Chapter 6
Heavy-booted feet pace up and down the hallway outside the door to my room.
Moving away…
Drawing closer…
Moving away again…
His steps seem loud from where I stand with my ear pressed to the wooden slab, even on the plush runner that covers most of the floors. Or maybe I’m just highly attuned to his every movement and noise because it’s been so eerily still and quiet for the last two days.
Since he dragged me out to that cliff, everything has changed, yet it’s also stayed the same. Meals continue to be laid out immaculately. The Beast avoids me, storming away from the house at first light with his ever-present axe in hand. He returns only a few times during the day, then disappears into the trees again, his body tense.
He never looks to my window.
Never checks to see if I’m watching him.
Maybe he assumes I am, the same way he was watching me.
I glance toward the corner of the room, where a small mantle clock sits on the shelf. Its face has always captivated me. The way it almost appeared alive, and now, I know why—because it holds the hidden camera The Beast used to spy on me.
Which is why I have it turned backward, facing the wall.
He hasn’t said a word about it, and two days have done little to cool my ire over the whole situation. The Beast’s little “Field Trip of Terror” hasn’t cleared up my seemingly endless questions, either.
If anything, I only have more. And given the way the man has been incessantly pacing for the last half an hour, he has something to say. About what is anyone’s guess. But each pass he makes in front of the door only seems to coil me tighter, waiting for something—anything—to happen.
I never thought I would miss my captor’s moody, more-often-than-not gruff presence, but as soon as he returned me to the house that night and walked away from me without a look back, it felt like I was losing something I hadn’t known I had possessed.
Not a friendship, but an understanding of sorts.
Now, one day has rolled into two, and this itch to see him and try to further delve into what he told me at the gorge eats away at me.
The footsteps finally stop, and I freeze, backing away from the door slowly—finally able to put my full weight on my foot, at least somewhat comfortably without the shooting pain or tug at the stitches—until my knees hit the mattress behind me and I sink down onto the bed.
My fingers curl into the comforter as I wait.
Five seconds tick by.
Ten.
Twenty.
Sixty.
What are you doing out there?
The door handle turns, and I hold my breath as it eases open slowly.
I’m not sure how I expected him to look.
The same?
But he doesn’t.
Dark bags under his gray eyes suggest he hasn’t slept. Deep lines in his forehead and around his mouth look like he’s spent the last few days with a permanently furrowed brow and frown.
I shouldn’t feel the little flutter of excitement at the knowledge that he’s been suffering as much as I have, but it’s there all the same as he steps through the jamb, back stiff, jaw tight under his beard.
“What do you want?”
Shit.
That came out all wrong, like an accusation instead of an actual question.
Maybe I should have just let him speak. Let him say his piece. But all this waiting, all this doing nothing for days on end, has left me anxious.
He takes a tentative step in, then another, rubbing a hand along his beard. “I wanted to apologize for the other night.”
My back stiffens.
What kind of game is he playing?
The Beast isn’t the type of man who apologizes for anything, and certainly not when he was so confident in his own actions only a few days ago. He was a man on a mission that night, and he was very clear on the purpose of dragging me out there—to scare the shit out of me and make me compliant.
“Why?”
“Because that isn’t—”
Isn’t what?
He bites back his words, and his gaze dips to the floor. I can see the wheels turning in his head as if he’s trying to find the right ones.
After a moment, his gray eyes lift to meet mine. “I want to show you something.”
That doesn’t answer my question. Doesn’t explain his sudden shift, nor do I know if I want to go with him. The last time he showed me something wasn’t exactly pleasant or a trip I’d like to repeat.
But the look in his eyes tells me he might not take “no” for an answer, and he’s already demonstrated he’s more than willing to toss me over his shoulder to get me where he wants me.
I raise a brow at him. “Is that an order?”
His face falls slightly. “No.” He shakes his head, his hands hanging loosely at his sides instead of fisted like they normally are. “You can stay here if you’d like, but I have something I think you’ll want to see.”
The almost soft tone of his normally hard, gravelly voice is so unexpected that it actually takes a moment for me to process his words. But I would be lying if I said my interest isn’t piqued. Because The Beast is looking decidedly un-beastlike right now.
I push to my feet and take a few tentative steps toward him.
His eyes lower to my foot, and he raises a white brow. “Better?”
It’s the only thing that has been good the last few days. Staying mostly in my room and off it has helped it heal even more, and in a few days, I can probably remove the stitches and not feel like part-Frankenstein’s monster.
I nod slowly. “Yeah. I can finally walk on it without much discomfort.”
“Good.” He shifts awkwardly in his boots, almost as if he’s unsure what to do. The Beast unsure is certainly a new one. “Follow me.”
He turns and walks from the room, taking long strides I struggle to keep up with, since my foot still isn’t one hundred percent. But it appears he’s given up on using brute force to get me places, which I have to appreciate—no matter how annoying it is to try to match his steps down the hallway.
We reach the central staircase, but instead of going down, he starts up. I freeze with my hand on the banister, staring at the third floor and the set of double doors I’ve never seen open.
“You said not to go onto the third floor.”
He turns back from halfway up and narrows his eyes on me. “I did, but now I’m telling you to follow me there.”
I release a heavy breath and take a tentative step up, then another, following him with a strange mix of trepidation and anticipation bubbling in my veins.
Part of me always believed the answers I’ve sought were behind those doors, and now, The Beast is about to let me in.
Will I finally understand why I’m here?
He waits at the top of the staircase, and when I reach him, he moves to the door, grasping both knobs. “I know you’ve been bored here the last week. This might help with that.”
His hands turn the brass, and he pushes open the doors.
The familiar scent of parchment, ink, and old books hits me so hard that it brings tears to my eyes.
It can’t be…
A gasp slips from my lips as I move forward into the massive library.
Floor-to-ceiling bookcases cover every square inch of the walls and stand in rows from one end of the huge space to the other. Each crammed with a collection of books that makes what we have at the Lewis and Clark Library—the oldest in Montana—look like a kindergarten classroom’s bookshelf.
Two long tables run down the center with various papers and books spread out across them, as if The Beast himself has been up here working.
It takes several minutes for me to take in everything from my position, which is only a few steps into the room. Stunned silent, I gape, turning to The Beast. “Oh, my God…”
Why would a man like Weston Barker have a library like this?
He fights a smirk at my stunned-stupid reaction, and I wander to the right, to the first bookcase that appears to be all British authors. A set of three simply bound publisher-board style editions immediately draws my eye to the author’s name.
My hand shakes as I reach for one of the books, then jerk it back. “Is that…a first edition?”
Weston approaches and carefully slides one book of the set from its place, turning it toward me and flipping open the first page. “Pride and Prejudice printed in 1813.”
A first fucking edition…
“That has to be worth fifty grand!”
His lips curl into a satisfied smirk. “Closer to one hundred, I would imagine.”
Holy shit.
I scan the rest of the case in front of me. It alone holds at least a million dollars’ worth of books, if not more. Titles and editions I would never find in my library, nor at most libraries anywhere in the world.
My eyes move from them to the entire vast room that takes up the entire third floor of the house. “How did you get all these?”
He moves over to one of the tables and leans back against it, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. Fabric pulls over his biceps and his shoulders, and he crosses his ankles and scans the room. “Many of these books have been in my family since we built this house. Some came with us from England, well before Montana was even a territory.”
“Really?”
Nodding slowly, he motions toward glass-fronted bookcases along one wall. “Those are locked in climate control due to their age. My many-times great grandfather was a librarian in London. He kept the important records for the Barker family for generations, which is now my job.”
Along with burying the bodies…
That little mental reminder of the other night sends a shiver through me as I scan the papers and books spread out on the table. Perhaps documentation of the current workings of the Barker family. Certainly nothing he would ever want me to see. But there are so many books here; there isn’t any way I could read all of them in ten lifetimes.
Fiction.
Nonfiction.
Every author.
Every book imaginable exists in this one glorious space.
I can’t manage to find my words as I move down the racks across the far wall, trying to take in every spine but unable to read them fast enough as my heart jackrabbits. “Do you have any idea how important this place is?”
“To you? Yes.”
I freeze, unable to look at him when his words have stolen my breath.
He clears his throat thickly. “You told me you were a librarian. I knew how much you’d love it here.”
Love might be the understatement of the century.
For all the years I’ve spent in my home library and the state’s, this one feels more like home than those ever have.
God, he even has one of those rolling ladders…
My heart skips a beat, staring at it. “I honestly don’t know what to say. I’m kind of flabbergasted. I never expected—”
“That I could read?”
I finally turn to face him and scowl. “No. That any of this would interest you, I guess.”
He releases a little sigh, surveying the room absently. “I live alone on a mountain, Callista. I have a lot of extra time on my hands.”
That’s fair.
It’s not like he can spend all his time burying Barker enemies. They can’t have that many.
Right?
Casting a quick glance at him, I keep walking, keep scanning titles until another shelf makes me stop. I reach forward, slide out the cookbook on French pastries, and turn it toward him. “You’ve read this?”
He nods.
“Did you—” I bite back the question because it seems so absurd to ask what I’ve suspected to be true even though I can’t come up with another answer. But I have to know. “Have you been making me all those meals since I arrived?”
His gaze darts away, and he rubs the back of his neck. “Like I said, I’ve lived on the mountain alone for a very long time. It’s given me plenty of opportunity to read and develop new skills like languages and cooking.”
New skills?
The brush-off of his talents makes me gape.
“So, let me get this straight: you cook, you clean this massive house, you chop firewood and maintain this vast property, you speak Greek—”
“I actually speak a dozen languages.”
I throw up my hands and laugh. “Of course, you do. And you also manage to find time to do your family’s dirty work.”
His head snaps up, and his gaze meets mine, hard, unyielding, like the steel it shares its color with. “I don’t sleep much.”
Even though the words are true, the statement feels like an inadequate description of my nocturnal situation.
By a long shot.
I can’t even remember the last time I slept through the night or slept at all, really. Just fitful moments here and there, filled with ghosts that never stop chasing me and regrets that crush my shoulders harder than any true weight I’ve ever carried.
And standing here in the library, in my safe space—the one room the cameras can’t reach—that I was so determined to keep her out of, I know I’m not going to be getting any sleep as long as she’s under this roof.
Her pure joy and genuine wide smile as her eyes dart around all the books and take in everything make something warm ignite in my heart. It sears across my chest and blasts through my blood hotter than anything I’ve ever experienced before.
Fuck.
It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything but the agony of my curse—the guilt and regret over what I did and what I’ve let happen for so many years. The taint of the blood on my hands never washes off, and as I rub at that spot over my heart and watch Beauty trail her delicate, pristine fingers over spines of books—some that haven’t been touched in a hundred years—I can’t help but see the glaring truth.
Callista Fox is far too pure and good for this life.
She shouldn’t be tied up in this.
I’ve wanted her freed of it from the first moment I learned who she was and why she was here, but the past week with this woman has cemented that I need to figure out a way to end it.
Fast.
Coming to a stop in front of the case with the glass covering the books, Callista turns back toward me. “These are the oldest?”
I nod slowly. “Yes.”
Some of them are hundreds of years old, handwritten by my ancestors, the Barkers before me, who brought the family across the vast ocean and unforgiving land to read in what would become Montana.
“Have you ever read them?” The true awe and wonder in her voice continue to tug at my chest. “There are so many.”
“Some. Others are so degraded that I’m afraid to take them out, to touch them, terrified I’ll cause more damage. And I doubt there’s anything I could learn from them that would be of benefit, anyway.”
Just old family stories, some so ancient they’re impossible to even read anymore. And they have little to offer aside from proof that all of us have been cursed from the beginning, cursed since we set foot in this country with our sights set on doing whatever it took to ensure we thrived.
We took it too far.
All the Barkers have.
Twisted a dream into a nightmare.
And I’ve made my mistakes and my bed; now I have to lie in it. And it includes having Callista Fox lying in mine every night. Which is why I will never be there, why I’ve spent my nights sitting at these tables, poring over the Barker ledgers and books I’ve meticulously maintained for years, looking for an answer, a sign, some sort of direction I can take that might lead me away from the current path, one that terrifies the fuck out of me.
I haven’t been afraid of anything in thirty years, but the moment this little blonde looked up at me with so much fear in her eyes as she scrambled away from me on that porch, I somehow knew deep down that my life was going to change forever.
Seeing her like this only further ingrains that knowledge.
Beauty presses her hands reverently against the glass, nose almost to it. “I could help you preserve them.” She turns her head to look over at me, hope in her gaze. “That’s one of my specialties. Preservation.”
Of course it is.
Why wouldn’t it be?
Send me the perfect damn woman—beautiful, feisty, intelligent, caring, and kind, someone willing to sacrifice herself for her father, yet she stands here, offering help to the man who holds her against her will. A woman with a very special skill set that only a handful of people in the entire country could offer.
Very calculated.
I swallow thickly. The idea of her digging through Barker archives sours my stomach. All our sins laid out on the pages of those books, no matter how old, will color her view of us.
But maybe that isn’t a bad thing.
Just like taking her to the gorge, if she sees the real history, learns how far back the corruption, manipulation, death, and destruction go, she’ll close herself off from me, maybe even fear me the way she should.
I force a neutral expression. “That would be great. Let me know if you need anything I don’t have.”
That has her spinning to face me fully, and she approaches the table slowly. “And you’ll what? Order it online?”
The humor in her voice and twitch of her lips almost makes me smirk.
“I have my sources.”
She narrows her eyes on me. “How do you get things up here? I know you didn’t have all those extra clothes, the bathroom items, and everything else you’ve left for me just lying around in hopes that a woman would appear one day.”
Shit.
I certainly didn’t.
And a woman showing up was the last thing I wanted.
This place is too volatile for someone like Callista. It will destroy her eventually. I will.
I shake my head. “No, I have sources, people who can find me anything I need and get it to me quickly.”
“But how?” Her soft brow furrows. “You don’t allow anyone on the mountain and…” She stops, her steps faltering as her words trail off. “Are you driving down from the house each time you need to pick something up?”
I tighten my hands around the edge of the table and avert my gaze from hers, not wanting to admit that’s exactly what I’ve been doing because I want her to be comfortable. I need for her not to hate it here completely, and maybe deep down, because I didn’t want her to hate me completely, even though that would be best for both of us.
But she’s too smart for me to lie about it. There’s only one way anything gets up the mountain—with me.
Clearing my throat, I nod. “I meet them at the base of the mountain at the turn-in, where you should’ve stayed.”
She scowls at me, the twist in her pink lips so adorable it almost makes me laugh. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
“For what?”
“Regret.”
Christ, she’s so na?ve.
One thing her father did well—right or wrong—was shelter her from the harsh realities of this world. And apparently, even showing it to her the other night hasn’t been enough to teach her the lesson I had hoped it would.
“It’s never too late for regrets, Beauty.”
I have held on to mine for decades, and having this woman here is only adding to them exponentially. “Just let me know what you need…”
“Time…” Her brow draws low, and she tears her gaze from me to scan the room. “There are more books in here than any one person could possibly read in an entire lifetime.”
I nod slowly. “I know. I’ve lived in this house for over fifty years, and I’ve barely made a dent.”
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it as she peeks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Is that what you’re doing up here? Trying to make your way through all the books?”
I can hear the hesitation in her voice.
Callista knows she shouldn’t be asking me questions, and I sure as fuck shouldn’t be answering them. But the response slips out all the same because I find it hard to deny this woman anything.
“I do anything I can to take my mind off the things I don’t want to be thinking about.”
Mostly her.
Her gaze whips to meet mine, and it’s her turn to look shaken. “Have you spent much time up here since I arrived?”
“All of it.”
Save for my taking care of necessary duties on the property and trying to physically exhaust myself to forget about her, I’ve spent every moment up here, at this table. Even the few moments of actual sleep I may have gotten over the past week have been with my head dropped to its smooth surface.
Instead of recoiling at my response, instead of fear flashing in her gaze as I expect the admission to elicit, heat pushes a blush up her neck and over her cheeks and something I never expected to see in her emerald eyes stares back at me—desire.
Fuck.
I rip my gaze from hers and shove off from the desk. The place I’ve always been safe in this house has now become the most dangerous part of the property with this woman in it.
I need to get out.
Away from her.
I take a step toward the door, but Callista manages to insert herself directly in my path, moving far faster than I expected her to be able to on her still-healing foot.
“Thank you for showing me this, for giving me access to it. I can tell how much this place means to you, how difficult it is for you to share it. How difficult it is for you to share anything.”
Flexing my hands at my sides, I clench my jaw, fighting my body’s reaction to her proximity. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Callista.”
One of her brows rises. “Don’t I?” She advances a single step, bringing with her the scent that will now cling to every inch of the library. “You may be the one watching me on the cameras, but I see you. I see things I shouldn’t in a man with a reputation like yours, things that make me wonder what’s reality and what’s all a fa?ade and why the hell you’d have it there in the first place.”
Too smart.
Too observant.
I should have known she wouldn’t back down, even after seeing the cemetery.
“It seems my warning the other day didn’t take.”
She doesn’t respond to that, merely tilts her chin higher and squares her shoulders, refusing to back down. The challenge she lays down without a single word makes my cock stir behind the zipper of my jeans.
Fucking hell.
The way she looks at me has shifted in only a matter of a week—from abject terror and resentment to something that scares me when I should be the one terrifying her.