Page 9

“A lot of maps, actually. My GPS doesn’t always work out here.”
Blue set his tablet aside then and fixed that dark, assessing gaze of his on her.
But this time, Everly was prepared. She still felt as if she were falling, the same way she’d felt when she’d rolled out of that car and staggered toward him across the dirt and weeds and roots in the cleared bit of woods behind the lodge. She’d felt as if she were toppling from a great height, like the mountain itself, then hit the ground hard, flat on her back so that she lost her breath.
That was what it was like when Blue Hendricks looked at her.
It was how she’d known it was him. Oh, sure, if she looked closely, she could see the hint of the skinny, feral boy she remembered—but he’d always had this effect on her. When she’d been a little girl, she hadn’t known what it was—she’d just known that he was her favorite. Her hero.
She knew what it was now. It was just... him. He was electric.
And he was the only one who could help her.
“You nodded off in the middle of a meeting you apparently drove three thousand miles to make happen.” Blue’s gaze was steady. Discerning. As if he were trying to see right through her. Or, worse, already did. “Who does that? Is this a drug thing?”
Maybe it wasn’t surprising that Everly felt transparent. Pale, really, all the way through. Or maybe that was the odd summer light, making a new set of accusations about her character and choices and entire freaking life punch through her like bullets. Making her wonder how much more she could take.
As much as you have to,she told herself.
She made herself stand taller when she wanted to droop. Or maybe curl into the fetal position and sob. “I guess I was tired.”
“Because you drove here from Chicago.”
“I was afraid they would stop me at the airport if I tried to fly.”
“But you figured the border would be a piece of cake.”
“I guess I didn’t think about the border. But they didn’t stop me.”
“What was your plan if you couldn’t find me?” he asked, in that quiet, considered way he had, which onlymade him sound more menacing. “You were just going to turn around and drive back? And then hand-wave away the two-week absence to any interested parties?”
“That, or I figured someone would just kill me already, and end the discussion right there,” Everly retorted. Her teeth hurt, so she unclenched them. “At least this way I got to see some really pretty scenery first.”
“I like the attitude,” Blue said, though his tone suggested otherwise. His tone plus the hard way he was studying her. “Who knows? It might save you.”
“And here I was hoping that you would.”
Blue laughed at that. And maybe it was the strange light all around him that made this seem like some kind of dream—though definitely not a good one.
Everly had always prided herself on her ability to read people and situations. It was what made her good at her advertising job, dealing with clients who never, ever said what they wanted, and would then get furious if the agency failed to deliver what was in their heads. But she’d been reading this situation wrong from the start, and Blue was probably one more thing she wasn’t seeing as she should.
It didn’t take a psychic to understand that Blue Hendricks was not a man to be trifled with. A wise woman would have maintained a healthy distance and a matching level of scrupulous courtesy so as not to set him off.
Too bad Everly couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything resembling healthy.
“Even if I was the hero you’re dumb enough to think I am?” Blue laughed again, with even less humor than before, and Everly had to fight to breathe through it, because it was yet another weapon, and he wielded it toowell. “What makes you so sure that I would want to save you? Some girl I barely remember?”
“You remember me. I get the feeling you remember everything. In minute detail.”
“I remember things that matter.”
That stung. She knew it was meant to, so she only raised her brows in a kind of challenge rather than let the deliberate slap drag her under. “Your friends said they would help me. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”
“My friends don’t get to make this decision, little girl. I do.” His mouth—God, she had to stop staring at his mouth and imagining...things—curved. It didn’t make him seem any more approachable. “You’re a ghost from my past, not theirs. That makes you my problem. That’s how it works here.”
“Then I guess this is my lucky day.” She folded her arms in front of her, and blinked as she took in the strange twilight that made the water look like wine and the pine trees seem like intent, hovering spirits. “Or my lucky night, whatever. Because I feel pretty certain that if you weren’t going to help me, you wouldn’t have tucked me in for a nice nap in your cabin.”
His mouth curved again, but this time, it made an echoing heat curl through her. She could feel it all the way down in her toes.