Page 86 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
“Be ready,” he warned.
I pushed through first, prepared for whatever awaited us inside the shitty little motel room. Instantly we knew it wouldn’t be much. The place was empty.
“Check the bathr—”
“Is this my first time clearing a room ?” I snapped at him.
The thin line of his mouth curled into a rare grin. “Fair enough.”
I stepped through. The bathroom, which was the size of a postage stamp, was empty. A few toiletries lay open on the rim of the sink: a single toothbrush, a razor, and a notoriously shitty bar of motel soap. Beside all that, lay a bottle of Advil, open and empty.
“Ryder…”
Something in Jaxon’s tone made me move swiftly. He wasn’t an alarmist. I knew when he meant business.
“Here, look.”
I found him hunched over the night table beside the bed, staring down into an open wallet. The leather was worn, the inner chambers devoid of anything, even money. All of them empty, save one.
“Holy shit…”
Through the scratched plastic window, I could make out the general shape of the man’s beat-up ID. Jaxon slid it out, so I could see the face too.
“No,” I shook my head. “No fuckingway.It can’t be.”
“Look at it.”
I was in disbelief. Shock. Total denial.
“No.”
“Ryder, itis.”
My mouth went dry. Nothing about this made any sense. But then I thought for a moment…
And realizedeverythingmade sense.
“Fuck!”
We were back at the truck so quickly, I barely felt the blast of cold air as we sprinted across the snow-choked street. The engine roared to life, and the Marauder’s tires spun.
I only hoped we weren’t too late.
~ 49 ~
CAMRYN
I figured it would be easy, re-writing my story from scratch. I’d already done the outline, the notes, the grunt work. And since I’d written half the novel once already, I imagined that part would at least flow quickly and easily from my usually good memory, to the clean digital pages of my new laptop.
Except for the fact that none of this was the case.
Instead, I found myself stumbling along, struggling to recall even the simplest of details. I’d write and then rewrite entire series of carefully constructed paragraphs, only to murder them with the delete button. For some strange reason, I was doubting everything I’d written. And it wasn’t until halfway through the day that I realized what was wrong:
The new story and the old one were very, very different.
For one, I’d glossed over many of the details that slowed things down. The newer stuff I’d been writing was quicker to develop, and faster-paced. Plus, somewhere along the line, I’d interjected romance into the story without even realizing it. The lead character suddenly had a love interest, and a torrid one at that. It added depth to the overall plot, while lending passion, urgency, and steamy acres of all new backstory.
And it was good. Very good.
