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Chapter Six
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Harper just wantedthe earth to swallow her up. Once Karter came and showed her to the guest room she would be using, she stayed there all day and all night.
Trays of food were left at her door and when her hunger won out she quickly snatched one.
A whole day and night had passed and now Harper paced the decent-sized guest bedroom like a caged animal. She shouldn’t be here.
The three men she had just met, who had said the barest of words to her, and who had spanked her, then filled her ass with a piece of ginger, were making her go crazy. Not only her mind but her body too and that she found harder to believe.
She didn’t date because her dates were usually boring. She didn’t experience insane sexual tension, because she wasn’t cutout that way, but now, her body hummed. One thought about them and she was on fire all over again.
For the sake of her brain health, she needed to stop thinking about them at all. She channeled her thoughts to the mess that was her life.
Now she kept going back to the map her father had given. She hadn’t taken a wrong turn. She hadn’t taken any turns and the map showed she should go in a straight line to get to her destination. So how did she end up lost and at the mercy of three incredibly big but indescribably fascinating men? Lumberjacks, no less.
She hadn’t bothered to check the weather. She had been too fuming mad at her father for making her do this. But surely he would. Did he know there was a snow storm coming? Is that why he had ushered her out so early that morning?
Why had he been so anxious for her to leave?
Something didn’t feel right. She couldn’t put her finger on it and it frustrated her to no end. Why had her father done this to her?
How did the three men who lived here not even know that a shopaholics therapy retreat center was located in the same area they lived in?
She was completely unaccustomed to worrying about stuff. When things got bent out of shape, she went armed with a fresh credit card and went shopping. By the time she returned with an armful of things she didn’t need, her problems had diminished in size and she swept them aside, unsolved.
It had been a formula that had worked well for her repeatedly.
She needed to shop.
She felt as if she were sitting on a ticking bomb that she didn’t know she was sitting on.
Something was wrong.
Everything was wrong.
She couldn’t cope. Her breaths started to grow short and the struggle to draw another one caused alarm to bleed under her skin. She climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.
The room was surprisingly warm but she soon realized it was thanks to the underfloor heating system. Plus the fire in the living room had been large enough to warm the whole cabin.
But a blanket of cold assailed her. Her panic attacks usually started this way.
Harper had to get out of there. She needed her things. Her hand lotion, her lip balm, her sanity. She needed her new Hermes bag. The rush of buying it was still fresh in her mind. If she held the bag, just once she would be okay.
She felt herself starting to fade, her memories clouded. She was losing her hold on the feeling shopping for things gave her. The comfort. The way it erased what was bothering her. Now more than ever she needed an entire mall to herself because of that one thing that kept shadowing everything in her head about the map.
She wasn’t certain anymore that she had taken a wrong turn. But she needed to see the map to confirm it.
She tossed aside the thick comforter and then climbed out of the bed. She opened a window and discovered it wasn’t snowing anymore. In fact the night looked calm if not cold. A reprieve, with the worse still to come.
She gathered the pair of boots they had given her then searched for the car keys she put into a pocket in the poncho she had worn before she started searching for a signal so she could call her father.
Armed with the boots and her car keys in her hands, she quietly strode out of the room.
Silence ensued all around her.
