Drake’s sigh as he looked me over hit me bone deep. It was a judgey sigh and I wanted to slap it out of him. “You’ve been like a sister to me since college, Lena. I hate seeing you like this.”
“Like what?”
“Doubting yourself. Fearing every shadow.”
I pressed a hand to my stomach over my shirt. “Shadows have claws.”
Drake nodded, sipped his beer. “Then I know a man. Someone you can trust in this.”
“Good. I can pay.” I had plenty of money. My career had seen to that.
Drake’s pensive assessment never faded as he watched me over the rim of his schooner. “Elena. Trust him to get the job done. But don’t turn your back to him. Not for one second. There’s a reason life made him the man he is.”
A week after that conversation with my oldest friend, one who still talks to me, I sit in Gabriel Decker’s house, a damn long way from anywhere. I’m begging a cup of coffee from him,and about to tell him why I’m here. Somehow, I suspect he’s as dangerous as Drake suggested.
And the one time my back was to him, he helped me. Touched me. I reacted to him in a way I’ve never reacted to a man before.
What does that say about him? About me?
The locks on his door remind me of Drake’s words. A shiver riots over my body.
“Cold?” Gabriel murmurs.
“Uncertain.” What is it about him that’s like a truth bomb in action? I can’t lie no matter how much I try.
“Fair enough.” He nods at my side, never looking my way.
I decide to go with the flow and keep blurting out the hardest truth that I couldn’t say when I was seated across from Drake that day in Hope Peak. Perfect Brews isn’t exactly the best place for quiet conversation if you want what’s said to go unheard.
“My ex is trying to kill me.”
The moment the words leave my mouth I regret them. They hang in the air of Gabriel’s stunning home, shattering the sense of serenity he’s garnered in this quiet space away from everything and everyone out here. I’ve brought my sense of unmuted chaos here into his home, and I have no right to do that. No matter what scars this silent man beside me carries—and I’m sure there are many—he doesn’t deserve to be dragged into the bullshit I’ve brought onto myself.
I shake my head, pushing up on screaming thighs that can’t deal with a yoga class let alone a hike then the world’s biggest stair climber activity. “I shouldn’t have come here. This is wrong.”
The hand that wraps around my wrist closes like a manacle. Forest green and granite eyes meet mine, barely constrained fury blazing behind them.
“You came up my mountain seeking something, Elena Markham. You’ll stay until you get it.”
Shit, shit, shit.This is the part people don’t tell you about the bear in the woods theory.
Sometimes the bear is a little protective. Sometimes they’re a little mad. And something in me wants all that.
So, so badly.
But also, I’m scared that what I want might clash with what I’ve come to find. And that’s so much more critical that any want on my tick sheet from here on in.
But from the way that the mountain man holds onto my wrist and refuses to let go, there’s a different sort of trouble brewing.
CHAPTER FOUR
GABE
“Let go,” Elena murmurs, staring up at me with dilated eyes. “Please.”
She doesn’t pull away, and she doesn’t flinch. Not once.
I already have a damn good idea of why she’s in my home and who sent her my way. The fact that she’s likely come from a domestic abuse situation—assuming I’ve guessed correctly from the little she’s already said—and hasn’t run screaming from me yet is telling.
