Page 22 of Beyond the Blue Horizon
He moved to the side, and I moved back toward the door as he rounded me.
As if the two of us were in a boxing ring and sizing the other up.
Disbelief filled his sharp features. “You want to clue me in on why that matters?”
“Oh, I don’t know…some random guy picks us up and tells us he has a place for us to stay and it turns out he lives there? Seems awful convenient to me.”
“Convenient?” It was a low, gravelly challenge. One of his brows arched like a blade. “Convenient for what?”
“Is this what you always do…pick up stranded women and bring them here to do God knows what with them? Let’s see what Yelp has to say about this.”
Okay, I didn’t know what I was doing. Making a fool of myself, probably, but he was too much.
“Yelp?” An itch of amusement ticked in his question, the man half in the glow of the light hanging on the side of the door and the other swamped in shadows. Every flinty, intimidating edge of him seemed to toil and twist in the night.
“That’s right,” I told him.
I whipped my phone from my back pocket, not even sure what deep end I’d dived off of.
But this man made me feel like I was losing my grip.
Unhinged and unwired.
I swiped the screen of my phone dramatically then opened my Yelp app, typing The Sanctuary into the search bar.
It populated and I said, “Here we go. Let’s check some reviews on the creeper owner of this motel.”
His dubious chuckle skated the air, and he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black jeans.
Okay, so yeah, I was being ridiculous. But once I’d hopped onto the train, I couldn’t seem to get off.
Because I started to read off imaginary reviews.
“One star. Owner is a real weirdo.” Up went my thumb, as if I were making a checklist.
“Would give zero stars if possible. Owner basically held me hostage, demanding that I stay at his motel.”
There went my index finger, and something smug flitted through his ridiculously handsome face, as if this were highly entertaining.
“One star. Stay away. Owner demanded my phone number.”
I lifted my middle finger, and I couldn’t seem to stop the grave I was digging for myself, and I continued right on in a direction that I knew better than traveling.
“One star. Owner seduced me. Sex was terrible.”
No question, the only thing that one did was expose where my thoughts had gone because the man cocked the most arrogant smirk. “Think you already know that last one just isn’t true.”
Right. That was the only one he was going to refute.
He took one step my way.
A landslide.
A hurricane.
Chills spiraled, and they didn’t have anything to do with the cold. I fumbled backward a step, and my back hit the door behind me.
Pinned by this stranger who wielded some kind of power that I couldn’t allow him to possess.
