, had that kind of cash? Most writers I knew didn’t make very much.

Plus, she was young. Really young. She told Drew she was twenty-three, but she looked barely out of her teens. I’d half suspected she was a runaway who’d happened onto the cabin by accident, except that Winston had mentioned her, so she had to be a paying guest.

Still, she didn’t seem like the type to spend so much time alone in a place like this. Though maybe it made a certain kind of sense. She was one of the shyest women I’d ever met. Well, except for her one-eighty when she thanked me for the laptop. It was like she’d completely changed her persona.

I slammed the axe down extra hard and the log split, the pieces shooting out in different directions. Probably not the smartest way to treat our only axe. But I was frustrated.

I wasn’t up here to think about women. This was our time to finalize the plan we’d been working toward for years. Wondering about Sierra was a waste of time—something that had always bothered me.

Tristan was in this endeavor for the environment. He was right, too. Building shoddy housing with cheap-ass materials that flooded people’s lungs with toxic chemicals and ended up in a landfill decades later was horrible for our planet.

But it was also inefficient. Why build if you’re just going to have to build again later? Inefficiency was laziness personified, and I hated it.

That was one of the reasons I’d gotten some work done after lunch when Drew was fawning all over Sierra, providing her with toiletries and clothes and whatever he could think of. It was kind, of course. Drew was kind—he was sort of the human version of my dog. Far too excitable at times, but overall endearing.

Like Tristan, he didn’t seem to question Sierra’s presence up here on the mountain. It was obvious he thought she was pretty, but he didn’t view her as a mystery, even though the first clue was right there, literally in front of his face.

Because Sierra wasn’t just pretty. She wasn’t just beautiful. She was fucking stunning. The kind of woman who could make a fortune as a model. With no makeup on, her hair in a haphazard ponytail, and Drew’s oversized clothes on her, she was one of the most perfect women I’d ever seen, and that was saying a lot.

Back home, I had no shortage of female company. Redheads, blondes, brunettes… all were beautiful, and Sierra blew them all away. What the fuck was a goddess like her doing out in the middle of nowhere?

It just didn’t add up, and it was going to bother me until I figured out what was going on. Our time up here was too important to waste on distractions—even one as tempting as Sierra.