The town hippie.
Or witch, as some of the mountain folk preferred to call her, but not the spooky kind.More like the sexy, crystal-wearing, thrift-shop-junkie type whose rare-occurring, angelic smile had every man in town swooning.He shook his head and dragged his feet up the steps of the front porch.She wouldn’t be happy to see him.From what he’d observed, she wasn’t happy to see any male under the age of fifty.
Fuck it.If she had a mystical flower to ward off cougars, he’d take it.
***
McKenna clutched theshotgun to her chest.Her grandfather’s old gun had saved her ass more than once and she hadn’t had to fire it yet.The blasted thing had better work if tonight was the night she had to shoot a man.She shoved a curl behind her ear and pressed her back to the wall in the entryway.The scream had practically shaken the cabin’s walls.Not one of the random animal cries that had become as natural to her as the call of a blue jay, not the sound of a prey being caught by its predator—oh no.This cry had been angry.Wild.Human.
Which scared her a hell of a lot more than any creature in the mountains.
If Trevor came back, he’d get a bullet in the chest this time.
Thump,thump,thump
The rickety porch outside the front door complained under the intruder’s weight.She fixed her gaze on the ceiling and fingered the amethyst crystal at her neck, focusing all her energy on pushing the bastard away from her door.
If it weren’t for the stupid storm, she’d call the sheriff.Cell phone service was patchy at best on a good day.A blizzard meant even the landlines would be out.
Just as they’d been the night Trevor attacked her.
He was back.He’d promised he would be.
Rage, hot and fierce, burned beneath her skin.She’d kept her distance from the men in town, played by the rules so as to not draw attention to herself, but Trevor, the sick creep, had thought she owed him something.He wanted her, and none of her polite requests to “screw off” had been enough.
Knock,knock,knock
The hinges jangled.She squeezed her eyes shut and tore her back from the wall.Zeroing in on the door, she hoisted the gun just as her grandfather had taught her.
“Get off my property, Trevor, or I’ll blow a hole through your goddamn skull!”The vibration of her vocal cords burned her throat.
Silence.
She compressed her lips and took another step forward.“Did you hear me?You’ve got three seconds to get off my porch, you piece of shit.”A growl rumbled deep within her chest.She was ready to obtain justice for every woman Trevor had overpowered.He hadn’t succeeded with her, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t with others.
“McKenna.”The voice on the other side of the wooden door was weak and shaky.“It’s me...Jaxon.”His name came out on a wheeze, barely audible.
The weapon’s weight dragged her arm down a notch.“Jaxon?”Of all the creeps in town, he seemed the least likely to show up at her door.He was one of the few men under the age of forty who hadn’t asked her out.He didn’t linger in the grocery store aisles or ask her too-personal questions.No, Jaxon was the one whose gaze lingered longer than the rest—not on her chest or her ass but on her most personal space: her eyes.As if he wanted to see into her soul or something.But in her experience, men weren’t that deep.They all had their ways of getting women into bed.He’d be the most dangerous, the one who knew how to strum the right chords to get exactly what he wanted.
But showing up at her door after midnight in the dead of winter during a blizzard?It was almost too crazy for Trevor.Definitely too crazy for Jaxon.
“What do you want?”She brought her eye to the peephole.Her hand hovered over the switch for the porchlight, but she curled her fingers away.Somehow, turning on a light would make it too real; it would make it weird to ask him to leave.Which didn’t make any dang sense since he had no business being at her door in the first place.
“Truck broke down,” he said.“Fucking Bobby, that crook.”The accusation sent her eyebrows together.“I got attacked by a mountain lion, I think.I’m bleeding.I just need a lift to town—I...I’ve got some cash.”McKenna heard a groan.“Maybe.Hell, I might have left my wallet in my truck.”
She flicked on the light, unbolted the lock, and inched the door open.Leveling the barrel of the gun through the crack, she studied him.In the orange glow of the porch light, she saw fear etched into the tense lines of his cheekbones.A beanie covered with the hood of his jacket hid the top of his forehead.He stood, leaned rather, with his hand propped on the doorframe.Deep, heavy breaths puffed from his chapped lips.He looked like one of the Viking heroes from the History Channel.She’d been obsessed with watching the shows about them over the last few weeks.
Not a hint of lust or drunkenness laced his emerald-green eyes, but he watched her nonetheless.His uneasy gaze dropped to the muzzle of the weapon.“Are you gonna shoot me?”The faint Boston accent made her knees wobble.
She steeled her spine and lowered the gun.“Get inside.”
He mumbled a thank you, slipped into the entryway, and shut the door.She kept the weapon in her grasp but pointed it at the floor by her feet.She’d always had a strong intuition and had let it guide her numerous times when everything else in her world hadn’t made sense.Six years ago, it had led her to quit her career, sell her city condo, and move to the mountains to find her soul.She’d been happy ever since—until Trevor clouded all her joy.Warning bells had always fired in her head when she was around him.That was one of the reasons she’d avoided him like the plague before she knew what kind of scum he was.Jaxon on the other hand...His presence didn’t carry a hint of a threat, and every movement he made screamed that he needed her help.
She lowered her gaze to the hand at his side.As if remembering what he held, he lifted it: a can of bear spray.Her stomach knotted.He grimaced and then winced.“Sorry,” he mumbled, and set it on the table near the door.
A little of her tension ebbed away.“You said a mountain lion got you?”
He nodded, flipped off his hood and beanie, then stripped out of his jacket to reveal a thermal long-sleeved shirt.“Yeah.The beast came out from behind me.”He pulled his arm out of his sleeve and his body tensed.
