Murder_ A Sinful Secrets Romance - Ella James Page 0,102

much. But they’re still bears. Their bodies still know the cycle of things. So they still try to stock up on food before.

I have cameras set on two of their most common dining halls: a patch of wild grapes and a grove of oak trees, heavy with acorns. When I look, after I get home from Barrett’s in the morning, both places look pretty picked over. So I make an unplanned trip into the enclosure a little after noon.

I throw out nine vitamin ball bombs and sink a wooden case of frozen rainbow trout in the pond. I don’t see Papa, who I know from my pre-visit cam check is many acres away. I decide not to linger, even though it makes me sad. I consider going back in tomorrow to organize the stock shed. If Papa scents me and wanders over… Well, who am I to protest?

With a silly smile on my face, I walk back to my cabin, call the local Wal-Mart to ask about Christmas lights, and spend the next two hours catching up on work-related emails—with St. Jude’s, with the stuffed bear supplier, with a few Beary Appreciated Donors, and with the fencing company, who last week was supposed to send someone to patch a weak spot on the east side of the fence, but didn’t.

I realize as I wait on hold with the fencing place that I haven’t even thought to check the cameras for my creeper. I skim through a few hours of footage, then Jamie calls and I keep on skimming as she tells me about Niccolo, and how his mom is depressed because she and his dad are having trouble, and Nic’s brother—the poor, sweet, dead one, John—was honored recently with some kind of posthumous Army award, and did I know Jamie thinks she might have gotten her very first gray hair, and before I know it, I’ve skimmed 42 hours of cam footage and there hasn’t been a single trace of anybody.

Sweet!

I hear Jamie stop her motor-mouthing and take a sip of something.

“Are you at Starbucks?”

“I’m meeting a client.”

“When?” I giggle. “We’ve been on the phone almost an hour.”

“Hmm, well then they’re late. I should go find out what happened.”

We hang up without me telling her about my night with Barrett, and to be honest, I’m kind of glad. It’s nice to keep it to myself: my very own delicious secret.

I spend the next hour doing Bible study and then meditating, and by the time I’m finished, I’m feeling very zen about this thing with Barrett. Either it’ll bloom into something or it won’t. All I can do is open myself up to what God wants to give me and continue trying to be grateful for whatever comes my way.

I pass the rest of my afternoon fertilizing my gardenias, making a trip to Wal-Mart for a laundry list of household items, and then dragging a ladder around my bedroom, stringing lights from the ceiling.

I tell myself if nothing more happens with Barrett, I’ll be glad to have the lights. It’s getting colder, closer to the holidays, and usually when it gets near Christmas, I have a harder time with my own nightmares.

On that note, I decide to pull out my journal and get a hold of my feelings.

I spent the night at Barrett’s last night. I went over there drunk, and he seemed really off from the first moment, now that I look back on it. I tried to leave after just a little bit, and he wanted me to stay. And then we were in his den and he started having a panic attack. I felt so bad for him.

Somehow he ended up telling me he’s a killer. And of course, I had no idea what to make of that. I finally figured out he was saying he was a sniper, and somewhere in the night he said he was in ACE. I saw some random internet news story about Delta Force where they talked about the name change, so that’s the only reason I even know what it is. (So, holy hell, Barrett came from Delta Force… I now understand the mad martial arts skillz).

Anyway—he talked so long about how he should keep his distance from me because of the things he’d been through, and at one point he even said something along the lines of ‘people shouldn’t come back from war,’ or maybe just he shouldn’t have. I know what PTSD is like but… I don’t know. His