Raid - By Kristen Ashley Page 0,30

He was on the steps when he heard it lock.

Raid sat in his Jeep and didn’t pull away until the downstairs lights were off and he saw her shadow moving behind the filmy curtains of her bedroom.

He drove to his place. He tagged the afghan and walked up the side stairs, unlocked his door and moved in.

He pulled off his clothes, yanked the comforter off his mattress, untied the satin ribbons around the afghan and threw it out on his bed.

Then he climbed under it.

He’d been right when he first touched it.

She’d been right when she said it would keep him warm.

Heaven.

Then Raiden Miller fell asleep under the warmth of Hanna’s cashmere, and for the first time in a long time he didn’t have a nightmare.

Not even one.

Chapter Eight

Double Feature

The next evening…

“Leave it to you, when I’m lookin’ forward to my plans for after the fuckin’ movie, you find a double feature,” Raiden grumbled.

I threw a nervous smile over my shoulder at Raiden, who was carrying a big bucket of popcorn in the crook of his arm and two huge sodas in his hands. He was following me down the aisle of the Willow Deluxe, our theater in town that, against the odds of competition from the huge cineplexes only forty-five minutes away in Denver, stayed in business.

This was mostly because the town liked it. Then again, the citizens of Willow just liked Willow.

Our town was one of those strange exceptions to every rule. We had not gone the way of one-stop convenience and bulk buying economy.

We had a butcher. We had a fruit and veggie shop. We had a non-chain hardware store. We had a grocery store that everyone went to that was family owned and had been for over fifty years. We had a florist, a craft shop, three gift shops, a coffee house, Rachelle’s Café, a pizza joint that did great Italian on the whole, a biker bar, a cowboy bar, a Broncos fans only bar and more.

Including the Deluxe, which was a not-for-profit and stayed in business as well as continued renovations due to the generosity of a town that wanted to keep its old-fashioned, hometown feel.

I loved the Deluxe.

I loved my town.

But my smile was nervous because of what I suspected Raiden’s plans were for after the movie, not because I was still worried and wondering if he was really into me.

No, even if last night, or more accurately, super-early this morning he had not made that very clear, earlier that evening he’d made it even clearer.

Needless to say, Raiden’s idea of “slowing this down” clashed with mine.

In other words, before the movie he took me to Rachelle’s for dinner, and even before that, he’d told me to call his sister to get his number, which, of course, I did not.

He had to know, since Rachelle was at the café a lot even in the evenings, that she might be there and see us together.

And she’d been there.

I’d been at that café a lot and never seen Raiden there with a woman.

Making out with one outside, yes.

Inside, never.

And neither had anyone else, like KC or my other friends, all of whom followed Raiden’s actions like, well, what we were: crazy, creepy Raiden Ulysses Miller stalkers.

So it was not lost on Rachelle (or me) what Raiden taking me to her café meant.

However, this was the least of my worries, when, after she saw us together and her eyes bugged right out of her head, she came rushing to us, exclaiming, “Ohmigod! Hanna! I haven’t seen you in forever! Look at your hair! I love those highlights! They look great! And it’s so long! I barely recognized you.”

Raiden gave me a brows raised look as he pulled out my seat, and I belatedly avoided his eyes as I sat.

“And you’re so tan!” Rachelle went on, stopping at our table. She put two fingers to her cheek, tilted her head and gave me a once over before enquiring, “Have you lost weight?” Then she answered her own question, “No. But definitely toned up. I am so getting my own Schwinn if that’s what it can do.”

I tucked my hair behind my ear and chanced a glance at Raiden to see his lips quirking and his eyes on me.

Rachelle seemed not to notice the looks Raiden and I were giving each other or the fact that neither of us spoke.

Instead, she cried, “Don’t order! You’re both getting the special. Tonight’s special kicks ass, if I do say so myself.”