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I felt simultaneously concerned that Hunter was feeling cornered, glad that he had some kind of defense mechanism in place, and worried that said mechanism might not be the healthiest one. Well, I couldn’t find out if I didn’t go talk to him, could I?
“Do you have the address?” I asked.
Right after I said it, I worried that she wouldn’t tell me, that she would think it was unhealthy to be this fixated on Hunter. That she would pity me, like Paige had.
But Martha just flashed a smile as bright as a shooting star. “Good on you. Maybe you can pull him out of his funk.”
And she handed me the address that she had had waiting on a piece of paper.
#
I’d thought the fishing place would be nearby, maybe on the other side of the lake that I could see from the manor house, but my GPS told me it was even deeper in the country. I turned on my lights and drove carefully through the rolling hills and deep dark woods that were no doubt lovely and picturesque by day, probably looking like they’d rolled out of a damn Thomas Kinkade painting.
By night, though, it looked like something straight out of a very grim fairy tale, one of the ones where the ending is less ‘happily ever after’ and more ‘and then the last person in the story died in a very bloody, poetically just way.’ They were not doing wonders for my nerves, those rolling hills, and that deep, dark forest.
What the hell was Hunter doing here? He couldn’t really be fishing, could he? I mean, yes, he was allowed to have hobbies I didn’t know about—in the grand scheme of things, liking fishing was a teeny tiny thing compared to some of the things I didn’t know about him—but why was he fishing now? Maybe Martha had misunderstood. Maybe Hunter was putting together his big plan to save the company here; maybe the isolation and serenity helped him think or something.
I mean, it was mostly making me think of urban legends about hillbilly cannibal axe-murderers, but different strokes for different folks.
After about thirty minutes of my GPS’ calm British voice directing me to make this turn or that turn, I rounded a corner and saw the lake. It was larger than the one by the manor, and more wild-looking, its edges rolling and blurring and disappearing into tiny inlets like the fingers of a vast hand. The cabin was tucked back by one of those little inlets, with rough-hewn logs and a blue granite chimney, covered in ivy and moss and looking like it was becoming a part of the landscape itself.
Even in the dark, I could imagine how beautiful it would look by daylight, how the trees would be lit emerald green and the lake sapphire blue, how the sky would stretch on forever, interrupted only by the sight of a bird on the wing.
In a place like this, you could imagine that you were the last person on earth.
Was that what Hunter wanted to imagine?
I parked the car and waited for a minute, gathering my courage. I was doing the right thing. I was.
Now that the engine of my car was off, the silence seemed to envelop everything. I could hear the rustle of the breeze through the leaves, the lapping of the lake water against the sandy shore. A slight slap as those waves hit the dock and the rowboat bobbed off to the side.
Surely Hunter had heard me pull in. Why hadn’t he come out? Was he at one of those curtained windows, just watching and waiting? Was he going to make me come to him?
Well, that was fair.
I squared my shoulders and left the car. Struggled to keep my posture straight and my face pleasantly neutral as I made my way up the path. I took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
It banged open like a gunshot.
“Hunter!”
His name was torn from my mouth in a gasp.
He glowered, leaning heavily on the doorway in a rumpled plaid button-up and jeans that looked like they had seen more mud and engine grease than detergent in the sum total of their lives. He was grizzled and unshaven, his hair mussed and his eyes narrowed.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
And then he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me inside.
FOUR
I was stunned into silence as I gazed up at him.
Hunter looked terrible.
I mean, he was still gorgeous, you couldn’t change that with a chisel, but he also looked like he’d been drinking for two weeks solid, and had only occasionally remembered to bathe. His eyes on me were furious, but underneath it I saw the unmistakable gleam of lust. Or was I imagining it?
“I asked what you were doing here,” he repeated slowly, his voice barely containing his rage. Even still, I felt my body responding to the heat rolling off of him, the press of his hands against my shoulders, the way our eyes locked.
Words failed me. What I wanted right then was to shove him against a wall and run my fingers down his chest, his tight abs, slip them under the waistband of his jeans to wrap around that thick, hot—no! I was here for a reason, a very important reason.
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