CHAPTER FOUR
WALKER
My new housemate was a dancer as well as a lawyer—a hurdle I knew she wouldn’t let me dodge, though for now I satisfied myself in watching her hips bounce around inside my borrowed clothes.
Faith danced when she made the bed in my spare room. I knew, because she hadn’t shut the door the night before. I swore my old Army sweats never looked so good, even with the cuffs rolled up a half dozen times.
She danced in the kitchen too, a reduced version of what she did in the bedroom, bopping her hips about as she drank her first coffee of the day. The rate she imbibed that stuff gave me the impression I’d need to get her down to Red Hart sooner than I expected or she’d drink me dry.
Not too soon, because something about having Faith Somerset in my home reminded me of what it was like to share my space with another person for more than a few scant hours.
And…I liked it.
Having her around. Loud, crass, and filthy mouthed. Faith already made me question the way I set myself up, the choices I’d made over the years. As uncomfortable as that made me in the first few hours we shared the same breathing air while the rain thundered down on my roof, I also liked that she challenged me.
It had been a whole lot of years since anyone had the balls to do that, probably longer to my face.
“When do we start?” I winced at the words that left my mouth, but she’d come here to do a job, and now she was stuck in a place that didn’t suit her.
The least I could do was give her the courtesy of my attention before I turned her down.
Besides, it gave me a reason to look at her wherever she talked, and by God could that woman use her mouth. Which made me wonder, while her hips swayed gently and the rain kept her locked away inside my house, what else she might use her pretty, cherry lips for.
Then I banished those thoughts and tried to look civilized while she turned those color change eyes on me, lit with enough hope that my room felt like the sun rose and the rain stopped.
I checked over her shoulder before I dashed her hopes past a month of Sundays.
It hadn’t. Rain still lashed the side of the mountain in sheets, some of the spray entering the veranda as a gust of wind caught it and lifted the icy droplets to cover her feet.
“Come away. You’ll end up freezing, or sick.” I planted her ass in my chair and leaned against the wall instead. “Tell me what you came up here to say.”
Faith studied the bottom of her coffee mug and said nothing.
My eyebrows rose as the silence stretched out. “What?” I prompted her. “Surely my father didn’t frighten you so badly that you can’t tell me what he wanted you to say without all your pieces of paper or your phone on?” All the papers that disappeared down the mountain along with her car. Guilt assuaged me as my voice ran out of juice at that point.
I folded my arms over my chest and refused flat out to cough, though my throat itched motherfucking abominably. I was done talking. Now it was her turn.
She peeked up at me through her lashes. I had no idea if Faith knew just how cute she looked, stuffed into my oversized clothing that hung off her tiny frame, her flame colored hair tousled about her like I’d fucked her seven ways from Friday, but she bit her lip and doubled the effect in seconds. “Can I invade your pantry and make my own coffee this time? Pretty please?” Her bare feet, still slightly damp, dangled off the edge of my hand made rocker that I broke twenty times just in the process of designing the thing. She sank deep into the pillows that supported my back like I’d carved it just for her.
I swallowed hard and jerked my head to one side. “Yeah. Did I fu– didn’t I make it right?”
She shrugged and struggled to get off the edge, like Goldilocks trying to get out of Papa Bear’s too-big chair. “Could be a bit stronger.”
I bit back a laugh. “Stronger? Girl, I emptied half the tin into that thing.”
She grinned back at me, swinging her feet off the edge of my seat. “Mmm. Might be able to teach you a thing or two yet.”
Shaking my head, I reached down and slid my hands under her arms and lifted her along my front, taking the few steps to my kitchen and placed her on the granite stone floor. Her toes touched the cold ground. She squeaked, looking down, then back at me with wide eyes.
It didn't take long for her to track the marks carved deep into the stone that took the Red Hart teens—then—and me the better part of two years to carve out once the boys left me alone.
“You built the house in the literal mountain?” she whispered.
I swore if her eyes got any wider, she’d pop out of existence and turn into an anime princess. The girl was a walking wet dream. I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Want a tour of what’s back there?”
I’d only needed to make her a basic dinner of ramen noodles and stock soup plus coffee the night before and this morning, plus some toast so I hadn't needed to go far, which was probably how she came to the conclusion that’s all the pantry did.
My comment seemed to hit home. Her mouth opened then shut and she nodded once. Fast.
I held out my hand. Mistake. But I did it anyway.
She wound her fingers around mine, her touch soft and warm, like it had been when she rested her face against my palm last night. That had been a mistake, too, because it had been a damn close thing, wanting to invite her into my bed instead of leaving her to sleep in hers.
And sleep she did, purring away with the sort of resonation that meant that while she got rest, I did not. Not that I minded. If she slept, she felt safe, and that had been the goal.
Yeah, fucking right.
I ignored the pulse of arousal that half-hardened my dick on sight and turned my back to her, taking a too-large step that towed her along behind me.
“Sorry.”
My next step was a touch shorter as I turned the corner beside the fridge that thankfully kept everything cold until this morning when I walked out into the rain and poured fuel into the jenny anyway, well before she woke up. It had been my mistake in letting it run down the week before.
“It’s okay. Thank you for showing me around. This is—” Her words and breath hitched, both, and she stopped talking for a moment. “Fucking amazing,” Faith breathed at my back.
Light fingertips pressed into my spine on either side of my spine as I stopped in the middle of the small row that traveled long into the mountain side that turned a sort of corner.
So did my house.
The outside kept along the flat rock. That’s where the bedrooms were, where we slept the night before. Hers bordered onto the rock face at the back, which was why it got cold in there. Not because of the exposure to wind, but because the rock itself seemed to leech a sense of coldness into the room beyond the plaster Jude insisted I use rather than leaving the bald rock as the wall like I’d wanted.
In case someone ever visited, apart from him.
Like who? I’d asked back then. He’d sent me a knowing glance, and I nearly cuffed the kid who'd grown up to become one of my closest—and only—friends.
Having Faith in my space now and giving her a tour hadn’t seemed like a really shitty idea—until this moment. Her tiny hands pressed insistently to my spine, flattening against my back. My muscles tightened beneath my shirt, I stiffened in place.
“What are you doing?”
She shifted and shoved and woman-handled me until her tight body slid right around mine—her hands wrapping right around my waist somehow in their own personal discovery orbit—until she stood at my front instead of at my back.
“You are a big boy, aren’t you, Walker Roan? Wow. That was a journey. Now, you can’t tell a girl there’s coffee and a secret cave in your house, and then stand between her and both of those things, can you?”
My lips twitched. “I suppose not.”
It had been so long since I interacted with a woman—and certainly never a woman like Faith Somerset—that I’d forgotten what flirting felt like. It wasn’t like I didn't sort out my own physical needs when they hit me. I was a man like any other, and I took care of the urges as they came on. But having her in my space, so close, so tiny and soft and goddam tempting, smelling like my own damn soap and shampoo like I’d personally branded her and she had let me when she showered and used my shit last night—that was a different sort of torture.
One I liked way too fucking much.
She’s not staying. She can’t and she won’t if I ask her to stay.
And she'll annoy the shit out of me after more than a day.
I knew that last would be the truth. It was one of the reasons I left everyone else to their own devices—quite literally—and the world, and discovered my own personal slice of it. Plus, from what she’d told me earlier Faith had her own little setup down the mountain. She’d never leave that for a man like me.
My heart panged at the thought. An organ I long forgot resided within me. Hell, I didn’t even know how old she was. Thirty, maybe? That had to make her ten years or so younger than me.
She nodded decisively. “Good, then.”
Her tone caught me off guard. “Good, what?”
“I’ll go wandering. There’s no bears back here, right? Or traps?”
I smirked. “Don’t fall in the pool.”
“The what?”
I leaned against the shelving that held my beer and waited. Her footsteps, already light as she padded barefoot away from me, grew faint. I counted in my head, then my brow furrowed as nothing came back at me. Wait. Maybe she had fallen in. What if?—
“Faith?” I started forward, pushing myself off the shelfs with a burst of breath as my chest tightened at the thought of something happening to her on my mountain. The vision of yesterday, her car that could have had her in it tumbling backward as I grabbed for her though she’d never been in any danger, thank Christ, strangled my heart. “Presh, tell me you?—”
“Holy fuck, big boy. You have been holding out on me.” Her voice echoed weirdly along the tunnel that I’d dug all the way to the hot/cold springs that gave me a source of freshwater as well as a therapeutic spa bath.
Coach lanterns I’d rigged up on wires kept the light dim but the tunnel usable.
“Don’t drink it, small town girl,” I warned as she dangled her toes in the hot pool, ignoring the cold ones where my taps ran from on the right, and a deeper one I used to wake myself up with occasionally. “That one is purely for bathing in.”
“Yeah, I figured that out, but thanks.” She lowered her ankle into the water and gasped. “Okay, I am coming back here tonight.” She glanced back at me, sucking her lower lip between her teeth the way she seemed to do when she was unsure of something. “Is it safe?”
“If I said no would you do it anyway?” I whisked that safety net she thought I provided away just to see what she’d do.
“Probably. This is too tempting.” Faith dragged her foot out, and swirled her fingers through the water. “How did you find this?”
I shrugged. “Trav’s dad, Len, knew this was up here. They owned the land for a long time, knew all its secrets. He sold me a patch under the provision that I wouldn’t change too much or cut off the river that flowed through his land. So, we worked around it.”
“It’s a good change.” She nodded. “Do you use it?”
“A lot of nights after I’ve worked my ass off. It helps–” I cut my words off.
She looked at me. “What hurts, bear boy?”
“Nothing.”
A snort erupted from her. “You’re so full of shit.”
“Potty mouth, Precious. Such a potty mouth.”
“You are talking a lot today.” She smiled prettily as my mouth snapped shut on demand. Blazing red hair flickered out behind her as she sauntered past me.
And all my broken brain could picture was her in the hot water without a stitch on, her hair drifting around her, and my clothes tossed somewhere behind her on the granite.
Shaking my head to clear the vision that did nobody any good, I braced my hands over my head against the cold stone, feeling the weight of the mountain bear down on me. “Come on, Precious. Let’s get you that coffee. Don’t you have a story to tell?”
Faith tossed me a sassy grin over her shoulder like she knew exactly what was on my mind. All the way back into my cabin, I swore her hips swayed a little more.