11. Piper
ELEVEN
PIPER
Fifteen minutes later, Finn and I stepped out the front door of the cabin.
He was dressed in his heavy coat and mittens and a cap, plus snow boots and a tiny ski bib that had miraculously shown up yesterday afternoon after I’d found out we were going to have to stay here for three weeks.
A note had been tacked to them, the handwriting decidedly masculine.
Thought you might need these.
The man took thoughtful to a new level.
As if he anticipated what we would need before we even knew it ourselves. I still had no idea what to make of him.
I nearly rolled my eyes at myself.
I’d do best not to try to decipher it.
“Burr, Mommy! Is co-wed .” Finn hunkered down, snuggling up close to my leg as we crossed the porch.
“Is it too cold to play outside?” I asked, praying my voice didn’t slant into hope considering I was going to freeze my ass off if I spent any amount of time out here.
“Not too co-wed !” He giggled it, shaking his head emphatically as he jumped down the single step of the porch and out onto the pathway.
Of course not. Not that I minded. I wanted to relish this. This time, for however long it lasted.
He ran a couple steps ahead of me, tottering down the walkway and veering to the right where the stone sidewalk led around to the play area that he’d seen out the front window.
I followed a few feet behind him, my smile soft as I watched him.
Then I stumbled a step when I saw who was coming in the opposite direction, chest squeezing in anxious anticipation.
Crap.
Theo.
Dressed in his normal black jeans, though instead of a leather coat, he wore a puffy black one, plus a black beanie on his head. A dark wraith striding up through the endless expanse of white.
“Hi, Feo !” Finn shouted it as he lifted a mittened hand and waved it over his head.
Without reserve, Finn began to trot faster that way.
While I felt like I’d stepped in glue.
The sight of Theo nothing but quicksand. A rushing of my spirit that gushed out in front of me. The part that wanted to crawl to him when the rest of me knew I needed to turn the other direction and run.
“Hey, there, Finn-Finn.” That deep, tolling voice rumbled through the peace.
A thunder that resonated through my being.
“You pway in the snow wif me?” Finn bounced his way, my innocent son unable to feel the threat that rolled off the man. The child unable to understand why we couldn’t trust anyone.
“What, are you coming out here to play in the snow?” Theo enthused.
“I wike snow!” Finn giggled like mad, his shoulders squishing up to his ears.
“Well, I just so happen to have a sled. How about I go grab it, and I can give you a little ride?”
“I ride!” Finn agreed so easily.
That obsidian gaze flashed to me. Black charges of night that struck in the day.
Barbs so sharp they had the power to hook into my flesh.
Energy lashed in the middle of it.
Greed and interest and the kind of attraction that I absolutely couldn’t feel.
Nelly’s suggestion took the inopportune time to take a jaunt through my mind.
“What? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Every time that man gets within a hundred feet of you, that poor, neglected body of yours just about combusts.” Combust might be an understatement.
If she had the first inclination the number of times I had thought about it since I met him.
What it would be like to reach out and run my fingertips along the raw beauty of his face.
To scratch my nails through his trim beard.
For him to stand over me as he peeled himself out of his jeans and?—
“You’re looking a little…dazed.” Theo’s voice cut through the dangerous fantasies. My attention snapped back to the here and now.
He had no idea.
Except with the smug expression he was wearing, I thought he might.
I shook myself out of it and let a scowl take to my brow. “It’s called squinting. The sun’s really bright against the snow.”
He studied me from across the space, that infuriating amusement that I couldn’t quite peg tugging at one side of his delicious mouth.
“Right.” He drew it out.
I huffed.
“You pway ?” Finn urged, bouncing in front of Theo again.
Theo’s attention dipped to him. “Yup. I’m just going to grab that sled. Be right back.”
He wound around him, all smooth, roughened arrogance.
The ground vibrated with each step that brought him in my direction.
“That’s not necessary. I’m sure you have a million things to do,” I muttered under my breath when he got close enough.
Trying to let him off the hook.
Okay, fine, trying to let myself off the hook.
“And miss the opportunity to hang out with my little Finn? Why would I want to do that?”
He swiveled as he passed, taking a few steps backward as he looked at me, those hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket and that beanie low on his head.
It amplified all the cut, imposing edges of his stunning face, his lips extra plump and red in the cold.
With a scorching grin, he turned back around and jogged down the path that led to the main motel building and disappeared through the trees.
“Crap,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Come, Mommy!” Finn was suddenly right back in front of me, grabbing my hand and towing me toward the field.
Disappointment surged when I saw the children who’d been playing earlier were nowhere to be found.
Finn’s little shoulders slumped at the sight. “Kids go bye-bye?”
I released a heavy sigh, breath vapor as I exhaled into the frigid cold. “I’m sorry, sweet boy. It was probably time for them to go inside.”
But Finn’s distress didn’t last for long because the air was shifting again.
Bending in the direction of the man who came hustling back up through the path, a red plastic sled in his hands. “Look what I got,” he called as he approached.
“ Swed !” Finn pointed at Theo, his legs pumping in place, his tiny boots hitting the ground in excitement.
Theo let the sled drop to the ground and started to pull it through the snow.
He stopped right in front of us, and I was slammed with his presence.
Hit with an overpowering rush of volatility.
An aura of danger that radiated from his being.
But it was his kindness toward my son that had me trembling.
“Hop on, little man,” Theo said.
Finn tottered forward two steps, his little snow boots sinking into the powder. He leaned over to grab the edge of the sled, and he basically toppled in since he was so bundled up.
A rough chuckle rolled from Theo, and he helped Finn adjust to sitting.
“There we go. Now hang on tight because I’m about to take you on a wild ride.”
He sent me a wink that promised it wouldn’t be so wild, but I was pretty sure the one that gleamed in his eyes for me would be exactly that.
Wild.
Wild and ruthless and perfect and…
I ground my teeth.
What was he doing? Making me feel this way? This was reckless. The most reckless thing I could do. Thinking of him as… something .
But I didn’t know how to stop.
Theo grabbed the rope and began to pull Finn through the snow.
“Hold on tight,” I shouted.
“No worry, Mommy! I hold tight!” Finn returned.
Theo increased his pace just a bit, and Finn tipped his head back in glee. A peal of laughter rolled from his mouth and rang through the heavens.
Joy ricocheted through the trees, and a flurry of birds flitted through the barren branches.
My heart lodged itself at the base of my throat as I watched Theo begin to haul my son through the field.
Zigzagging back and forth and winding through the playground with the gorgeous lake in the background.
“You like that?” Theo chuckled the question since Finn hadn’t stopped cackling the whole time.
“I wuv it, Feo! I go zoom!”
Theo glanced up at me from where they were in the middle of the field. Something soft and adoring washed through his features.
My stomach tumbled.
He couldn’t look at my son that way. Couldn’t look at me that way.
He hardly even knew us.
But it didn’t seem to matter.
There was this understanding scored in his being. Like he knew how desperately my son needed this. Like he knew how desperately I needed it.
A reprieve.
Rest.
A moment to tip my face to the crisp blue sky and…hope.
I could feel a spindly tendril of it try to break through the barren planes of my insides as I watched Theo and Finn frolic in the snow.
This menacing man who’d been stepping out for us since the second he found us.
He took a bit of a sharper turn, and the sled wobbled, tipping up a bit on its side before it righted itself.
Finn howled with laughter, shouting, “Wee!” as he went. “Faster, Feo , faster!”
“You’re an adrenaline junkie, aren’t you?” Theo teased.
Finn furiously shook his head and flapped his arms out to the sides. “No, I a owl.”
Theo busted up as he lifted that unrelenting gaze in my direction.
That warm sound curled through the crisp, vibrant cold.
Like maybe he was wrapping me in those arms that seemed so sure.
So confident and easy as he played with my son.
I was the fool who sank into it.
The one who allowed the deepest peace to settle over me.
But Nelly was right. We needed this. Even if it could only be for a little while.
I didn’t know how long they’d been out there playing when I felt movement from behind.
A wash of heaviness and uncertainty.
I glanced over my shoulder.
There was a woman and a little girl hovering behind me, both of them bundled up for the snow.
The child was maybe four or five, and she wore a pink, full body snow suit. You could barely make out her dainty face with the way the hood was cinched down over her head.
The woman was probably my age, give or take a few years, and she clung to the little girl’s hand.
Wariness oozed from her being. Doubt and caution woven in every molecule of her body.
When Theo noticed her, the easiness he had been wearing drained. I could almost feel it being sucked from the atmosphere.
He fumbled to a stop where he and Finn were about thirty feet out in the field.
Instantly on edge.
All his focus on the woman and her child.
My stomach tightened in a coil of distress that gathered from out of nowhere.