Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
H arbor
This was a bad idea. She was my bounty. I was meant to deliver her to the authorities, get my money, and go on my way. She was a criminal, after all.
Yet here I was, deceiving her like a giant fucking asshole simply because…I liked her. And it had been a long, long time since I’d liked anyone.
Still sitting in the snow, she closed her eyes, like she was either gathering her strength or preparing to tell me to fuck right off. Katrina had gorgeous eyes. They were dark brown with little flecks of light bronze in them. I wondered if they danced when she laughed. She looked like she hadn’t laughed in eons.
She took my hand and used it to pull herself upright. My skin ignited, and it took every ounce of willpower inside of me not to pull her against me.
I dropped her hand quickly, unwilling to let the temptation linger, and stepped into the cabin.
It was clear that there was no way she had already been staying here. The furniture was covered in drop cloths, and a fine layer of dust covered everything. I’d have to check the fireplace and make sure there wasn’t anything nesting in there before I even contemplated building a fire.
We were going to need one. It was freezing in that cabin. There was a thermostat on one wall, but it looked like it had been stuck at fifty degrees for the past twelve years.
“You can’t stay here,” I said automatically.
“You don’t get a say in what I do.” She crossed her arms over her chest, which only served to shove her breasts closer to the collar of her U-neck shirt. I tore my gaze away from her sweet, golden-skinned body and focused on more immediate problems, like the almost certain lack of running water.
To prove my point—and also not stare at her tits—I went to the sink at the corner of the studio-sized cabin and turned the faucet. Nothing came out of it. “Pipes are likely frozen. There’s no heat. You don’t have food.” I gestured to the single bed and the couch that looked like mice had chewed it. “You can’t stay here. Let me take you to a hotel.” On the road to Milwaukee , my professional brain whispered.
Then, holy hell, she removed her winter coat and all rational thought fled my brain. Katrina’s hourglass curves were model-worthy, her round breasts mountains beneath her thin tee shirt, her hips straining the fabric of her jeans.
This was bad. No, it was awful. Apocalyptic. My cock woke up from its chronically dormant state, and I focused all of my frustration and interest on this shitty excuse for a cabin, simply to avoid showing her my arousal.
“Let’s go.” I turned off the defunct faucet, not willing to look at her.
Katrina removed a dust cloth from the kitchen table and shook it in the air, sending dust mites flying. “It isn’t so bad.” She went to the wall beside the refrigerator and flipped the switch. A pale yellow light sparked over her head. She didn’t deserve that kind of shitty lighting. She deserved a lifetime of soft filters and crystal chandeliers. “The electricity works.” She opened the fridge, which was empty, then shut it again and turned to me. Her expression was one of fire and determination, and despite my best efforts, it only made my cock throb harder. “I have nowhere else to go. I don’t owe you anything. We’re strangers, but you can choose to trust me. So when I tell you that I will be fine here, you need to accept that. I don’t have a choice here.”
She would think it was strange if I didn’t ask, because what average person wouldn’t want more information? It didn’t mean I had to tell her about myself. “Can you tell me why?” I said, hoping my expression didn’t betray me. “I have to be honest, it won’t affect whether or not I want to help you, because I do regardless.”
She sighed and bit her lip, which was the complete wrong thing to do because now all I could picture was that lush mouth tangled with mine. I needed to focus on something else, so I went to the fireplace and opened the flue. Not that I had a ton of experiences inspecting fireplaces, but a nest didn’t fall on me, so I considered that a win.
“My ex is a cheating asshole,” she said at last, as I brushed ash from my pants. “I know a lot of people have awful exes, but mine is ranked way up there.” I didn’t reply, not trusting myself not to reveal what I’d already learned by reading her file. “We got divorced, which was long overdue, and I made him move out of the house. But then his lawyer called mine, saying he was asking for alimony. Why?” She flung her arms wildly as if the very thought was bananas. Personally, I agreed. It was a singularly asshole thing to do. “He never made any of the money while we were together. I graduated college because I worked two jobs and still had a three-point-seven GPA. The only thing he contributed was a permanent pot stank to our living room couch.” She flung her winter coat over a dust cloth-covered kitchen chair. “Trust me, that was the second thing I put on the curb after the divorce was finalized, right after our bed, followed by all the shit he hadn’t bothered to pick up.”
This was yet another problem. Not because I was getting a fuller picture of the story, but because I liked Katrina’s tenacity. She was still pissed at her ex-husband’s behavior, and she well should be. She was smart, too. And talented.
I didn’t think I had ever been so attracted to someone before. I was so fucked.
“Anyway.” Katrina bent over to open the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and I deserved an award for how quickly I looked away from that perfect heart-shaped ass in the air. “My attorney filed all these forms, saying how he never contributed, etc etc. Then he starts showing up at my home at all hours of the day. He said he was worried about me, that I might have a stalker. He installed cameras all around my house. It creeped me out.” She shuddered and pulled out a very old handful of what was either cleaning rags or…something that might require a rabies shot later. “I thought I had rerouted all the feeds from his phone to mine, but he must have still had access somehow. I wasn’t even home at the time,” she said softly. “I looked at the footage later, but he’d deleted the time frame when the accident happened. I didn’t even know about it until the police showed up at my art studio.”
My nerve endings tingled. Pete Dobbs set up the hit and run?
If I opened my mouth, I was definitely going to say the wrong thing. So I crossed my arms over my chest instead, which was also probably a bad move since it sent the wrong body language signals.
But Katrina wasn’t looking at me. She pulled at the handful of dust towels—definitely old microfiber and not clumps of hair, thank fuck—separating them into curls of fabric. “He staged the whole thing.” Her voice was soft. “I think he had a friend, who he got to drive the car into him. What was I supposed to do?” Now she spoke barely above a whisper, and there was such pain in her voice, it drew me toward her. I knew it was wrong, but she needed comfort, and I was the only one there. “I’d spent most of my money on the divorce lawyer, so there wasn’t anyone but a newbie public defender. My parents offered to pay for one, but they need their money for retirement. I couldn’t do that to them. ” Tears brimmed in her eyes. She put her hands into the towels and swirled them around, making a design like a mandala or labyrinth. “It’s not fair. I didn’t do anything. I was at my studio, alone, and there aren’t any cameras there because I didn’t think I needed them.” She glanced up at me, and it seemed like something broke inside of her, something she had been clinging to, because she lurched forward, clutching my shirt in her fists, and leaned her forehead onto my shoulder. “Please. I’m not a bad person.”
She smelled like pine and summer rain. I placed a hand on the middle of her back, nowhere near anywhere I wanted to touch, but I was trying to be a gentleman.
“You’re not a bad person,” I said, and she squeezed me harder. It was okay. I was built like a tank, I could take it. Besides, nothing pissed me off more than an entitled douchebag taking it out on someone he perceived weaker than himself. “I can help you. I know you have no reason to trust me, but you can. Give me an hour. I’ll go get some food and supplies so you can stay here. We’ll figure all this out.”
“How?” It was as soft as a cat’s meow.
I shut my eyes and tentatively wrapped another arm around her. This was the type of hug I might have given my mom, except my feelings toward Katrina were anything but filial. One small white lie, but even my mom would have agreed it was necessary. “I help out a private investigator friend sometimes. I can help you, Katrina. If you’ll let me.”
She pulled me closer to her, like she needed me, and that was more than enough to send my heart into the deep end. No one needed me for comfort like this, and I craved it.
Except then she lifted herself up on her toes and kissed my cheek. Her soft lips burned like the shrapnel in my knee when it rained, but so much sweeter.
I was a very bad man, indeed, wanting what I knew wasn’t mine.