“It sounds wonderful to me.” After the places she’d slept the past couple of days, or tried to, just being invited into Leni and Knox’s home felt like heaven already.
“This way.” Leni indicated a back stairwell that opened into the rear of the small kitchen.
Willow followed her up to the cozy apartment located at the top of the stairs. It was tiny but welcoming, its single room containing a bed with a handmade quilt and crisp white linens, a tall antique bureau, and a small writing desk situated beneath a curtained window in back.
“There’s a connected bathroom with a shower tub,” Leni pointed out. “Knox has made lots of repairs and improvements to the place.”
“It’s lovely,” Willow said.
“I’m glad you like it,” Leni said. “Make yourself comfortable for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Willow drifted over to the window, which overlooked the backyard lawn and the forest beyond. Moonlight bathed the landscape in soft, milky shades.
Closer to the house, tucked at the end of the unpaved driveway stood the one-car garage where Razor and Knox had gone. A dim light glowed from inside, but the men were nowhere to be seen.
A few moments later, Leni came back holding a small laundry basket containing several items of folded clothing. She placed everything on the end of the bed. “Take what you like and leave what you don’t. I won’t be offended. Most of this won’t fit me for months anyway, so consider it yours to keep. I brought a few things of Knox’s for Razor too.”
“That’s so kind of you, Leni. Thank you.” Willow gravitated toward a floral midi-skirt and a chunky oatmeal-colored sweater, pulling both pieces out of the pile.
“Those were some of my favorites too. I think we’re fairly close in size—or would’ve been, before Knox knocked me up.” She grinned. “I’ll leave you alone now so you can get settled and relax. If you have any things you’d like me to toss in the wash for you, just drop them in the basket and bring them down whenever you want.”
“Thank you,” Willow said, warmed by her generosity. “Um . . . Leni? How long do you think Razor and Knox might be?”
“Judging from the glower on my mate’s face earlier, I’d say they’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do. I’ll let Razor know where you are when they come back in. He can bunk down on the sofa in the living room . . . or not.” Leni smiled. “I’ll leave the sleeping arrangements up to you two.”
With that, she strolled out of the room, quietly closing the door behind her. As her footsteps retreated down the stairs, Willow pivoted toward the window and walked up to it to peer outside. The light still glowed in the garage down below. Overhead, the moon had climbed higher into the night sky as the hour crept closer to midnight.
Willow yawned into her hands and glanced at the bed. As tempting as it was to lie down in her resale shop clothes and sleep for a year, she couldn’t stand the idea of crawling into the clean cotton sheets in her current state.
The brief shower she’d taken at the motel in Cheyenne seemed like forever ago considering everything she’d faced in the time since. Washing up in the resale shop restroom had only removed the worst of the blood and grime from her skin.
What she needed was twenty minutes under a hot shower—or, better yet, a long soak in the bathtub.
One of the items Leni had left on the bed was a thick chenille bathrobe. Willow picked it up, savoring the normalcy of the soft fabric and the golden warmth of the cozy room around her.
It felt selfish and indulgent to long for a few minutes of calm, but God, how she needed it right now.
She sat down on the end of the mattress to remove her boots and ankle socks, then, clutching the soft robe against her she padded barefoot across the rug and into the small bathroom to start the water.
CHAPTER 17
Knox hadn’t said much as Razor filled him in on the highlights of his past few days and nights on the run with Willow. His Hunter brother listened in grim silence, eyeing Razor with typical, dark intensity from his leaning stance against his workbench in the garage.
Razor cleared his throat after describing the ambush at St. Anne’s and the multiple dead bodies he’d been forced to leave there for the Order to clean up in his wake.
Knox grunted, his muscled arms folded against his chest. “The warriors are going to want answers from you about that sooner or later. My money’s on sooner.”
“Yeah, I know. And they’re going to get them—but not until I see this thing through on my own terms. These fuckers tried to ash me. It’s personal now.”
Knox’s icy blue eyes narrowed with scrutiny. “Seems like you’ve been taking this whole thing personally for a lot longer than that. Going on six months now, if I had to guess. Isn’t that about how long you’ve had an eye in the sky on that little Colorado cabin in the mountains?”
Razor cast his brother a flat look. “I figured you’d come around to that eventually.”
“Kind of hard to ignore when it looked like you were sitting on hot coals in the kitchen.”
Razor started pacing, suddenly feeling twitchy in the confines of the small garage. “I’ve let things get kind of fucked up where Willow’s concerned.”
“No shit,” Knox said. “For starters, why are you willfully endangering this woman when you know she’s a Breedmate? You should’ve asked the Order to protect her instead of taking matters into your own hands.”
