Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
ISLA
He was watching me. As I bounced against Beau the lumberjack’s back, his little demonic trash panda followed closely behind, its beady eyes darting between my pack and my face.
I wasn’t sure what Ashehole’s problem was, but my laptop better be okay. It was my spare one, a lightweight, compact model that was good for writing on the go, but if I was going to be stuck in the woods for an undetermined amount of time, I needed to work.
Beau was silent the rest of the trek, the wind picking up and blowing my disastrous hair in my face, and I knew it was going to take me forever to get it untangled.
My mind raced as he went further into the woods, but I sighed in relief when we finally reached a clearing. At least he hadn’t been lying about having somewhere to wait out the storm safely. Well, as safe as I could be with a tall, burly, bearded, red-haired, devilishly handsome stranger.
While I was briefly worried I had a concussion, I wasn’t disoriented enough to miss how attractive my supposed rescuer was. And since I’d spent the last fifteen minutes staring at his firm, toned, denim covered ass and his tree trunk thighs, I was feeling all kinds of conflicted.
I’d been so distracted with my career that it’d been a long time since I’d been this close to a man, and while my ankle throbbed with each of his long strides, I wasn’t sad about being thrown around by this one.
“We’re here,” he grunted, dropping my bag to the porch as four distinct electronic beeps sounded.
“Can you put me down?”
“Give me a fuckin’ minute, woman.” His hand tightened on my thigh and before I could prepare myself, he was swinging me backward and dropping me onto a soft surface, the smell I’d been inhaling on the back of his shirt amplified by about a thousand as he settled me onto his unmade bed.
“Thank you,” I whispered as he looked at me. He just nodded, turning on his heel and disappearing back out the door.
Well, that was rude.
I’d thought maybe he was going outside to get my bag, but as the minutes ticked by and he didn’t return, the exhaustion from earlier caught up with me and I found myself drifting off.
Sometime later, the sound of rain pattered on the roof, and my body felt heavy as I blinked and tried to figure out where I was. The cabin was dark, the glow of a fire crackling and as I scanned the dimly lit space, I wondered how long I’d been asleep.
The fire cast shadows across the room, and I almost screamed when I saw two eyes reflecting the light looking at me, but Ashe just huffed and rolled over from his spot by the fire and went back to sleep.
My back was warm, but my neck tingled with each soft puff of breath from the man behind me. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep, but it was clearly the middle of the night, judging by how dark it was. I wanted to be mad that Beau had curled himself around me without my permission, but as his deep voice murmured in my ear to go back to sleep, and his hand pulled me tighter against his chest, I succumbed to the drowsiness and did as he asked.
“You little motherfucker, drop it,” a deep voice growled, startling me awake while I tried to gain my bearings.
The cabin was dim, but traces of sunlight coming from the windows crawled across the floor.
“Is this what you were trying to steal from her?” Beau growled and I rolled, wincing as my ankle protested.
When my eyes focused, I could see the wrapper from the granola bar I’d only eaten half of and tucked into the top of my back the day before.
“You’ve got a problem, you little shit.” Ashe just chattered back at the irate lumberjack and reached up for the wrapper. “No, you can’t have this. You’ve gotta get control of yourself. You could have hurt her.”
The two went back and forth and then I heard little nails scraping across the floor as a streak of gray fur tried to throw itself underneath the bed I was in.
Inhaling, I sighed as the aroma of freshly brewed coffee invaded my senses. It’d only been a few days, but I’d missed my old friend.
“Want a cup?” Beau asked, holding a battered tin mug in my direction.
“Why do you keep him around?” I asked, nodding toward Ashe while I cradled the warm mug between my palms.
“I’ve tried to kick him out, trust me,” Beau grumbled, and Ashe chattered right back from his hiding place.
“How does one even obtain a raccoon for a pet?” I asked. I’d seen Instagram posts of domesticated raccoons before, but I hadn’t realized it was an actual thing.
“Found his mama in their nest after a forest fire. He was the only baby who survived. Took him with me and cleaned him up. Tried to surrender him to a wildlife rescue down the road from my house, but he escaped and found me.”
“Was he psychotic then?” I asked, eyeing the little bandit who had crawled out from under the bed and was currently playing with something across the room.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” I teased, secretly enjoying how Beau’s expression shifted, becoming more menacing than the grumpy caretaker role he’d adopted around me.
I could admit that I appreciated that he’d found me and carried me what was likely over a mile in the woods over his shoulder. Because I did very much appreciate that fact. But I still didn’t know what his intentions were. And the pessimistic voice in my head whispered that he was dangerous. I still didn’t know why he’d been wandering the woods surrounding the Appalachian Trail with an axe.
“Why are you here, Isla?” he asked, not rising to the bait I’d laid out.
That was the question. Why was I here?
“Trying to find my muse, I guess.” His head tilted, his eyes tracing my features.
“And what kind of muse are you trying to find?”
“I’m an author. I write mysteries.”
“Ah, one of those,” he mused, tipping his mug to take a drink.
“Yup. One of those,” I said dryly, trying to figure out how much I wanted to tell him about the book I was failing to write. Typically, Sam and Kristine were the only two with access to my writing, but an outside perspective would help spark something. “I’m here to research a missing person’s case from the early 1970s. A woman went missing on the trail and was never found. And I guess I thought coming here would help me understand what happened to her.”
He turned away from me, his posture tense. “Maybe you should have stayed wherever you came from because some secrets on the trail aren’t meant to be uncovered.”
“Well, that’s ominous…”
And it was also the last thing he said to me for almost a week.