CHAPTER FIVE
FAITH
Walker Roan was a stubborn man. Plus, his tech was at least a decade out of date, and that didn’t help with anything. I did manage to pull up his father’s will before the internet died for good. I knew he had to have read that, though from the look on his face when I glanced across at him it hadn’t been any time recently, and he may not have read it all the way through to the end.
“Didn’t anyone go through this with you at the time?” I asked gently.
His beard shifted side to side, which I took as a no.
“Okay. Welp. He wanted you to take on the land he left behind.”
“No.”
I sucked in a long breath. We had been over this a dozen times already. Walker listened politely, gave me all his attention and when we got to this point, his answer was the same each time.
No.
No
No.
Fucking No.
No wonder he never got to the end of the document. I guessed his answer had been the same back then. I also guessed that at some point he got up and left the meeting, and that was when the papers were delivered to me the next day.
That meeting should have been mine, but at the time the firm I worked for decided that one of the partners should handle it because they knew better.
Also no.
I licked my lips. “Do you understand what will happen to the land if you don’t come to collect on it?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
“And you don’t care?” I kept my tone carefully neutral. Because even though Walker was stubborn and I’d been in his house for around twenty-four hours, I’d grown to care for him. I’d spent far more years looking after his father, but I could see the resemblances between them both.
Also, I loved that piece of land. I’d driven past it many times over the years on the way into white cap, back when I was studying, on my way home. I had to, and it kind of heralded my return that I was back home .
Okay, so I was invested. And maybe there was a good reason why I hadn’t been reading that day. But also someone who cared about the family should have maybe negotiated with this man and not left him bereft of his inheritance then so we weren’t at this pivotal point now.
And I still wanted to scream at him about it, but I didn’t.
Don’t you care about your father’s legacy? That it will be chopped up and parceled out into roads and other developments around White Cap?
I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose. “You’d only have to come off the mountain once. Just set foot on the land. Claim it is yours. I’ll look after the taxes. You can keep it for?—”
“What, my grandchildren?”
I raised my eyebrows encouragingly at the first alternative to ‘no’ I’d heard in the last hour.
Walker snorted. “Because I see so many opportunities for those around here.”
“Well, if you got off the mountain, maybe you would have a chance to make some,” I said tartly.
Walker leaned across the small fold out table where he had placed his ancient laptop that miraculously booted up with the help of three hours of long overdue updates, and placed his scarred, inked hands on my wrists.
“Faith, listen to me. My answer is no,” he said softly.
I bit my lip, staring into his liquid brown eyes and hated that I was about to do this.
Because there was no way I left town and drove all the way up his mountain without a trump card in my back pocket.
“Even if the reason the land is being taken away from you under a stack of clauses isn’t for roads, Walker? It’s because the roads are being built to put a casino into White Cap.”
His hands tightened on my wrists. “What?”
A zing of tension rocketed between us as his eyes flashed.
I knew I had him. I just hated that I'd had to do it. Paul Roan spent his life protesting and fighting again putting poker machines in the local bars in White Cap. Then the advent of a prospective casino. He spearheaded a massive campaign that prevented the plans for years. Most of my teen and college semesters were spent checking in on him while he made sure that the casino never went ahead, claiming the jobs created wouldn’t be the sort that the town needed. Walker had already left by then.
Then he got old, and sick. But he had spurred the town into action, and the campaigns continued well after he and Walker fell out.
Now Paul Roan was gone and the legacy he left behind was about to be divvied up by corrupt politicians I couldn't prevent from doing what they wanted, lining their pockets with the sale of his land.
But Walker could. If he could move his ass down his mountain in the next two months, and decided to keep that land. Do something with it. Which meant he needed to come off the mountain more often.
And that was the crux of his ‘no’...until right now.
“Faith?” he asked, a warning in his voice.
I didn’t want to, but...needs must. Today fell under that caveat.
“I knew your father well, Walker. Really well.” It was my voice that strained this time, instead of his. “I don’t know if you remember, but I was at his funeral. I was the one hiding in the back because I couldn’t face anyone that day. I handled his legal accounts for years.”
Walker frowned. “You weren't at the will reading, I would have remembered you.” His eyes never flinched from mine as he made that declaration.
Something lanced straight through my chest, like his gaze passed right through me. His thumbs brushed the backs of my hands where he hadn’t let me go, and his fingers shifted to close around mine.
“No. They—I wasn’t allowed to be present. Too distraught, or something.” I hiccupped at the memory.
“Fucking assholes,” he growled, reaching out to sweep my hair back from my face. When the strand just kept going and going he curled it around one fist until he reached the end and tugged gently. “Just because someone cares about another human does not mean they are inept.”
I blinked at him through stinging eyes. “For a man who refuses to see other humans and didn’t talk to his father for the better part of ten years, you have a remarkable sense of what they are about,” I whispered.
Walker started. His hands opened, freeing mine. My hair unraveled from his fist and fell back to my lap. “My answer is still no.”
He pushed away from the small table, closed the laptop with a snap, and shifted the outdated tech away from me without a second glance.
“Fucking mountain man,” I grumbled as I sank into the hot water in his cave pool, bitching all the while. “Stupid, stubborn man and his stupid, stubborn mountain.” I splashed a bit just because I could, and stamping my feet did sweet fuck all in the water.
I mean, stomping bedrock wasn’t satisfying in the least, certainly not when there was no one else around to see me do it.
“Are you always this vocal when you whine about other people, or should I get out and leave you to it?” Walker's voice emanated from the other pool.
The cold pool.
“What the fuck are you doing over there?” I shrieked, submerging way too fast in the hot water and upping my temperature at a speed my body did not cope well with.
My hair tangled in the water around me, swirling in tiny eddies like a noose until I wrapped myself up in red tentacles that also happened to be attached to my head. Wet hair was horribly heavy. I knew I should have knotted it on top of my head, but the idea of it swirling around me seemed romantic…until right now.
I fought my way out of my cocoon with the grace of a waterlogged hippo and flung my hair at a rock to free myself of its grip.
“I’m bathing,” came the calm reply, seemingly through a wall of rock, though I knew there were air pockets between the pools because I’d spotted them when I did my little discovery tour earlier in the week when Walker first let me into his secret man cave shit.
Almost a whole week. That’s how long I’d been in his home. I was no closer to succeeding in negotiations with him. My phone was totally flat, I had no reception before that and as far as I could tell, Jude and Travis would only know that I was stuck on the mountain by the fact I never returned like I promised.
I hoped they figured that out and didn’t just think I’d gone back to White Cap.
Because as great a host as Walker Roan was, I still needed to return to my own life, my business and my clients. Even though we hadn’t killed each other just yet, it had been a close thing a few times.
Plus, it was still raining. Which was why I had finally succumbed to the temptations of the underground hot pool. Otherwise, I froze my ass off in the log cabin cave that, although pretty, also wasn’t home. Though with Walker nearby, it was sorta starting to feel like it, staring out at the gray skies. A big part of me wanted to see what was beyond.
Another part of me wanted the sky to stay that way and never change because…
That meant not having to go back.
Not for the first time I’d sat there looking at the rain I couldn't see beyond while Walker stared into the fire from his chair. I wondered what it would be like to just…stop.
To not go back. Not to have clients and responsibilities. Not to have a business. Just to shut up shop and…exist.
Like Walker Roan did.
Then my brain kicked in, told me that was the stuff of impossible dreams, and my planning went on and on and on again. I forced my mind back to the situation at hand, because the idea of staying here with Walker was far too…romantic.
I didn’t want to have those sorts of thoughts about anyone.
“Why are you in the cold pool?” I frowned. “I thought you were having a shower?”
“I did.”
“But you didn’t follow me down here.”
“There’s more than one entry into this part of the mountain, Precious.” I could freaking hear the smirk in his voice.
“Asshole,” I muttered and leaned back into the water that muted whatever he said next. “Sorry, I can’t hear you,” I singsonged, just to be a brat, because I was feeling the vibe.
The water rippled around me and something splashed my face. A large something.
I sprang up, lurching half out of the water. “What?—”
“The water got too cold.” Walker blinked innocently at me, but my mountain man had never been innocent, not once in his damn life.
Plus, I just gave him an eyeful from the waist up, naked tits and all, when I threw myself out of the water thinking a bear got in with me.
Because a bear did get into the hot pool with me.
I wrapped my hair around me like a cocoon a second time, but at least now it was by design. “I thought you were supposed to do it the other way around,” I grumped as he watched me with curious eyes. “Hot pool, then cold pool.”
Walker shrugged. “I’ve never been worried about others' expectations.” He caught one loose end of my hair and held the wavering end in his large, scarred hand in the water. “What happens if I pull on this?”
I stared at him breathlessly. “Do it, and see.”
His mouth flickered at once side, his eyes dark pools on their own in the flickering light that reflected off the water’s rippling source. He wrapped the strand of my hair around his finger, tugging once as he moved closer until I could see the fine smattering of hair that covered his chest. Inked, as I suspected, all the way across his shoulders and chest and down to his stomach. That one tug was all he did, and he then let go.
Disappointment merged with a hot rush of need that the pool swept away. We stared at each other across a small expanse of unbroken water, then he turned away and swam across the pool with long, sure strokes until he reached the far wall.
And stayed there.
“You’re safe here, Faith. I promise.” His raspy voice, ruined from talking so much with me after what seemed to be years of not speaking to anyone at all apart from what was probably a handful of squirrels or other assorted wildlife, gave out to a faint whisper.
But I still heard him.
I sank lower in the water, pretending the heat I shared from his mountain came from him instead and gave him my equally soft answer.
“I know.”