Unfinished Hero 04 Deacon (7 page)

“It doesn’t have to be romantic,” I
offered.

“Thank fuck,” he murmured and I grinned.

He stood, hands planted on narrow hips, and
studied the shelves. This took a while. Long enough for me to get
impatient.

“How about
Thor
?”

He looked over his shoulder at me and
communicated nonverbally that
Thor
was most definitely
out.

Apparently, badasses didn’t watch superhero
movies.

So noted.

He looked back to the shelves.

“How about
Red
?” I suggested. “It has
Bruce Willis in it. You have to like Bruce Willis. Everyone likes
Bruce Willis, especially badasses. And it’s awesome. And funny. And
it has Morgan Freeman and Morgan Freeman makes everything better.
And Karl Urban, who isn’t hard to watch. Not that you’d think that.
But it’d work for me.”

He reached out a hand and pulled out a DVD
case. I saw it was
Red
. Thus I grinned again.

He went to the player and as he ejected the
last movie, he asked, “Things good with your family?”

I figured he asked this because we’d been
doing the breakfast dishes when my family called.

He had then absented himself. The call lasted
an hour and a half. A call that, during, John Priest had taken it
upon himself to go to the big shed that held a bunch of crap,
including my little tractor, and cleared the snow from my lane and
the parking area.

Part of the time he did it, I watched from
the side porch, listening to my family, happy and together and
celebrating and trying to pull me into that feeling long distance,
and I did it with that something I was denying I was feeling
bubbling up inside me.

It was a super-awesome thing for him to do.
Giving me time with my family. Giving me a break from the constant
work.

When he got back, I thanked him.

His reply was, “Chile dip.”

I took this to mean badasses weren’t good
with gratitude.

I’d noted that too.

“Things are good with the fams,” I assured
him as he put
Love Actually
in its case and tossed it on the
TV stand.

It was then he surprised me by asking another
question, this one more personal than the first.

“Why aren’t you there?”

“My cabins are rented.”

He finished shoving
Red
in the player,
turned, and leveled his eyes on me.

“Why aren’t you there?”

I sighed.

Then I explained. “I have an SUV to buy.”

His head cocked to the side. “What?”

“I have an SUV to buy,” I repeated. “And I’m
saving to pay my dad back for giving me money to make a go of this
place. I’m doing that with interest so it’s taking some time. And
I’m buying my SUV with cash because I don’t want to finance it. The
cabins are filling up and I almost always have several of them
rented, but it’s not like it’s steady and I haven’t been here long
enough, and the cabins haven’t been renting steadily enough to
assess how the rentals are going in order to get a sense of what
kind of the income I’ll have. So I’m being cautious. And I need the
money.”

He moved to his chair, no longer looking at
me, and folded his frame into it.

What he didn’t do was reply.

I reached to the remote.

That was when he spoke again.

“Why didn’t they come here?”

“Home is closer and Mom and Dad have a huge
house.”

I felt his gaze so I looked to him.

“You got eleven cabins,” he pointed out.

“Home is home, Priest, and my sister just had
their first grandchild. My mom and dad live on the ranch in
Oklahoma where my dad grew up, his dad grew up, me and my brother
and sister grew up. With Lacey having her first baby, the ranch was
where this Christmas had to be.”

“Have you met her kid?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He looked to the blank TV.

I took that as a sign it was time to fire up
the movie, so I did that.

We were ten minutes in before Priest said
quietly, “Nothin’ more important than family.”

His words made me catch my breath, mostly
because he was right. I should have taken the financial hit, closed
Glacier Lily, and taken a few days to drive down and spend
Christmas with my family, meet my nephew, get to know my soon-to-be
sister-in-law better, commune with my beloved uncle.

I really should have.

I also caught my breath because those words
came from him and they were surprising, seeing as he was here with
me, a stranger to him like he was to me.

Which meant he either didn’t have any family
or he knew just how true those words were because he lost his
somewhere along the way. Neither option, by the by, sat very well
with me.

But bottom line, I couldn’t deny that deep
inside I liked it that he felt that way.

It was my turn not to reply and I didn’t.

I just reached to a cookie tin, settled in,
and watched the movie.

* * * * *

“So, badasses drink hot cocoa,” I
remarked.

“Yup,” John Priest confirmed.

I grinned into the steam coming from my cup
and snuggled deeper into the blanket I’d wrapped around me prior to
sitting in my Adirondack chair on my side porch, Priest beside
me.

I had my eyes trained through the trees to
the glimmering Christmas lights fighting through the dark to give a
subdued but nevertheless merry feel to Priest and I sitting in the
cold and snow, drinking cocoa late at night after tons of movies,
good food, a dinner that Priest tucked into—his first bite of duck
making his face change momentarily, showing me he liked it, making
me like giving that to him more than was healthy.

Now Christmas was almost over and it wasn’t a
good day. It was an excellent day. He wasn’t talkative company. He
wasn’t warm. He wasn’t affectionate. He hadn’t even smiled.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t good company.
That didn’t mean in his own unique way he didn’t communicate
without words or even looks that he appreciated being there. My
company. My food. My goofiness. Just being somewhere nice with a
decent person on a holiday. It meant something to him and he
communicated that to me.

And I knew that because there we sat, in
comfortable silence broken only by me occasionally saying something
stupid just because I had the feeling he enjoyed me being a dork.
So much it put the comfort in comfortable for him.

I listened to the river flow, allowed the
stillness of the night to shroud me, warm in my blanket with hot
cocoa in my belly, and definitely warm in the companionship of the
man at my side.

I sighed quietly and relaxed deeper into the
beautiful tranquility.

“We don’t change.”

That came from Priest and it came quiet. Not
ugly. Not icy. Not mean.

But firm.

And the bubbling inside me stopped
gurgling.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“’Preciate the kindness,” he went on.

“Good,” I said softly.

“You’re a good woman, Cassidy.”

I closed my eyes, opened them, and murmured,
“Thanks.”

“But we don’t change.”

“Got it.”

He said no more.

I licked my lips and took a sip of cocoa.

The night was no less still. The view no less
beautiful. But the tranquility was gone.

I sipped my cocoa and got to the bottom of
the cup, doing it making a decision.

So he was scary. So he was badass. So he was
closed off in a way that he’d made clear more than once he was
never going to open.

I didn’t care.

I had this one shot, the only one I knew I’d
ever get, so I was going to take it.

He would give nothing, this I knew.

I didn’t care about that either.

I was going to do what I had to do.

No.

I was going to take what I needed and give
what I wanted.

Therefore, I said, “Gonna call it a night,”
as I unwrapped myself and got to my feet.

I threw the blanket over my arm and made to
move between our chairs as Priest remained silent.

I stopped by his chair and I looked down at
him gazing at the trees.

“I know you don’t wanna hear this,” I started
quietly. “I know you don’t do friendly. But I don’t care. It’s
still Christmas and I still get to give friendly and you’re gonna
take it.”

He didn’t move and he didn’t speak.

I did.

“It was a good Christmas, John.”

I didn’t see him tense but I sure as heck
felt it.

That didn’t stop me.

“It was going to be a crappy one, but you
showed and made it good. I’ll remember it forever, the year the
stranger who wasn’t a stranger saved me from a lonely holiday.”

Before I lost my nerve, I bent to him, my
lips at his ear. So close, I could smell his scent. And it was his.
Not cologne. Not aftershave.

All Priest.

Heavenly.

“It meant a lot,” I whispered. “So I thank
you for that, John Priest.”

I moved my head, my lips now at his temple
while he remained stone-still.

“Merry Christmas,” I finished softly, brushed
my lips against the dark hair beyond his temple, and quickly,
before he could rebuff me and take away all the goodness he’d given
me, I scurried to the door and through it.

I made sure the house was locked up (all but
the side door off the kitchen so Priest could get in, of course),
but kept a few lights on to lead Priest’s way to bed.

I got in my own and laid there for a long
time, listening.

He didn’t come up for ages. I checked my
alarm clock and it was over an hour.

Only when I heard the door close in the hall
did my eyes finally drift shut so I could go to sleep.

And I slept not knowing that the man in my
guestroom sat outside for over an hour, quietly, unmoving, all the
while waging war.

He won.

But he lost.

And so did I.

Because the next day, before I got up, he was
gone, but he left behind three hundred-dollar-bills on my
registration book, taking away the kindness I’d given him, seeing
as he paid for it.

And two months later, when he came back,
Christmas had not changed him. He rented cabin eleven. He paid in
cash. He spoke few words. After he checked in, I barely saw him.
And when he checked out, he shoved the key through the mail slot on
my door.

Three months after that, more of the
same.

Six months after that, the same.

This lasted for four years.

Four.

I told myself I wasn’t doing it, but I kept
cabin eleven open as best I could, just in case. It was always the
last cabin I rented when I was full up.

And I did it so every time he came—not
constant, but consistent—the only thing I had to give him was open
for me to give.

* * * * *

That was the way it was.

And that was the way it remained.

Until that night.

That night that would be the best night by
far in my entire life.

A night that would also be the worst thing
that ever happened to me.

Honey

My eyes opened the instant I heard the loud
music start.

I knew.

I knew by the looks of the family there was
going to be trouble.

Three boys, all the same age, obviously not
brothers and they couldn’t be a day older than eighteen.

Two parents in a fancy Escalade, the boys in
a not quite as fancy Navigator. Two parents that checked them in to
a cabin and I hadn’t seen them since. Checked them in because they
knew no way in hell the proprietress of kickass cabins in the
Colorado Mountains would let three underage boys itching for spring
break fun stay alone in one of her cabins. Checked them in and took
off, probably to check in to their own fancy condo closer to the
slopes.

Checked them in and left them to their spring
break to do what those boys clearly, by their car and clothes and
snowboards and attitudes, felt entitled to do.

That being whatever the heck they wanted.

It had been so far, so good. Three days and
they were mostly not there. No noise. SUV gone. More than likely
hitting the slopes and carousing elsewhere.

I’d gone to bed and done it after checking
the lot.

When I did, they were gone.

Now I knew they were back.

I threw off the covers and quickly dressed.
Jeans. Bra. Thermal. Socks. Boots.

I grabbed the baseball bat I’d kept by my bed
since that woman was assaulted in one of my cabins and Priest got
angry about it. On my way out, I also nabbed my flashlight.

I left lights on in the foyer, the motion
sensor lights outside coming on as I went out. I locked up after
me, turned on the flashlight, and headed swiftly down the lane
toward the cabins where the loud music was emanating.

It was late March, still high season, and now
spring break season. The last few years, the country had hit a
recession, but somehow I’d survived it. Rentals dipped occasionally
but I always had customers in more than three cabins, which worked
for me. Things were looking up for the economy and my rentals were
up. Right then, I had nine cabins rented.

As I walked down the lane, my head turned
right, toward eleven, which was also rented.

Priest was there.

He had been for two days. I’d checked him in
and after, as usual, hadn’t seen him.

However, at that precise moment, his cabin
was dark and there was no black Suburban parked outside it.

He was somewhere else.

Interesting. He’d been there when I’d checked
the lot at ten o’clock. I had no clue he took off and stayed out
late, mostly because I made a habit of not paying attention.

It was interesting but none of my
business.

I kept walking, thinking that in the last
four years he’d updated his Suburban. It was still caked on the
side with mud most of the times he came to stay, but it was newer.
It just didn’t seem to matter to him it was newer. He took the same
care of it as he did the old one.