Chapter 5 #3
Something in the way he says it steals the smile from my face. He pauses and turns to glance my way. “The whole time you’re trying to decide whether the stranger is dangerous…” His eyes finally find mine. “You never once think to look behind you.”
I blink. “What?”
“Because while you’re busy watching him…” He nods toward himself. “Someone else is watching you.”
The forest suddenly feels a little quieter, and I can’t help but glance over my shoulder, not seeing anyone. Is he trying to scare me?
“You assume the man in front of you is the predator.” His gaze lingers for a long pause. “You never consider that he might be the reason nothing else has reached you yet.”
Silence settles between us, the forest closing in.
I stare past him, into the trees stretching away into the fading light, unsure if we’re still talking about the campfire story or if he’s warning me about something.
“So tell me, Lucy…” he says quietly. “Would you rather fear the man you can see…” He lets the question hang. “Or the one you never knew was there?”
“Seriously?” I let out a nervous laugh, glancing around once more. “Are you trying to tell me there’s someone stalking me right now?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Wolf.”
His eyes drift past me for the briefest moment before returning, and I finally see it for what it is. He’s winding me up.
I shake my head, unable to stop a laugh. “You really enjoy getting inside people’s heads, don’t you?”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Only the interesting ones.”
I snort. “So that’s your hobby? Terrifying unsuspecting women with campfire stories?”
“They usually terrify themselves.”
I point a finger at him. “See? That’s exactly the sort of answer that will make people think you’re hiding bodies in these woods.”
A laugh escapes him. It catches me completely off guard as it transforms his whole face. The hard edges soften, the intensity eases, and for one dangerously distracting moment, I forget every sensible thought I’d had since stumbling across him.
I clear my throat. “Well, it was… nice meeting you, Wolf. Thanks for the cautionary tale.”
I saunter past him with a sway in my hips, shoulders back, and I flick my hair over my shoulder like a woman in a shampoo commercial because I have no shame.
“Every story has some truth buried in it.” Behind me, his words follow.
I glance over my shoulder. “Sure.” I grin. “Be wary of the big bad Wolf. Message received.”
His smile widens another fraction. “That wasn’t the story.”
“No?”
“Nope.”
I stroll backward another couple of steps, laughing now, facing this ridiculously handsome man. “Then you’ll have to tell me the rest another time. I have a fireplace with my name on it, so I’d better get back to my grandma’s lodge.”
“Done. And if you ever really need the deep woods, Lucy, I’ll gladly escort you.” He grins, which is intoxicating, seeing as I’m swooning now.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I say airily, as if my entire bloodstream isn’t carbonated. Then I turn and make my way back quickly. At the tree line, I glance back.
The track is empty, and Wolf is gone.
“Holy shit,” I whisper to the empty woods, and speed-walk the rest of the way with a hand pressed over my hammering heart.
Who was that? A convict who calls himself Wolf, built like a mountain, and my traitorous, deranged body is fizzing head to toe like champagne somebody shook first. Butterflies is too gentle a word for what’s happening in my stomach. These are attack butterflies.
That man can drag me into the woods anytime. I giggle out loud and hurry across the clearing toward the lights of the lodge.
Inside, the great room has turned golden.
Ethan must have lit the big fireplace, and the flames throw warm, moving light up the river stone and across the leather couches.
I follow the smell of my own baking to the kitchen and find Ethan at the island with one cookie in his hand and a second waiting in the other.
“These are really good,” he says with a guilty grin.
“Yeah, they are.” I lean on the doorframe, smug to my bones, Wolf on the brain, but I don’t want to say anything to Ethan and sound like some swooning teenager. I collect a plate and fill it with cookies.
“I’m starting dinner in a minute, so don’t ruin your appetite. Herb chicken, roasted everything, and a mushroom sauce.”
“Sounds delicious. I’m gonna crash in front of the fire.” I head back toward the great room.
I burrow into the cushions with my plate balanced on my knees, flames muttering and snapping in the stone mouth.
I need a distraction, urgently, industrially, because every time my mind idles for two seconds, it slides straight back to Wolf, and my whole body flares up.
He’s a convict, a stranger, and named after the animal that eats girls like me in fairy tales.
So I pull out my phone and open my e-reader, scrolling for something absorbing and wholesome. My thumb stops on a cover that’s all shadow and a bare chest. A masked man in a dark romance about a woman taken by a captor she absolutely shouldn’t want and craves anyway.
I tap it open and settle deeper into the cushions with a cookie.
By the second page, the masked man has a gravel voice and steel-gray eyes in my mind.
By the second chapter, his name is Wolf.