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“Put some fucking clothes on,” Cole bitched. “I’m not cleaning the sofa tomorrow.”
Tanner took no notice. “So do we know who this asshole is? Got a name?”
“Yes, he’s a cop. I’ve been searching for him, but not got much so far.”
“Hmm. We need to be careful if the guy’s a cop. He’ll have backup and a cop going missing will attract the kind of attention we don’t need. I’ll review our security. We don’t want to get caught with our pants down,” Tanner said.
He made a good point. While it was unlikely anyone would venture up here in the current weather, it was possible. And this guy was clearly very motivated if he’d been following Eva before she crashed. We couldn’t afford to take any chances.
Eva
Being here, in this cabin, was like a dream. A pleasant one, but still a dream. I slept deeply, ate better than I had in years, and for the first time I felt safe.
The kitchen incident had been brushed under the proverbial rug. Cole and Silas had explained to me that Tanner was their brother and he hadn’t known I was here.
He’d scared the shit out of me, but also invoked feelings I wasn’t comfortable looking too closely at. It wasn’t until Silas got knocked to the floor that I snapped out of the spell Tanner had cast over me.
It was the blood that did it. And the violence. Watching Silas bleed on the floor brought it all back. All the memories of Brent cutting me, using me as a punchbag, screaming at me.
Dissociating was my coping mechanism, and this time was no different.
After Cole left me alone in my bedroom, my brain ran through different escape plans, but by the time morning came, reality had sunk in. There was no way I could leave the cabin. Not without help, anyway.
Whether I liked it or not, I was stuck here for the time being. Once I accepted this, I calmed down.
Several days had passed since Tanner’s unexpected arrival and he’d been avoiding us all ever since. He ate in his room, was never around when I was, and I’d begun to think he was a ghost.
I felt bad because this was his home, but also relieved that I wasn’t being subjected to his particular brand of dark intensity.
Since I had mostly recovered from the accident, Cole and Silas were trying to keep me busy. Silas had even asked me to help him chop wood yesterday, which was ridiculous. It basically involved me watching him wield an ax while shirtless and sweaty.
From how he flirted with me, I knew he liked the way I blushed every five minutes and ogled him when I thought he wasn’t looking.
Cole rolled his eyes a lot at Silas’s antics and pretended to be annoyed at his shameless flirting. From what I could tell from watching the dynamic between the guys, Cole was the adult in the house, Silas was the annoying younger brother who enjoyed pranking the shit out of them all, and Tanner was the dysfunctional one.
Today, we were baking.
It wasn’t something I knew how to do, but Cole insisted I needed to learn. He said it was a useful life skill. Silas had laughed at that. He said shooting and knowing how to fix a generator were a lot more useful, at which point Cole had punched him in the face and they’d started play-fighting.
Honestly, I’d never seen men fight as much as these idiots. It was all in good humor - most of the time. Aside from the fight between Silas and Tanner, they didn’t seem to suffer any ill-effects from the roughhousing. Whereas most men would have black eyes and end up covered in bruises after a serious fight, they all looked good as new within a few hours.
It was a little odd, but I figured they just had good healing genes.
For my baking lesson, Cole had decided we were making cookies. He said it was one of the easiest recipes and impossible to mess up. I was unconvinced, but I stayed quiet, not wanting to disappoint him.
Cole watched as I measured out flour and added cocoa powder to the bowl. I was terrified of messing up the recipe and wasting the ingredients. Memories of Brent beating the shit out of me for dropping something he’d paid for were at the front of my mind. My hand shook as I lifted the sieve.
“Now add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar.”
I did as I was told.
“Use your hands to turn it into a dough.” I tried, but it was sticky and I soon got frustrated.
“No, like this,” he said, moving behind me and placing his large hands over mine to illustrate the figure-of-eight movement I was supposed to be using to form the dough.
It was hard to concentrate while he stood so close. His body was like a furnace against my back and I could feel every hard plane of his muscular torso pressed against my soft curves. His scent was intoxicating. My attention soon drifted from the task at hand.
“Like this?” I wished he would move away so I could string a coherent thought together. But he seemed completely unaware of how fast my heart was beating in my chest and how badly my body was overheating at his proximity.
