Beyond the Blue Horizon (Moonlit Ridge Book 4), page 4
I wavered, mind careening through every way that I might be able to get my family out of this town tonight. Because there was something about it that made me sure that I’d wandered into dangerous territory. Fallen onto a path that was going to lead to…I didn’t know.
Trouble?
Destruction?
Or was I just being paranoid?
“Comin’?” Theo grunted, his eyes slanting over me in a slow slide that sent a tremor ripping through my body.
A spark of severity that sliced through my middle.
That was the trouble right there.
The effect this stranger had on me.
But there seemed to be nothing I could do but follow him out the lobby doors, considering Nelly was already waiting out in the storm.
“Have a great night,” Madge called behind me.
Oh, there was nothing great about what I’d gotten us into, but still, I returned, “Thank you for your help, Madge. I hope you have a great night, too.”
Theo wound ahead of us, and he turned left down the walkway that led along the wing of rooms on that side.
The storm had waned, and now soft flurries fluttered down from the heavy night sky.
From what I could tell, the motel was both comfortable and upscale. Sort of a cross between retro chic and mountain resort.
The neon sign I’d been able to see when we’d been driving in from the distance proclaiming The Sanctuary definitely lent to the vintage vibe.
It was a one-story building that looked like it was likely built in the fifties, and it had two long wings that extended from each side.
I’d noticed there were a few larger cabins interspersed around the grounds, and the landscape promised to be lush and beautiful and fully surrounded by the dense woods.
Even though the wind was no longer battering, the air was still a bitter cold, and I curled myself around my son to try to protect him from the chill as we hurried to catch up to Nelly who was now five feet behind Theo.
“Is co-wed, Mommy.” Finn shivered as he tucked himself closer.
“I know, baby,” I whispered at his temple.
Theo took a right on a sidewalk that angled off the main building. The pathway was illuminated by low landscaping lights that sent rainbows glittering off the tumbling snow.
The path cut through a dense copse of trees, and the snowcapped tops of the pines disappeared into the gloomy expanse above.
Up ahead were two small cabins that faced each other where they were situated on a small cul-de-sac drive, the one on the left about a hundred yards closer than the one on the right.
A-frames that seemed to almost blend in with the trees that surrounded them, each with a little covered porch out front.
Muted lights glowed like a beacon from within.
A quiver of relief vibrated somewhere in the deepest depths of me. Something about this place oozed a warmth that my weary spirit wanted to fully fall into.
Give in and rest.
I needed to ignore it because there could be no comfort in this.
Theo turned up the path that led to the left one. Unit B was written in bronze letters that hung vertically on a wooden beam that fronted the porch.
He bounded up the single step onto the wooden planks, his movements fluid and lithe as he moved across the space. He dug something out of his pocket.
A keycard, I realized.
Panic churned.
Right.
Of course.
Because he owned this place.
He pressed it to the reader, then opened the door and stepped aside to allow Nelly to ramble by.
He swiveled that heady gaze to me as I raced up behind her, Finn clinging to me as my boots thudded on the porch as I rushed. I wasn’t sure if it was the cold or the man that I was trying to outrun.
But the truth was I was trying to outrun everything.
Every threat.
Any danger.
Still, I inhaled a staggered breath when I stumbled into the warmth of the cabin.
I let my attention sweep the bottom floor of the great room.
A cozy couch sat in front of a gas fire that already roared from the hearth. It was made of rugged stones and had a wood beam mantel with a flat-screen television that hung above it.
The entire wall to my left was made of windows and climbed high to the pitched roof.
Through it, I could barely make out the view of the lake in the distance. An endless expanse that was hugged by the wintry forest.
A kitchen sat on the far side of the living area, the two spaces separated by a low bar with three stools. A four-person round table sat under the giant windows in the corner on the left.
It wasn’t large, but quaint and cozy.
Theo stomped his boots out on the rug in front of the door before he stepped into the space.
Consuming it. The air churning with the tension he emitted.
Warily, I turned toward him, hugging my son tight. The rock that grounded my purpose.
“There is a bedroom downstairs.” Theo gestured to the far right of the living room where there was a door next to the staircase.
Then he waved his hand toward what looked to be a loft upstairs. “A loft with another bedroom and bathroom is upstairs. I’ll have housekeeping bring over a baby gate. Not sure if you’d rather be upstairs or downstairs, but thought Nelly might want to be downstairs.”
My spirit stirred.
Did he really think all this through?
Taking into consideration my grandmother’s age?
Caring and caring and caring when there was no reason for him to?
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “I’ll probably take the second floor so Nelly doesn’t have to navigate the stairs.”
“Probably a good call. Wouldn’t want to take a tumble down them.” Nelly ambled into the first-floor bedroom, her voice drifting out as she enthused, “Oh, lord a mercy. I’m never going to want to leave. You’re going to have to drag me out of here.”
I had to wonder if she issued it a challenge.
“Which bags are yours?” Theo glanced at the pile of baggage he’d left just inside the door.
“I got the owws!” Finn exuded, pointing at his backpack with white snow owls all over it. I wasn’t sure when he’d become obsessed with them, but they had become his favorite thing.
“Yeah. Thought this might belong to you.” A grin hitched at the edge of Theo’s wicked mouth as he tossed the small backpack onto his shoulder.
“I can get the suitcases,” I told him.
“Know you can,” he grumbled as he picked up the black suitcase and matching carry-on. “But why would you want to if you have me to do it for you?”
I sighed. I was picking up quickly that there wasn’t much use arguing with him. “Those are mine. The mint green ones are Nelly’s.”
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” He smirked, the man a storm in the middle of the cozy room. In four long strides, he bounded up the stairs with my bags, and a moment later, he was coming back down.
My attention got trapped there. On his lithe frame as he swept downstairs.
Pure, volatile energy.
He grabbed Nelly’s bags and moved for the room where she was staying.
“Where do you want these?” His deep voice rumbled out. Tendrils that could weave right into my spirit.
“Oh, right there under the window would be just fine. Thank you.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” It was a grunt that radiated through the walls.
“Rescuing damsels stranded in the snow?” Nelly giggled.
“Pretty sure it was not damsels that I stumbled upon. A pack of lionesses seems about right.”
Another giggle. “Oh my.”
Great. He was wrapping my Nelly around every one of his tattooed fingers.
He appeared back in the doorway.
A riptide that could pull an Olympic swimmer out to sea.
“Let me know if there’s anything else you need. Food should be here in about ten minutes.”
“I want food.” Finn nodded his head emphatically, shifting around to get in my line of sight to let me know how eager he was over the proposition.
“It’s on its way, little buddy,” Theo said. Then he tipped his full attention back to me. “I’ll grab it from the delivery driver and bring it over as soon as it gets here.”
Every second he stayed sent my nerves fraying further.
I blew out a sigh, trying to keep myself together. “You’ve done enough, Theo. Why don’t you head home and enjoy your evening and I can grab the food?”
It basically came out a frenzied plea.
We didn’t do this.
Rely on others.
And this man had single-handedly done more for us in one evening than any other person had done in years.
I needed to get away from him. I didn’t know what it was about him, but just the sight of him felt like a warning flare.
“Oh, I plan to, beautiful. Won’t take me but a second since I live on the far side of the property.”
His grin was casually cruel. Nothing but sinful seduction.
I didn’t know what had the panic rising further. The fact that he called me beautiful or that he dropped the bomb that he lived here.
Apparently, the living here part since it rocketed out of me. “You live here? On the property?”
“You have a problem with that?”
Apparently, since I was the one who’d been ambushed and netted.
Nelly came moseying back out from her room toward where I stood trying not to spiral.
“Come to Nells, my Finn-Finn, and we’ll get you all set up for when the food arrives.”
He scrambled right out of my arms and into hers, blond hair framed around his precious, cupid face, his red lips squished up with his excitement.
Nelly sent me a look that could only be described as conniving.
I narrowed my eyes at her, and she just let go of a scratchy chuckle as she carried Finn into the kitchen. She pulled out a chair and settled him on it.
I preferred to have him strapped in a highchair, but we didn’t always have those luxuries, and he’d gotten accustomed to being on his knees at a table.
“Give me your number.” Theo shot the gruff words at me from out of nowhere, my back to him as they impaled me from behind.
My brows shot to the ceiling as I turned to find he’d pulled his phone from his pocket.
Was he serious? He wanted my freaking number?
That was it. The last thing I could tolerate from him. My breaking point.
Air huffed from my lungs, and I stomped around him for the door, trying not to drag his essence into my lungs.
The scent of the woods and the snow, and rough, sumptuous leather.
I swung open the door, fully ignoring the cold as I hurtled myself out into it.
Following me out, he snapped the door shut behind us.
“Why didn’t you tell me you live here?” It gushed out of me as I whirled in his direction.
He moved to the side, and I moved back toward the door as he rounded me.
As if the two of us were in a boxing ring and sizing the other up.
Disbelief filled his sharp features. “You want to clue me in on why that matters?”
“Oh, I don’t know…some random guy picks us up and tells us he has a place for us to stay and it turns out he lives there? Seems awful convenient to me.”
“Convenient?” It was a low, gravelly challenge. One of his brows arched like a blade. “Convenient for what?”
“Is this what you always do…pick up stranded women and bring them here to do God knows what with them? Let’s see what Yelp has to say about this.”
Okay, I didn’t know what I was doing. Making a fool of myself, probably, but he was too much.
“Yelp?” An itch of amusement ticked in his question, the man half in the glow of the light hanging on the side of the door and the other swamped in shadows. Every flinty, intimidating edge of him seemed to toil and twist in the night.
“That’s right,” I told him.
I whipped my phone from my back pocket, not even sure what deep end I’d dived off of.
But this man made me feel like I was losing my grip.
Unhinged and unwired.
I swiped the screen of my phone dramatically then opened my Yelp app, typing The Sanctuary into the search bar.
It populated and I said, “Here we go. Let’s check some reviews on the creeper owner of this motel.”
His dubious chuckle skated the air, and he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black jeans.
Okay, so yeah, I was being ridiculous. But once I’d hopped onto the train, I couldn’t seem to get off.
Because I started to read off imaginary reviews.
“One star. Owner is a real weirdo.” Up went my thumb, as if I were making a checklist.
“Would give zero stars if possible. Owner basically held me hostage, demanding that I stay at his motel.”
There went my index finger, and something smug flitted through his ridiculously handsome face, as if this were highly entertaining.
“One star. Stay away. Owner demanded my phone number.”
I lifted my middle finger, and I couldn’t seem to stop the grave I was digging for myself, and I continued right on in a direction that I knew better than traveling.
“One star. Owner seduced me. Sex was terrible.”
No question, the only thing that one did was expose where my thoughts had gone because the man cocked the most arrogant smirk. “Think you already know that last one just isn’t true.”
Right. That was the only one he was going to refute.
He took one step my way.
A landslide.
A hurricane.
Chills spiraled, and they didn’t have anything to do with the cold. I fumbled backward a step, and my back hit the door behind me.
Pinned by this stranger who wielded some kind of power that I couldn’t allow him to possess.
In a flash, the amusement had drained from his face. Fierce, fathomless eyes speared me to the spot.
“Not sure why you’re afraid of me, Piper…” His voice shifted, turning serious and grave. “But I can promise you, I won’t lay a finger on you.” He leaned in closer, his mouth close to grazing my ear as his tone shifted again. “Not unless you want me to.”
Heat streaked through my veins.
I knew what this was.
Attraction.
Something I rarely felt. Something I would never again give myself over to.
And that was why I needed to stay as far away from this man as possible.
He took a step back, and I sagged forward, as if he was the one who had been keeping me standing.
“Now, give me your phone number so I can text you in the morning to set up a time that we can go over to the autobody shop and get the word on your car, yeah?”
I breathed out a tremulous breath at the sudden change in his demeanor. I couldn’t even process the way he had me giving in as I rattled off the numbers.
His head tipped down, and a longer lock of his black hair fell forward to brush over his forehead as he entered the number into his phone and sent a text.
My phone dinged in my back pocket.
He tipped his attention back up to me, another smirk riding to his full, pink lips as he muttered, “I promise not to do anything worthy of a one-star review with it.”
Stunned, I stood floundering around inside myself, trying to figure out how this man had so easily bent me to his will.
I didn’t share my phone number with men, or anyone, for that matter.
Sure, I got a new one every few months, but that didn’t mean I should go around being reckless with it.
“I’ll be back in a couple minutes with your food. Go in and warm up. It’s cold out here.”
I tried to form a response. To find a way to put him off.
But that ball of razors in my throat made it impossible to speak.
Uncertainty clashed inside me. Sickness at being a jerk to him when he’d been nothing but kind.
Okay, he’d also been overbearing and demanding.
But still—kind.
I mean, we could still be stuck in that frozen car if it weren’t for him.
What would have happened then?
Laughter rang from inside the cabin. The low tenor of my grandmother’s and tinkling of my son’s.
Gratitude curled through my being, so fierce and unrelenting that when Theo turned his back and strode off the porch, the man nothing but a slick of darkness slipping through the glinting snow, the words were crawling up through the sludge of doubt and fear and getting loose of my tongue.
“Thank you.”
Ten feet down the path, he turned around, walking backward as he muttered, “And what are you thanking me for?”
I knew he was drawing me out by the tweak at the edge of his plush mouth.
I was already stuck here, anyway, so I guess it didn’t matter. “For everything.”
The smile he wore softened, though the rest of him was still carved in ferocity. “Wouldn’t have left you on the side of the road, Piper, just like I’m not gonna leave you in need, either.”
There was something about it that sounded so much deeper than the mere acts of kindness he’d demonstrated for us tonight. Something that sounded of a dire, indestructible claim.
As if his entire being were written in it.
Without saying anything else, he swung back around and disappeared into the murky shadows that consumed the path.
Trembling, I slipped back into the cabin, and I quietly snapped the door shut. My forehead dropped to the wood as I slowly turned the lock.
Metal grated as the deadbolt clicked into place.
My shoulders tensed when I sensed the presence edge up behind me. The concern that radiated out from her beautiful, graceful soul.
“Why are you always so sure everyone is out to get you?” Nelly’s voice was soft.
I breathed out around the truth that we had no choice but to abide by, and I turned around to face her as I whispered, “Because no one can be trusted.”
FOUR
THEO
The sky sagged low as I slipped along the perimeter grounds of The Sanctuary. The night was so dense it felt like it’d become its own entity.
