Page 21 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
“He inks people.”
“Oh.”
“He’s got a dedicated chair at Second Skin, so he’s down there most nights. But he also subs at another tattoo parlor, over in Bradford. They let him crash on a couch in the back, if the weather goes south.”
Jaxon, a tattoo artist. Oakley, working as a deputy sheriff. It made sense, of course, that they’d end up with civilian jobs. It’s just that I kept going back to the intensity of that one photo, hanging in their cabin. After seeing it, I couldn’t picture them as anything else but soldiers.
“Look, the cabin’s huge and we have tons of room,” said Oakley, “so don’t say another word about it. I for one want you there, and I know Ryder’s ecstatic. We gave Jaxon a lot of shit after dropping you off at that hellhole. Tons of shit, actually.”
“Oh yeah?” I mused. “What’d he say?”
The SUV rolled on for a few seconds, before Oakley cleared his throat. “He suggested we had ulterior motives. That maybe we just wanted you to ourselves.”
A flock of butterflies took off in my stomach. Even so, I managed to chuckle.
“Well?” I pressed, mercilessly. “Did you?”
Was it a trick of the dying sunlight? Or had Oakley’s skin turned a few shades redder?
“It doesn’t matter what Jaxon thinks,” he said, ignoring the question. “You’re staying with us, until we find you a new place. Preferably one that won’t kill you by spring.”
A few minutes later we pulled up to the cabin, which was so far up a hidden driveway it could’ve received its own zip code. The place looked even more spectacular from the outside. A large solar array on the roof solved the mystery of what providedelectricity this deep in the woods. Somewhere off to one side, smoke drifted from a wood-fired boiler.
But what really caught my eye were the dozens upon dozens of fresh dirt mounds. These piles were seemingly everywhere, in a broad circle around the house. At the edge of the woods, recently-felled trees lay scattered in similar piles. I saw what looked to be some kind of excavating machine, partially covered by a tarp.
Oakley hopped out and ran around to my side of the truck like the true gentleman he probably was. He caught me looking around, though.
“Construction,” he said, by way of explanation.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “No way. You’re making this place evenbigger?”
He laughed as he took my hand and grabbed my meager bags. “Actually, we’re making the forest smaller.”
I squinted back at the mounds. In the back of my mind, I knew something about his explanation didn’t exactly ring true.
“C’mon, let’s get you settled in.”
Icy gusts whipped our faces as we hurried up the shoveled path. The big yellow logs on the windward side of the house stood heroically, fending off an entire mountain range of snow drifts. I couldn’t wait to get on the other side of those frosted windows, to warm myself by the fire.
A minute later I was happily inside, my coat hung up, excitedly following Oakley along. He glided up the thickly planked staircase, my bags in hand. Once again I couldn’t help but pause at the bottom, staring up at that dramatic photo, taken in some exotic, unknown jungle.
The ferocity with which the soldiers stared back at me was almost overwhelming.
“Wanna see your room?” asked Oakley, from the top of the stairs.
“Very much,” I grinned, and followed him up.
Down the hall we went, all the way to the last door at the very end. He pushed it open, revealing a spacious room with cathedral ceilings, a king-sized bed, and more of the terrible paintings that afflicted their beautiful log mansion like some horrible plague.
“This is Sarge’s room, isn’t it?” I asked.
Oakley nodded and dropped my bags.
“Did he paint all these?”
I pointed in a slow circle, to the many different wilderness scenes. Some of them were nearly identical, as if the artist were practicing a particular painting, to get it perfect.
“Yes,” replied Oakley. “Every single one of them.”
