Page 16 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
No…
I ran over, and there it was: my laptop. Or rather, what was left of it. The once sleek and beautiful machine I’d hopedto write and publish my first novel on was little more than a twisted, blackened mess.
“Shit, Camryn,” said Oakley. “I’m sorry.”
My shoulders slumped. I let the machine clatter back to the floor.
“It’s gone,” I sighed hopelessly. “Everything. All of it. There’s nothing left.”
I kicked an empty container of dehydrated ramen in frustration. The noodles were gone. Even the flavor pack was missing.
“Where are your things?” asked Jaxon.
“My what?”
“Your clothes,” he pointed. “Personal items. Toiletries. Gather them up, anything you can salvage.”
I looked around again, scanning the apocalyptic landscape that was once my cabin. Eventually, I scrunched my nose at him. “Really? After all this?”
Jaxon coughed and shrugged. “There’s always the laundromat.”
~ 8 ~
OAKLEY
“I still can’t believe we just left her there.”
The snow-covered pines rolled by, as Ryder guided us along the long, winding road up the mountain. His jaw was tight. I could tell he wasn’t any happier about this than I was.
But Jaxon had been pretty insistent.
“Look, it’s not like we didn’t help her,” he reasoned. “You saved her from violence. We gathered her things. We drove her into town, and set her up in the nicest hotel that had room for her.”
“Motel,” Ryder corrected him. “Not hotel.”
“Whatever.”
“Not whatever,” I grumbled. “That place is a shithole and you know it.”
Jaxon ignored me for a while, as he tended to do. Ryder was easy to read, but you never really knew what was going on behind Jaxon’s humorless brown eyes.
“This is what she wanted,” he finally said. “In fact, she insisted on it.”
“She didn’t want to be a burden,” I reasoned. “That’s the only reason why—”
“And she would’ve been,” he cut me off. He whirled in the front seat, looking back to where I sat, hands on my knees, in the Marauder’s huge cargo area. “Never lose sight of our goal. Remember what we’re doing up there, and why we’re doing it.”
I lowered my head, bouncing with the truck as it rumbled along. Jaxon was right, but even so, I couldn’t help but feel terrible. For whatever reasons she’d come here, Camryn was in way over her head. Her cabin was completely shot to shit, even before the wolves showed up, and not nearly provisioned for winter. And now she was stuck in some strange old town, with even stranger people — a fact I personally knew more than just about anyone.
And worst of all, she was stuck there alone.
Damn.
The rational side of me told me I shouldn’t care so much, but a much bigger part of me couldn’t help it. Camryn wasn’t just alone, she was totally oblivious. She’d driven thousands of miles to come here, all on the romantic notion of writing a book in some cozy, snowy cabin. Instead, she’d picked the worst possible landlord; a man who’d abused her northern naivety and good nature. He’d also rented her the mother of all teardowns.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was breathtakingly beautiful. Even now, I couldn’t get the image of her out of my mind. I was obsessed with that long, blonde hair, and how it spilled so perfectly down over her full, beautiful breasts. Most of all though, I could remember how she felt when I first ran to her. The softness of her skin. The feel of her curvy, feminine body, as she lay trembling in my arms.
I told myself I’d slept across from her in case she needed something, but I knew it was just to be near her. Hell, I’d even studied her pretty face for most of the night. While asleep, theworry lines on her forehead were gone. Her expression was smooth, passive, peaceful. Just like the slow, rhythmic breathing she enjoyed while basking in the firelight.
