Shameless - Sybil Bartel Page 0,32

pointed.

Oh my fucking God. “That’s the cabin? Is it hanging on the side of the cliff?” You could barely see it from the road.

“Half cut into the mountain face, half on stilts.”

Stilts? “Is that even safe?”

“You’ll be fine,” he reassured, turning the SUV to the right, where all of a sudden, we were facing a garage door half buried in snow. “Stay here.” He grabbed his gloves and opened his door.

“Wait!” I quickly shrugged off his jacket and handed it to him.

He took it without making eye contact. “Be right back.”

Getting out of the SUV, he put the jacket and gloves on, then trudged a couple yards to the garage door. Messing with what looked like a padlock on the side of the garage before digging in the snow at the foot of the door to reach a handle, he then shoved the whole thing up.

A cavernous garage came into view, complete with a drift of snow still standing in front as if the door had never been lifted. The headlight beams illuminated a swath of the concrete floor and wood walls, and I could see some hanging tools and a locked metal cabinet in back.

Shade kicked some of the snow away, then made his way back to the SUV and got behind the wheel. Without comment, he drove through the drift and into the confined space.

I’d never been so happy to be in a garage in my entire life.

“Wait here.” Shade threw the SUV into Park but left the engine running. “I’m going to clear a path.”

Hopping out before I could say anything, he quickly shut the door and grabbed a snow shovel from where it hung on a peg on the wall.

I turned in my seat to watch him.

He first walked in the tracks the tires made, then in shin-deep snow across the width of road we’d come in on, moving toward the steep-pitched roof that was practically eye level. When he got to what looked like the edge of the world, he paused and scanned his surroundings. Looking like he was about to go over the cliff and plummet to his death, but also looking like he was listening for something, he stood perfectly still as snow fell on his dark hair.

Then he shook his head and took a step forward.

I gasped, but he only went down a few feet.

Visible only from the waist up from my vantage point, he began to shovel snow.

I couldn’t see what he was clearing, but it didn’t matter. In the almost unnatural illumination of a snowstorm at night, I watched a man who looked unstoppable methodically scoop, lift and throw heavy shovelfuls of dense snow over his shoulder.

His mouth not opening from the exertion he was putting out, his movements fast but not hurried, his arms didn’t falter once under the weight of his task.

I’d never seen anything sexier.

And it was over in minutes.

Swinging the shovel over his shoulder, his gaze alternating between the road we’d come up on and the snow-covered pine branches overhead, he strode back toward the garage as if walking in deep snow was nothing.

He put the shovel back in its place, then opened the driver door, but he didn’t get in. Taking off the jacket, he tossed it at me. “Put that on, princess.” No inflection in his tone and sounding distracted, he didn’t glance at me as he cut the engine and grabbed his keys.

I slid my arms into the warm jacket that smelled even more strongly of him now.

He shut the driver door and opened the door behind it to grab his bag. Before he closed it, he glanced at me. “Problem?”

I realized I was sitting there just staring at him.

I knew he was former military. I knew he could protect me. I knew he could disarm me with a crude comment as easily as he could with a compliment. He shot like a sniper. He went down a cliff in a vehicle like a stunt driver, and he kissed like a god.

But until this very moment, I didn’t know what it was about him that was so damn captivating.

He was simply unstoppable. Shamelessly so.

Everything about him was dominant, ruthless, and brutally honest. I didn’t think there was anything he couldn’t do if he set his mind to it.

I envied that.

I wanted to be that.

I wanted to be near someone like that.

My father wasn’t like that. He was conniving, and he used people, and if there was a way to cheat something or someone,