April, Dani - Superstar (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (5 page)

Chapter Three

They parked thirty feet away from the front door, not even able to make it all the way up the drive before the piles of snow being pushed before the monster truck brought it to a halt. The truck was now just as snowbound as the little car they had left behind them out on the road. Ethan was the first to hop down out of the truck, his legs sinking down into the snow to above his knees.

He trekked through the snow and had the key to the front door ready. He climbed onto the porch, wiped some frost off the doorknob, and opened up. When he got the light of the front room flipped on, everything looked warm and inviting, and they hadn’t even started the fire yet. He only wished that it was just him and his brothers arriving here alone and that they didn’t have their strange guest tagging along with them.

When he came back outside, Skipper was already loping across the snow and running up the front steps. The dog’s tongue was hanging out as he gladly ran inside to the warmth of the cabin. Behind Skipper, both Brad and Scott were assisting the girl across the snow, one on each side of her. The girl was carrying those ridiculous little poodles in her arms. Ethan sighed. This might be a long and awkward time ahead.

He didn’t even wait for them to arrive on the front porch. He just turned around and went back into the front room and began hefting up wood for the fireplace. Fortunately, the last time he had been here he had left the wood stockpile next to the hearth well provided.

“You guys go out and bring in our luggage,” he called from his kneeling position by the fireplace. “By the time you get back, I’ll have this thing started.”

Brad and Scott had just escorted the girl inside. They both looked at each other as if neither of them wanted to leave her. Finally, Brad relented and headed back out into the wind and blowing snow. Scott was still in La-La Land staring at the pretty girl. Ethan would have to give his kid brother some pointers later on about women and find out what was up with him.

“This is our vacation spot,” Ethan explained to the girl as he threw more logs into the fireplace and made ready to light the fire. “My brothers and I have all taken a week of vacation from our jobs. Well, Scott over there doesn’t have a job, but Brad and I both have this coming week off.”

The girl was looking all around the front room of the cabin. She had set her dogs down on the floor, and they had gone over to sniff Skipper some more. The girl looked like she was giving the place a thorough inspection.

“This is cute,” she said. “It’s pretty small, but I like it. This place is awesome.”

“Actually, Chrissie, this is one of the larger cabins of this type you’ll find up here in this neck of the woods,” Ethan told her. Somehow this girl seemed to have a superior attitude that annoyed him. “The three of us guys haven’t all been up here together in a couple of years. So it was going to kind of be a special week for us. Guess we picked a bad time.”

“So you mean you don’t like…live here all the time…you just come here to get away from your jobs?”

“Yes. That’s about the size of it.” Ethan looked over his shoulder at her. What kind of girl was this? Where had she been living all her life? She seemed like she would probably be smart enough, but she also seemed not to know anything basic to life.

Scott still hadn’t said a word. Ethan lit the fire and held his hands over it as it provided the first small burst of warmth. From outside, Brad came in loaded down with their luggage, a cold gust of wind chasing in after him.

“Scott, bro!” Brad yelled at him. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and do
something
?”

“Yeah, okay.” Scott still had not pulled himself out of his mysterious reverie. He went over to the couch, took a seat, pulled out his phone, and began fiddling with it as if searching for something. Skipper came over and tried to lick him, but he was paying no attention to his dog.

“I’ll be back,” Brad said, showing his exasperation with Scott as he bravely went back outside to fetch the rest of their luggage.

“So, Chrissie…” Ethan cleared his throat and rose up from the now nicely burning fire. “This might be a good time for you to see if you can raise the highway patrol.”

She had gone over and taken a seat on one of the big overstuffed chairs by the fire. She looked as lost as Scott. Her dogs padded back up to her, and she took them on her lap, still wearing the long fur coat.

“You okay, Chrissie?” Ethan raised his voice just slightly.

“I don’t want to call anyone,” she told him, looking up with her adorable blue eyes.

“I don’t understand.”

“Can I just please stay here until it stops snowing?” she asked him, so much hope in those big eyes. “I really like it here, and I promise I won’t be in the way or anything.”

“Well, Chrissie, my brothers and I are probably going to be snowed in here all week,” Ethan tried to explain to her and almost felt like he was talking to a child. Although from what he could see of her body under that coat, she certainly was not a child. “Don’t you have some place to go?”

“Right now I don’t have any place to go. I’m running away.”

“Who are you running away from?”

She didn’t answer. She just lowered her face into her hands to hide the tears falling down her face. Brad picked that moment to walk back in through the front door with the last of their luggage. He paused in horror as he saw the crying girl and silently set the luggage down on the floor.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Chrissie doesn’t want to leave,” Ethan told him. “She’s running away from someone.”

“I’m not running away from a ‘someone,’” Chrissie explained, sniffing back her tears. “I’m basically running away from my whole life.”

Brad went to her and knelt beside her chair. He reached over her lap and petted her dogs, giving her a smile. “You really want to stay here with us, honey?”

“Just until the snow melts and I can get my car out of that snowbank.”

“That will be days.”

“I won’t get in your way. I promise. I like it here, and I like you guys.” She wiped her wet face with the back of her hand. “You are the first real people I think I’ve ever met. Anyway, my babies want to get to know your dog better.”

Ethan watched Brad as he looked back at him for guidance. Ethan could only shrug. This situation was so far out of his league he didn’t even know where to begin. He was very leery of this mysterious girl, but he knew his brother well enough to know he had a different take on things.

“Thanks for trusting us, Chrissie,” Brad told her. “You can stay here if that’s what you really want.”

“Yes, it is.” She wiped away some more tears.

“I hope you’ll let us help you.”

“You’ll help me if you just let me stay here until the storm ends.”

“You’ve got that,” Brad told her, putting a smile on his face. Ethan had to hand it to him, he could be real smooth sometimes. “Luckily we’ve got enough food up here to feed an army, and once that fire gets going, this whole place is going to not only be warm, but it’ll get hot.”

“The fire feels great.” Chrissie had a smile back on her face, her tears already gone.

“My brothers and I are probably not the most terrific hosts in the world,” Brad told her and looked back at Ethan and laughed. “But while you’re here, just consider everything we’ve got as your own.”

“Thanks, Brad,” Chrissie said. Then she amazed Ethan and almost knocked Brad over. She bent over and kissed Brad, briefly placing her hand on his shoulder.

“We each have a phone, Chrissie,” Ethan told her from his corner of the room, rescuing Brad who was blushing too deeply to speak. “So if there’s anyone you want us to call for you, just let us know. Okay?”

“Thanks for not asking me any questions, guys.” Chrissie gave another beautiful smile and curled up cross-legged under her fur coat, fanning her hands out toward the now well-developed fire. Ethan couldn’t help but notice she was wearing a very short dress under that fur as her long, shapely legs crossed elegantly in front of her on the chair.

* * * *

There was only one bedroom in the cabin. Ethan normally took it when he was up here with his brothers. Sometimes they played poker to see who would get it. Ethan felt he was the only one that foresaw the potential for problems in that arrangement. He didn’t say anything of course, and Brad quickly offered it to Chrissie.

She took it as she had taken all their hospitality. Like she was used to having people give her things that she wanted. Telling them that she wanted to get her babies settled in bed, she left them alone with the crackling of the fire in the front room, and they had their first few minutes to talk privately since she had entered their lives less than an hour before.

“What do you make of her?” Brad asked Ethan quietly, although Chrissie had shut the door to the bedroom and the thick wooden doors of the cabin were enough to keep out unwanted conversation.

“I don’t like it, man,” Ethan told him honestly.

“You don’t like her? What do you mean you don’t like her?”

“She seems okay, but I don’t like this situation. Something’s not right here, and we definitely don’t know enough to be getting ourselves involved with this chick.”

“You mean Canyon Creek’s biggest ladies’ man hasn’t noticed the woman we’ve got in our cabin?”

“Yeah,” Ethan admitted. “She’s really nice in that way. But what’s her deal anyway?”

“I’m sure she’ll open up to us,” Brad said. He had walked into the big country kitchen and was opening up some cans for their supper. “I just didn’t want to press the poor kid. She’s obviously had a bad time of it, or she wouldn’t have been out on that road tonight.”

“I’m wondering who she is.”

“I have no idea.” Brad started the can opener, readying a can of beef stew to put in the microwave.

“You know the way she’s dressed and she’s kind of ditzy.” Ethan walked around the bar counter outside the kitchen. “I’m wondering if she’s some kind of high-priced call girl. Maybe she was on her way to meet a client.”

“No!” Brad laughed at him. “You’ve got too big of an imagination, bro! Now shush or she’s going to hear you talking.”

“Well, look at her, man,” Ethan stuck to his point, lazily spinning around one of the barstools. Outside, the wind was crying loudly and had loosened a shutter on the back of the cabin, which was now knocking against the siding. “She’s gorgeous and she’s hot and she’s got a major rack on her. She’s also pretty young. A young girl like her from around here doesn’t have the money for that expensive fur unless she has a sugar daddy…Hell, I don’t know, maybe she’s a stripper from up in the city.”

“I don’t believe any of it, bro,” Brad whispered so the girl in the next room would not hear.

“And why didn’t she want to call the highway patrol?” Ethan posed another sane question. “Maybe it’s because she’s in trouble with the law. We just don’t know who she is…”

“I know who she is.” Scott spoke for the first time in an hour. Both Ethan and Brad turned to him. “I know who Chrissie is,” he told them again and got up from his seat on the couch holding his phone and walked over to them.

“Who is she?” Brad asked him.

“When you first saw her in the truck, it was almost like you had seen her before. Like you already knew her,” Ethan said.

“I have seen her before, and so have you.” He handed over his phone to them. “I knew her when I first saw her tonight, but I wanted to do some research before I was sure. Now I am sure.”

Ethan took the device in his palm and looked down. Scott had brought up a web site of entertainment personalities. Neither Ethan nor Brad knew what this was all about.

“I don’t get it,” Ethan said. “This is just some people in Hollywood. What does that have to do with us, or the girl in our bedroom?”