2. Piper
TWO
PIPER
What the hell did I think I was doing? Putting my trust in this stranger?
But the storm continued to howl and thrash and batter, and my car…
I gulped around the jagged rock at the base of my throat as I looked out at where the tail end was sticking up in the air from the ditch.
Sickness curdled my stomach.
I couldn’t believe I’d been so careless.
That I’d allowed this to happen.
The car was probably toast, and that car was our lifeline.
Our salvation.
The one thing that kept us safe.
Carrying us from one destination to the next.
Now, we were stuck. Subject to the will of a stranger who was currently running around my car grabbing our belongings and loading them into the bed of his truck.
Theo Mallin.
My spirit tried to cling onto his name like knowing it would make this okay.
Like giving in and allowing him to give us a ride was better than keeping a mountain between me and my family and anyone else.
He’d already ducked into the driver’s seat, turned off the ignition, and flipped on the hazards, the man on a full-scale mission as he prepared my car to be abandoned.
Of course, that was all after he insisted on being the one to remove Finn’s car seat and strap it into the backseat of his truck.
A tremor rolled through me as the vents pumped hot air into the cab of the massive pickup. With one hand, I pressed the compress to the cut near my hairline. With the other, I gripped the truck’s door handle like through it I might be able to read the owner’s mind.
Draw his intentions out from the expensive leather of the seats.
I refused to be so stupid as to just place our safety in his big, foreboding hands.
I mean…God…look at him.
Out in the icy snow with the wind lashing through his thick black hair and licking over his heavily tattooed flesh.
Only wearing a fitted black tee and jeans.
Worn motorcycle boots on his feet.
The man was written in menace and peril.
A dangerous type of beauty that compelled.
A magnet that would suck you into an abyss before you even realized what hit you.
The last thing I needed was a dark, intimidating knight, and there he was, running around like it was his duty to save us.
God, how could I have been so careless?
But I hadn’t seen the black ice on the pavement.
At least I’d been going slow.
At least no one was injured.
At least?—
“Can feel you spinning out up there just as fast as our car did, sweet girl.” Nelly reached up from where she sat directly behind me and set her hand on my shoulder. “Take a deep breath. We’re all fine, and that’s the only thing that matters. We’ll figure the car out later.”
My grandmother had always been my voice of reason.
The calm in the storm.
My guide and my hope and my support.
She also tended to take things far too casually for our dire situation.
“I know,” I muttered, my attention still pinned on the man who pulled our suitcases from the trunk then slammed it shut.
I had my duffel on the floor at my feet, refusing to let it out of my sight.
“Mommy, is okay. No worry. We aww fine.”
I shifted around to find my sweet Finn grinning from his seat, peeking at me from around the side of it, the single dimple in his right cheek out in full force.
My love for them squeezed my heart in a fist of desolation.
That love was the greatest thing I had.
The only thing I had.
I couldn’t let a mishap derail that and, right then, the only thing I felt was trapped.
“Yup, our Finny boy is right.” Nelly reached over and tickled his belly. “We’re all gonna be just fine. Just fine indeed.”
Finn giggled and tried to clutch at her hand. “You don’t tickwle me, my Newwy Bewwy .”
“What, I’m not allowed to tickle you?” she teased.
“No way!”
“Then what am I good for?” She drew it out like she had nothing else to offer.
“Hugs!” Finn shouted.
I would have sunk into the peace of their teasing if it wasn’t for the fact Theo had finished loading our things and was now rounding the front of his truck.
Stalking around it, really.
A vicious predator hunting for prey.
“My, my. Now that is something to look at.” Nelly hummed it from the backseat.
My stomach trembled.
I felt her statement to the core.
There was no chance I could look away from him.
He was tall and lean.
All stealthy, sinewy muscle.
Oozing with the kind of mayhem that should come with a warning label.
It was like watching a tsunami made purely of trouble rising from the distance and knowing there was no chance to outrun it.
“We are not ogling the nice man who stopped to help us.” I had to force it out.
She laughed outright, though her words were held in innuendo. “Oh, I bet there isn’t a single nice thing about him.”
She was right. Absolutely right.
Because I could barely breathe when he opened the driver’s side door and hopped into the cab.
The light that poured down from above glinted off the designs that crawled over his wet, bronzed skin, and snowflakes stuck to the tips of the longer pieces of his hair.
The fabric of his tee was soaked and clung to every etched, sculpted inch of his abdomen and chest.
A flicker of something I absolutely couldn’t feel flared in my belly.
A pang of desolate, acute attraction.
He ran a tattooed hand through his hair. “Storm’s raging out there. Have to admit, I was not expecting this.”
No.
I hadn’t been expecting it, either.
None of it.
Not the storm or the crash or this man who’d come up on us as if it was his life’s purpose to rescue us.
Thank God he stopped.
He could have driven by rather than throwing himself out into the frozen tundra to help us.
I flinched the second I thought it, subtly shaking my head. I couldn’t rely on him. Couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust anyone.
I needed to remember that.
“Guess it’s a good thing I had to make a trip into the city today and was coming back this way,” he said in a low voice. I had a hunch he meant it to be gentle, but it still cut like a growl.
“Yeah, I guess it was,” I managed.
Intensity billowed off him on suffocating waves. His presence was more commanding than anything or anyone I’d stumbled upon in all my life.
An energy crackled in the air.
An awareness that slithered across my skin.
A draw that I didn’t understand.
I inhaled a shaky breath like I could rid my reaction to him.
The only thing it served to do was drag his aura in, and I was struck by a rush of his scent.
Mossy woods and crisp snow and the faint vestiges of warm, smokey leather.
All of it was bound in an undercurrent of sex.
“You good?” he rumbled, the two words gravel.
“Yeah. I think I’m fine. You don’t have to worry.” I tried to sound as casual as I could.
He hesitated for a moment, like he wasn’t sure that he believed me, before he shifted around a fraction to look into the backseat. “How about you two?”
“As right as rain,” Nelly enthused.
“Not wain . Is snow, Newwy. Wook .” Finn pointed a chubby finger out the window at the swirling snow that continued its barrage from the sky.
A roughened chuckle rolled out of Theo. “Yeah, little man. It is definitely snowing and cold out there. Think we’d better get you into town so we can get you warmed up.”
Finn exaggerated a shiver. “So co-wed .”
His words were garbled with his little stammer that always twisted his Ls into Ws.
“We’re off, then,” Theo said as he faced forward and put his truck into drive.
He looked over his shoulder to make sure it was clear then carefully eased back onto the road.
A heavy silence swamped the cab, the only sound the roar of the diesel engine as he began to wind through the forest in the same direction we’d been traveling.
Tension built and bound as I warred with what I was going to do.
I wondered if Theo could feel every one of my worries because his low voice finally cut into the burden. “I have a buddy who owns an autobody shop. I’ll give him a call to have him come tow in your car once the storm clears.”
“That’s not necessary.” It shot out of me. A barb of defense. “I can handle the arrangements.”
He glanced my way for one beat before his focus was back out the windshield.
His arm was stretched out, and the grim, black ink flexed over his straining muscles.
Craggy branches covered in half-wilted leaves crawled out from under his shirt sleeve and wound all the way down to his wrist. A thousand secrets were woven within them. Howling faces and tortured ghosts that peered out from the leaves as if they were trapped.
A viper curled down the branch as if it were there to devour them all.
“You have someone you know in town?” Theo pushed, his brow arching like he knew I wasn’t from around here.
Panic bubbled inside me.
“No, I just…don’t want to put you out. You’ve already done so much for us.”
He grinned this wicked grin that made me sure he was the most dangerously handsome man I’d ever met.
No man should be that appealing.
A single look shouldn’t cause tingles to go racing across my flesh.
I knew better than to allow my thoughts to go in that direction. I knew the type of men I was attracted to, and I could never be that reckless to give into it again.
“Making a call for you isn’t putting me out. It’s the least I can do.”
“I think the fact your clothes are soaked from the snow is proof that you’ve already done more than enough.”
“Maybe I’m just getting started.” That grin tipped higher, those moonlit eyes sparking like black diamonds beneath the bare light as he peered over at me.
My stomach twisted.
“Well, that is awful kind of you,” Nelly supplied before I had the chance to respond.
Her voice sagged with as much suggestion as Theo’s.
Though it was a prodding for me. A prodding that we could use the help. That we really were stranded in a strange place.
“There are a ton of scumbags out there who will bleed you dry just for the sake of doing it,” Theo said as he glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “My guy can be trusted. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of the way you should be.”