Chapter 12 ZACHERY MEETS THE BEAVER
Chapter 12
Z ACHERY M EETS THE B EAVER
I make it to the Pitchfork Lodge shortly before midnight. The LA traffic ran me later than I liked, but I’m feeling awake and borderline agitated as I enter beneath the antler arch Kelsey told me about before she left for her date.
I didn’t hear much from her afterward. I had to text her three times to get any response. She only said it didn’t go well, but she was in her room and safe.
I’m familiar with this pattern. It’s the one where some asshole has sunk her pride, made her feel small. She goes silent, even with me.
I’ll kill him.
The lobby is deserted other than all the dead creatures staring at me from shiny glass eyes. I spot the beaver she talked about.
This place is something, that’s for sure.
I ring the bell, and a bleary-eyed man steps out from a room behind the desk. “Can I help you?”
“I need a room.”
“We’re all booked.”
I glance out the window, mostly blocked by a huge taxidermy bear. The parking lot is half-empty. “Really?”
“We got a whole hunting party here. Came five to a truck. Lent my last room to a young lady a few hours ago.”
I sigh. Maybe I can get hold of Kelsey and see her for a minute before I try to find some other place. It’s not likely she’s asleep at this hour. I know her habits pretty well.
“Thanks,” I tell the man and step away from the counter.
I sit on a wooden bench. What should I say to her? She doesn’t know I’m coming. She might not want me here.
Me: You need a pick-me-up?
I wait.
Nothing.
Me: I’m about to start making out with a beaver.
It takes a minute, but she texts back.
Kelsey: What?
Me: Rumor has it that she has a loose eye.
Kelsey: Are you seriously here?
Me: I’m downstairs.
Kelsey: Did you get a room?
Me: They’re all booked. Hunters everywhere.
Kelsey: One was cleaning a shotgun in the lobby earlier.
Me: This does not surprise me.
Kelsey: Come up! I’m in 203.
I hesitate. This is what I was angling for, but I wonder if it’s a good idea. Kelsey and I have spent a lot of time together over the years, but never alone in a hotel room when I don’t have anywhere else to go. At least not yet.
But it seems I’m committed.
Me: On my way.
I stand, and the man behind the counter looks up.
“I’m headed up to my friend’s room.”
He shrugs and disappears through the door.
I dislike that I’m carrying one of my suitcases into her room, and for a moment, I consider taking it back to my car.
But this is Kelsey. I’ll simply explain.
I’m not clear how to get upstairs right away. I spot an elevator, but after a moment of waiting, I ascertain that it’s not functioning.
I follow the exit signs and finally spot a set of stairs. I take them two at a time.
When I get to Kelsey’s room, she’s peering out into the hall. “I thought you were lost!”
“The elevator appears to be out of order.”
“Oh, yeah, Watson said that.”
“Watson?”
“The man at the front desk.”
“You already know everybody here?”
She waves me inside the room. “I made quite an entrance.”
I follow her inside. I haven’t stayed in a room this small since a high school trip. There’s a bed beneath an oversize painting of a mallard family, mass-produced and as hideous as anything I could have imagined in a place like this.
But I’m not here for the art.
I tuck my suitcase discreetly in a corner and drop onto a threadbare chair next to the bedside table.
Kelsey sits on the bed, a gray sweater thrown over a pair of pink pajamas. When she turns to me, I spot a cartoon bear on the shirt.
I knew it.
But a quip about her sleepwear dies on my lips when I see her expression, her lip practically quivering. She’s falling apart.
I move to sit beside her. “Tell me everything.”
She holds off for a good ten seconds, fussing with her fuzzy socks, also printed with bears.
Then it all comes in a rush. “I shouldn’t have faked a meet-cute. I tripped, apparently flashed the room, and they all thought I wanted one of them to stuff me like taxidermy!”
Wait, what? “Stuff you?”
“Zach! I mean with their dicks!”
Oh. “And how do you know this?”
“They told me.” Her face crumples. “At d-dinner.” She shivers.
Damn it. I draw her against me.
She tucks her face into my neck. She’s warm and soft and sighs against my skin.
“Kelsey, they’re small-town yahoos who have no right talking to a woman at all, much less like that.”
“But I did fake the fall. I thought I was making a meet-cute.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
I’m so angry these assholes upset her that I want to bash a whole lot of hillbilly faces in.
Of course, we’re in the desert, not the hills, but even so, it was crass and lowbrow.
She shakes a little, and I think she might be crying, but then she pulls away in a fit of giggles. “Are you thinking about punching somebody?”
“No.”
She lifts my arm, where my hand is in a tight fist. “So, what’s this then?”
I shake my fingers loose. “Nothing.”
She laughs again. “I love you, Zachery Carter.”
My brain stutters on her words, wanting to interpret them another way, a real way. But I know better. This is Kelsey being demonstrative, full of hyperbole.
I make a typical remark for me. “You and half the women in America. Get in line.”
This gets another giggle.
She scoots back on the bed to sit cross-legged. “So, why are you here?”
Right, that.
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“Zach!”
I rehearsed several answers to this in the car. It might take every ounce of my acting training to convince Kelsey, though.
“Jester and I discussed your trip this morning and got concerned about you. I volunteered as tribute.”
Her gaze takes in every point of my face as if assessing it for authenticity. “You and Jester, huh?”
“He was trying to repair your Charlie Brown mug.”
“Right.” She sighs. “This week did not have an auspicious beginning.”
“But you pulled the Two of Cups.”
This gets a genuine smile out of her. “You remember!”
This is exactly the distraction we need. “Let’s pull another one. A message from the universe about what’s next after those blowhards.”
“That’s a great idea!” She rolls over to reach into a pink duffel bag, flashing a long, bare leg. I force myself to look away. It’s when Kelsey is at her most vulnerable that I find it most difficult to resist her.
She extracts a different box from before. It’s a metal tin and has drawings of colorful bears on it.
“What’s this?”
“My Gummy Bear Tarot. It’s more lighthearted than the other one.” She pulls the deck out of the tin. “I think you should pull the card.”
“Will it be accurate then? I might be a nonbeliever.” My eyes follow the quick movements of her hands as she rearranges the deck.
“The magic works. Even if you do an online pull.” She stops shuffling and spreads the deck across the bed in a fan. “Because the magic is in you. It’s like dreams. They mean whatever you think they mean. It’s your subconscious you’re tapping. It doesn’t have to be mystical. It’s more about our feelings.”
“Okay.” I consider the cards. One is sticking out slightly above the others, so I take it.
“Flip it over,” she says.
Two gummy bears look like they might be in the Garden of Eden. Above them is a godlike bear on a cloud. The words “The Lovers” are printed at the bottom.
“That’s on the nose,” I say.
Kelsey tilts her head, taking in the image. “Yeah, it’s weird. I’ve never pulled the Two of Cups or the Lovers before, and here I’ve gotten them both regarding this trip.” She winks at me. “Almost makes you believe it’s actually magic.”
I don’t like it. More nonsense to mess with Kelsey’s very solid common sense. And it’s my fault—again. First with the fortune teller, and this time encouraging her to use her deck.
But I stuff all this down. My negativity won’t help in this moment. “Does it mean what it sounds like?”
“Not always.” She takes the card from me. “It can mean soulmate, or a powerful bond. It isn’t always about a lover in the usual sense.”
Soulmate. Now that’s a word. Has she ever had one? Have I? Is it even a thing?
I’m not a believer in that, either. I can’t be, not in my line of work.
Kelsey leaves the Lovers card on top and puts the deck back into its tin.
“How many decks did you bring?” I ask.
“Uh. A few.” She drops the tin into her bag. “What was your plan?”
There’s a note in her voice I’m not sure about, like maybe I ought to think about leaving.
I shift away from her. “I wanted to check on you.”
“Six hours of driving? When we could talk on the phone?” She returns to her cross-legged position, and I work to keep my gaze off the miles of skin between her socks and her shorts.
“I haven’t gotten a good set of bloody knuckles in a while.”
She tugs her sweater around her middle more tightly, like she’s cold, or shy, or maybe uncomfortable. I probably should leave.
“I’m okay, you know. I’m not a damsel in distress.”
I was worried she would draw that conclusion. “I never thought you were. But maybe you could use a wingman?”
She considers this, plucking a loose string on the worn bedspread. “Maybe.”
“I’ll totally stay out of the way. I’m just the bodyguard.”
“Like Kevin Costner to Whitney Houston?” she asks.
If only.
“I was thinking more Secret Service to the First Lady.”
She squints an eye. “You don’t have the right look.”
I hold a finger to my ear like I’m listening to instructions. “I have the perimeter secure.”
She laughs and knocks my hand down. “Okay, I tell you what. You can stay for a little while. But if I get my sea legs, I might need you to step aside. I’m from a small town, so I know how the guys often think. They might not be secure enough in who they are to have a handsome, famous man like you nearby.”
“Handsome, eh?”
She shoves me, and I pretend it’s hard enough that I fall off the bed to land on the floor. I peer over the edge of the mattress. “You think I’m handsome.”
“Every woman in the world thinks you’re handsome. Now get back up here and do my bidding, bodyguard. You work for me.”
I return to the corner of the bed. “I can be inconspicuous.”
She lifts a single eyebrow, a look that kills me. “Right. You are about as inconspicuous as a Hemsworth.”
“Comparing me to a Hemsworth. You really do love me.”
She shoves me again. “You know I do.”
I shouldn’t have taken us back to this sort of talk. It’s physically painful. But I play it off. “Now that we’ve established the parameters of our relationship for this trip, I should find my own hotel. This one is full.”
“You can stay here.”
Now it’s my turn to lift an eyebrow. “There’s only one bed.”
She laughs. “And that’s how you know we’re living in a rom-com. Meet-cute. Villains. A taxidermy beaver. And only one bed. Are you going to sleep on the floor?”
“For you, I would sleep on the floor.”
“Have you ever slept on a floor?”
Never. But I humor her. “I might have fallen there a time or two in my misspent youth.”
“I’m sure we can handle the only-one-bed situation without any trouble.”
But as she gets up to pull back the covers and form a barrier down the middle with the extra pillows, I’m not so sure.
Not in the least.