Trusting a Stranger (7 page)

He took a breath, then wished he hadn’t because her sweetness was in his nose once again. He did his best to ignore it and forced himself to speak.

“You shouldn’t be up,” he greeted gruffly.

“Morning to you, too, Mountain Man,” she replied.

Graham’s eyes flicked to the moonlit sky.

“Evening,” he corrected.

“Always have to have the upper hand, don’t you?”

He gave her a considering look, wondering how she could possibly believe he had the upper hand. Just looking at her made him feel...not exactly helpless. Not exactly powerless.

Spellbound, maybe.

“You should go back inside,” Graham said, deflecting her question so that he wouldn’t have to admit just how out of his element he felt right then.

In reply, she narrowed her eyes in the already-familiar way that told him she wasn’t interested in doing what he thought she ought to do.

With the same stubborn look on her face, Keira moved toward him instead of away from him.

Graham opened his mouth to point out that she might not like the way things turned out if she did as she wanted instead of as she should, but he didn’t have to say a word. Right before she reached the porch swing, the slippery ground did it on his behalf.

Keira’s feet, which were dwarfed inside a pair of his socks, skidded along the ice and with an “Oomph,” she landed in his lap.

She made as if she was going to get up, but Graham wasn’t going to let her go so easily; she felt far too good, right there in his lap.

“Stay.”

He realized immediately that he’d echoed her earlier request—the one he hadn’t been able to deny—wondered if she noticed it, too. If she did, she didn’t say.

But after a minute, she leaned against him and tucked her feet up. Automatically, Graham’s arms came up to pull her even closer. It was strange, how natural it felt to hold her like that.

“At least this way, I know you’re not freezing your rear end off,” he said into the top of her head.

There was a tiny pause before she asked, “Is that why you want me to stay?”

“No,” Graham admitted.

“But you’re still not going to tell me anything, are you?” she replied.

He ran his hands over her shoulders, then down her arms and rested his palms on her wrists.

“No,” he said again. “Not because I don’t want to.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“My gut.”

“Your gut tells you not to trust me?”

Graham chuckled. “Actually, my gut tells me that I
should
trust you.”

Graham moved his hands from her wrists to her hands and threaded his fingers through hers.

He suddenly found himself wondering if
she
trusted
him
. What
her
gut had to say.

Maybe she hadn’t even considered it.

Did he want her to?

She really shouldn’t trust him. His past was too troublesome, his heart too marred. He might hurt her in his attempt to keep her safe. Hell, he had nothing to even offer. Not until he’d taken care of Mike Ferguson and all that went along with finding the man.

But he wanted her faith, and not blindly. He wanted to know that he hadn’t lost the quality that made a girl like Keira believe in him.

“So...” she prodded after his long moment of silence.

Graham jerked back to the present moment. “My gut tells me to trust you. But it’s warning me even louder that if I tell you my story, it’ll put your life at risk.”

“Isn’t that my risk to take?”

“It should be, yes,” he agreed.

“But not now?”

“I didn’t save your life just to let you get killed, Keira.”

Her hands tightened on Graham’s. “Are you sorry?”

“Sorry about what?”

“That you saved me.”

The quiet, trying-not-to-sound-hurt voice cut into Graham’s chest. He couldn’t stand the thought of her believing that.

He released her hands so he could reposition her, so he could see her face and she could see his.

“No matter what happens, Keira,” he stated softly, “I’ll never be sorry that I saved you.”

A little smile turned up the corners of her so-kissable lips, and Graham wanted to make it even wider.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If you come inside and let me feed you dinner
and
you manage to stay awake for more than five minutes after, I’ll answer one question. Your way.”

“Carte blanche?”

That smile of hers reached her eyes.

In spite of his head screaming at him
not
to say yes, Graham couldn’t help but give in.

“If you promise not to ask me anything too terrible during dinner, then yes.”

“What do you want? Small talk?”

Graham nodded. “Small talk. In exchange for carte blanche.”

And her full lips widened into a grin, and that spellbound feeling slammed into Graham’s heart once more.

Chapter Twelve

True to his word, Calloway kept the conversation light. He fed the woodstove and heated up some thick soup and told her he hadn’t seen so much snow in the mountains in a long time. With a head shake, he deflected her question about precisely how long.

And in spite of her resolve to stay awake, and her nearly daylong nap, the second she finished her soup Keira could feel her eyes wanting to close and sense her mind wandering. She tried to keep it focused. But when she pushed her bowl away, a yawn came out instead of a question.

If she did manage to stay awake...what would she ask?

Just a few hours ago, she swore that she had a dozen all-important, totally articulate things she
had
to know about who Calloway was and what he was doing there on the mountain. About his interaction with the man outside. About the box of newspaper clippings.

Now all the specifics were muddled.

“Keira?”

His voice, rumbling with amusement, made her jerk her head up from its unintentional resting place on her hand.

Calloway had cracked one of the beers from the fridge and looked far more relaxed than Keira expected.

He looks so...normal.

Which was somehow comforting. A beer and a fire and cozy evening. Keira wished wistfully that it could be that simple.

“You awake?” he asked.

“Yes,” she lied.

Clearly, she’d drifted off enough to give him time to get the beer from the fridge. Funny that she was already so comfortable with this man—complete with all his dangerous edges—after such a short time. And not a single alarm bell was going off, either.

Calloway took a swig of his beer and gave her a considering look that matched her own. “So. Does this mean you have something to ask me?”

Keira tried again to recall what, specifically. She’d had something in mind. It eluded her now.

“Did you feed me soup to make me sleepy?” She wanted to know.

A grin broke out on Calloway’s face. “I give you carte blanche and that’s the question you choose?”

“You know perfectly well that wasn’t it at all.” Another yawn took away from the emphatic way she meant to make the statement.

“Why don’t you lie down while you think about it?” he suggested.

“Nice try.”

Calloway’s smile widened. “I could carry you over to the bed again.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe I would.”

His eyes did a slow head-to-toe inventory of Keira’s body. They rested on each part of her just long enough to make the object of his attention warm, then moved on to the next.

Feet and ankles. Knees and thighs. Hips and waist. The swell of her breasts.

He paused at her lips and lingered there before he raised his gaze up again, and then he came to his feet and began to clear their table.

And even though Calloway had broken the stare and his eyes were otherwise occupied, Keira knew there was no
maybe
about it.

He would enjoy taking her to bed.

And if Keira was being honest, she craved the closeness, too. She wanted the feel of his arms around her and she wanted to taste his lips again.

Maybe the heated desire she felt was amplified by her surroundings, maybe it was made more intense by how close she’d come to death just yesterday.

Probably.

It made sense psychologically—reasonably. Her training in the social work field had taught enough about transference.

But underneath that, Keira felt a stronger pull.

He’d rescued her, at the risk of his own safety. And he was still putting her life ahead of his own.

A man like that...he deserved appreciation.

Appreciation. Yeah,
that’s
what you feel.

She shoved aside the snarky thought and watched Calloway rinse their bowls, then dry them.

His body moved smoothly and confidently, undaunted by the stereotypically feminine activity. Keira liked the glimpse of domesticity. A lot.

“Keira?”

She jumped in her seat. “Yes?”

“Nothing. Just checking.”

“Checking what?”

“Whether you’d fallen asleep or whether you were staring at my rear end.”

“Very funny.”

Calloway chuckled. “It was the only reason I could think of for you
not
offering to dry while I washed.”

Keira’s face warmed, and she stood up quickly. But the big man was at her side in a second, his hand on her elbow.

“Hey,” he said. “I was kidding. You need to rest, not do dishes.”

“I’ve rested an awful lot already.”

“Not enough.”

Warmth crept from his palm into her arm and through her chest, and she couldn’t argue as he led her across the room to the bed. And she felt a little lost as he released her.

Definitely more than transference.

She looked up at his face, wondering how she’d ever questioned whether or not he was handsome. He was near perfect.

“In my other life,” he told her, his voice low, “it was my job to take care of people. I want you to get better, Keira. Soon. So all I need right now is to make sure you’re all right.”

He pulled up the blanket from the bed, tucked it around her face, then cupped her cheek. And that second, Keira remembered what he’d said about his gut and trust, and something clicked home for her.

“I work for child protective services,” she said slowly, “and I have to form snap judgments sometimes. I need to know if I’m leaving a child in a potentially unsafe environment, or decide if someone is trying to deceive me into thinking it’s safer than it is. And I know this is different, but I’m used to listening to my gut, too, Calloway. And it’s telling me that even if you’re not sharing everything... I should trust you, too.”

For a brief second, a mix of emotions waged a war in the Mountain Man’s stormy eyes. Relief. Worry. Fierce want. Frustration.

Then he kissed her forehead and strode across the cabin.

Keira considered going after him, but something told her she didn’t have to. Calloway wasn’t holding his secrets as tightly as he had been, just hours earlier, and she could be patient.

She leaned her head down on the pillow and squished up against the wall, making room for him. Whenever he was ready.

* * *

G
RAHAM
BUSIED
HIMSELF
with tasks around the little house. None of them really needed doing, but none of them took him very far from Keira, either.

He wasn’t so bogged down in denial that he didn’t recognize the burgeoning feelings he had for the injured girl. Nor was he naive enough to believe that a relationship between them was possible.

Which was a good enough reason for not climbing in beside Keira.

The bigger problem was: it wasn’t a good enough reason to stop him from
wanting
to do it. From wanting
her
.

He paused in his counting of his emergency candles to look over at her. She was pushed to the far end of the single-size bed, leaving just enough room for Graham’s body. More than enough room if he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

Her position on the bed wasn’t an accident. It was an invitation. One that made an uncomfortable ache spread out from his chest and threaten to take over the rest of him.

You owe her an explanation.

Yes, she deserved some honesty about who he was and what he was doing there.

He just wasn’t sure how he was going to go about telling her.

He leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

There just didn’t seem to be an easy way of letting someone know you’d been accused of murder.

His eyes slid over Keira, then away from her.

And abruptly, he went still.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to tell her after all. Maybe she knew already.

A box—one he’d shoved aside and forgotten about and hadn’t touched in long enough to let it get covered in dust—sat across the room, its lid askew.

* * *

K
EIRA
WOKE
TO
FIND
the bed empty and she couldn’t quite deny her disappointment that Calloway’s warm body wasn’t beside her. And her heart dropped even further when she sat up and spied him slumped over a cup of coffee. He was still dressed in the previous evening’s clothes, his hair wild.

Did he sleep at all?

“Calloway?”

He turned her way, and she saw that his face was as ragged as his appearance.

“I need to ask you something, Keira.”

“Carte blanche?” she replied, managing to keep her voice on the lighter side.

He nodded, but instead of asking a question, he made a statement. “Holly Henderson.”

The murdered woman from Derby Reach.
Keira felt the blood drain from her cheeks. Why was he bringing her up now?

“You know the name.” Calloway said that like a statement, too, but Keira seized on it.

“Yes. I know her name. But so does every person in a hundred-mile radius of Derby Reach. And you saw my driver’s license, so you know that’s where I’m from.”

“True enough. Holly Henderson was killed four years ago,” Calloway said. “Big news in Derby Reach. And you’re right, everyone did hear about it. But for some reason, I think it’s a little fresher in your mind. When was the last time you heard the name, Keira?”

Without meaning to, she flicked her eyes toward the corner of the room. Toward the box full of incriminating news articles. Immediately, she regretted the slip. Calloway’s gaze followed hers. And when he looked back in her direction, his face was dark.

Not with guilt, Keira noted. Regret, yes. Sorrow, absolutely. And hurt. Yes, there was that, too.

And it managed to cut through her apprehension and froze her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Before she could regain the ability to speak, Calloway was on his feet, moving toward her. He reached down, grabbed the rope she’d all but forgotten about and looped it around her wrists. He cinched it just shy of too-tight and fastened her there. Lastly, he snapped up the box, gave Keira a furious, achingly heartbreaking glare and stormed out of the cabin.

Damn, damn, damn.

For several long minutes, she stared at the door. Her heart was still beating at double time, and she was sure he was going to come running back any second and offer an explanation.

What
was
his connection to Holly? For some reason, she was sure—so sure—that he wasn’t responsible for her death.

But the door stayed shut, and the cabin stayed distinctly quiet, and she had to resign herself to the fact that he wasn’t returning anytime soon. And she wanted to get free.

Keira followed the length of rope with her eyes.

It disappeared at the edge of the bed, so she shimmied toward the end. She still couldn’t see where it was tied, but sliding to the edge of the mattress gave her enough slack to move a little more. She inched forward so that her whole head hung off the bed.

Aha!

There it was. The rope went from her wrists to the woven metal frame underneath the mattress. As Keira leaned down a little farther in search of a possible way to free herself, she lost her balance and toppled to the wood floor.

She decided to take advantage of her new position.

She worked her way under the bed, ignoring both the few slivers that found their way into her back and the fact that the frame was low enough to the ground that it dug into her chest.

She brought her fingers to the knot on the bed frame. It was as solid as the one on her hands. But a warped piece on the metal bed frame caught Keira’s eye.

If she could twist it, even just a little bit, she might be able to create a gap wide enough to slip the rope through.

She began to work the metal. It hurt a bit. The fibers of the robe rubbed unpleasantly against her skin, and she jabbed herself twice on the metal, hard enough the second time to draw blood.

C’mon, c’mon.

When she finally saw some progress—a tiny space between the bits of metal—tears of relief pricked at her eyes.

With an unladylike grunt, she twisted the already bent piece of metal frame as hard as she could while shoving the rope forward at the same time. It sprung free.

“Yes!” she crowed, and propelled herself out from under the bed.

She crossed the room quickly, but paused at the spot that had housed the cardboard box.

Knowing it probably wasn’t the best idea, but unable to resist an urge to do it anyway, Keira made her way to the front door. She cracked it open and a blast of chilly air slammed into her.

Too cold.

She snapped up the Gore-Tex jacket from its hook just inside, put Calloway’s too-big boots back on and stepped onto the patio.

She limped down the stairs and into the yard, holding her arms tightly against her chest to fend off the cold.

How Calloway was able to stand it with no coat was beyond her.

Where had the man gone to anyway?

There were plenty of footprints at the base of the stairs and along the edge of the cabin, but no distinct ones that led away from the cabin.

She scanned the tree line. It was so thick that, had it not been for the tracks in the snow, Keira wouldn’t have been able to tell where Dave, Calloway’s not-so-friendly friend, had come in on his snowmobile. There was no evidence of a footpath in, either. But there had to be a way out. Didn’t there?

She had the uneasy suspicion that if she climbed up one of the very tall trees surrounding her and looked out, she would see nothing but even more trees for miles on end.

Keira shivered, a renewed niggling of doubt brought in by the yawning forest before her. Her stomach churned nervously, too, and she had to look away from the suddenly oppressive view of the woods.

Trying to distract herself, she turned back to the cabin and planted her feet in the snow at the bottom of the stairs so she could give the wooden structure a thorough once-over. It
was
old. She’d noted it in the dark the night before. The logs were all worn smooth, and the roof sagged in some places.