Her lips parted. Her eyes widened, pupils dilating until black all but swallowed the warm brown of her irises. Recognition flickered like a match in a pitch-black room. Then, as if time was moving in slow motion, a pretty pink flush bloomed behind the constellation of freckles sprinkled across her cheeks.
She remembered me. Good.
Now, to see how she responded once the shock of recognition wore off. I held my breath, waiting to see what this little roll of the dice would reveal.
Then, she did what I hadn’t dared to hope for. She softened. She didn’t give me fear or revulsion, just surprise… and a hint of something else. Something that made my pulse hammer.
Her flush deepened and she licked her lips as she stared at me. Was that… attraction?
No, I didn’t dare hope for that. Not yet.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we? You’re Jacob, aren’t you?” she breathed.
Jesus Christ.
I wasn’t prepared for that at all. My pulse slammed so hard it almost staggered me. She remembered me.
Four years later, after one brief encounter with a man with a bloody hand and a scarred face… she remembered me.
I kept my voice steady.
“Yeah. That’s me, and you’re Chrissy Jones, if memory serves me.”
Her gaze swept my face, barely skating over the scar twisting down the side of it and locking onto my eyes instead. When she did, her expression softened in a way I wasn’t prepared for. She didn’t regard me with fear or caution. No, she looked almost… relieved to see me.
“I thought—” She bit her lip and shook her head. “I thought maybe I imagined you that day in the hardware store, since I never saw you again… until now.”
I swallowed a laugh. If only she knew how many times she’d almost seen me again over the past four years.
“No… you didn’t imagine me,” I said quietly.
Her breath caught.
Good.
“What’re you doing out here?” she asked. “On this road?”
Working very, very hard to make you mine in the only way I know how, given our current circumstances.
“I maintain the lodge grounds,” I said, and it was true. I’d insisted on working alongside my staff ever since I woke up from my coma. “I live on-site and was coming down to check the gate down by the county road, for Mr. Stonewood, when I saw your car.”
She blew out a shaky breath, hands sliding into her pockets.
“I’m glad it was you who found me.”
God help me, I almost reached for her. Instead, I shook off the urge and kept my distance. I blinked at her and cocked my head.
“You really remember me from that day at Stonewood Hardware?”
She bit her lip and I had to stifle a groan.
“How could I forget? You were bleeding like a stuck pig, and the two idiots behind the counter were just staring at you like a couple of dumbasses. It still pisses me off when I think about how they treated you that day.”
I chuckled and stepped toward her, my boots crunching on the worn asphalt, and was once again pleasantly surprised when she didn’t instinctively recoil like most people would in her position.
“They were just dumb, superstitious teenagers.”
“They were pure fucking rude, and it was unacceptable. They should have been ashamed of the way they behaved.”
