AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He went back to the pile of paper, while Molly searched the cupboard for more coffee. “I don’t suppose you see a laptop anywhere around?” she asked. “Or a yellow legal pad with a lot of notes for a story.”
“What kind of story?”
“No one seems to know, exactly. He wanted to show it to me, I think. He wanted to get it published.”
Sam rummaged through the sheaf of paper. “There are random notes scribbled on some of these receipts. Like this one. Check for ED. Or this one. WanderWorld.”
Her head jerked up. “WanderWorld? That’s a blog. I left a comment on it but haven’t heard back. She had a run-in with a Chilkoot at a bluegrass festival.”
“So maybe this story he was writing was about the Chilkoots?”
“I was just about to say the same thing.”
They stared at each other, both coming to the same conclusion. Had the Chilkoots wanted him and his story to get buried in an avalanche?
“I’m going to look for that laptop,” he told her. But a thorough search of the cabin turned up nothing, no legal pads, no computers, no trace of a story.
When he got back to the kitchen, he found Molly making two cups of black tea. Her red hair fanned across her shoulders, and his fingers itched to stroke it. She turned to face him, showing a worried frown. “I’ve been thinking. You said the note was in a different handwriting. What if Elias left it for us?”
“It was buried under other receipts. I doubt it was him.”
“Maybe he was trying to hide it because someone was after him. I think we should go out to the Ice Falls road just in case, see where the avalanche was. What’s the harm? At least I’ll get a look at the Ice Falls.”
He sighed and scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. It might be interesting to see where the avalanche had buried Daniel’s truck, but on the other hand…it had been cleared by now, the Ice Falls road was a long-ass drive, and a potential wild-goose chase.
“What if it’s a fake-out? What if someone wants to lure us to the Ice Falls as some kind of trap?”
“Don’t you think they’d make it a little more obvious in that case?”
“Counterpoint…they’d want to make it as realistic as possible.”
Her eyes flared with sparks. “Don’t you ‘counterpoint’ me.”
“Counterpoint…I’ll counterpoint you whenever I want.” He stepped toward her and planted his hands on the countertop, bracketing her between them. With only an inch separating them, the space between them vibrated with electric energy. Her breathing sped up and her chest moved up and down. When she spoke, her voice was throaty.
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
He smiled, feeling like a wolf who’d cornered a lamb for breakfast. “Consensual counterpointing only, of course.”
She leaned forward and brushed her body against his. Full breasts soft against his chest, stomach to stomach, hips to hips. “I hate that I can be mad at you one minute, and you give that hot look and I forget what rubbed me wrong.”
“I don’t want to ever rub you wrong.” He moved his groin against her mound, letting her feel the hard bulge of his morning hard-on. He’d woken up half-aroused, and things had only gone up from there.
“See that you don’t,” she purred. She moved against him like a cat enjoying every sinuous flex of her body.
He nipped at her lips, captured them with his mouth, engaged her in a slow, sensual kiss. She opened for him immediately, her lips parting to allow his tongue inside. He savored the flavor of her—fire and spice, heat and delicacy. She might not seem “delicate,” but he thought there were parts of her that were. Molly kept pieces of herself protected, and those were the parts that most intrigued him.
“Sam,” she murmured. “I…I want you.”
“I want you, too.”
“But there’s…I think I’m getting a splinter…”
He pulled back from her, horrified at the thought that he’d been pressing her into raw wood that had given her an injury.
At the same moment, a young voice called from the front door.
“What are you doing?”
