10. Elodie
TEN
ELODIE
I really meant to turn around.
Once I had realized that I accidentally walked into the wrong room and someone was showering, I had swiveled on my heels to hustle the hell out of there.
Then a single word stopped me in my tracks.
Elodie.
My name, spoken in a choked groan that could only mean one thing. One guttural, masculine moan that paralyzed me. One I had felt right down in the soles of my feet.
Heat sparked at the edges of my skin like the first lick of a wildfire.
I wasn’t supposed to hear that. I was definitely not supposed to feel it. A pulse of heat shot through me, sharp and insistent, pooling low in my belly like my body had rewired itself to respond to him.
No. Not him . The situation. The sheer primal sound of it.
I could lie to myself and pretend like I thought the moan on the other side of the door meant he was injured, but I knew better. I knew exactly what was happening in that shower.
What I didn’t know was why it was my name on his lips.
In my defense, I had knocked and the door was already cracked when I pushed it the rest of the way open.
I had even called out, for fuck’s sake.
Breaths sawed in and out of me as I pressed my back to the wall next to his bathroom door. My nails dug into my palms as a low throb pulsed between my legs. Cal moaned again and I nearly screamed.
I would never be able to look Callum Blackwood in the eye again.
As I scanned the darkened suite, it was clear this was Cal’s living space.
Masculine traces of him were evident—the king-size bed meticulously made with sharp, military-grade edges.
Zero frills on the bedside table, only a lonely clock and a wristwatch.
Across the room, his closet was open, his shirts and pants hung with painful organization.
I moved on instinct, legs carrying me forward before I even registered the motion. My pulse pounded in my throat, my breath short and uneven. I needed to get out of there—now, before?—
The shower squeaked as it turned off.
“Fuck,” I whispered, desperate with the need to escape. In the dark, I tiptoed across the suite, cursing the ancient floorboards that softly creaked underfoot.
When I made it to the door and slipped into the hallway, I let out a sigh of relief. Cracking the door just as it had been, I scurried down the hall, still clutching the whole reason I was lurking around the Drifted Spirit Inn in the first place.
My body was on fire as I scurried as quickly as my feet could take me.
“Elodie.” A thick, booming voice stopped me. His voice. Only this time it was filled with surprised annoyance rather than the desperate groan of a man about to orgasm.
I jumped with a yelp, turning toward him. His head was poked out of the doorway, bare shoulders on display. He was wearing nothing but a towel, hastily wrapped around his hips. I swallowed hard, envying the terry cloth as it hung on for dear life.
A drop of water tracked the cut V of his waist, slow and deliberate, before soaking into the white cotton. I told myself I wasn’t watching. That I wasn’t standing here like an idiot, rooted to the floor, pulse hammering in my ears.
Thick water droplets clung to the tips of Cal’s hair, darkening it to nearly black. The hall light cast a moody glow, but I could see his sharp gaze freeze on me.
“Oh!” I cleared my throat. “Hey, Cal.” Fancy meeting you here ...
His dark gaze narrowed, his eyebrows suspicious slashes across his eyes. For a moment he just stared, his demeanor clouding with intensity as though he knew I had violated his sacred privacy.
Could he tell? Could he read the thoughts tumbling from my mind?
I’ve been actively imagining your dick in your hands for the last several minutes.
I blinked, hoping that seventh-grade drama class wouldn’t fail me and I could act my way out of the world’s most awkward encounter. I lifted my hand with a jerky wave.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “No one is allowed back here. ”
My mouth opened, but I snapped it closed again. I pointed in the direction of the front desk. “Helen sent me back here. Levi left his hoodie at my place. I was just returning it.”
“It’s late.” His eyes flicked to the black hoodie and back to my face before he sighed and shook his head. “Why that kid thinks he needs a hoodie in June is beyond me.”
I didn’t respond because my brain was still back at the bar. I was lost in the memory of how his hand had landed on me, warm and steady, fingers pressing just enough to ground me before curling against the small of my back.
A warning. A claim. A reaction maybe he hadn’t even thought through. I’d played it off and acted like it didn’t shake me, but it had.
I’d danced for him.
Maybe that was it—the way I moved, the way I let the music carry me, all while knowing exactly where he was in that bar.
I wanted him to look. I wanted him to feel it, but I hadn’t expected this .
I hadn’t expected to come home and hear my name on his lips, groaned like a prayer, like something pulled out of him by force.
My pulse jumped, betraying me.
I gripped the hoodie tighter, hoping he wouldn’t see the way my fingers were shaking.
I blinked, willing my brain back to the moment. “That’s kids for you, I guess.” I reluctantly held the crumple of black fabric out, unable to step forward.
His moody eyes flicked across the hallway as he stepped out of his room, wearing nothing but that low-slung white towel.
Heat licked up my spine. He wasn’t just built—he was carved, like something meant to be worshipped in dim candlelight.
Broad shoulders, every inch of him honed from discipline and something far more dangerous than just hard work at the gym.
His chest, all ridges and valleys of muscle, tapered into a trim waist. A constellation of old scars mapped their way across his skin, stark against the ink that wrapped his biceps and climbed the hard cut of his forearm toward his hand.
Not clean, perfect lines—his tattoos wove through rough, jagged scars, ink bleeding into flesh that had been torn and stitched back together more times than I wanted to consider.
Some deep and thick, others thin and raised, a history that spoke of battles I would never hear about.
The contrast between them—the art and the damage—was staggering.
Proof that he had been torn open and put back together again.
I swallowed, pulse hammering. He was devastating, and I hated that I couldn’t stop looking. The space between us felt too small, the air too thick.
Cal reached for the hoodie, his fingertips burning a path across the back of my hand as he dragged them across my skin.
An awkward laugh snagged in my throat. “Levi did great today—I worked him hard and he didn’t complain once.”
What the hell? Why am I making small talk about his son when he’s naked ?
“Okay, bye!” My cheeks flamed, and I swiveled on my heels to make my escape without looking back. I wound through the maze of the Drifted Spirit, beelining it toward the front door.
“Find what you needed?” Helen’s voice was full of honey as I rushed past her.
I paused, facing her. She was perched on a high-backed stool behind the front desk, absently looking up from a book. The well-worn novel was splayed open on her lap—a vintage Harlequin romance with its long-haired love interest wrapping himself around the waif of a woman beneath him.
My mind instantly pinged to Cal wearing nothing but a towel. He’d look good with a sword in his hand.
A real sword. Not his dick—oh my god.
A strangled “Yep!” was all I could muster as a fresh wave of heat crawled up my chest and neck.
Helen chuckled to herself, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether her overly vague directions— the living quarters are down that hallway, past the kitchen and toward the back —were intentional.
Sure, the elderly woman had no way of knowing exactly what I would walk into, but the mischievous glint in her amber eyes told me she had a feeling I might stumble into her boss.
Maybe the innocent-looking woman really was a troublemaker.
I turned, wrapping my arms around my middle and suppressing a smile.
“You know,” Helen said at my back, “you got me thinking.”
Curiosity piqued, I turned with a raised eyebrow.
“The Lady,” she supplied. “You were right. It feels wrong that we don’t know more about who she really was, outside of the legends.
” Helen leaned forward, pulling an old scrapbook out from behind the desk.
It landed with a gentle thud on the thick oak desktop.
The book was similar to the one at the library, but bound in cracked leather the color of wine .
“This old house came with a lot of old memories.” She nodded toward the book. “Including this.”
Drawn forward by intrigue, I stepped closer and gazed at the words Scrap Book in swooping cursive printed on the cover and embossed with gold. This kind of distraction was exactly what I needed to forget all about Cal and his thick, masculine groaning.
My fingers hovered over the words. “May I?”
I glanced at Helen, who smiled. “Of course.”
The hinges creaked open, and I was assaulted with the slightly sweet, musty smell of almonds.
The old-book smell wrapped around me as my fingers floated over the pages, too afraid to touch it.
The book seemed to be a record of the Barker household and general goings-on in Star Harbor.
Newspaper clippings were glued next to sepia portraits.
Faded, handwritten notes included scribbled dates and annotations.
I paused at a photograph of the Drifted Spirit Inn.
Though the image was old, the home stood proudly in the background.
The trees weren’t nearly as imposing as they now were, and the land around the home was undeveloped.
At the base of the porch steps, a handsome couple stared at the camera, two children—a young boy and girl—by their sides.
A handwritten date was scribbled beneath it: 1886 .
“This is so cool,” I whispered, lost in the history of it all.
Helen pointed at the photograph that had captured my imagination.
“That is Louis Barker along with his wife and children around the time that construction of the home was completed. He was an intensely private man ... little is known about his family.” She lifted a shoulder.
“Most is probably just lost to time, which makes the mystery all the more alluring. ”
I glanced up and smiled, knowing exactly what she meant.
“There are some pictures of the farmland, a few notes written by who I am guessing was Mrs. Barker.” Helen closed the book and slid it toward me. “I thought you might want to borrow this—use some of the old pictures.”
My imagination sparked to life. I could already see the social media images of then and now, side by side, showing what the farmland used to be and how Stan and I were honoring it, even today.
I reached for her hand and squeezed. “Thank you.”
Carefully, I lifted the book off the counter and hugged it against my chest. Bit by bit my plan for enticing people to Star Harbor Farm was becoming clearer. The most important hurdle was making sure the farm was up and running by the time people showed up.
That included a laundry list of items that made my head spin. It was time to focus. Prove myself.
I was drowning in tasks, and the last thing I needed was to be distracted by moody innkeepers who spent the better part of the evening scowling at me at the Lantern, only to moan my name in the shower.
Besides, Cal never had to know. Not about the hallway. Not about the moan. Not about the fact that for the rest of my damn life, I would hear my name in that voice, in that moment, whispered into the dark like a secret.
He never had to know.