Chapter One #2
“Exactly what I would like to do, but good boy for not running off after a squirrel and getting lost in the woods.” Wyatt unloaded a laundry basket of clean clothing and several paper sacks of groceries. “What would you like to listen to this evening while I research kitchen knives for my book?”
Rascal danced around on his hind legs.
“I don’t know if you are begging for treats or if you want something fast that you can boogie down to.” Wyatt chuckled.
Rascal yipped and dropped back down onto all fours.
“Treat it is.” Wyatt shook several cheese puffs out into his hand and tossed them into the air.
Rascal caught the first one before it hit the floor and then scarfed up the others like a little vacuum cleaner.
Wyatt sat down in a folding chair in front of a small portable desk.
“You got treats, so I get to choose the music. Let’s start with ‘The Bar’ and move on from there.
” He plugged his phone into a small speaker and jacked up the volume until the walls of the cabin seemed to be bowing.
He opened his computer to look at various knives that would be used for the serial killer in his work in progress, a mystery novel about an evil man who was partial to different kinds of blades.
Rascal hopped up onto the sofa and buried his head in a pillow.
“I believe I’ll go back to his first kill and make him enjoy listening to bar music while doing his wet work,” Wyatt said.
Rascal’s ears were laid back when he peeked out from under the pillow.
Wyatt picked up a pen and made a note on the open spiral notebook lying beside him.
He was so deep into studying different types and sizes of knives that he didn’t hear anyone knocking on the door, until Rascal left the sofa in a blur.
The tiny dog howled like he was about to attack a full-grown angry black bear.
“Dammit again!” Wyatt turned down the music and padded barefoot across the hardwood floor.
He slung the door open to find a beautiful woman with enough fire in her brown eyes to send the whole place up in a blaze.
He blinked several times, but she didn’t disappear or turn ugly.
She wasn’t very tall, had jet-black hair that came close to matching her eyes, and stood there with her hands on a thin waist that accentuated her ample top and rounded rear end.
“Yes?” he growled.
She gave him a long dirty look. “Turn the music down … please.”
“I will not!” He raised his voice. “I’m an author and music is my muse.”
She had already turned to walk away, but she flipped around so fast that strands of her long dark hair flew across her face. “If you like loud noise so much, why did you come out here?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I rented this place for a couple of months to get away from people and work on my book.”
“Well, I came for the same reasons, except I paint in the early morning, and I sleep at night,” she said.
“Too bad,” he said. “I work at night and sleep until midafternoon every day. You’ll just have to get used to my music.”
“Never!” she barked. “I will call the rental company tomorrow morning and complain about you, and you can bet your …”
“My what?” He butted in.
“What’s your name?” she snapped.
“Wyatt.”
“Well, then, Wyatt, I will leave a scathing review on the rental website about you, and the company will never let you live here again.”
“Hon … eeee …” He turned the word into several syllables. “I don’t give a tiny rat’s ass about a review that uses my name. And I will never turn the volume down. Nothing in the contract I signed said I was not allowed to play my music as loud as I want.”
“You are insufferable,” she huffed as she walked off the porch.
“Then go back to wherever you came from,” Wyatt called out. “Or use earplugs.”
Her expression changed, and tears floated in her eyes.
He couldn’t stand to see a woman cry, so he took a step back and slammed the door with enough force to send his favorite coffee mug flying off the cabinet and land in a million pieces on the floor.
“Okay, okay, I get the message,” he fumed as he cleaned up the mess and went back to his notebooks and computer.
The woman had looked like she was ready to fight a forest fire with a cup of water when he opened the door, but the anger shifted to a haunted sadness when he yelled at her to go back where she came from. In that moment, he saw a story hiding deep in her soul.
He turned the music down, put his earbuds in, and started researching different kinds of knives again, but his mind kept jumping off course.
He couldn’t get away from that look in his neighbor’s eyes or the way she walked away with her shoulders slumped.
He closed the computer, turned off the music, and picked up Rascal’s leash.
The little dog jumped around like a windup toy and made it to the door before Wyatt even had his shoes on.
Jillian swiped at a tear making its way down her cheek and stomped all the way back to her cabin.
The anger soon turned to sadness when she remembered what he had said about her going back to where she came from.
That line had struck home like a sharp knife piercing her heart.
She had sworn when she aged out of the last foster home she would never look back or remember being taunted by the other kids with those same words.
However sexy Mr. Writer Wyatt was with his shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes, he had no idea that hearing those words again would break her.
“I am not a titty baby. I will not cry. I am strong. I don’t need anyone.
I can survive on my own.” She sat down on one of the rocking chairs on her front porch and wiped tears from her cheeks as she whispered her childhood mantra several times.
She came to the remote area to paint, not relive or even think about her past. She had spent a lifetime trying to forget what she had survived, and damn sure did not need a rude neighbor to tell her to go back where she had come from.
After a few minutes, she rose up out of the chair, stiffened her neck to hold her head up high, and blinked away the last of the tears.
She closed her eyes and took several cleansing breaths.
“I will not go there, not tonight,” she whispered, and left the bits and pieces of the old Jillian on the porch before she went inside the cabin.
She glanced over at Molly sitting in the window.
Jillian had made a habit of counting her blessings after memories of the past surfaced, and was about to begin listing them when she heard a dog yapping, and realized that Wyatt had turned down the volume on his music.
Not the bark of a bulldog or a big animal.
Molly’s long orange and white hair stood on end, making her appear bigger than she was.
The twittering sound she usually made when she was fighting with a bird or a squirrel filled the quiet room.
Jillian hurried over to see what had gotten the cat’s attention and pulled up the blinds.
The bare-bulb porch light she had left on when she stormed next door illuminated a portion of the area well enough that she could see Wyatt walking that tiny dog.
She hadn’t paid enough attention to the animal when she was angry, but now she could see that the pitiful little thing looked like a cross between a chunk of steel wool and a rat with longer legs.
She giggled at the sight. Something about the way Wyatt stood there like some kind of Greek statue made her figure he would have a big, fancy show dog.
She’d read that men often chose a dog that looked like themselves.
With that in mind, she would have chosen an Afghan hound with long flowing hair, or maybe an Irish setter.
Certainly not that critter he had out for a late evening walk.
Giggles turned into laughter, and she fell back on the bed.
The tears that she wiped away on her shirtsleeve that time were not sad, but ha-ha funny ones.
She glanced up to see Molly staring at her with a disgusted look on her face.
“Go back to putting the fear of a cat in that poor animal,” Jillian said. “The universe sent me this visual to make me feel better. I may even do a charcoal of that picture since it is burned into my brain.”
She sat up and locked her hands around her knees. She needed good light when she worked with oils or acrylics. But that was one commodity she didn’t need if she was working in black and white. She pulled her easel over beside the bed and set a two-foot-square blank canvas on it.
“Nothing is ever black or white,” she quoted when she sketched the first lines onto the white canvas. “Everything in life is different shades of gray, or so my art teachers preached at me.”
She had disagreed with them and still did. Some things might not be pure white like the driven snow or that whipped topping that came in a tub. But others were black as the evil she had seen and experienced in the world.
Molly hopped down from the window and rubbed against Jillian’s hip.
That was the sign that it was past time for her human to be in bed, but Jillian ignored the cat and kept working.
At midnight her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since lunch.
She pushed the easel back, put away the charcoal sticks, and eyed what she had done from across the room.
The work wasn’t finished by any means, but she took a picture of it and sent it to her agent with a message asking her what she thought. It was late, so she didn’t expect an answer until morning, but ten minutes later her phone pinged.
My God! That is so powerful that it takes my breath away. I want you to make more like that before the showing. Black and whites are really popular right now. If this is what you can produce all alone in the woods, then stay there a whole month.
She sent back a smiley face blowing a kiss and a note: Thanks. I’ll see what I can do.
She hummed while she heated water in a small pan until it boiled and then dumped in macaroni from a box. When that had cooked, she drained it, added the powdered cheese, butter, and milk, and stirred it all up.
Some folks called it comfort food, but she disagreed. To Jillian, it was salvation food and always would be, but she had promised herself she wouldn’t dig up the bones of the past while she was in the woods.
She ate out of the pan while she continued to work until dawn.
The work was still unfinished, but it was coming to life.
Her agent, Natalie, called it having power, but all of Jillian’s energy had left her body to go onto the canvas.
She barely had enough life left in her to carry the dried-up, empty pan to the sink, run water in it, and make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast before she fell into bed without even taking a shower.