Lumberjacked (A Holiday Lumberjack Mountain Man Romance) - K.C. Crowne Page 0,9
leaves a hell of a scar. At least I gave the passengers a nice show. I’d always enjoyed messing with people’s heads.
The dots moved on the screen, and I pulled up the area. They were where they were supposed to be. Two men were somewhere in Siberia. One was in Finland. One in Denmark. Jobs that Maksim sent them on. None of them were headed to the States, or anywhere close by.
Satisfied, I let out a breath I’d been holding. As long as they kept their trackers in and I could find them, we were all good. Maksim wouldn’t risk having anyone work for him without a chip, and I was the only one clever enough to hack into the tracking system. I was safe for now.
I powered down my shit to save the battery and left the cave, pushing through the crack again. I walked down to the cabin slowly, giving the woman the space she said she needed. When I pushed the door open, Angela stood in the kitchen, carving the pheasant. On the little table, she had put out two plates.
I watched as she worked, her hands expertly gripping the knife. She wasn’t scared to get her hands dirty. This woman was incredible. Beautiful, feisty as shit. And she knew how to use a knife, from what I could see.
Even though I had my reservations about opening up to a stranger, I couldn’t deny her nature was genuine. She didn’t seem to be hiding anything.
Innocent, pure. She was too good for me. I wasn’t going to touch her. She deserved better. So, so, much better than a fucked up former assassin with tattoos and a past so dirty there would be no absolution. I’d crossed the line too many times to count.
Behind that line was a special kind of hell, reserved for people just like me.
I didn’t want to drag someone like Angela to that place.
Angela
When Viktor walked inside, I frowned at him and wondered where he’d been. He smelled like the forest, and I inhaled deeply before returning to my task of cutting up the poultry.
“Welcome back,” I stated, a little sarcasm in my tone. He grunted but didn’t speak, and I glanced over my shoulder again, catching his eyes. He was staring at me, and I lifted my eyebrows. “What?”
“Nothing,” he growled and stomped into the other room, leaving a trail of mud behind him.
My clean streak cried as I looked around for a broom, but my stronger half told me cleaning up after him wasn’t my job. He’d cooked, I’d cut up the bird, but I wasn’t a damn maid. Obviously he cared about cleanliness because, overall, the cabin was well-kempt. But he was a crude man and clearly not used to having company.
There was just something about him, though, and I listened to my gut. Even though everything about him screamed trouble, my instinct told me he wasn’t dangerous.
I scoffed aloud at myself. I’d seen the tattoos, his brooding nature, the jagged scar across his otherwise handsome face. Maybe the knock to my head had been harder than I thought. Logically, it made no sense that I would be this drawn to someone like him. If he spoke five words to me in a row, it was a lot. And he seemed so damn suspicious of who I was and where I came from.
He liked being out here alone, I could tell. He was one with the forest in a way I hadn’t seen before. Hell, my dad had been like that, too, what I could remember about him. Rough and rugged. And insistent on exacting control over the people in his life. The physical bruises my mother had borne were no longer visible, but the emotional scars would remain forever.
Viktor seemed nothing like the man my dad was before he ditched us. For one, I wasn’t afraid of Viktor. Maybe I should have been. I just couldn't find it in myself to be.
When he walked back in the room in a clean shirt, he glanced at the floor and scowled, then took his boots off and carried them to the porch in his socks. He reached into the pantry and swept up the mud, dumping it in a bin where I assumed I’d toss the bones. We worked in silence until an itch of discomfort pushed me to open my mouth.
“I really need to get home, or at the very least call. My mother is probably worried.”