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“Hey, this is Jackie. If I like you, leave a message. If I don’t, then why the heck are you calling me, huh?”
“Jackie, it’s me,” I say. “Please tell me you’ve got Lava with you right now. I’ll try your office.”
I hang up, finding that I’m standing in the living room next to the dead fire, the lights turned down low so that when the car pulls into the driveway, the beams dart across the room and then come to settle on me like twin spotlights.
I swallow as fear jabs at me, telling myself this isn’t the west coast returning to me. This isn’t that hell. I need to get a grip and stop assuming that every car that pulls up is him, that the terror I ran away from is going to return any moment.
Then I hear Lava’s barking, a noise I’d be able to pick out of any number of barks. It’s his excited, happy-to-see-you bark, high pitched and happy.
I run out onto the front porch, cellphone still gripped in my hand like a weapon.
I still can’t shake the feeling that disaster is coming to Stone Harbor, that the door wasn’t left open by mistake, that the wind didn’t simply blow it open.
Which has happened before, I remind myself forcibly. Stop living in fear.
The car comes to a stop on the gravel driveway, it’s jet-black color stark against the swirling white snowfall all around it. The door opens and immediately Lava comes springing out, his golden fur caked in mud as he bounds over to me, tail wagging as though it’s connected to an overcharged motor.
“Lava,” I sing, leaning down and letting him jump up on me, all excitement, as he licks and wheezes in his pure joy to see me. “Oh, God, I was so worried about you. I’m so glad you’re home.”
He quickly darts into the house, sniffing around, perhaps to check that nobody has intruded on his territory while he was away.
I look up at the car. I’m not good with makes and models but it reminds me of the car in Supernatural, sleek, and black with a wide hood.
The man who steps from the car sets my heart racing all over again as soon as I lay eyes on him.
He’s tall, almost seven foot if I had to guess, dressed in a T-shirt and gym shorts despite the weather. His black hair tinged with silver and his muscles bulge as though he’s recently worked out, and as he walks over to the porch I see that his jaw is squared and powerful and his eyes a perceptive, glinting green. He walks upright, hands hanging casually – as though ready – at his sides.
A tingle moves through me as I drink in the sight of this muscular silver fox. I can’t tell how old he is exactly, but I’d guess mid-thirties to early forties, his expression holding a glimmer of sophistication and experience.
His T-shirt has the words Seal Team emblazoned over his heaving chest, I note when he stops just shy of the porch, looking up at me.
“Are you Jackie Fitzgerald?” he says. “The dog’s owner?”
“N-no,” I say, hating the stutter.
My tongue suddenly feels clumsy, as though it’s too busy wondering how those impressive muscles must taste to form words.
Get it together. Like he’d ever be interested in you.
“I’m her roommate,” I say, finally finding some sort of balance.
“Hmm, okay,” he says, his jaw tight as he stares at me, his voice deep and as gravelly as the driveway. “Well, tell her to keep an eye on her dog. I found him on the forest road. If I was a worse driver, I could’ve hit him.”
“Thank you,” I say quickly. “For rescuing him, I mean.”
“Anybody would have done the same, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” I can’t help but laugh.
But he’s having none of it, his lips remaining in that seemingly angry flat line. His eyes flit over me.
I feel a tingle of electricity for every inch his gaze touches.
“What would you prefer I call you?” he murmurs a moment later.
“Um, how about Millie?” I say. “And what should I call you?”
At first, I don’t think he’s going to tell me. He just keeps staring. But then with a heavy sigh, he says, “Markus. Markus McCabe.”
“Okay then, Markus McCabe, would you like to come in for some hot cocoa? You know, as a way to say thank you for rescuing Lava?”
A stunned feeling punches into me when I make the offer. After everything that’s happened, you’d think I wouldn’t be in the habit of inviting people I don’t know into my home … and yet here I am, doing it anyway.
There’s something in the way he looks at me, something that tells me the last thing this man would do is hurt anybody.
Unless they deserved it. Then he’d be feral, I bet.
