No matter how experienced he was in the wilderness, it couldn’t save him from that one narrow stretch of rocky trail that crumbled under his weight and gave way, sending him tumbling down into oblivion.
There’s no other plausible explanation.
It took me five years to accept, but now that I have, I feel…well, not exactly at peace. I’m not sure I’ll ever get there. Accepting, maybe. And grateful.
Grateful for everything we had, even though it wasn’t destined to last a lifetime.
My lifetime, anyway.
And if every once in a while I’m sure I feel someone watching me, I chalk it up to having a guardian angel looking out for me from above.
The only other alternative is that I’m suffering from paranoia, and I’m really not prepared to deal with that.
When my doorbell rings two weeks before Christmas, it’s six o’clock. It’s dark outside, snowing steadily, and I’m not expecting anyone, so I’m surprised.
I’m also just about to take cookies out of the oven. One more minute and they’ll be done, two and they’ll be burnt to a crisp. The oven hasn’t been replaced since the house was built in the sixties, and I’m pretty sure it’s possessed by the devil.
I hurry to the door, pulling off my oven mitts. When I get the door open, I’m distracted. I’m also looking down, so the first thing I see is a pair of big black boots dusted with snow.
I look up from the boots to see more black: jeans, shirt, wool overcoat with the collar turned up. The eyes staring back at me are a shade lighter than black, but they might as well be for how darkly they burn.
It’s Kage.
My heart plummets to somewhere around my kneecaps. I say loudly, “You.”
“Yes. Me.”
His voice is that same low, lovely rumble, a velvet stroke along my skin. The man should get a second job as a DJ on a porn radio station, if there is such a thing.
When I only stand there staring at him like a lunatic, he says, “You dropped your oven mitts.”
It’s true. My cheery red Santa-and-reindeer Christmas mitts lie discarded on the threshold between us, dropped in my shock at seeing him.
At least I didn’t swallow my tongue.
Before I can recover from my surprise, he leans down, sweeps up the mitts in one of his big paws, and straightens. But he doesn’t give them back to me. He stands holding them like they’re a prized possession and he’ll only hand them over for a steep price.
“You’re back. I mean, you’re here. What’re you doing here?”
Not exactly neighborly, but I thought I’d never see him again. I thought I’d never have to deal with the hysterically shrieking hormones his presence always ignites.
Gazing at me steadily, he says, “I had business in Vegas. Thought I’d drop by and say hello. I just got in.”
“Drop by? Vegas is an eight-hour drive from here.”
“I flew.”
“Oh. I thought I just heard on the news that they stopped all the flights into Reno-Tahoe International due to bad weather?”
“They did. Just not mine.”
He looks at me with such intensity, my heartrate skyrockets. “Why not yours?”
“I was flying the plane. I ignored the call to reroute.”
I blink at him. “You’re a pilot?”
“Yes.”
“You said you were a debt collector.”
“I am.”
“This is confusing.”
“I’m a lot of different things. It doesn’t matter. The point is that I stayed away as long as I could. A little bit of fucking snow wasn’t about to stop me from getting here.”
That sends a jolt of electricity straight through me.
I want to pretend I don’t know what he means, but I do.
This beautiful, strange, magnetic man has just informed me that he’s thought about me as much as I’ve thought about him, that he tried to fight the urge to come back here from wherever he went, and that he thinks returning is a bad idea for whatever reason, but has resigned himself to it nonetheless.
We stare at each other until I regain my senses and invite him in out of the snow.
I close the door behind him. He makes the room feel crowded because he’s just so big. I wonder if he has to custom order all his furniture. And clothes. And condoms.
Best not to think about that now.
We face each other in my small foyer made even smaller by his bulk and simply look at each other.
Finally, he says, “Something smells like it’s burning.”
“That’s just me thinking. You never put your house on the market.”
“No.”
“You said you’d put it on the market within a few weeks after you left.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
His voice drops. “You happened.”
Surely my gulp must be audible. I will my hands to stop shaking, but they ignore me.
He says, “You never called.”
“My roof never leaked.”
The ghost of a smile lifts the corners of his lips. It vanishes when he says, “What happened with Deputy Dipshit?”
“We haven’t talked since that day you nearly ripped off his head.” I pause. “Did I ever thank you for that?”
“No thanks were necessary. It’s a man’s job to protect—”
He cuts off abruptly and mutters, “Fuck.” Then he looks away and says gruffly, “I should go.”
He’s uncomfortable. I’ve never seen him uncomfortable.
It’s oddly appealing.
I say softly, “You can’t just show up out of the blue and leave ten seconds later. At least stay for a cookie.”
His gaze slides back to mine, and now it’s heated. “I don’t want to keep you.”
He says it like that’s exactly what he wants to do: keep me.
If my face gets any redder, he’ll think I’ve burst a vessel.
Then he backtracks. “You’re baking cookies?”
“Yes. Well, they’re probably hockey pucks by now because my oven’s a piece of junk, but I’ve got another batch ready to go.”
“You bake?”
A prick of irritation makes me frown at him. “Why is that so surprising? Do I look like I’m incapable of operating a kitchen appliance?”
“I’ve never met a beautiful woman who bakes.”
I find that even more irritating. Because one, I don’t like backhanded compliments, two, skill with baking has absolutely nothing to do with a woman’s looks, and three, he makes it sound like beautiful women are draped all over him wherever he goes.
Which they probably are, but still. I don’t like the idea.
I say tartly, “And I’ve never met an eight-foot-tall debt collector who launders money through real estate and flies a plane into a closed airport during a snowstorm, so we’re even.”
He grins. It’s breathtaking. He says, “Six-foot-six. Are you the jealous type?”
I think about it. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a man do something to make me jealous. Are you the type who enjoys making your girlfriends crazy by flirting with other women?”
In his pause, I sense an ocean of darkness.
He says gruffly, “I don’t have girlfriends.”
How are we standing closer? I don’t remember moving, but my feet must have a mind of their own, because suddenly, we’re only inches apart.