CHAPTER THREE
FAITH
I stared around the small living area with its single, hand-hewn rocking chair, no television, zero tech, and what looked like a hand woven rug I suspected Walker had traded for maybe years ago from the track worn along one edge that seemed to match the width of his boots.
The whole lot overlooked a broad, open veranda where the rest of the mountain dropped away to one side, opposite to where I’d come in. His kitchen was there, too, small, built for one person, with a pantry as advertised, stocked to keep him alive for as long as he needed.
Seeing as he never left, that meant stocked well.
But the view from the rocker that looked out over the sheer cliff face beyond was what blew my mind. Mountains upon mountains spread out in glimpses between the falling sheets of rain that grayed the rest of my vision. Cold draughts blew into the log cabin he had built for himself in the ultimate version of rustic living in the literal middle of nowhere.
I wrapped my arms around myself as I watched the heavens open over us, shivering, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the extreme vista with its brutal beauty laid out so bluntly right before me.
“It’s different here. I know that.” Walker stepped up behind me. His giant, oversized back shielded me from some of the wind that whipped around us. The pine and mountain scent of him filled my senses as I shook my head.
“No, it’s not that. It’s beautiful,” I whispered, still staring through the rain. I had the impression that once it stopped and cleared I would be able to see for miles.
I hoped I would be here to see it when it did.
Then my reality crashed into me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, closing off the stunning view aid out before me. “My car.” My paperwork. That had been on my car when it fell off the mountain.
“I’m sorry, Faith.” A hesitant note entered Walker’s voice before a large hand that matched the mountain man standing at my back cupped my shoulder. “It will be a while before we can leave and head down to…anywhere. I promised you coffee.”
I bit my lip and nodded, willing the tears to stay at bay. “You did.” Everything I’d had with me was in that car. My car that tipped off the edge of his mountain and sounded irrecoverable as it broke on every single solid surface on the way down. My bag containing my purse, my license and all my things in it. My coffee thermos and lunch that Eve had packed. The file with Walker Roan’s notes in it.
Damnit, I’d wanted that thing off my desk, but this was not how I'd planned to achieve today’s goals.
“Coffee would be lovely. Thank you.”
Strange how, in the face of abject panic, we reverted to all the social niceties. Even from this wild man who had the sense to get me out of the pouring rain when my car fell off the edge of the world and into nothingness. For the first time it slammed into me why Travis and Jude had been so worried about me driving up here in the rain.
“Christ.” I pressed a hand to my stomach, half doubling over. “That could have been me in that car.”
If I had taken a few minutes longer to reach him. If I had stayed inside, gathering my thoughts rather than jumping out to sass him, because I was sick of sitting on my ass.
If, if, if…
“It’s okay, you potty mouthed thing.” The hand on my shoulder patted me awkwardly. “How do you take it?”
Rough, fast and with a side of mountain man freshness.
I turned and blinked at him, my reply ready to go because no landslide was going to steal my options today. I blinked when I found deep brown eyes staring at me edged with concern.
“Ah, take what?” Maybe my response needed to be limited, given the circumstances.
His beard twitched, and I wanted to run my fingers through it.
“Coffee, Faith. How do you take your coffee?”
“Black, please. Sugar if you have it. None if you don’t. I’m not fussy.”
His beard twitched again. “So it seems.”
I didn’t know what to make of that cryptic comment, so I followed him away from the stunning vista and into the small kitchen where he planted me on one side of the short bench on a single stool while he headed into the walk around pantry at the back.
“You made this place yourself, didn’t you?”
“With the help of Travis and Jude, the summer that Jude first turned up at Red Hart. The year?—”
“Your father kicked you out,” I finished for him softly.
Walker reappeared with a large tin of powdered coffee that didn’t actually dwarf his hands. His lips, even beneath his beard, seemed set in a tight line. “That’s right. You know my history as well as I do, don’t you?”
I swallowed hard. “It’s a good thing that everything I had with me that fell off the side of your mountain is also backed up on this.” I extracted my phone out of my pocket and waved it at him.
He eyed the device like he might snatch it from my hand and toss it off the cliff face himself. “Better shut that off,” he said abruptly.
“Why, because you don’t want to face your past?” I raised an eyebrow.
Instantly, I felt shitty that I’d come back with a snap when here he was trying to make me feel better. I wouldn’t even be in this situation, invading his space and stuck if I hadn’t done what the Red Hart boys recommended in the first place and stayed at the bottom of his mountain.
Not that I’d admit to that.
Walker watched me for a long, silent moment. Finally, he shook his head. “There’s no reception here, Faith. If you leave that on, it’ll be flat in a few hours. I don’t have a charger for anything new and I don’t imagine you have one stuffed into those skin tight pants.”
His gaze drifted over my body, what he could see of me tucked away behind the bench, then jerked his attention back to my face.
My mouth hung open. “Oh.” Was Mister I-don’t-do-people-on-my-mountain just checking me out?
A second sneaky look back at his face caught his gaze coasting over mine and settling on my lips. He was. Game changer. Now I knew where we stood. I could play by those rules, because Walker Roan was a different kind of eye candy, but he was eye candy, nonetheless. And he wasn’t my client, so I wasn't breaking any rules…yet.
I frowned, trying to figure out what we had been talking about before we dropped into accidental flirt mode because that was safer and I wasn't ready for this…not quite yet. My mind needed caffeine to activate, apparently. I recounted what I knew about Red Hart’s history.
“Jude and Travis must have been young.” Jude had his own stories to tell.
“They were. Fifteen. Too much energy, randy, gangly as hell, about ten years younger than me. But I needed the assist, and they needed direction for a summer. Just not from Trav’s Pa back then, rest his soul.”
I bit my lip and nodded. Red Hart's land was laced with its own tragedy.
Walker stopped talking, his voice dry and raspy. He coughed more than once as he made coffee for us both and pushed one large, chipped mug across to me. I ran my fingers across the rough clay surface, then looked down at the rug.
“These are all local, traded things. Aren’t they?” I looked back at him.
Walker shrugged, as if to say what of it? He seemed to be done talking for the time being. He ran his hand across the edge of the thick wood benchtop where his arms rested, and I recalled the wood he’d been chopping when I arrived earlier. Maybe he traded heavy hand crafts with Kyle, or did custom jobs. Those paid well, and he seemed to have decent skill with wood.
I risked another glance at him, but Walker was definitely done talking for now. I didn’t blame him in the least. I’d invaded his home, stayed longer by far already than I ever intended, and I hadn’t even broached the topic I was supposed to be talking about.
I did, however, take his advice, and turn off my phone. If he thought my device would be flat in a few hours without charge, then I’d be here for much longer. Which begged the question… how much longer? A quick glance outside showed thick gray clouds with no sign of the rain abating.
“It’ll be a while, huh?” I looked back at Walker when he didn’t talk.
He just watched me and when I stared at him, my panic rising, he reached across and pressed my mug into my hands.
I looked down at my forgotten black coffee, surprised. Grateful for the distraction, I picked up the cup of cheap black ambrosia and took a sip. Sweet, thick liquid scalded my throat. I took another, using the quick burst of pain to ease my panic until a rumble from across the bench indicated Walker’s approval.
“Thank you,” I whispered, more than a little horrified when tears stung my eyes. I blinked rapidly, looking out at the rain instead. It wasn’t like I should be looking anywhere else. Certainly not at the tattooed, wild man behemoth who saw way too much right now. “Is the house likely to follow my car on its slide down the mountain? At least it would make it a quick trip back to the big house at Red Hart,” I said lightly.
Walker rumbled again, a noise I took for his laughter. “No,” he said quietly. I thought he was finished talking, but then he surprised me, reaching across the benchtop to close work calloused hands over mine where they clasped my mug. “You’re safe here, Faith.”
With me .
He didn’t say it, but then, he didn’t need to. After that, we drank coffee in his kitchen while the rain poured down and didn’t talk at all.
And my panic never returned.
Walker Roan’s cabin contained exactly six rooms which was three more than I expected: A living area, a kitchen, plus pantry, which I counted as one space. His bedroom, his bathroom, and a spare room right across the short hall from where he slept.
That was where he left me when the light faded for good for the night, and he set a fire in the living area, sitting quietly in his rocker as he stared pensively into the flames. Unwilling to disturb Walker’s quiet mindset that seemed to be his normal, I sat on the veranda hardwood floor a few feet away from him. My arms wrapped around my knees as I watched the rain that showed no sign of letting up, much in the same manner as he did the fire.
And the silence, interspersed with its white noise that seemed held at a distance by the darkness that didn’t dare to enter his space while he was inside it, and constant crackles from the fireplace, wasn’t deafening or uncomfortable at all.
Somehow, with Walker Roan at my back, our combined arm’s reach distance away from each other, I wasn’t half as scared as I thought I might be in this place. A world away from anything where he was a kind of mountain god, perched in this place so far from everyone and everything by choice.
When the night air grew cold and my light shivers stopped, my arms numbing, he seemed to notice my discomfort, or lack thereof. A heavy blanket that smelled of sharp spruce and spicy male and leather scents dropped around my shoulders. His hands pressed down, then lifted me up.
I gasped at the ease he lifted me in his arms, sweeping the blanket beneath me so his arms never contacted bare skin. Suddenly I was looking at the inside of his beard, my cheek resting over the vicinity of his heart, through the thick weave of the blanket that broke the space between us.
I frowned, butting my cheek against his covered shoulder until he coughed a laugh.
“Are you right there, Precious?” Dark eyes watched me, reflecting starlight the rain obscured.
I blinked up, white noise blocking out everything else but him. “What, are you giving me a stripper name, now?”
“Do you need one?” He raised an eyebrow. “Let’s get you to bed.” My breath hitched. He sighed. “Your bed, Presh. Not mine.”
“Such a disappointment.”
My feet hit the floor. I scrabbled for a moment as pins and needles shot up my legs after having them folded for so long. His arm gripped mine—through the blanket, of course. I clung to the offensive but warm piece around me.
“Thank you for offering me your place and not sending me off down the hill.” I tried to recover.
“I wouldn’t do that.” He looked affronted even as his voice strained. A hand raked through his beard. “Come on. I won’t sleep if you’re wandering about the place on your own tonight.”
“Just tonight?” I closed my mouth with a snap when he shot me a sharp glance. “Sorry. I’m not used to watching what I have to say,” I apologized.
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said gruffly. “A woman should speak her mind.”
I stared at his back. “You’re the only one of your species who thinks that,” I said softly.
Walker didn’t stop moving in his retreat along the hallway toward the bedrooms, but his shoulders did flex beneath his chequered shirt, so I knew he heard me. He didn’t stop walking until he reached the spare room that I guessed I would be calling home until the rain stopped and either we went down the mountain or Jude and Travis made it up somehow to collect me.
I still winced internally that I’d gone against their suggestions and hadn’t listened, but I was here now, and the damage had been done. I’d wear their combined glowers when I returned to ground level, whenever that happened. Eventually. I just had to survive until then, in the company of a somewhat grumpy mountain man, and try not to let my outspoken lawyer ass impeach on his space too much.
“I can help out around the place a bit,” I blurted as he began to turn back to me. “I can sew, a bit, if you need stuff fixed. And I can cook. If you need legal things done while I’m here, apart from what I came up here to do—” I wasn’t letting him off the hook that damn easily. “—then I can work on that, too. I have a full business back at White Cap and if you do have other internet connectivity or tech, then I’ll log in through that. I work my own accounts?—”
“You don’t have to pay your way, Faith. I’m happy to have you here.” A muscle flexing in his jaw beneath the edge of his beard smattered where the deep brown smattered with a few red and silver hairs told the truth of his lie.
I swallowed. “Okay,” I whispered, not knowing where to go from there.
He nodded. “This is you. Take the blanket with you. It gets cold. There’s my spare clothes in the drawers. They’ll be too big for you, but you can sleep in them until we clean yours, alright?”
Tears stung the back of my eyes at his kindness, but I refused to let them fall before this mountain of a man who let me into his home without a single objection so far.
“Thank you. I’m sorry…” I bit my lip. He had said not to apologize. “Thank you,” I repeated again, and turned into the bedroom lit with its lamp. The light flickered as I crossed the threshold and went out.
I froze in place, my breaths coming short as pitch darkness encompassed me. Suddenly the rain sounded louder, and the wind seemed to rock the log cabin in its place where it became all too obvious that we were perched on the edge of the mountain. I wanted nothing more than to run back to the false protection of the fireplace in Walker's all too exposed living area and huddle before the open flames and their faux protection.
Or turn and hide the behemoth’s arms at my back. Either round of security would do just fine.
“Fuck,” Walker cursed softly at my back. “The sun's gone. Solar power’s run out for the night. We didn’t have a lot of sunlight today. I’ll fill the jenny up and give you more light.”
My brain kicked into gear. “The generator isn’t near the house, is it?”
I didn’t recall seeing anything on this side when I arrived earlier, though I'd only had a snapshot of his rustic living area before the clouds swept around the mountainside that appeared to have been hiding from me for my three hour crawl across Red Hart land and up Walker’s mountain.
“No, it’s around the other side, near the shed.” His finger trailed across my temple. I nearly jumped at the contract, then relaxed as I realized he offered me comfort with the touch, leaning into his hand. He stilled, but didn’t pull away.
“Don’t go out there. It’s only darkness. The weather is filthy. I’ll survive.” I kept my voice light like the lights going out was no big deal.
Utter bullshit. The moment he left I would be lucky I didn’t climb on the bed and run in circles, screaming my lungs out like a three year old. At least, in my head.
Lie. I’d absolutely be under the covers, screaming silently into my cupped hands until my breath ran out to the memory of my car sliding off the side of the hill and hitting everything on the way down, wondering if the house would be the next to fall into oblivion taking us with it.
It’s survived for at least fifteen years up here. It will survive one more night.
And the next that I stayed here. And the one after that.
However long I had to remain in Walker Roan’s home. Away from everyone and everything.
He never did answer that question on tech. Had I asked one? Or just blundered in with an offer, as per usual, and hoped he would deluge me with information? I got the impression that Walker wasn’t the free information sharing type of guy.
Jude and Travis had spoiled me for country cowboys forever. But Walker Roan wasn’t a cowboy, was he? He was a mountain man personified, and he would be lucky, I guessed, to see one or two people a season, if not in a whole year. His social circle probably included a few squirrels, the Red Hart boys and a bear or two.
“Bears. You have a whole wall missing. One entire side of your house is open. How do you keep out wild animals?” I turned on my heel and gaped at him.
Not that I could see his face, but the touch of his hand didn't drop away, curving around my cheek instead. The touch was intimate, warm and grounding. His fingers were rough and calloused, his palm gentle and oversized where he cupped my face.
Walker could crush me all too easily, I knew with strength like his, muscle popping out everywhere and not the useless gym based city sort. His was the real deal, work hardened.
But he stepped into me, I knew by the increased warmth of him alone. My hands rose to press against his chest or his stomach, discovering hard planes of muscle I suspected wore as much ink as the trails that decorated his neck and forearms.
“Cliff face, remember? The house is built right to the edge. Jude, Trav and I designed it that way. The squirrels can get in. Maybe a few rodents, though they don’t bother me. Once a snake, but it ended up as my dinner that night.” I could hear the smile in his voice as I let out the shudder he intended me to give, and he laughed softly, drawing me a little closer.
I didn’t object.
“No bears or wolves?” I didn’t want to share my bed with that sort of carnivore. A different type, maybe…
“None, Faith,” Walker reassured me, his voice deepening. “You’re safe here. I promise.”
I nodded into his touch, letting my eyes drift shut as I rested my cheek into his palm.
His breath stalled as I gave him my trust willingly. A second later he leaned down, and his lips brushed my temple. “Sleep,” he whispered, pulling my blanket tight around my shoulders. “I’m right here if you need me.”
Then he was gone, and I stood alone in my doorway. The only light I could see was the faint reflected flicker from the fire further along the hallway that showed my own personal bear of a man disappearing into the room straight across from me. Walker hesitated before his door closed, not quite all the way. From the noise outside, the storm has resumed as my company for the night.
But I wasn’t afraid of what I couldn't see in the dark anymore.