Chapter Three
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Coral
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Taking only my handbag with me, which matches my pink sundress and stiletto shoes, I climb out of the car and groan.
This part of the world is not made for me.
My heels crunch through dried earth, a bit of gravel, and a sprinkling of pine needles.
The air is so crisp I think I might faint, but I persevere.
I refuse to pass out from the fresh air right in front of their doorstep. They won't make me forget it.
I'm so busy treading over the terrain to get to the front door that when I look up, I'm at said door, and there they are.
All three of them. Looking like the sexy man gods, all gruff and rough, and weather- and work-worn. Six feet four, maybe five, of pure muscle that their clothes do nothing to hide. Their skin is tanned, and I swear I can feel the calluses on their extra-large hands on my naked body.
Umm, what? That would be a hard fuck nope, I tell myself and recalibrate. They're ogres. Let that be known to all parts of my body, particularly my breasts, nipples, clit, labia, womb, lips, eyes, heart rate, and common sense. And I hate them.
"Oh, there you are. I couldn't see you from the trees," I say with practiced flippancy.
They'll never know what the sight of them, this close, did to me.
Ugh. All three of them have dark, brooding eyes with thick silky lashes.
Even the thick layer of stubble can't hide the sharp slant of their jawlines or their untamed male beauty, unapologetically earthy and strikingly handsome.
Virility pours off them like an aphrodisiac, all man and beast.
I push my way through into their cabin—it's excessively hot outside, and I don't want to melt... from the heat, I clarify in my mind.
I try holding my nose as I do, but the scent of their cologne, annoyingly fresh and rich and hypnotic, filters into my other senses. They were not supposed to smell this good. What's wrong with them?
It's just as well I'm so over them.
"Okay, here's how this is going to go," I say, taking my sunglasses off and putting them on my head before I turn around to face them in their mudroom.
"You don't want me here anymore than I want to be here.
I'm under some misguided obligation to my father; well, he threatened me.
I mean, he didn't threaten me as in, "I'm going to kill you if you don't do as I say," but he took away my credit cards, which is the same thing.
" And try as I might, I couldn't control the catch in my breath and the quiver in my voice.
How am I going to survive being this poor? I don't even have a dollar in my purse.
"That's even worse than threatening to kill me, if you ask me. But you are under zero obligation to have me here. I saw a quaint little town with an inn on my way here, and if you pay the bill for the next seven nights, I'll just go and hide out there. I'll return home a new person."
I air-quote "new" and then continue. "And your life will remain the same. Bland and uneventful, just how you like it, right? Deal?"
They don't answer straightaway. In fact, they don't answer at all. They exchange those secret glances at me, which I absolutely hate—nothing's changed since I was six years old and they were ten.
"It's—" But my words are cut off when Samuel gives me a melt-your-panties-off grin and then goes to my car to get my luggage. All eight bags.
"You're staying," Cedar says, and I turn on him like a feral cat.
"You can't tell me what to do."
"Are you sure you want to keep that attitude?" he asks me instead.
"Are you sure you want to keep those eyebrows?" I ask sweetly, folding my arms over my chest.
After I wrote my name on his face in my six-year-old scribble and doused him with honey so the ants would get him, I told him he was lucky I couldn't find my father's razor because I planned to shave off his eyebrows.
Cedar growls, Masen chuckles, and Samuel, carrying all my bags, joins him.
"Just let me go," I plead.
"Not going to happen," all three of them say in unison.
"But it's the perfect plan," I whine.
Still nothing. They don't thank me for coming up with a mutually beneficial scheme to dupe our fathers by my staying at the inn and their being free of her to live their quiet lumberjack lives.
"I'm sure you must be tired," Masen says. "Taking nine hours to do a six-hour trip and all." We'll show you to your room. You can freshen up. Would you like to have dinner with us, or would you prefer it in your room?" he asks.
"Well..." I'm shocked they haven't put me to work in the kitchen scrubbing floors within the first minute of my arriving, so this is a good sign.
If I'm getting room service for the week ahead, this might not be that bad after all. And the view is nice. I mean it’s just trees, but okay.
Maybe they just want me to stay out of their way. I can do that. Easy. And then we can go back to our own lives.
"I would love to have dinner brought to me, please," I say sincerely. "And yes, I am a little tired and freshening up sounds lovely."
Let this be the way we part ways. The cabin might not be a modern marble-and-chrome architectural wonder, but from the outside it looks fairly big.
Surely, we can get by without having to see each other at all. Maybe this won't be as bad as I thought.