For a moment, he looked me up and down, his eyes dark as they appraised me. What color were those eyes, anyway? Deep blue? Some kind of hazel?
I’d find out soon, not that it would make any difference. He wasn’t my type, and guys like Alexander James Freaking Westmore did not go out with guys like me, guys from Five Points, with no college education, and no bank account to write home about.
“So?” I asked. “Alexander James Westmore, you want me to leave you here or are you coming with.”
“Coming with,” said Alex. “But call me Alex, if you would.”
Ooooh, he had manners, too. Royce would have liked this guy, and Jonah, by association, would have liked him, as well. Too bad I’d never be bringing cool-as-a-cucumber Alex home with me any time soon.
“Well, let’s go,” I said. With my hands in my pockets, I pointed with my elbow at the Volvo. “If any car can get us there, it’s this one.”
“Nice,” he said, and then he surprised me. “Thank you for the ride. And for stopping. I’d be in that lake if it wasn’t for you.”
He wiped at his forehead, seeming a little dazed as he looked at the snow coming down thick and fast. Maybe he was overcome with the fate he escaped, or maybe he could not believe he was going to let some dicy-looking stranger give him a lift to a country lodge in the middle of the forest that might or might not have rooms.
Frankly, I was a little surprised at myself, at new me, though I didn’t have any idea how all this might look in the morning. But I led the way to the Volvo and got in, reaching over to move stuff from the passenger seat into the back so he could slide in. As he did, his eyes lit up at the bag of Bugles that still sat on the console between us.
“Help yourself,” I said. “I always have eats and treats when I’m on a road trip.”
“Thank you,” he said and with a sigh, he stuffed a small handful of Bugles into his lovely mouth. Then he smiled at me as crunched away, then said, “I’m not dead.”
“No, Alex, you are not.”
I laughed and waited while he buckled in, then slowly trundled across three lanes of snowy highway, and turned onto the road into the woods. The road was white between the trees, with the only thing breaking up the snow was a single set of what looked like deer tracks.
“Here we go,” I said, and turned the wheel into what looked like no-man's-land, but which would hopefully end up taking us to a hotel that had rooms for the night.
Ho ho, fucking ho.
CHAPTER 3
The snowy track turned out to be a two-lane road deep with snow that came up to the top of the Volvo’s hubcaps. And while I knew the car would make it, the looks Alex was giving me as I trundled along, taking it slow and sensible, were anything but convinced I had any idea what I was doing.
“Chill out,” I said. “I practically drive for a living.”
“What do you do for a living?” asked Alex, but I could tell he didn’t really care about the answer, only that he wanted a distraction. How do I know this? He grabbed the oh-shit handle (Jonah liked to call it the Jesus handle), with a grip so tight, his fingers were white.
Being new me, I had some empathy to spare, so I humored him.
“I lived over a garage in Denver,” I said, keeping my eyes on the snow-piled road, so he wouldn’t think I was taking my eyes off the road and freak out. “We sold spare parts, and I delivered a lot of the times, and drove all over.”
His response was a noncommittal grunt, and I got the feeling he was still coming down from an adrenaline high of almostdying and being rescued by a handsome stranger dressed in black.
“My name is Beck, by the way,” I said, because new me had some manners.
“What kind of name is Beck?” he asked.
I stole a glance at him, thinking for a minute that he was being snarly in mean, and that maybe he’d meant to say something more along the lines of,What kind of fucking name is Beck?But he wasn’t.
By the time we got to Whispering Pines Lodge, I reckoned he’d be back to his old corporate CEO self, and giving orders. I’d seen a flash of that bossiness right before he’d gotten out of his car.I’m going to come that way. His tone then had been everything about being in charge in a crisis, and I figured that kind of attitude was tattooed on his skin. Maybe even his very soul.
I almost missed the driveway that led to Whispering Pines Lodge, but a last minute sharp turn got the Volvo onto a mostly plowed drive that led up to what looked like a main lodge. The building was old, covered in snow, and the supports that held up the front porch looked barely able to hold the weight.
But as I parked the car carefully between a large truck and a Honda CRV and got out, I took a look around as I waited for Alex to get out, too.
The lodge was old, but it was sturdy. The walls were made of logs that looked thick, with a river rock base, all of which looked robust enough to last another hundred years.
As we walked across the scraped-snow parking lot, I could see there were lots of cars. Which meant lots of people were already checked in. Would there be rooms? If there weren’t, Alex and I were going to spend a chilly night in a Volvo that, while comfortable to drive, was not set up to sleep in.
