“You’re an idiot,” Santana reminded him, but he did smile as Nakita bounded on the small porch, snow covering his nose, whiskers, and thick gray fur. Nakita’s long tongue hung out of his mouth and he scratched at the door.
“I know, I know.”
Santana stepped into the cabin, three rooms with a sleeping loft tucked under the eaves of a steep roof. This tiny home was the original house on the Long homestead and well over a hundred years old. That was before copper had been found and mined in some of the surrounding properties and the Long family had gained all their wealth and built the cedar and stone lodge tucked into thickets of
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pine and spruce and overlooking Milton Creek, homage to Brady’s ancestor who first claimed these acres.
Though his cabin was drafty, insulated poorly, Santana preferred it to the suite of attic rooms in one wing of the main house, quarters that had been dedicated to the year-round staff. Living in the big house was fine for Clementine, the housekeeper, and her teenaged son, Ross, but not for Nate. When push came to shove he would pick privacy over grandeur any day of the week. Besides, he needed to be closer to the livestock. And farther away from Brady Long whenever his boss decided to show up. Heat radiated from the wood stove crouched in a corner of the cabin’s living area. Somewhere in the last fifty years the compact space had been equipped with electric baseboard heat, but Santana liked the old stove with its glass window to
view the fire burning inside. He figured the exercise he got sawing up the fallen trees on the property each spring and splitting the rounds was worth it.
Never once had Regan Pescoli been here. Nor had he spent any time at her house. It was as if they’d had some unspoken pact to stay out of each other’s private space. “Stupid,” he muttered under his breath. They’d both tried so hard to deny what was becoming more evident with each passing hour: that he’d fallen for her.
He hung his hat and jacket on a peg near the front door as Nakita nosed at his food bowl and lapped water wildly from his dish. Santana skimmed himself out of the weatherproof pants and boots before propping them up on the rock floor in front of the fire. After adding more logs to the stove, he fed the dog, cut a thick slice of brown bread for him-88 Lisa Jackson
self, and, after slathering it with butter, bolted it down, then warmed himself up in a shower. One thought circled his brain: Regan’s missing. Toweling off briskly, his face a mask of granite, Nate tried not to succumb to panic. But he couldn’t quite convince himself that everything was fine, that she was just busy or even avoiding him. He threw on his clothes and headed back to the stove, feeling like something sinister was at stake. Like a gust of wind blowing the stable door open and freaking you out yesterday? Face it, Santana, you’re on the edge of paranoia. Because of a woman. Something you swore to yourself you’d never do. Settling onto the worn arm of his recliner, he found the remote for his television while his dog was already snoring softly on the rag rug in front of the fire. His muscles were tense as he turned on the morning news.
What was it Pescoli’s partner had said when she’d called and he’d asked concerning Regan’s whereabouts?
“If we knew that, I wouldn’t be calling you.” Again that unsettling feeling crept through his guts. Man, Santana, you’ve got it bad. You can’t get Pescoli out of your mind. What was it she’d said that she wanted? A relationship with no strings attached? Sounded good, didn’t it? Except now she’s under your skin. You can’t shake yourself free from her, and face it, you don’t want to. His jaw tightened. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d sworn no woman would ever get to him again. But Pescoli with her burnished hair that flamed red-gold in the sun and eyes that shimmered from green to gold had caught him off guard. She was athletic, smart as a whip, and had a wicked sense of humor that always surprised him.
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And then there was the lovemaking.
Hard and fast.
Or sensual and slow.
But never enough, no matter how sated he’d felt after one of their sessions at a local motel. And never boring. He loved to stare down at her as they made love. It excited him to see her beautiful nipples harden and her eyes grow dark as her pupils dilated with desire. He couldn’t get enough of her.
She was one helluva woman, he’d decided long ago, but one he’d never thought he couldn’t leave. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Now he was scared to death, and Nate Santana wasn’t one to frighten easily. In fact, he’d sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with him. In a case of fight or flight, he always chose fight. And it had landed him in some tough spots. Hadn’t always been his smartest option. Nor was getting involved with Pescoli such a great idea.
Everything about her should have warned him to stay away. She’d been married twice. She had two hellions of teenagers. She was a damned homicide detective, for Christ’s sake. Yep, he should never have gotten involved with her, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d actually challenged him in a bar one night, first to pool, then to arm wrestling, and then to shots of whiskey, he might not have noticed the smell of her, the fire in her eyes that matched the flame in her hair, or the fact that she seemed slightly amused by him. Being attracted to her, playing her game, had been his first mistake. Ending up in bed had been his second.
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And now, his third: actually giving a damn about her. Caring about her. Missing her.
“Damn it all to hell.”
He drank two cups of black coffee, thought about carving himself a second piece of bread but decided he couldn’t force down another bite. Watching the weather report, only half paying attention to “more of the same,” he finally surfaced to learn another storm was on the horizon. Great.
Time was inching by. He glanced at the clock mounted over the sink and scowled. Still an hour until daylight. “Oh, hell,” he said under his breath. He couldn’t stand not doing anything. He whistled to his dog and walked to the door where he began putting on the layers he’d so recently peeled off.
“Come on, Nakita,” he said, as the dog yawned and stretched. “Let’s go into town.”
It was well past time to track Pescoli down. After a miserable night, Alvarez rolled out of bed, stumbled through the shower, and dispensing with makeup, dried her thick hair, snapped a rubber band around a high ponytail, and wound the whole mess into a tight knot on her crown. She checked her image in the mirror, saw her eyes were watery from the damned cold, her skin lacking luster, her nose red.