Chapter 4
*EMERSON*
“This is not an extended-stay hotel,” I said as Knox parked the car at the end of a tree-covered two-track lane in front of a small log cabin.
Basically, I’d just survived my boat being destroyed to end up kidnapped by the hot guy. I’d have a freak-out over it, but I’d already used up all my freak-out energy.
This was what I got for trusting Calder.
I had to learn to stop getting into cars with hot guys.
Knox shut off the car, and I prepared to run. “Yeah, I kind of lied about that part.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” My flip-flops were going to make running through the oak trees surrounding the cabin difficult.
I guess some people got to have calm, normal lives, and I got the one with adventure and not being able to pay my bills.
“This is better than an extended stay,” Knox said as he got out of the car.
When I didn’t join him, he opened my door and leaned in.
The smell of his cologne hit me in the face and turned me into a drunken sailor.
“This is totally off-grid. It’s not on any map.
A friend of mine keeps them in a safe place for them to stay. ”
“Do you have friends who often need safe places to run?” Who exactly was this nice-smelling hot guy?
He nodded. “Yes, and I’m looking at one right now.”
My half-smile fell. “I am fine. You and Calder are overreacting. Also, we are not friends.”
“Noted,” he said with a smirk and stepped out of the way so I could get out of the car.
Knox grabbed my bag from the backseat of the car as I walked up the short porch steps to the front door.
“How do we get in?” I asked at the door without a keyhole.
He stepped beside me, flipped the small lid off a box next to the door, and punched in a code too quickly for me to see the numbers. “There’s a code.”
“Right, I saw that part.” Annoyance crept into my words. Honestly, I felt a little bad about it. This wasn’t Knox’s fault. He’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now he had to stay with me in some off-grid cabin.
The door swung open, and he stepped in first. “Wait here.”
I didn’t listen and walked in right after him. “I thought you said this place was safe? Why do you need to check it?”
He sighed as he turned back to me. “It’s just a thing we do. To be sure.”
My eyes widened as I got my first sight of the cabin’s interior. “No,” I said in horror.
“What?” Knox’s body grew stiff as he searched for what upset me.
I pointed to the corner of the one-room cabin. “There’s only one bed.”
“Oh.” He walked further in and dumped my bag and his on the floor beside the offending furniture. “It’s a king.”
“There’s only one.” I pointed at each of us. “And there’s two of us.”
There wasn’t even a couch. Just two wooden chairs next to a table off to the side of a small kitchen, which was really just a small two-burner stove and a mini-fridge.
“It’s a little sparse, but it will do the job,” he said as he caught me checking out the rest of the cabin.
A closed door beside the kitchen had to be the bathroom. Well, no, it was either the bathroom, or I was leaving. I only had so many limits, and we were approaching my load capacity.
“We’re both adults, Emerson. It will be fine.”
His words hit me like a brick to the head. The anxiety I’d been keeping locked up flooded to the top and out my mouth. “It’s not going to be fine. Nothing is going to be fine.”
“It’s really not that big of a deal,” he said, his eyes growing wide to match my panic. “We can shove a bunch of pillows between us if that will make you feel better. And I promise I don’t snore.”
My shoulders slumped. “It’s not about the stupid bed, Knox. Everything is wrong. My boat is gone. I’m losing everything. Even my apartment is gone at the end of the month when I can’t pay my rent.” Which I couldn’t do without the grant funding I needed for manatee protection and research.
“Well, then I guess dinner is on me,” he said, laying a hand on my shoulder.
I nodded because what else did you do after pouring your heart out to a stranger? “It had better be tasty and expensive.”
Twenty minutes later, after Knox made a phone call and then drove somewhere—after making me promise not to leave our one-room hideout—he came back with an insulated bag of food.
“How is this macaroni and cheese so good?” I asked before shoving another bite of the creamy dish into my mouth. It was just noodles and cheese, but it exploded with flavor on my tongue with each bite.
He laughed. “Dolly knows how to cook. We ate here all the time when I used to work for Calder full time.”
“You were here in South Carolina?” That didn’t seem right. I swear I’d remember having seen someone as hot as him. Sure, Calder had hot guys here all the time, but Knox was a special kind of hot.
The kind that made my stomach end up in knots.
He shrugged. “On and off. I was normally somewhere else, and that’s when he had offices up the coast, too.”
“You have to eat up because once you get back to Alaska and the snow blocks you in, there won’t be Dolly’s mac and cheese.” I laughed at his serious expression.
Knox told me all about his life in Alaska and living in a cabin similar to the one we were in now. And his rescued dog Whiteout. As much as I loved the sun and sand of Tidehaven, Fairplay Mountain in Alaska sounded pretty amazing too.
He finally chuckled. “True, but there will be chili, stew, burgers, and anything else I can throw in a pot and cook all day. Plus, I’ve heard some of the guys have McDonald’s burgers in their freezers for mid-winter snacks.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “That doesn’t help sell the place.”
Knox opened his mouth to respond as he finished his thick grilled turkey sandwich, but his phone buzzed and gave two quick beeps on the table, almost skidding its way across the surface.
He stared at it for a millisecond before snatching it up with concern.
His response instantly set my stomach back into worry mode.
“Calder said they just adjusted the storm’s path. It’s swinging west and heading right for us, like we’d worried would happen.”
I glanced out the small window to our right. The moss hanging from the oak trees twisted in the breeze. We hadn’t noticed the wind picking up as we’d been talking. “It wasn’t even cloudy earlier.”
That lump in my stomach that I’d almost gotten over—well, told myself I had to wait to deal with until I could have a good cry about the loss of Maribel—came back in full force.
“It was supposed to skirt the coast,” Knox said, studying his phone. “Now it’s almost a direct hit.”
I finished the mac and cheese. No point in wasting good food, even if my stomach was questioning my choices. “How long do we have?”
“Based on this radar, it’s going to hit early tomorrow morning,” Knox said, shaking his head. “People won’t have enough warning.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a tropical storm, and everyone knows they can change course. We’re always a little prepared. Probably like you and snow.”
Honestly, with all the things that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, a tropical storm was the least of my worries. I’d been preparing for it to shift because the manatees had been acting weird for the last two days. They always knew before the meteorologists.
He lifted his left eyebrow. “Why aren’t you panicking yet?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m saving it for later.” I dropped my plastic fork in the takeaway container.
Knox nodded once as the first few drops of rain pelted against the cabin’s windows. It was moving in quickly. “Good.”
“Good?” What man said good when a woman told him she was saving up for a freak-out?
“Yeah,” he said, standing up and taking my stuff to throw it away. Someone had packed the mini-fridge with food, so even if the storm hit, we’d be well-stocked. Better than anything I had in my apartment. “If you weren’t, I’d worry you were a psychopath.”
“Don’t get too comfortable. There’s always a chance.”
His smile grew as he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it onto the back of his dinner chair. An enormous wall of chiseled muscle greeted me from his torso. I blinked, trying not to lose consciousness.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pretending his muscles didn’t wow me but that his undressing annoyed me.
Maybe it was natural, but his skin almost twinkled in the cabin’s overhead light.
Not like a sparkly vampire, but as if he’d spent a day in the sun and then was oiled down.
I wanted to run my hands over the smooth skin of his chest followed by my tongue.
Stop it, Emerson. Get a grip.
I couldn’t let him catch me drooling.
He headed toward the cabin’s main door. “I’m going to check on the generator in case things get bad this far inland.”
“And the shirt?” I asked, pointing at it so I had something to look at besides him.
Knox shrugged his shoulder toward the door. “It’s raining. I didn’t pack enough clothes to lose one to a rainstorm.”
Great, so he was just going to walk around shirtless.