CHAPTER TWO
WALKER
I planted my feet shoulder width apart and tried to ignore the sound of the tinny engine noise that reverberated along my spine crept up the mountain. Not that I expected anyone—Jude knew better than to head up my way when rain was due, and I hadn’t capped the drive like I promised myself I would months ago when the rain last stopped.
Now, it looked like I’d be doing a whole lot more when the remainder of last year’s effort washed away in a few hours’ time and left me with a slippery granite slope that wouldn’t be drivable any time soon.
Not that I cared if I was stuck up on the mountain for a while longer. I had no plans on leaving. Whoever decided to visit, however, might object to my personal habits when they were stuck here with me. I hadn’t shared my living space with another human for some time.
The clunky sound choked just outside my line of sight. I frowned, my axe lifted over my head as I stared down at the round of timber set out before me. That pathetic, rusty little vehicle didn’t sound anything like any of the Red Hart trucks, and it sure as hell didn’t belong to anything that trader Kyle might drive.
I placed my axe against the giant larch stump I habitually used for chopping rounds. With clouds setting in well after midday, I had a need for dry wood. Once the rain started on my side of the mountain, it tended not to stop for a while.
Exhaling a long breath I swung about to face the newcomer invading my rocky granite outcrop where I’d made my home just over a decade ago when I left White Cap. Travis’ father offered me a home back then when my own refused to do the same. I took the offer, and his son and his best friend worked shoulder to shoulder beside me for a season to help build a simple log cabin just big enough to keep the snow off my back in winter.
I’d stayed here ever since, only coming down to the big house to top up supplies and fuel when the jenny ran dry.
Which was why an unannounced visitor at this time of year with rain pending was not my idea of a good time.
I cast an eye heavenward just as a ratty little white car that probably should have stayed in White Cap about the same time as I left the small Montana town butted its scarred hood over the edge of my drive and onto the plateau where I spent my hours. The vehicle announced its presence with a death rattle that could have woken half the mountain range, and died.
The driver didn’t seem deterred at all by the steam that billowed in plumes from where I assumed the little car kept what remained of its engine. She bounded out of her car, red hair swinging from her shoulders to her—holy shit, did those sunset colored locks actually hang all the way to her knees ? Dressed in white jeans that stopped mid-calf and a red knitted top that bared her shoulders, neither my mountain nor myself had seen anything as vibrant as this tiny woman in years, if ever.
Not that the woman was tall; she’d be lucky to reach my nipples if we stood forehead to chest level. But her hair was fairytale length at least. Considering her dramatic arrival, I wondered if I shouldn’t be on the lookout for a wicked stepmother, or perhaps a wayward dragon on the fly.
“Walker Roan.” Her voice stopped me dead as she stalked toward me, tapping a manilla folder as thick as my forearm in her hands. A sultry smile curved cherrywood red lips to match her hair. “You are not an easy man to catch, sir.” She smiled and tossed the folder on the hood of her car—for dramatic effect, I suspected.
Damn slip of a thing would be lucky if those papers didn’t blow away and end up at the bottom of the mountain in the next few minutes, the way the clouds were starting to roll in behind her, not that I expected she had noticed.
Something about the way my name rolled off her tongue left me hotter under the collar than a downslope wind rushing along the mountain face. I raked one hand through my beard, covering my mouth as I stared down at her. The woman didn’t stop until the toes of her glossy patent heels— who the fuck wore goddam high heels on their way up a mountain? —touched my scuffed leather boots.
Yep, nipple level. Maybe an inch or so below. Called it.
That was where the top of her head reached on me as I stared down into her hazel color change eyes that matched the forest around us with their stunning array of greens and browns and yellows that shifted with the sunlight.
Those eyes that still watched me like she expected an answer.
Because she did.
I cleared my throat. “You’re the woman who’s been asking around about me, are you?” My voice came out rough, like I hadn’t used it in a while.
She was my father’s lawyer. Attorney. Whatever. Jude mentioned her at least once in the last six months, maybe sometime earlier. It wasn’t like I kept track.
And she looked at me like my voice came out strange compared to what she was used to. Hell if I knew what the kids down at White Cap looked and sounded like. It’s not like I had regular company up here, which was kind of the point. I supposed that unless I counted yelling “Fuck!” at the generator when I dropped my screwdriver between the panels at the back last month, it had been a while since I spoke to anyone.
“I’m Faith Somerset. We have a lot to talk about.” Her hands planted on her hips and her gaze transformed into a glare in the space of seconds.
I could have sworn flame tried to roast me, too.
“Do we.” I cleared my throat again and coughed when my voice itched, but the two words still came out flat as fuck.
Faith looked less than impressed. “I called, I emailed, and I messaged. Hell, I even sent you a freaking letter.” Her voice rose at that last one with indignation.
I offered her a gentle smile to lessen the blow. “My post box is in White Cap. I haven’t been in to clean it out in years. Trav has, though.”
She stared at me. As I watched that glossy, patent heel on her left foot actually rose a few inches in slow motion then stamped back down in the epitome of a perfect, spoiled temper tantrum.
“Do you mean to tell me—” She inhaled a long, calming breath that seemed to do shit all for her, but it sure was amusing to me. “—that Travis Beaumont could have told me he’s been collecting your mail for you all this time, right before I drove all the way up your fucking mountain?”
I smirked. “For a pretty little thing, you sure have a potty mouth. It’s cute.”
Her face pinked on cue. Also cute. “I. Am. Not. Little. Or cute,” she added as an afterthought.
I let her have that one. “Didn’t Travis tell you not to come up here with the weather closing in?” I asked.
Her glare returned. “He told me you never came off the mountain. I’m here to change your mind.”
Her declaration didn’t do shit for me. “You might want to move your car before the rain starts.”
“What rain?”
A fat drop plopped right on the middle of her pert, ski-jump nose, washing away half her makeup in a second flat.
“That rain.”
The deluge started as the sky that had been clear a second before darkened. Clouds that had been hiding around the western face of the mountain swirled and blew in, blotting out the sun. Rain that started slow pattered our skin to start. Fat drops turned heavy, then sharp and icy, turning her hair into a crystalline river of flickering copper and scarlet beneath the fast fading daylight.
“You want to get inside.” I held out a hand as the wind picked up, pointing to the front of my cabin, and raised my straining voice to make myself heard over the deluge. “This is going to get torrential.”
The woman standing in the middle of my yard stared at me through her ruined makeup. “I thought they were kidding about the rain.” Her soft voice was whisked away by the wind.
Letting out a bark of a laugh that risked her wrath and probably some other version of fiery death, I grabbed her hand and towed her under the rafters of my cabin, out of the weather that seemed hell bent on giving her a fine mountain worthy greeting.
She squeaked, or made some sort of hyperactive noise that resembled a terrified animal as I pulled her close, but I only wanted to get that glorious hair out of her face. Unfortunately, my thick fingers weren’t really up to the job. I smeared what was left of her makeup across her eyes until she resembled a trash panda wearing a damp party suit.
“You’re not helping,” she muttered, folding her arms across her chest. Her breasts pushed up. I tried not to stare.
“Probably not,” I agreed, my lips twitching beneath my beard.
I sighed and shook my head. The ground shifted. I frowned, tightening my hold on the woman. She squeaked again when I pushed her back against the house, sure my luck had finally run out, but it wasn’t me who the mountain took its wrath out on.
Movement in my periphery had me lunging sideways despite my better judgment, but nothing I did would have stopped the end result, anyway. Her little white car slid backward a foot. She moved with me even as I flung an arm across her chest, knocking her backward. The ground moved, and it was too late. The tiny car that matched the tiny woman lost its battle along with the topsoil remaining on my driveway under what was probably half a year’s worth of rain in less than ten minutes since she arrived, if that.
The top of the hill collapsed, taking her car with it as she watched on in abject horror. A horrendous creak announced the vehicle’s death as it slammed into what sounded like every granite boulder on its way to the bottom of the hill.
I waited until I thought it had fallen all the way down, then coughed into my fist.
“Well, that’s that, then. Can I get you a coffee? I think I’ve got some UHT milk about in the pantry.”
The horror reflected in her eyes probably matched my own, if for a slightly different reason. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t keep a mirror in the house, but she’d find that out soon enough.
Or a phone.
God knew who she’d been calling, but it sure as fuck hadn’t been me.
I strode inside my home that had been built for one and now had to house two bodies. At least until I could figure out how the fuck to get her off my mountain and safely back to Red Hart before one of us killed the other.
Or worse.