Chapter 1 #5
As…preoccupied as I’d been, I hadn’t really noticed the cabin last night.
But this morning, in the daylight, its charm was on full display.
My bedroom was a half-story up from the main floor, and it led to a sitting area with a weathered wood futon, two mismatched but comfy looking armchairs, and an intricate but slightly threadbare rug that really tied the room together.
There was a built-in bookshelf along one wall, an open staircase leading to the main floor, and his voice humming a soft melody through the air.
“Morning,” Darryn said, taking a break from his kitchen serenade when I walked down the stairs. Today he wore faded jeans, a dark gray Evergreen State College T-shirt, a kitchen towel slung over one shoulder, and an all too knowing grin spreading across his face. “Sleep well?”
In the amber glow from the lamps hanging on the walls, he looked even better than he did yesterday. Big as a mountain and chiseled from stone. Where the hell did they make men like Darryn Madigan? In a lab? Some underground factory whose sole purpose was to churn out ruggedly gorgeous sex gods?
“Good morning,” I said with something resembling dignity.
“Want breakfast? I made coffee and bacon.” He pointed his metal spatula toward the griddle where four pieces of egg-soaked bread were turning golden brown. “And French toast.”
“I have to use the outhouse,” I said before he could tell me one more food item that might make me start drooling.
His head tilted, a brow arched. “You know, that doesn’t actually preclude you from eating breakfast. You can have it all, Hannah.”
A shiver sprinted across my neck. The way he said my name, smooth and low like he might as well have been saying, “get on your hands and knees,” was something I needed to come to terms with.
It was true that it had been years since I’d felt a man grow hard against me, had a man’s hands on my body or his breath on my neck.
It was even true that if he did actually tell me to get on my hands and knees and crawl to him right there and then, I probably would. But I didn’t think I should.
I felt uncomfortably exposed around him. Transparent. Like I was cellophane. Like he could pull a corner back and so easily unwrap all my protective layers.
Taking the umbrella down from its hook by the door, I said in the professional tone I used to tell parents that their child might not pass calculus, “I would love breakfast, thank you.”
After another visit to the outhouse, I walked back into the cabin to find Joey snoring on his chair by the woodstove, a plate of French toast and bacon on one side of the table, and Darryn sitting at the other side, eating his breakfast.
“Do you drink coffee?” he asked, halfway to his feet.
While I sighed, “Yes, please,” he pulled a mug that said Life Begins at 80 from a shelf and filled it for me. I reached for the mug, but he held it back.
“Always in such a hurry,” he said with a little tut. “I need to know how you take it.”
Hard, fast, now, my brain suggested unhelpfully. “Do we have cream?”
“As a matter of fact, we do.”
I took my seat at the table, my eyes fluttering at the delicious mix of sweet and savory rising from my plate. When he opened the fridge, I asked, “How does that work?”
“Well,” he said without missing a beat, “when whole milk is spun around at very high speeds, the fat separates, and cream can be skimmed off the top.”
“The refrigerator,” I said with a laugh. “I thought we didn’t have electricity out here.”
“Oh, that. It’s propane, like the lamps. Although, to be honest, I don’t know how propane makes things cold.” He shrugged, a little dramatically. “Sorry to let you down.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Your knowledge of the intricacies of modern dairy processing more than makes up for it.”
He poured the perfect amount of cream into my coffee—because of course he did—then he pulled a container of strawberries out of the fridge that looked so fresh I wondered if he’d picked them himself.
Joining me at the table, he passed me my mug, set the strawberries down between us, and said, “I worked at a dairy farm for a summer when I was fifteen.” He winked at me, and one hundred butterflies fluttered two hundred wings inside my belly.
“My dairy expertise is a deep and hard-earned source of pride.”
I laughed again, then we stared at each other for a moment. And there was something about his eyes. So clear. So blue they looked impossible. An impossible color that was as impossible as this entire situation.
“If you can help me get my car unstuck,” I said after taking a sip of knee-bucklingly good coffee, “I’ll leave today.”
Lifting a bright red strawberry to his soft, pink lips, he narrowed his eyes, his focus homing in on me as Joey’s head popped up from his chair so he could squint at me too.
I took another sip of coffee, hiding behind my mug, feeling scrutinized from all sides.
Finally, Darryn lowered the fruit and said, “You should stay. I’ll go.”
“I don’t want that,” I said. “You got here first.”
“It’s a cabin, not a competition.”
“I know.” I took a bite of French toast—also delicious. “I still don’t want to kick you and Joey out. And I should really get home.” To what? To emptiness? To silence?
He sat back in his chair, then crossed his arms over his chest. I knew that posture, those slightly pursed lips and that concerned brow furrow.
“Don’t do that,” I said, pointing my fork at him.
“Do what?”
“You know what. You’re either about to give me some deep insight into my current predicament, or you’re going to sit there and wait silently until I offer one up. I’m a high school counselor. I know the game.”
His shoulders shook. He was a chuckler, this one. An easy laugher. A man whose smile lines were etched more deeply than the ones that came from frowning. Dangerous.
“Okay.” Uncrossing his arms, he leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table and asked, “Why do you want to leave? Would it be so terrible to stay here?”
The unspoken end of that question—with me?—echoed like a whisper across a canyon.
“I know your name,” I said. “I know you’re good—” his brows lifted, until I added— “at making coffee. But otherwise, I know nothing about you. And I don’t routinely spend three-day weekends with strangers.”
Sitting back again, he said, “Well that’s simple enough.
Let’s not be strangers anymore. Hi.” When he extended his hand, I played along, shaking it once, firmly, certainly not remembering how those long fingers had felt between my legs.
“I’m Darryn Madigan. I live in Olympia, Washington.
I have three brothers—two older, one younger.
I’m forty-nine years old. I work as an advocate for disabled vets and am a vet myself.
I’m single—divorced,” he added for clarity.
“I also have a son. He’s twenty-eight and had lived in Olympia too, but he moved to Chicago four years ago for work.
That was when I started coming up here. I was trying to drive back home after visiting my brother who runs a sober living home in Red Falls, and I couldn’t.
I just couldn’t go back to Olympia knowing my kid wasn’t there.
So I pointed the car north, drove until I ended up at the Merc, and then I found a listing for PeePaw’s pinned to the bulletin board.
The cabin, the mountains, the silence… I don’t know.
” He rubbed his left eyebrow. “It helped. Now, Joey and I come back every year.”
It helped. The words stuck to me in unexpected places: throat, ribs, heart. Maybe, if things were different, staying here would have helped me too.
After tossing his dog an entire slice of bacon, Darryn set his gaze on me, his steady eye-contact heating my blood. “Your turn.”
Processing his introduction, filtering through words like vet and single and, especially, Olympia—a town only two hours from mine—I pulled my hair out of its knot and shook it loose.
While he watched my dark curls fall over my shoulders with something like longing, I said, “I’m Hannah James.
I also live in Washington, in Sequim. I’m forty-five, also single, also divorced.
And, like I said, I’m a high school counselor. ”
“Which explains the student in the hallway freaking out about being pegged,” he cut in, and I nearly choked on my next inhale. “I figured maybe you were a teacher. But a counselor makes more sense.”
I groaned. “I forgot I told you about that.” I remembered last night the way I remembered week-old dreams, in blurry, confused snippets. “I was a mess.”
“I didn’t mind.”
I looked up at him, finding a mischievous smile while his foot slid forward to rest against mine.
“I like your kind of mess.”
I pulled my foot back. He was too good looking, too nice, and way too good in bed to be playing footsie with. Darryn Madigan was a trap. A big, burly, gorgeous trap.
But it was still raining, and I had nowhere else to go until—
“Oh, shit.” I shot to my feet, the movement startling a deep bark out of Joey. “Steph.”
Darryn frowned up at me. “Who’s Steph?”
“My friend. My coworker.” I spotted my keys on the counter and snatched them up. “I was supposed to go back to the Merc after I picked up my bag. She was looking for another place for me to stay. But then I—”
“Got distracted?” He was finding far too much amusement in this entire situation.
“I have to call her. She’s probably called in a missing persons by now.”
Rising to his feet, he stepped into my space, took the keys from my hand, and set them back on the counter. “I already tried to get your car out this morning. It wouldn’t budge.”
“You did?” I must have slept like the dead not to hear it, but when I turned toward the door, I saw that both my favorite shoes were lined up on the mat. “You found my shoe?” I blinked at the state of the pair. “And cleaned them?”