Across the Vanishing Sky (Starlight Grove, #1)(11)

Everything in me went on alert. I grabbed my glasses, shoving the frames onto my face as I glanced down at my open duffel and cursed. I wasn’t usually this careless. I was always prepared because I knew better than anyone what could hide…in the day or dark, behind a warm smile or a sinister scowl.

It didn’t matter that I hated guns—weapons of any kind, really. I’d become a master with all of them. But the small and varied arsenal I maintained was in a travel gun locker in the back of my goddamned SUV.

Hinges squeaked—the front door opening. There was no time to wait.

I wrapped the towel around my hips and stalked out of the bathroom and down the hall, only to come face-to-face with a woman whose golden-amber eyes had gone wide with shock.

The expression appeared genuine, but I knew people could be good actors. The best.

Those wide doe eyes matched lips forming a perfect O of surprise. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and the long, wavy blond strands hung around her like some sort of teasing curtain. She wore cutoffs—the denim kind with threads that dangled and danced across tanned, toned thighs—and a tank top in a dusky pink that only heightened the sun-kissed quality of her skin.

And the shoes. They looked like they’d once been white high-top Chucks, but they’d been colored all over. And not by someone with a deft hand. I could just make out what appeared to be a cookie, a heart, and something that looked like a bear.

I took in every tempting, alluring inch of the woman—took in those facts and filed them away in less than ten seconds, knowing every single one of them could be a lie.

I let the scowl rise to my lips. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”





4





BRAEDYN





I hadn’t been stunned silent many times in my life. When I accidentally broke a neighbor’s window at age nine. When Vincent told me he didn’t want anything to do with me or my child. When I finally held Owen in my arms. The first time I saw the Pacific Ocean.

And now.

This moment. As a man who looked like some cross between a professor and a biker with mountain-man height and shoulders prowled toward me.

I should’ve been scared. I told my brain as much. Said to reach for the pepper spray in my pocket. To call Yeti.

But I didn’t. I was too busy ogling him.

It wasn’t just his rugged beauty—though he had that in spades. It was something else. An energy that clung to him. The same kind infused into his skin by way of his tattoos. It wasn’t as if he was covered from head to toe, but he had a healthy dose of ink.

Art that ghosted over his forearms and hands led to bare biceps and then gave way to a piece on his chest that stole my breath. I couldn’t help but study the image that pulled taut over toned muscle.

A phoenix.

My mouth went dry as the design on my own rib cage seemed to heat. The man’s phoenix was surrounded by wisps of smoke and ash, and I swore the creature’s eyes glowed as they burned into me.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?”

The barked words had me pulling back to the here and now, regaining some sense of sanity as I heard my little boy’s laugh outside as he played with Yeti. Just because this man had a tattoo similar to mine didn’t make him a friend.

But I wasn’t the only one who heard the words spoken with an edge of anger. Yeti did, too. And she didn’t appreciate them directed at her human.

As I pulled out the pepper spray, Yeti tore up the steps of the cabin and charged in front of me, letting loose a ferocious growl. She didn’t attack the man, just stayed between him and me, but the surprise of it was enough to have him stumbling back a step—stumbling back and losing his towel.

The shock of the sequence of events was enough to have my jaw dropping right along with the terry cloth. And I suddenly didn’t know where to look. I didn’t want to take my eyes off him in case he made a move, but I couldn’t look anywhere on his very toned body without flushing to the shade of a tomato.

The man swiped up the towel and covered himself as Yeti bared her teeth. He cursed, backing up another step as a new voice joined the chaos.

“Mom?” Owen asked.

Normally, I’d revel in the fact that my son had called me Mom instead of bro or bruh, but all I could think about was that this situation had just gotten so much worse.

“Why is there a shirtless dude in our new house?” he continued, completely unshaken.

I let out a strangled sound, clamped a hand over my son’s eyes, and backed out of the doorway. “I’m not sure why there’s a shirtless dude in our house.” But it was better than the naked one from thirty seconds ago.

The man let out a strangled sound as my dog growled low in her throat. “It’s my house. Blaze rented it to me fifteen minutes ago.”

Crap on a cracker.

When I picked up the keys, the landlord had seemed a little out of it. I really hoped he wasn’t some scam artist. “He rented it to me two months ago, and I have a year’s signed lease.”

The man muttered another curse. “Can I move to get dressed and get my phone, or is your dog going to rip off an appendage I’m fond of?”

Owen giggled at that. “Yeti won’t bite you. She’s supes friendly.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I hedged. “Better move quick or she could get hungry.”