AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Melinda held the lantern and Grant tugged out two extra blankets followed by a man’s black quilted jacket with a fur-lined hood.
“Sleep in this,” he said. “I’d have put you in the den to be close to the fire, but I want you to have the bed. And the door.”
Grant laid blankets on the bed, then grabbed a straight-backed chair from the corner of the room, the uprights like matchsticks in his broad hands. “Have you used a chair this way before?”
Melinda blinked at him. “Sat in one?”
“I’ll take that as a no. After I leave, jam this chair under the door handle,” he said. “There’s no actual lock on the door, but this will do the trick. The only bathroom is in your room, but you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll go outside when I need to. Mountain man tricks.” A smile curved his lips, and then immediately disappeared. Good. She needed to lie down before she fell down, not get distracted by sultry smiles and eye crinkles.
Grant wedged the chair’s back underneath the handle, trapping the door closed, and for a tenuous moment they were locked in the bedroom together, driver and passenger, culprit and victim. Kidnapper and kidnappee.
Melinda’s breath stilled. He, too, must have felt the charged air because he made no eye contact with her while he worked. A millisecond later he freed the chair, left the room, and closed the door. Melinda stared after him.
“Lock the door, Melinda,” he said quietly, and waited until she’d placed the gun heavily on the bedside table and slipped the chair into position before his footsteps retreated.
Melinda used the bathroom but skipped brushing her teeth. Her kidnapper hadn’t mentioned the curative effects of dental hygiene, and she was bloody exhausted. She awkwardly removed her bra, replaced her wet coat with the black quilted jacket, and crawled into bed. Then she switched off the lantern and collapsed onto the pillow and into sleep.
~
The light beneath Melinda’s door vanished and Grant breathed more deeply than he had in the last five hours. He allowed himself a moment to grip the kitchen countertop and lean his forehead against the cool, unforgiving cabinet above. What the stupid hell. How’re you going to navigate out of this one, Samson?
Grant sighed and opened the kitchen taps into a saucepan to capture any remaining water. How much was there? Paul hadn’t visited the mountains for a month. What remained in the gravity-fed tank? Grant deliberately avoided looking at the thermometer, which whispered his name outside the kitchen window, a sadistic siren yearning to reveal its frigid temperature and taunt him with how cold it would soon become.
DiMario, if we survive this, you owe me big.Halfway to the pot’s rim, the water sputtered and died, and Grant lifted the pot from the sink to the counter. Beyond big. His-own-desert-island big.
Grant pawed through cabinets and moved as many saucepans, stockpots, vases, and pitchers as he could find to the kitchen island. He donned hat, gloves, and boots, zipped up his brown Carhartt coat, and carted the empty vessels to the end of the walkway. Patternless gusts of snow slapped his face, pummeled his back, and crept inside his jacket. Grant dropped to one knee and tipped the first saucepan into a snowdrift. It was a cold but relatively easy process, and within minutes he was inside again, stomping snow off his boots and shaking snowflakes from his hair.
Back in the kitchen, he struck matches and coaxed the stovetop to life. Each burner received a snow-filled pot, and each pot’s contents were melted and boiled. Before long Grant was resting saucepans on cookbooks and dish towels to cool.
By the time he left it, the kitchen looked like intrepid pioneers had dealt with a leaky roof during a monsoon. It also looked colder—he’d finally caved and seen that the temperature outside was negative seven. Ignoring this damning information, he headed to the den.
The sheepskin rug in front of the marble-faced fireplace was gratuitous, but Grant admitted that it added to the look. If you were into that sort of thing. The charcoal-gray couch appeared too modern to be comfortable. Grant crossed to it and sat.
Wow.Grant conceded that it offered a level of comfort. We’ll see how it sleeps.
Tucked beyond the den was Paul’s small lounge area, too close for Grant’s comfort to a sliding glass door leading to a back deck. That damned slider. Might as well have left a hole in the wall, for all the good it was doing. He walked to the back of the room and was surprised that, while it was degrees cooler than in front of the fire, it wasn’t that much worse.
“Hmph,” he snorted. That was what you got with two-thousand-dollar curtains to compensate for a five-thousand-dollar slider. He grabbed a hank of curtain and noted its heft. Okay, probably worth it. Grant laughed quietly. Only Paul would prioritize swanky curtains over insulation and a damn generator.
At least they had the wood stove. The lifesaver. Efficient, and of course, posh. A cordless, motorless fan adorned the stove’s top, its only power the heat rising from the stove below it. As the stove heated, the blades turned, and hot air circulated throughout the room. Not bad, City Boy. The hearth’s gold-looking firewood rack sported a tower of dried, split wood, and Grant knew there was at least a face cord of split logs stacked under a tarp outside.
He rubbed his hand across his jaw. They were going to need that wood. They were going to burn up a forest making it through the storm. He added two more logs to the fire. Grant guessed he’d sleep poorly enough to not miss adding more wood, but just in case, he set his phone alarm for two hours. While he was at it, he set it on battery-saving mode.
Two hours later Grant was sliding logs into the stove as the phone’s alarm sounded. He silenced it, stood, and tiptoed to Melinda’s door. He put one hand against the wood. Was she all right? Could she sleep? Probably best not to break in and check, especially since he’d coached her to shoot him on sight. He sighed. He crept back to the den and reached for his own backpack. He extracted Melinda’s wallet, which he’d collected from the floor of the Maybach.
Grant stared at the zippered enclosures.
Don’t do it.
In the end he didn’t have to because instead of his invading her privacy, the wallet slipped from his hands. Not every pocket exploded its contents, but at least one did, and guilt coursed side-by-side with excitement through his veins. Coins, receipts, and several magenta-and-orange business cards spilled onto the floor.
Her name?Hope shoved aside guilt.
“Melinda Aahana Sen,” he saw embossed in gold script, “A Wing and a Prayer Kitchen” below it. Was that her phone number at the bottom? His pulse quickened. It had to be. He stared at the number, trying to memorize it. No dice. He tucked a card into his back pocket, a child in a candy store who’d scored a two-for-one treat. Anyway, he’d need someone to call from prison. The rest of the items he tucked back into their pouch, then deposited the wallet on the coffee table.
First kidnapping, now theft. What have I become?
Inadvertent robbery complete, Grant lay down on the couch for what was sure to be a sleepless night.
