Chapter 1
One
Adam
Ten years later…
“What the hell, Asher?” I come to a dead stop as I enter the main house through the back door. “Please explain to me why there’s a woman tied to a chair in our kitchen.”
I shouldn’t be surprised. Ever since the rest of us moved back to Gallant Mountain, Asher has declared himself to be our resident vigilante. He’s been here for five years, and he feels the need to constantly patrol the property on the hunt for trespassers. He’s as mistrustful as they come.
The woman is feisty. She’s going to hurt herself the way she’s flinging her body around, tugging against the ropes Asher used to secure her.
Asher grunts. “Found her snooping around behind the barn. We need to question her. She’s probably been sent to spy on us.”
I take a deep breath and roll my eyes. “Jesus,” I mutter. “We can’t go around snatching up people just because they step over the property line, Asher.”
Suddenly, the young woman stops struggling and tips her head back to look up at me. A wild mane of red curls hangs loose around her shoulders, partially obscuring her face. “Tell him to let me go, Adam,” she shouts.
I gasp, taken aback. How does she know my name? My heart races as memories from my teenage years flood to the surface. Red braids on a lanky child. Giggles and smartass comments. Deep blue eyes. The same eyes and hair on this woman, though she’s not laughing now.
“Firecracker?” I step closer. Could it be her?
She rolls those gorgeous eyes. “I’m a grown woman, Adam. A bit old for that ridiculous nickname.”
“Rebekah?” I add when I recall her real name.
“Are you going to untie me or not?” She jerks against her bonds, which are surely abrading her skin.
Shooting a glare at Asher, I lurch forward, round behind the chair, and loosen the rope until it falls away.
Asher growls. “Are you at least going to question the little thief?”
“Thief?” she shouts. “I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”
Asher smirks. “I bet you’re here to steal information. Who do you report to?”
As she shakes out her arms, she jumps to her feet.
“I don’t report to anyone, you fool.” She may be small, but she’s mighty, totally undaunted by our size.
I’m a big guy. Six five and broad. With my thick beard and sometimes surly expression, people tend to steer clear of me. But Asher… He’s even larger than me.
Rebekah is probably five two and less than a hundred pounds soaking wet. Though that mane of red curls is probably adding a few pounds. She brushes her hair back from her face and stomps closer to Asher, fists by her sides, face red hot. Apparently, he doesn’t scare her.
Asher smirks at her and shoots me a narrow-eyed look before he turns and leaves through the back door as if I’m a fool for releasing his captive.
Rebekah spins around to face me. She crosses her arms over her chest and cocks out a hip. She’s wearing loose overalls that are huge on her and rolled up at the cuffs. Her shoes are filthy and falling apart. The red tank top is tight and worn as if she’s had it since she was a kid.
It’s her hair that captures my attention.
It’s stunning. It always was, even when she was a child.
I do a bit of math in my head. She was about ten when I last saw her.
She’d be twenty now. She’s small, but her eyes tell a story without words.
Rebekah is not a child anymore. She’s a grown woman who’s seen more than most people do in a lifetime, no doubt.
It’s hard for me to keep a straight face with her glaring at me like she is. I’m like a giant bear next to her, but she’s not afraid of me. And she shouldn’t be.
My mind floods with memories of her sneaking onto our land from a young age.
Her parents owned the property adjacent to ours, but it’s more than half a mile to the house from here.
She trotted through the woods to get to our homestead quite often.
The last time I saw her was when I was eighteen, old enough to know that she came from extreme poverty.
My parents fed her every time she showed up.
She has an older sister, Hannah, but I only met her a few times.
She didn’t like to traipse through the forest.
Rebekah was a tomboy. From the looks of things, she still is. I’d say she still doesn’t eat well, either. I can’t take my eyes off her. There’s something about her that calls to me. Perhaps I’m just worried about her welfare. I think it’s more than that, though.
Freckles dance across her nose, more than she had as a kid. Her hair is now a slightly darker red and considerably longer. She used to wear it in two braids behind her ears, and I wonder if she still does, or if she likes it down and wild.
I find myself wanting to touch it.
Shaking away my odd thoughts, I point toward the chair she vacated. “Sit. I’ll get you something to drink.”
“You’re not the boss of me either, Adam’s apple.”
I laugh as I remember her calling me that. I don’t think she even knew what an Adam’s apple was. She heard someone say it and started using it to taunt me. Because even as a scrawny kid, she liked to think she could go head-to-head with everyone, especially me.
“Sit, firecracker.” If she’s going to call me Adam’s apple, I’m certainly going to call her firecracker. “You have to be thirsty from all that snooping. What would you like to drink? Soda? Water? Tea? Juice?”
She shuffles closer to me as I open the fridge as far as I can to allow her to peer inside under my arm.
She gasps. “That’s a lot of food.”
I wince internally. This woman is food-deprived. If her family is still as poor as they were a decade ago and she still lives at home, I suspect she doesn’t get enough to eat.
Glancing at her, I shrug. “I have five brothers, remember? We eat a lot.”
She looks up at me with wide eyes. “You said you have soda?”
“Sure do.” I squat down to see the bottom shelf better. “Cola, lemon-lime, orange…”
“Orange.”
I pull out a can and pop the top for her. “Would you like a glass and some ice?”
“No, thank you.” She takes it from me, tips it back, and downs half of it with trembling hands.
Shit.
“It’s almost noon. I was about to make a sandwich. Can I make you one?”
She shrugs nonchalantly. “I’m fine. You don’t have to do that.” Her gaze goes back to the contents of the fridge, though, and she swallows as if her mouth is watering.
I start taking out all the ingredients for monster sandwiches and pile them all on the giant island.
“How about you climb onto one of those stools and tell me what you’ve been up to for the last decade?
” I fully intend to feed this woman while we talk, but she’s obviously prideful and isn’t going to ask me for food.
She hoists herself onto the stool. It’s painful for me to watch. She’s too skinny. What I want to do is round this damn island and lift her up myself, but she would probably stab me in my sleep.
“Talk to me, firecracker.”
She smirks. “Like I said, that’s a stupid nickname. I’m not ten anymore.”
“Sweetheart, you’re still a firecracker.”
She sits tall with her spine straight. Her soda is gone. The can made a hollow noise when she set it on the island.
I turn back to the fridge and grab two bottles of water. I slide one to her without a word. “Talk,” I tell her again. My curiosity is piqued. I want to know what this woman has been doing. I’m worried about her.
The more I look at her, the prettier she gets. She’s like a pixie, small but so stunning. Her button nose is slightly pink. It probably always is from the sun. I hope she puts sunscreen on when she goes outside. She must burn easily considering how pale her skin is.
Now that she has tucked her unruly curls behind her ears, I can see her face better. Her lips are like strawberries, naturally pink and full. Damn, her eyes… I could get lost in them. I don’t remember noticing how blue they were when she was a kid, but why would I?
Her face is clean, and she has no makeup on.
She probably doesn’t own any. Not if she still lives this far from town.
The longer I look at her, the more I learn.
Her clothes are old and threadbare. Her hair is wild, but only because she’s probably been out traipsing in the woods without tying it back. It’s not dirty.
She shrugs. “Nothing to tell.”
I frown. “Nothing? Ten years and you have nothing to say?” I tease.
“Nope. What about you? Where have you been? Where did you all go after the fire?”
Okay, we can start with me, but we’re totally coming back to her.
“After the fire…” The one that took my parents’ lives.
I pause, pulling myself together. It’s still hard to talk about.
I clear my throat. “With Mom and Dad gone, my brothers and I went our separate ways for a while. Andrew and Aaron were already out of college and working for the family business away from the mountain. Adrian was away at his university. Asher took off to spend time alone, hiking the Appalachian trail. Aaric and I left for college that fall.”
She listens closely, nodding as though she’s memorizing every word. She was always an inquisitive child, an information sponge. I met her parents only a few times. They were bigger hermits than my family. But I remember my mom and dad talking about them.
If my memory is correct, Rebekah’s mother was educated and did her best to teach her two girls. I think her name is Eve. Richard is her dad’s name. He was an angry man who did nothing but bitch and complain. He thought girls were useless and didn’t send them into town to attend the public school.
Granted, we also didn’t go into town, but our parents both had advanced degrees and home-schooled us without a problem. Part of living off the grid, like a lot of people who have land in this area of the country do, is just that: staying off the grid. People do so for a variety of reasons.
“Are you still living with your parents?” I ask her.
She looks down. “It’s just me and my dad now,” she mutters almost too softly to hear.
“Where’s your mom?”
“She passed two winters ago. Pneumonia.”
I wince. “I’m so sorry. That must have been hard.”
“I guess I was the same age as you when your parents died,” she whispers.
“True. It’s never easy.”
“Too bad my dad didn’t die with her.”
Now I’m even more concerned about her. I inhale sharply, uncertain how to respond. I hate her tone and the implication. “Where’s your sister?”
Rebekah shrugs. “Left one night after Mom died and never came back. My dad says she ran off with a boy.”
“She would have been twenty. Old enough to make up her own mind.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you not believe him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t think it’s possible she knew any boys, so that part was probably a lie, but she might have run away.” Her voice dips lower and she mutters, “I wish I could run off.”
This conversation has gotten extremely maudlin and serious. My hackles are up.
She sits taller. “I’m really sorry about your parents. They were good people. I loved them. They didn’t deserve to die in a fire. I never got to tell you that.” Her lips are trembling.
I set down the package of cheese I’m holding and round the island. After turning her stool in my direction, I wrap my arms around her and hug her close, rocking her gently. “Thank you,” I whisper.
There’s nothing else to say. It was tragic. The fire started in my parents’ wing of the house. Asher rescued Adrian, Aaric, and me. But it was too late to save our parents.
We paid for an investigator, but the cause of the fire was never determined. In our grief, after the funeral, the six of us scattered around the country.
I find myself wishing I could continue to stand here and hold Rebekah. She fits nicely in my arms. It’s an odd feeling. I don’t usually get sparks with women. But I have to let her go. Any longer and it will get really awkward.
As I release her, I stroke a hand down her hair. “You always had the prettiest curls I’d ever seen,” I comment.
She scrunches up her nose. “This ugly mop? I hate it. It’s unruly, and the color always got me teased.”
I furrow my brows. “By whom, firecracker?” To my knowledge, she didn’t leave the homestead enough to know other people who could have teased her.
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. I hate that you have such a strong aversion to one of your best attributes.”
Her breath hitches as her brows draw together. “Don’t make fun of me.”
I shake my head. “Sweetheart, I would never make fun of you. You were the sweetest child I’d ever seen, and now you’re a stunning woman. I bet heads turn when you go into town. I’m surprised you haven’t been snapped up by some hunk and landed at the chapel yet.”
I’m not kidding, though the idea doesn’t sit well with me. I’m mesmerized by Rebekah. I want to know more. And I will. I’m going to ask a million questions until she answers all of them. So far, she’s dodging me, and I want to know why.
With a slight tug to her hair, I make her tip her head back. “Who teased you?” We’ll start there.
She rolls her eyes. “My dad, for one. He told me how ugly it was often enough. Said I would never be able to go hunting. I would scare the animals away. Said no man would ever want to marry someone who looked as ridiculous as me.”
My heart nearly stops. What a fucking asshole.
We need a change of subject before I lose my temper, jump in my truck, and head over to her property to tell her father what I think of him.
I finally let go of her hair, walk around the island, and grab two bags of bread. “White or wheat, sweetheart?”
“You really don’t have to do this, Adam. I don’t want to eat your food. I’m fine.”
I narrow my gaze at her. “I’m not going to eat in front of you. That would be rude. If you don’t tell me what you want on your sandwich, I’m going to make it myself, and you won’t get to choose the ingredients. I might even mix ketchup and horseradish and spread it on really thick,” I joke.
Her cute face scrunches again. “Gross.”
“White or wheat?” I shake both bags again.