Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
GABE
“Do you know people in Warm Springs?” my unexpected passenger asks as I pull out of the driveway and head right back the way I just came. “Is that why you bought a house up here?”
Talking to anyone had not featured heavily on the list of things I’d planned to do this evening. Talking to an overly chatty, bunny-suit-wearing woman who’s covered my understated new house in Christmas decorations so overstated they should be preserved for posterity in a museum for the overstated, would never have gotten anywhere near the list.
At least she’s not wearing the suit anymore. Helping her out of it wasn’t the worst job I’ve ever had though—and it would have been more pleasant if we hadn’t been doing it in wind and snow. But since she’s currently got only one functioning ankle, I kind of had to assist. And also, maybe slightly because I caused her injury. Not that she didn’t bring it on herself, obviously .
Anyway, removing the suit revealed a body that matched the face in its levels of gorgeousness. Full breasts under a gray sweatshirt, the curve of her hips in the tight jeans—jeans that hugged her round backside when she bent down to rub her ankle.
As for her question, I don’t even remember who it was who mentioned Warm Springs to me years ago, just that they said it was a nice quiet small town, not too far from the city, where you can get away from it all.
My brain must have banked that information, because it popped right back to the top of my mind when I was suddenly looking for a place to escape the holidays.
“Nope,” I say. “Don’t know a soul here. That’s kind of the point.”
“So you’re not just cranky, you’re a loner too?”
I concentrate on the road ahead. The snow is a lot thicker than when I drove up. But at least the wind has dropped.
“Those are quite the assumptions to make about someone you met only fifteen minutes ago and whose name you don’t even know.”
“What’s your name?” She turns in her seat to face me a little more.
Oh Jesus. “Gabe.”
“Hi, Gabe,” she says and holds a hand toward me. “Nice to meet you. I’m Natalie.”
“Shame. I kinda prefer Bugs.” I take my right hand off the steering wheel and have just made contact with the tips of her warm fingers when a shape darts out from the bushes alongside the road.
I snatch my hand back and grab the wheel with both hands. “Fuck.”
I slam my foot on the brake. “Ow. ”
The jolt sends a sharp pain shooting through my left shoulder again. “Fuck. Ow.”
Natalie slaps both hands on the dash to steady herself.
The Cayenne’s tires slip a little in the snow before it comes to a stop. And I find myself eye to eye with the second piece of wildlife of the evening. But this one isn’t made of fake fur and filled by a human. This is a real one. A real red fox, standing stock still in the full beam of my headlights. One paw lifted. Snowflakes drifting gently around it like the perfect Christmas card scene.
“Christ, you scared the life out of me, little fella.” I put a hand on my chest and try to calm the rush of adrenaline causing it to pound.
“Oh my gosh. Look at him.” Natalie says. “So beautiful.”
“He’d eat you for breakfast though.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, not taking her eyes off the fox.
“They hunt rabbits.”
“Very funny,” she says. “Anyway, how do you know that, city boy?”
“What makes you think I’m a city boy?”
The fox comes to its senses, shakes the flakes from its fur, continues its journey across the road, and disappears into a snow-covered hedge on the other side.
I ease my foot off the brake to slowly let the tires regain traction as we head on our way.
“Well, there’s this.” She picks up a business card in the center console. “‘Horatio Detailing, Hudson Street, New York City.’ Plus this is a very city SUV, not a practical one. And you’re wearing a New York Apollos cap.”
“You’re quite the Sherlock, aren’t you?”
“I knew it.” She slaps her shapely thigh in triumph. “So what made you buy a hou?—”
“Are you Warm Springs born and bred?” I cut her off because, although I’m not hugely interested in this woman’s life history, hearing about it would be marginally less bad than answering questions about my own.
She drops back in her seat. “I feel like I am. I’m really from Queens. But when I was a kid, I spent a lot of time with my aunt who lives here.”
“At the retirement home.”
“She didn’t live there then. She was a psychiatrist. Got burned out about ten years ago and quit to run Senior Central instead. That’s what the locals call the retirement village—Senior Central. Anyway…” She straightens and zips up her coat. “What do you?—”
“The control for your seat heat is here.” The incessant talking is bad enough, but not as bad as an interrogation. I tap a button on the dash. “You’re probably cold now that you’re wearing clothing not shaped like an animal.”
“Aw, look at you all concerned for my welfare.” She says it in a sarcastic baby voice. “Anyway, what do?—”
“What do you do here? For a living, I mean. In a small town like this.”
“I’m a teacher.”
“Let me guess.” I tap my lips in mock thought as I ease my foot onto the brake to prevent us from gathering too much downhill speed. “Given your skills with flashing lights and animatronics, some kind of science?”
“Oh, you’re funny as well as sad, lonely and a bully.”
“Literally fifteen minutes and under not the best of circumstances, but you have me pegged as sad and lonely?”
“You don’t care about the ‘bully’ part? ”
I shrug, and flinch at the twinge in my shoulder. Bully is an assumption so rife in my line of work that I don’t even worry about it anymore.
“And yes. Yes, I do have you pegged as that.” She says it with a case-closed tone. “And nope, not science. Drama.”
“Ah, yes. Of course. The costume. Of course.”
My shoulder throbs dully. That jolt when we avoided the fox better not have made it worse. I give it a rub.
“I manage and teach public classes for the town.” Her voice gets even brighter, filled with enthusiasm. “Mainly kids. But sometimes adults too. And I coach auditions for the teenagers applying for drama schools and university theater programs.”
“Let me guess again, you wanted to be an actress, but it didn’t work out, so you moved back here with your aunt to teach.”
“Now who’s making assumptions? I’m only staying with my aunt until I start a new job in New Orleans in January. Running a theater staffed almost entirely by volunteers.”
“You have quite the community spirit.”
“And what do you do?” she asks. “Something that makes piles of cash, obviously.”
Dammit, I wasn’t ready to cut her off that time. I was too busy thinking about my shoulder and the deceptively sharp bend somewhere up ahead that I recall from my drive up.
“I’m in athletics.”
She looks like she probably wouldn’t know a hockey stick from a badminton racket, so hopefully that will shut down my least favorite question.
“From the SUV and the house and, presumably, the place in the city, I assume not as a teacher,” she says.
“God, no.” The words are out of my mouth with a tone that clearly offends her. Even with all my attention on the road, it’s impossible not to sense her recoil. “I just mean I’m not good with kids.” That’s a more socially acceptable answer than saying they’re generally exhausting.
“Is your athletics thing how you hurt your shoulder?”
She noticed that? “How do you know I hurt my shoulder?”
“You made a noise when you slammed on the brake for the fox. Then you rubbed it. And you were vaguely sympathetic about my ankle, when I imagine you don’t have a lot of sympathetic tendencies.”
“Again, fifteen minutes.”
“Got to be closer to twenty-five at this point.” She grips the edge of the seat as we take a corner faster than I’d intended. “Why is the athletics thing a secret?”
I’ll give her points for persistence.
“It’s not a secret.” I could continue to give non-answers till I get her home. Something I usually do when pressed by strangers. But something niggling inside me says that wouldn’t be fair to Natalie. Even if she has covered my house in a bunch of Christmas shit.
“I play for the New York Apollos.” I tap my cap.
“Oh.” Her head snaps to look at me. “That’s hockey, right? Not football? Or…something? Oh, actually I think that’s the team my aunt watches, so it’s hockey.”
“Sports fan, then?” That’s something of a relief. At least she won’t ask one of those infuriating questions like why did I make such-and-such a move against the such-and-such a team whatever number of years ago .
“It just explains the”—she gestures at my general presence—“muscles and…stuff.”
The instant I sense my lips involuntarily curling up at the corners I draw them together to bring them under control. “Thank you for appreciating my lifetime of training.”
Pressing the brake gently, I inch us around the bend I’d been nervous about.
“Oh, and it’s a coincidence,” she chatters. “Because my cous?—”
“What the fuck?” I shout for the second time tonight.
Natalie jumps and turns her attention from me to the road ahead.
“Oh, shit,” she says.
And we stare at the tree blocking our way.
Its giant root ball has flattened the bushes on one side of the road and the trunk, which has a diameter of about four feet, has flattened everything on the other. It’s impossible to see the top in the dark, so Christ knows where the thing ends.
“Okay,” I put the vehicle in reverse to start the process of turning around, which will obviously take a while since the road is barely the width of two cars. “If we go back past my house, can we get down the hill on the other side?”
“Nope.” She pops the P.
“No?” My eyes meet hers as she shakes her head slowly. “What do you mean, no?”
“Did you not explore the area before you bought the house?”
“I drove up the hill, saw the house, and drove back down.”
“Well, if you’d driven past it, you’d have discovered this is the only road up Fool’s Hill. About two hundred yards past your house, it stops and turns into a hiking trail.”
“There has to be a way.” I wrap my arm around the back of her seat and start what will likely be a ten-point turn.
“There isn’t.” She sounds certain.
I stop the car and stare at her. The light from the headlights bounces off the snow and illuminates the side of her face as she pushes her blond hair back behind her ears. Her skin is fair and a little flushed.
She turns her head to look at the tree again, and the light catches her eyes. They might be blue.
“If there’s no way around it…” She pauses and digs her teeth into a lower lip that’s lush and pink. “Which there clearly isn’t…”
She falls silent, staring at the giant, immovable obstacle in our path.
“Go on,” I urge her, knowing full well she’s about to state the inevitable.
She turns her head back inch by inch to face me. “Then there’s no way off the hill.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
First, I arrive to find my non-Christmas Christmas has been made extremely Christmassy, then I’m jumped on by an annoyingly perky and chatty mugger bunny, then I find out I’ve hurt her goddamn ankle, and now…oh, hellish Christmas-on-a-stick of all hells, now…
“Well then, I guess you’re spending the night at my house.”
I pull my arm from around the back of her seat and put the SUV in Drive.