Chapter 4
FOUR
DAISY
Cash led us through the forest, his big boots clomping through the damp dirt and underbrush.
Twilight hung in the air, filtering the light in a gauzy luminosity that made me feel as if I were wandering through a dream.
That might have been true if I weren’t running from a nightmare.
Well, that and trying to keep up with the giant who stalked through the trees, his long legs eating up the ground floor without effort.
My breaths had turned to shallow pants as I struggled to keep up.
I was at the rear, and my three children were between us, the man a silent guide of bristling muscle and brute strength.
Half our bags were slung over each of his shoulders, his arms full of a ton of our belongings.
I told him I was capable of carrying more than a bag or two, but he only gave me another one of those grunts as he tore the bags out of my hold.
If I was being honest, I totally appreciated it. It had taken me three trips to carry all our things when we crossed into his land from the neighboring campground to find our own secret spot.
You know, so I could do a little recon. Scope the man out.
Too bad I’d never gotten a peek at him, but man oh man, was I scoping him out now.
His back rippled and undulated with strength beneath his fitted white tee, all thick, corded muscle, and his jeans were worn and snug and conjured imprudent visions I had no business contemplating.
You will not ogle Cash Cunningham. You will not ogle Cash Cunningham, I chanted to myself. A frown carved my brow when the man shifted for a beat to glare at me from over his shoulder.
As if he heard me say it aloud.
I ducked my head to shield myself from the ferocity firing back.
Crappity crap.
Had I actually let that thought go? I sure hoped not.
The last thing I needed was to complicate the most complicated situation.
I couldn’t feel things I would only be a fool to feel.
Couldn’t revisit old feelings that I’d spent way too much time wondering if they were true.
If I’d only imagined that quick blip in time when I thought…
I clamped down on that train of thought.
The past didn’t matter. The only thing that did were my children. I couldn’t get distracted. I needed to be watching my back and not the muscle in Cash’s.
Returning forward, he kept climbing the hill as if it were nothing and the rest of us weren’t struggling to keep up. I should have been hitting the gym to prepare for this.
But I doubted there was anything I could have done to actually prepare myself for coming face to face with him.
So freaking gorgeous with this broken demeanor that I didn’t recognize at all.
Dark and brooding.
Anger and this mile-high wall that he’d constructed around himself.
God.
I knew the devastation he suffered.
But this?
How many nights had I lain awake wondering how he was? Wondering where he’d gone and who he’d become?
I’d assumed it was bad.
That he blamed himself.
But it seemed much worse than I could have anticipated. Not when he’d been so vibrant and sweet and free. It’d been difficult to picture him separate from that.
Seeing him in real life made it clear he’d succumbed to his demons.
A breeze rustled through, and on it, a shiver crawled my flesh. Fear clawing through my spirit as I thought of the reason that I had come here. That sense that I was forever being watched slicking like dread through my veins and sending nausea coiling in my stomach.
I needed to remember my demons were right there, too, waiting to catch up to me. I couldn’t be complacent and distracted. I needed to remember this wasn’t close to being about me.
“Are we even there yet? My wegs are ti-wed,” Eva whined. She staggered along the trail in front of me like she was going to collapse.
My sweet little drama queen.
“Almost, I think,” I told her, keeping my voice as bright as I could.
“We can do it!” Colin shouted, his backpack bouncing on his back as he scurried behind Cash, the dog named Duke scampering along at my son’s side.
“No way, we can’t,” Eva bemoaned.
“We can’t be babies, Eva,” Addy scolded. “We have to be brave, remember?”
It’s what I’d been drilling into them.
We have to be brave.
Of course, I never mentioned the you can’t be babies part, but Addy never hesitated to add her own spin on things.
But Addy’s championing did nothing because Eva plopped down onto her butt right in the middle of the path. “I am poops.”
I breathed out a sigh of frustration, then I sucked it up because I could do this. Whatever it took.
I slung the two bags I was carrying higher over my shoulders and bent down to pick her up under the arms. “Okay, sweet girl. Up you go.”
A groan left me as I tried to hitch her to my hip and balance everything else.
But the sole of my flip-flops, which turned out to be a really terrible choice for hiking through the mountains, slipped on a loose patch of dirt. It sent me slipping to the side and Eva scrambling to cling to my neck. “Eek! I falling, Mommy!”
I scrambled to readjust my hold while a heavy duffel slid down my opposite arm. “Hold onto Mommy’s neck,” I wheezed.
“Don’t wowwy, Mommy. I got you.” She beamed as she squeezed me tight, showing me all her tiny, gapped teeth.
My chest expanded.
This…this was why I’d sacrifice it all.
Somehow, I managed to right myself, hiking her higher and sucking in a deep breath, then that breath was getting ripped right back out of my lungs when I realized Cash was suddenly standing right there, a foot away. “Give her to me.”
It was gruff and curt and hard, as if our mere existences put him out.
“I have her.” My arms trembled with the weight.
Great. I was getting defensive now? When I was the one who was begging him for mercy?
But I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help the flash of hurt that penetrated as I realized I might not know Cash Cunningham at all.
Not anymore.
He glowered. “Give her to me, Daisy. You came here for a reason, and that was for me to take care of you, and that starts right now.”
No one had ever sounded so unfriendly in their offering.
Giggling, Eva tucked her head into my shoulder and peered out at him. “I want the big gwumpy giant to carry me.”
A splutter of surprised laughter erupted from me, then I pinched my lips closed because Cash wasn’t laughing.
He only scowled while he reached out with his meaty palms and pried my daughter from my arms. Reluctantly, I let her go, while Eva screeched her approval.
Wrapping her little arms around his thick neck as she turned that beaming smile up at him. “Now I don’t got tired legs because you can carry me, huh, Big Gwumpy Giant?”
“Hey, no fair! What about me? You think you could carry me, Big Grumpy Giant?” Colin hollered.
Oh lord, my kids were not going to make this any easier on me.
Cash only grunted in response before he turned and wound past Colin and Addy and started prowling back through the forest, climbing up the mountain and dodging branches and ducking below limbs with my youngest daughter in his arms and loaded down with our belongings as if he were carrying nothing at all.
“Is this all your land?” Colin asked like Cash hadn’t completely ignored his last question.
“Of course, it is. Don’t you remember the map?” Addy dished the details before I was ready to give them. “He’s got like a million miles. That’s why he didn’t find us for two whole days.”
Cash looked back from over his shoulder, and his eyebrow arched in incredulity.
You’ve been here for two days? And a map? What the hell is going on, Daisy? He didn’t need to say it aloud for me to hear it plain as day.
Both irritation and worry lined every inch of his face.
Nerves scattered, and the terror of what I was attempting prowled up my spine and sent chills scattering across my flesh.
Unsettled, I peeked into the dense forest again. The fear not quite as great as it had been. Not with Cash six feet away.
We continued to trudge through the thicket. Daylight waned with each moment that passed as we climbed and wound and edged deeper into the woods.
Finally, we broke into a clearing.
My heart nearly stopped, and I gaped at a meadowy expanse that held a quaint cabin hedged in a deep copse of trees.
A single-story home made of logs with a pitched roof and a chimney rising toward the heavens. It had a covered porch that ran along the front with three steps leading up to it.
Basic and plain and so beautiful it nearly brought me to my knees.
Because it was a cabin that looked exactly like the one he promised to build me when I was seventeen.