Chapter 1
[Kali]
The Montana morning is beautiful, crisp and clear with the brightest blue sky I’d ever seen.
I needed this place. I needed this view.
Even if this was supposed to be Connor’s birthday trip.
He’s the one who picked this small town in Montana. He’s the one who arranged the rental with a distant family member. And he’s the one who forgot to cancel the trip, causing my credit card to accept the final charge for a one week stay.
I’d never even heard of this so-called cousin who owned a house in Whitefish, Montana, with lakefront property that included a gorgeous view and a guest cabin.
“We’re getting a deal,” Connor had said.
Connor had said a lot of things. Like he loved me. He wanted to spend his life with me.
He had lied.
And now I’m here footing the bill for his birthday trip while standing barefoot on a rocky beach next to a calm lake with mountains towering above the opposite shoreline.
Wearing jeans and a sweatshirt due to the mid-September chill in the air, my soul encourages me to prolong this tranquil moment.
Then coffee calls my name.
Turning toward the small cabin, something at the main house catches in my peripheral vision.
The medium-sized mansion is just off to the left and rises three stories tall in a gorgeous combination of chunky, sandy-brown stone and rich dark chocolate-colored timber.
A broad balcony runs the width of the middle level and standing on the deck is a man.
A man standing tall and proud, chest wide and bare. He raises a mug of something steaming toward his mustache-covered lip, giving me another striking view.
Because his long, hard penis, stands as erect as the hundred-year-old trees covering this mountain.
“Holy shit,” I whisper to myself, taking all of him in.
The thick smattering of hair on that wide chest that trickles like a funnel to a thin stream of fuzz leading straight down to a wider field of dark and curly wonder. His legs, covered in a lighter layer of masculine hair, look long and equally as thick as the tree trunks around us.
My gaze leaps back to that mustache, where his lips surround the edge of his steamy mug, and then his eyes meet mine.
Slowly, he lowers his drink, squinting as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing any more than I can believe what I’m witnessing.
He uses his mug like a shield, which does nothing to hide the powerful length of his dick.
“Hey!” Anger laces his shout, as I suppose it should. He’s just caught me catching him in all his morning glory.
Then again, I’m the only one who was supposed to be here, and I race as fast as I can over the rocky ground with bare feet to my little haven on the property.
Within minutes, someone crashes through the back door of the cabin that faces the lake.
Front doors are street-side while the important doors are the decorative lakeside ones.
The cabin is quaint, with two bedrooms, a small bathroom, and a moderate-sized kitchen-living room combination divided by a peninsula cabinet which I’m standing behind, separating myself from this grizzly bear of a man.
“What the fuck?” he barks the second he sees me casually making myself a cup of coffee.
However, my hands shake as my mind flashes on repeat over what I’ve just seen.
His imposing form. His thick penis. His angry eyes.
“This is private property. You can’t be here.” His voice is equally frightening.
Setting the mug on the counter as calmly as I can, I bravely glare back at him.
“Actually, I can.” I lock my gaze on the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen.
Eyes that match the thick patch of hair over his chest, now covered by a white T-shirt.
The same color of hair that surrounded his morning wood, also now shielded by gray sweatpants, which do nothing to disguise the general length and girth of what they intend to mask.
“Says who?” he argues.
“Connor McNaulty.”
“Connor?” This burly man snorts. “That wanker?” He doesn’t say the insult in a British accent as much as in total disgust.
“Excellent term for him.” This might be the first thing the stranger and I agree upon.
“What does Connor have to do with this?”
Good point. As far as I’m concerned, Connor no longer means anything to me, but I name-drop him for good reason.
“He set up a stay in this cabin for us about a year ago. I thought he’d canceled it, but I was recently charged for the visit, so I’m here to claim my vacation.”
“Get Connor out here,” he snaps while those dark eyes flare, then he raises his voice even louder and shouts toward the hallway. “You fucking coward. Show your face.”
I snort, unattractive and loud, and on the verge of hysterical laughter. This man has hit the nail on the head once again. Connor is a coward. He couldn’t even tell me to my face that he wanted to end our twenty-five-year marriage.
Instead, a colleague took a video of him on a date with another woman.
A beautiful candlelit, rooftop dinner on the night of our anniversary, when I thought he was out of town for the weekend on business.
Instead, I’d been in our Chicago home, and he’d been in a nearby suburb, wining, dining, and fucking someone else.
“He isn’t here,” I state as calmly as I can.
“What do you mean he isn’t here?” His angry attention returns to me, where he roves from my eyes down to my bare toes and back to the blond mess of hair twisted into a knot at the base of my neck. “And who are you to him, anyway?”
“I’m no one,” I state, though it isn’t meant to depreciate my purpose on this planet. “And I’m here alone.”
“I’m lost,” he huffs, shifting on his long legs and crossing his arms over the smoothness of his white tee.
“Connor booked this place for us, but there is no us. Not anymore.” I hold my focus on his dark gaze, hoping he reads everything without me having to spell it out.
Our marriage ended almost a year ago. In all honesty, it’d been over for years before our electronically scribbled signatures filled separate boxes on the digital divorce papers.
“He wouldn’t have deserved you.”
Despite the grit in his rugged voice, his comment is a surprisingly nice thing to say, which catches me off guard.
“Yeah, well, he’s someone else’s problem now.”
Mr. Tall, Dark, and Gray-Sweatpants hangs his head a second, shaking it side to side, before popping it back upward.
“There’s been an unfortunate mistake. I own this place and it’s not for rent.”
“What?” Shouting has transferred to me. “I paid a thousand dollars for the week.”
He huffs. “If I rented, this place would be worth three times that amount. But I don’t rent it, so there’s been a mistake.”
As we glare at one another, we seem to come to the same conclusion.
“Fucking Connor.” My back teeth clack together as his jaw tightens, and he echoes me.
After a moment of silence to mourn the future death of Connor because I’m going to kill him if I see him, when I don’t plan to ever lay my eyes on him again in this lifetime, I ask a very important question.
“Now what?” I don’t have the financial means to just move to another location, providing there even is another location to rent mid-September in Whitefish, Montana.
Fall might not be the height of the season around here, but it’s a close second to summer, which is hanging on delightfully.
A weather app shows a perfect column of sunshine for the week ahead.
The owner continues to stare at me, taking me in one more time.
I have no idea what he sees other than someone who apparently no longer fits Connor’s type. I’m short and curvy, blonde and brash, and I’ve already felt the soul-crushing truth of Connor’s opinion of me. I don’t need this stranger’s assessment.
“I suggest you speak to Connor. He took my money, and he told me I could be here. Family, he said.” Which gives me pause, and I tilt my head. “Are you the distant cousin?”
“Distant cousin.” The guy chokes. “He’s my fucking stepbrother. And I don’t speak to Connor.”
“That makes two of us,” I mutter.
Connor didn’t talk much about this man, his older stepbrother. The successful black sheep of the family. Connor and his brother belong to his mother, making his stepbrother the son of Connor’s deceased stepfather.
“I’m Kali . . . Kali Summerbee.”
“Summerbee?” he whispers harshly like he doesn’t believe the rather sunshine-y name. It’s a pseudonym that I’ve adopted for my line of work.
“And you are?”
“Craven Boost, but people call me Booster.”