Page 28 of Recurve Ridge

My fingers twitched at my sides, itching to pick the debris from Jon’s beard, but the giant’s presence consumed as much energy as he expelled. Together, he and Robe formed an impenetrable barrier, locking me out when, for whatever stupid reason my chaotic thoughts chose to fixate on, I wanted into their combined space.

I closed my eyes and listened, and the same voice that had been soothing me since my hell-mad dash through his woods worked again. When I opened them, Alan stood in front of me, dancing. His sinuous turns and undulations would have earned him a rabid fandom on socials, but from what I’d learned about Robe and his men, they hid the things that made them each so unique and formidable. A small smile broke through my chaotic headspace.

Alan never stopped dancing.

At the back of the cabin, someone thumped the floorboards in a deep, heartwarming beat, drawing the lithe man into a series of twisting turns that caught the eye. The interior space filled with harsh claps and a pounding tempo suited to the mountains around us, tribal and rhythmic, that stopped my mind from going back to?—

Fingers prodding, pushing, pulling, twisting?—

No.

Would I end up joining the ranks of Robe’s hidden world? The thought flip-flopped my stomach, but as I watched Alan dance, devoured the flirtatious movements, the secret smile he offered as a quiet intimacy in an overcrowded room, the fear of an unknown future drifted away.

“Thank you,” I murmured when he halted in front of me, conscious of the ball of energy Will created that thrummed on my other side, though the young man remained still. “That was amazing.”

Something darker and far more formidable replaced his bouncing energy. I didn’t have to turn around to know that Robe stood behind me.

“Good to know my efforts are appreciated.” Alan grinned, though his sparkling eyes conveyed something else to Robe in a silent conversation they held without including me.

Robe’s palm came down hard on the benchtop. I flinched, backing up by pure instinct—right into the wall of the man who’d caused the reaction. Alan’s eyes narrowed, but he backed off, both hands raised, palms out in surrender, though he flicked a reassuring look my way.

A light touch grazed my hip as Robe locked his forearms against the bar on either side of me, leaning forward to prevent my turning to face him. He stared at me through the reflection in the mirror that sat behind the top-shelf bottles, the rare sort he preferred to stock.

“Tell me where you came from, Mari.” Robe renewed his interrogation with a sweet voice, his demeanor so different from when he battered the counter with his open hand.

The switch in him was instantaneous, though I had wondered how long it would be before his voice hardened, belying his kind tone. After all, these men didn’t live out here in the middle of nowhere for no good reason. They hid from the world, or maybe the world hid from them. Either way, the words, his or mine, needed to come out for that to happen, and I already tried that while I dressed in the borrowed clothes he provided. My protector. My interrogator.

I saw him as a threat to my safety. He saw me as a threat to everything and everyone he held close.

He might be right.

I opened my mouth and replied with a gurgling mess I had no intention of repeating any time soon. “You could have tracked my trail back through the woods. From the damage I inflicted on those poor trees, I clearly didn’t bother trying to hide it. I was just intent on getting out.” That was enough to start the shivers again.

I shut my explanation down, biting my lip. He wanted an answer, a reaction, and he got one. I shrugged my apology, but how else did one run for their life? Concealment hadn’t been my intent; distance and survival were my sole aim. I sucked on the metal tang that flooded my mouth from my split lip, giving myself permission to shut up.

“We did.” Robe’s voice brought me back. “Several times to be certain. Your tracks disappeared in the middle of nowhere. You managed to carve up my section of the woods. There was a disturbed patch, then nothing. Like you were meant to end up here. Miller is an expert tracker. If he can’t figure out where you came from, there’s something wrong.”

“It was like you fell out of the sky and landed right near us. An angelic delivery.” Miller’s eyes accused me of some unknown crime, but his haughty tone prevented my disjointed explanation from flowing from between tight lips.

Something about the way he posed, displaying a degree of entitlement the others lacked, though several had a military bearing…. I frowned, turning over what made his glare so out of place in this crew of muscle-bound misfits. It had been bugging me the whole time I’d existed in their living space, flying under the radar.

Miller jeered, his lip curling. There it was, in the tilt of his chin, the narrowed judgment in sharp eyes that missed little. Everyone else in the cabin reeked of genuine hard work, and though I didn’t doubt for one second that he did his share, Miller’s demeanor included something the rest lacked.

Privilege.

“Private school boy?” I asked, still studying him, and knew I’d called it right.

His mannerisms told the story for him: the way he threw his shoulders back, how he stormed about like he owned the place. All he lacked was the sports car and a doting mother on call.

Robe laughed, his chest rumbling behind my head, and reached out to clap Miller’s shoulder in a blow that had to sting. Miller’s whole body rocked forward.

He glared at me for a moment longer. “What, you’re a shrink now? Is that what you’re here to do?”

I blinked. “I beg your pardon?” My accent thickened when I got cranky, but it earned me a grin from Robe’s reflection.

At least his interrogation had stopped, though Miller’s had taken its place.

“I think he wants to know how you turned up in my woods, right on top of us, when there’s no trail and no proof that you came from anywhere at all.” Robe’s tone remained conversational, though his gaze roamed over my body that bore the marks put there by too many assailants for even me to count.

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