God, I needed to figure my life out. And I couldn’t think of a better place to help me do that than my grandpa’s old cabin.
Chapter Two
Asher
Ipulled up at the old, decrepit cabin. The place looked abandoned. Everyone thought I should have sold it years ago, but how could I? I remembered how much Nat loved the place. Looking at her now, I was glad I’d never sold it.
“All right, what do you say we go look at this place?” I asked.
Natalie squealed and hopped out of the truck. I pushed open the door and waited for my dog to jump out of the back. “Let’s go, Walter,” I said, then followed Nat to the cabin. Pulling the key out of my pocket as I stopped on the stoop, I held out my hand with the keys in it.
“Here you go.”
Natalie took the keys with a grin. She pushed open the door and stepped inside. Even though I’d given it a quick clean the other day, the sunlight still caught the dust in the air.
Damn it, I should have hired somebody to clean it properly. I mean look at Natalie. She was a freaking prima ballerina. She wasn’t the kind of woman who should be staying in a place as dusty and dingy as this.
Suddenly, she threw her arms around me. “Ash, you’re absolutely amazing. I can’t believe you looked after it so well for me,” she said.
I looked around. The place was a shithole, and she was thanking me. “No problem. I hope you brought some cleaning supplies.”
“Of course I did. It’s exactly how I remember it. As my grandpa always said, ‘nothing a little elbow grease won’t cure.” She put her hands on her hips and looked toward the little kitchen. “Or maybe a lot of elbow grease.” She smiled.
Natalie wrapped her arms around my waist again, and I couldn’t help but hug her back. The Natalie I remember didn’t feel like this in my arms. She had always been gorgeous, obviously, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice her, but she was my sister’s best friend, so hot or not, she’d been off limits. I glanced at Beth, glaring at me. Apparently, she was still off limits. Damn.
I cleared my throat and stepped back, putting some distance between us. “How long are you planning on staying?”
“I’m not sure. The training for the next season doesn’t start for about eight weeks, so I figured I’d give it a month and decide.”
It was hard to picture the beautiful woman in front of me staying in this shitty, rundown cabin for a single night, let alone the whole month. Natalie ran her hand affectionately over the dented, worn-down breakfast table in the corner. The thing was battered and bruised, just like the cabin, but she seemed to love it.
“Given how much you love this place, I’m surprised you stayed away as long as you did.”
“Yeah, me too.” She sighed. “I just couldn’t bring myself to be here without him, you know?” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “He loved this place. And I have so many good memories of being here with him. Fishing. Swimming.”
A slow, sad smile spread across her face. “He used to clear space out back every summer for me. He meticulously picked up every rock off the ground so that I could dance.” She wiped a tear as it rolled down her cheek. “After the first summer he rented a machine so he could tamp down the soil ‘cuz I kept bringing so much dirt into the house. He said I was gonna clog the drain, and he may as well have a little piglet living with him and not a granddaughter if I was just going to roll in it.” She chuckled. “He wasn’t wrong. I was disgusting. It was in everything.”
“That seems like something he’d say,” I said. Her grandpa had been a crotchety old guy. Bristly and grumpy to everyone in town, but not to his granddaughter. With her, he’d been something completely different. And whenever someone noticed or commented on it, he grumbled at them and told them to mind their business. But because of his reaction to her, the entire town fell in love with her. How could they not?
Including me. If I’d thought teenage Natalie was hard to resist, she had nothing on the woman in front of me. But a woman like that wasn’t meant to be with a small-town guy with calluses the size of baseballs on his hands. She probably dated billionaire men who got manicures on the regular. Not some guy who washed his hair with the same bar of soap he used on his body.
“You’re gonna just stand here and look at her all day, or are you gonna help us clean?” Beth asked.
Busted.
“You need me to show you how to work the stove and the generator?”
“No, I think I remember how to do everything.” Natalie walked towards the sink and turned on the faucet. It coughed and sputtered in bursts of brown liquid.
Natalie squealed and jumped back.
I chuckled. “You’re going to need to run the water a bit to clean the pipes. I gave it a little run yesterday, but clearly not enough.”
Natalie scrunched up her freckled nose in a cute little way. The more time I spent with her, the harder it was not to notice just how sexy she was. I needed to get the hell out of here.
“Well, if you think you’ve got it all handled, I’m going to take off and get some work done.” I held out my hand. “Give me your phone.”
Nat reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone and handed it to me. I quickly punched in my digits and handed it back. “Power out here is spotty. As is any kind of satellite for your phone.” I picked up the booster I’d brought over. “This should help, but you may need to stand beside it to get your phone to work.” I set the little contraption back on the windowsill and angled it until the bars on my phone returned.
