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“You got something against that door?”
My head whipped around so fast, I got dizzy. A man stood on the porch of a cabin up the hill. It was about twenty feet away, and I couldn’t see his features clearly, but certain things stood out.
Deep, husky voice. An accent I couldn’t quite place, as if the dude was from everywhere. Tall. Broad shoulders. Long muscular legs. His bare chest glistened from the muted lighting that spilled from inside his cabin, and his loose pants hung low on his hips.
Relief flooded me. I wouldn’t die. I would be saved and warm and the world was not so bad after all. “I…” My tongue was fuzzy, and it took a bit to get the words out. “I can’t get in. The door’s stuck.”
“I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but this is private property. Do you have the key?”
Okay. My knight in shining armour wasn’t exactly chivalrous. “Of course I have the key. I’m not an idiot. I’ve got it unlocked. It’s frozen.” Annoyed, I glared at him.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Where did I…” I took two steps forward and damn near landed on my ass when my heels hit a patch of ice. If I hadn’t been so busy trying not to fall, I might have heard him swear like a trucker. I might have known that he’d recognized me. “What does it matter to you where I got the key?”
“Answer the question, sweetheart.” The way he said sweetheart was the exact opposite of how it should be said. It came across as an insult. It rang a bell, and my heart took off like a rocket. This couldn’t be happening. No fucking way could this be happening.
He took a step forward, and suddenly, the shadows disappeared, revealing a face I hadn’t seen in years. Wait. Hold on. We’d had a moment three years ago, but it didn’t count. Still, it was face I knew well. Intense dark eyes. High cheekbones. Chiseled chin. Sensual mouth. My eyes dropped to his impressive body. To the tribal tattoo on his shoulder. To the one snaking across his lower abdomen. Like, way low. To the thin line of dark hair that disappeared beneath his pants. Huh. Some things never changed. If anything, the man was more gorgeous than I remembered, and that kind of sucked.
Boyd Appleton.
My stepbrother. No. That would be wrong. Our
parents divorced about six months after they got hitched. He was my ex-stepbrother. He was also the guy who’d taken my virginity along with my heart when I was sixteen, and I hated him more than anyone on the planet.
He glared at me from across the way, his anger like a slap to the face. I guess he felt the same.
Yeah. Welcome to my life.
2
Boyd
Un-fucking-believable.
Echo Mansfield. Here. In the Catskills. She was one woman I had no desire to tangle with and a distraction I didn’t need. Not when I was trying to get my shit together. Not when I had to get my shit together or the record wouldn’t be delivered on time. Like, what the hell? Had Axel known she’d be here when he’d offered up his place? Her father could be a real son of a bitch, no question there. But I wasn’t so sure he wanted his daughter around me. He’d made that crystal clear a long time ago.
Mood dark, I watched her closely. Saw a bag at her feet. By the looks of it, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The girl was trouble with a capital T. It followed her everywhere. Hell, you’d have to be a monk stranded on an island in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere not to know it. She was always in the tabloids. Always in the middle of whatever the hell was going on. She went through men like candy, and trust me, I knew she had a sweet tooth. She was still as wild and unpredictable as she’d been when I’d first met her.
And from what I could see, still as hot as hell.
“What are you doing here?” I ground out.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Jesus, Echo. Can you can just answer the damn question?”
“Not happy to see me, Boyd?”
“What do you think?” The last time I’d seen her, she’d tossed a full glass of Cristal in my face. Then she’d come back with another glass to dump on the woman I’d been with.
Our history was volatile. Sexual. Intense. And she’d been way too young to handle any of it. It was one of the reasons I broke things off. The first one being that her father had threatened to kill me. And the second was an inconvenient girlfriend back home. I thought I was doing the right thing.
“You don’t want to know what I think,” she practically purred.
Ignoring the bait, I looked behind her. “Where’s your car?”
“I don’t have one.” Her chin jutted out. Which caused her chest to puff out…which inadvertently drew my gaze to all that soft, creamy skin on display. The girl was half-naked, and I felt two things. The first? My dick sprang to life. I had an excuse for that one. It had been a dry three months. The second? An overwhelming urge to cover her up because A) that might help out the dick situation and B) she was way too fucking distracting.
