Unfinished Hero 04 Deacon (5 page)

He said nothing. Just kept scribbling.

I moved to stand at his side. “I should also
tell you that we had a little incident.”

He stayed bent over the book but his long
fingers that were wrapped around my pen—fingers that were on a huge
hand I hadn’t noticed until that moment was that large—went still
and his eyes slid to me.

Normally, his eyes focused on me in that
intense way would make me a babbling idiot in fear for the safety
of my…
something
.

Instead, all I could think about was what he
could do with hands that big. That strong. That obviously
powerful.

It was doubtful his touch could be
gentle.

And that was not a bad thing.

My dry spell had lasted since Grant with no
hope on the horizon it would be ending.

It was becoming clear I needed to get
laid.

I also needed to stop gawking at Priest,
thinking about his hands, and instead keep talking.

So I did that.

“We, uh…well, I had an, um…patron who was
staying. Apparently, she was in a spot of trouble and her trouble
followed her here. He assaulted her in her cabin. It was kind
of…well,
unpleasant
considering that’s unpleasant in and of
itself but he then was shot dead a few days later. Not by her and
not here,” I hastened to add when his scary look turned downright
terrifying even if he didn’t move a single muscle, just kept
staring at me. “By some other guy who had nothing to do with that
guy, but apparently this woman was a magnet for trouble so once the
first guy who assaulted her later kidnapped her, the second guy
killed the first guy and re-kidnapped her, uh…as it were.”

As I was finishing up (lamely), Priest
straightened and he did this not taking his eyes from me.

It was then I noted something I already knew
but noted it in an entirely different way.

He was really tall.

And really big.

As in
really.

For both.

I swallowed.

Then I kept giving him the information he
needed.

“Unfortunately, she was ripe to be attacked
because she didn’t turn on the outside light of her cabin. Also,
the parking area was unlit. I found that upsetting so I’ve had
lights installed in the lot. They’re not overly bright or
anything,” I assured him quickly. “But they cut the dark. And all
the units have new motion sensor lights outside. This can get a bit
annoying, seeing as there are critters out there that set them
off,” I admitted. “But if it gets too annoying, you can turn them
off. I just thought you’d wanna know, uh…that I’ve lit the parking
area. You know, just in case you need to close your curtains or
something to keep out the light.”

“A woman was assaulted,” he said slowly when
I finally stopped speaking.

“Uh…yeah.”

“In one of your cabins,” he continued.

“Uh…yeah,” I confirmed.

“Were you here?”

“Um…yeah.”

“How badly was she hurt?” he asked.

“Norm and Gladys told me she was beaten up
but okay. They saw her the next day. She reported it to the police
but Norm and Gladys were the ones who reported it to me. That was,
until the police came and asked if I’d seen anything.”

“Norm and Gladys?”

I grinned at him. “You and them are in a
club. My only returning customers.”

John Priest clearly did not find his
membership in that particular club as exciting as I did. I knew
this when his intense look turned into a scowl.

He was scary all the time.

Scowling, he was downright chilling.

Then he added his voice, which was still
rumbling, but it was no longer icy. It was vibrating with something
I couldn’t read, but what I could read was terrifying.

“A woman was assaulted in one of your cabins
while you were here, alone, in this house.”

I decided not to repeat my confirmation and
be quiet for once, mostly because it was taking a lot of effort not
to pee my pants.

He looked over my head and into my house. Two
seconds later, in utter fascination, I watched the scowl fade from
his face as the mask of indifference slid over his features and his
gaze came back to me.

“I’ll be here three days. Still one hundred?”
he asked as if our very recent word exchange had not
transpired.

“Yes,” I whispered.

He went for his wallet, gave me four
one-hundred-dollar bills, and I gave him his key.

“Have a nice stay,” I said softly as he
turned to leave.

He aimed a wintry look at me over his
shoulder.

My entire body did a quiver.

He closed the door behind him.

I sucked in a calming breath and didn’t move
in order to give the calming part of that breath opportunity to
work.

When I was no longer in danger of screaming
in terror and fleeing my own property, it hit me that something
just happened.

That something was that John Priest let down
his guard with me.

And when he did it, if I wasn’t losing my
mind, he did it because he was upset at the idea that I might have
been in danger.

Nearly two years, half a dozen visits,
practically zero conversation, a lot of money exchanging hands,
John Priest finally showed a reaction.

And it bore repeating, if I was not mistaken,
that reaction was that he was supremely ticked that I had been near
danger.

“Whoa,” I whispered to the door and heard
Priest’s big Suburban move down the lane.

* * * * *

That evening I sat on my side porch with my
feet up on the top railing, staring at the lights from cabin eleven
eking through the trees.

Since he’d shown that afternoon, I’d been
thinking about it and there was no way around it.

The dude liked me.

First, he kept coming back, and in the
beginning the cabins weren’t all that much to write home about.

Now, they needed better insulation and there
were ten dozen other things that I wanted to do to improve them.
They weren’t luxury. They were definitely nice but they weren’t
terribly exciting.

But he kept coming back.

There were lots of places to stay. It wasn’t
like the Colorado Mountains were something people avoided.

John Priest stayed at Glacier Lily.

Second, there was no denying the iron control
he kept over his emotions slipped that day in my foyer. And he
wasn’t upset generally about the state of a world where random
women were assaulted in mountain cabins.

He was upset that I was there, alone,
unprotected, and violence had been perpetrated on my property.

“Yep,” I whispered into the waning light.
“The dude likes me.”

I didn’t know what to do with this.

Suddenly, my thoughts turned to Priest’s
hands.

After that, I thought about the fact my
vibrator was constantly on charge, that was how much I used it.

What could I say? I was a twenty-six year old
woman without a boyfriend but with a good imagination and a healthy
sex drive. That kind of thing happened.

I took my feet from the railing, put them to
the deck, and heaved myself out of my Adirondack chair (that
seriously needed sanding and paint, not to mention a pad, my butt
was aching).

I entered the house and went to the powder
room on the first floor.

It needed updating. The wallpaper gave me a
headache, it was so flowery. The oval mirror over the sink had once
been gilded. Now it looked tawdry. And there were rust stains in
the sink from a drip that my dad fixed for me when they visited
last Christmas. A drip, from those stains, that had to have been
ongoing for perhaps centuries.

I didn’t take any of this in.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

I could see my hair. It was down, waving and
curling wild and way longer than I used to wear it, since I never
had time for haircuts.

I didn’t have on even a swipe of makeup and I
couldn’t remember the last time I’d used cosmetics. It had to be
months. It could be over a year.

And I was wearing another babydoll tee, this
one light pink and in hot pink on the front it said, “Carnal Is for
Bikers.” Over that was what could only be described as a stick
skeleton man riding a stick motorcycle with a huge, weird, wild
grin on his skeleton face. It was from a biker town that was about
an hour away. I’d bought it on one of my rare jaunts around the
area, one that did double duty of me putting out Glacier Lily
brochures and stapling leaflets to bulletin boards.

I loved that tee.

I was also wearing a pair of cutoff jeans
shorts. These were faded and I fancied they hung pretty good on me,
what with me putting on a bit of the weight I lost after Dick Grant
hastened his retreat due to me kicking him out.

When I looked down to my feet, I saw I wasn’t
wearing any shoes.

I was sporting a rather nice pedicure,
though, bright purple that was almost neon.

I’d done it myself. And the results pleased
me.

They pleased me enough—it all pleased me
enough—I walked out and went to the kitchen, heading straight to
the fridge. I slid out the homemade chocolate cream pie I’d put in
there that morning. I grabbed a knife. When I was about to slice
in, I moved it three centimeters wider and sliced a huge-ass piece.
I slid it on a plate, covered it in cling wrap, and went to the
back door. I slid on my pink metallic, slim strap havaianas with
their sole covered in gray, white, and turquoise flowers then I
headed to the front door.

Before I could think better of it, I grabbed
my key, walked out, locked up, and moved to the lane.

Then I moved straight to cabin eleven.

The lights were on, the sheers pulled.

I walked up the steps, across the porch, and
to the front door.

I sucked in a breath.

Then I lifted my hand and knocked.

A nanosecond later, the door swung open so
swiftly, I gasped and took a step back.

“You okay?” John Priest asked.

Oh man.

The dude so…
totally
…liked me!

“Uh…yeah,” I answered.

I saw his eyes through the screen door drop
to the pie.

Quickly, I started, “I made this today. I
thought you might—”

His gaze sliced to mine and he cut me off.
“Go home.”

“I—”

“Go.
Home
.”

I felt my heart start beating hard in my
chest as I said softly, “It’s really good.”

“Go home.”

“John…”

I said no more because at the mere utterance
of his name, something sinister beat from him through the screen
right into me, pummeling me to such an extreme, it was a wonder I
didn’t drop to a knee.

“Woman,” he growled, impatience threaded
liberally through the word. “Go…the fuck…
home
.”

And it was then he closed the door on me.

I stood at his door for long moments.

Then I went home.

When I got there, I ate the pie.

I did this even though every bite made me
feel sick.

Like any good woman who’d just humiliated
herself would, I ignored that feeling and kept eating.

And later, when I climbed into bed, I didn’t
sleep.

Waging War

“We’re worried.”

“Don’t be worried.”

“No one should be alone on Christmas.”

It was Christmas Eve. I was talking to my
mother. I was also in my house in Colorado while everyone,
including my sister, her husband, her newborn baby boy, my brother
and his new fiancé, and my beloved favorite uncle and his entire
family, were at the ranch in Oklahoma.

But every cabin was filled and all of them
with more than one person. Hell, one family was taking up four
cabins on their own for a huge family Colorado holiday getaway.

And Colorado holiday getaway I was giving
them. Each cabin had a festive Christmas tree decorated in full-on
Western. There was lots of twine with painted wooden things on it,
cowboy boots, snowmen wearing bandanas and cowboy hats, saddles,
horseshoes, and tin stars ornaments (and the like).

Not to mention, all the cabins were strewn
outside with Christmas lights. It took me two full days just to put
up those twinkling lights, but in the end, the effort was worth it.
It looked phenomenal. Further, the big pots I had everywhere that
were filled with flowers in the spring, summer and fall were
planted with baby fir trees also lit with cheerful, blinking
lights.

And each cabin had a big tin of homemade
Christmas cookies sitting on the counter next to a real poinsettia
to welcome my customers after they checked in and entered their
cabins to experience Christmas joy Glacier Lily style.

Mom and Dad and my brother, Titus, had come
last Christmas. This Christmas, everyone went home, but I couldn’t
afford to leave. Not even for two days. I needed the money.

And that sucked.

“I have friends in town who are having me
over for dinner tomorrow,” I lied to my mom, because I had friends
in town but I was too busy to put the time in for them to be true
friends who would invite me over for Christmas dinner.

So I was making myself duck breast, potatoes
dauphenois, and asparagus, with homemade rolls, ending in devil’s
food cake with homemade frozen custard. I also had a shed load of
munchies. And I’d bought myself (and the cabins’ DVD menu) six new
DVDs.

I was going to eat through Christmas. Eat and
watch romantic movies, lament my lonely life, my distance from my
family, the fact that I hadn’t snowboarded
once
since I came
to Colorado, and therefore I was living no dream.

I was stuck in reality.

And that sucked too.

“Your dad and I’ll make plans, come visit you
next month. Take you boarding,” Mom said to me.

“That’d be awesome, Mom,” I replied quietly,
and it would, the boarding definitely but mostly Mom and Dad being
with me.