Lumberjacked (A Holiday Lumberjack Mountain Man Romance) - K.C. Crowne Page 0,58

as it did, but I couldn’t help myself.

Her face changed when she looked at me, a mixture of affection and confusion. I was doing this to her, I knew that. I was keeping her on a line. She didn’t know what was going on and I wasn’t being totally truthful.

I just didn’t want her to know who I was. I didn’t want her to know that I had been a monster. I wanted her to love me, to always see me the way she saw me now. The moment she knew about everything that had happened before, the way she looked at me would change.

And as strong as I was, as much as I’d dealt with in my life, I wouldn’t be able to survive that.

Viktor

I couldn’t fucking sleep knowing that Maksim and his people were near. I shouldn’t have let the fucker live. He sure as shit didn’t deserve it, and I’d just made my own life more complicated.

And for what? Proving to Angela that I wasn’t a monster? Bullshit. I was too fucking worried about what she would do when she found out what I was. The moment she realized I was a killer, she would run so fast, she’d be a speck on the fucking horizon.

It was only through some kind of fluke, fate’s practical joke, that she had ended up with me in the first place. So why the fuck was I worried about not killing someone for her sake? I couldn’t change who I was. I couldn’t change what I’d done. And she deserved better than me.

I should have slit the asshole’s throat and been done with it. I would have been able to sleep better.

As soon as Angela closed her eyes after we’d fucked again – getting out of the shower had entailed all kinds of activities that had nothing to do with getting dressed – I’d popped right back up again and scoped the area around the cabin. Nighttime was dark as sin on the mountain. Darkness hid shadows, and Maksim’s men weren’t scared of a little darkness. Hell, we were the ones who brought the darkness.

No, if they were going to hunt me down, the dead of night would be a good time to do it. It was the time I would choose.

I looked for someone – anyone – to get on my land so I could snap a neck, rip off a dick and balls, something that would drive my point home that they should leave me the hell alone.

But there had been nothing.

The sun was still just a thought on the horizon, and I was out between the trees again. When I was out here and could see with my own eyes that no one was here, I could breathe easier. The moment I was in the cabin, I started to wonder if I’d missed something, if someone had crept up just when I’d turned my back.

I should have been happy everything seemed quiet. No sign of movement, no tracks left by humans – nothing to be worried about. Instead, it only made me more anxious. Fuck, something was brewing, I could feel it in my gut. There was a shitstorm, heavy and pregnant and waiting to break loose to rain all hell down on me. It was pending, and I had no idea how I was going to stop Angela from getting caught in the middle of my metaphorical mudslide.

If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have survived the real one. If she didn’t survive this, it would be because of me. That was the last thing a man wanted to think when it came to the woman he had irreversibly fallen in love with. Because fuck, I’d fallen for her, the slight little thing who could put me in my place because she wouldn’t back down.

After I’d circled the cabin a few times, made sure that everything was fine, I went up to check my equipment. All was well near and around the crevice, and the dot on the radar had moved on and was floating around in Grizzly Falls. Not far enough away but gone for the time being. The man must have believed and listened to my warning. Chuckling a little, I wondered how long it had taken him to get back to his vehicle with a bullet wound in his foot.

It didn’t make sense, the guy just showing up alone. Maksim usually wasn’t so stupid. Frowning, I considered moving the equipment to the cabin