Pull You In (Rivers Brothers #3) - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,7

hours out of each day, leaving me free to wander around, enjoy the outdoors.

It was a sweet deal.

Traveling by plane had been a new experience for me. We'd always moved by car. And me, especially, I was the car guy. In particular, I had been the getaway car driver for the others in our old life. So planes had never been a part of my life before.

The next time I took a vacation, I promised myself it would be a road trip of some sort, giving me some much-missed time behind the wheel, seeing sights, going on my own schedule instead of along with one with hundreds of other people.

But, for now, this retreat would do.

I'd pulled up to find one car parked, not being overly surprised. I tended to be someone who got places early. The women I worked with were always perpetually on time or often late, rushing in talking about their kids or their spouses or running errands. Fee didn't exactly run a tight ship about things like that, so it wasn't unusual that the others had chosen to be on later flights to coincide with whatever they had on their schedules for the day.

Me, I always liked being early.

As did whoever had the rental car I parked beside.

Or it was a host or the owner of the lodge.

I was half-surprised to walk in and not be greeted.

But I followed the lights until I found Katie standing there in the kitchen, eyes wide, looking like she was ready to plunge the knife into my heart.

She was maybe the last person I expected to see there.

She'd never been at any of the events around the office. Not the Christmas parties or the times everyone went out for food and drinks.

Bookish, quiet, I figured she wasn't the social sort.

I guess I thought she would have come up with some excuse not to be with all of us for five days in the woods, away from all her creature comforts.

But there she was, ready to gut a mountain cannibal in her retro MTV t-shirt and big sweater that swallowed up her whole body.

She was a short and very slight thing, looking damn near breakable most days, with light brown hair, brown eyes, and oversized glasses on her soft-featured face.

I overheard Angela, one of the women at the office, refer to her as "mousy" before, which was a shitty comment both then and now, since it was clearly not meant as a compliment in any way.

One thing I learned about working with women was they could be catty as fuck even when they had no reason to be.

And there was no reason for the name-calling. Katie was cute in a very understated way. Actually, now that I was really looking at her—without her flitting around like she did at the office—it was actually fair to say she was pretty.

It was almost as though she covered up in baggy clothes and big glasses and by never staying still for a few moments as a way to somehow mask that fact about her.

Typically, she was on her way out of the office when I was making my way in, making it so we rarely were around each other for more than a few minutes. Even when we were, though, she was always on the move, always doing something, rarely stopping to talk to anyone that I could see. Then, quietly, saying goodbye so low that only the people nearest to her could hear, then rushing out of the building.

It would be interesting to spend a little time with her actually. We'd worked at the same place for years. I'd maybe only spoken a handful of sentences to her. And she, even fewer to me.

I imagined once everyone else showed up, she would cling to her closer friends, and we wouldn't speak again.

So I was going to go ahead and take advantage of the couple of minutes of privacy.

"Alright," I said, nodding, when we made it into the great room where the walls were decorated with the heads of hunted animals. "You're right," I added, looking over at her. "It's creepy," I concluded.

"I hope we don't have to do a lot of the team-building exercises in there," she said, backing out of the room, eyes sad. "I don't like that. Heads on the wall," she added, grimacing.

"Can't say I'm much of a fan either," I agreed cringing at the endless glass eyes, leading her into the next room, a game room of sorts with