Page 20 of Into the Lion's Den (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

Her shoulders jerked, and she suddenly raised her hand to her cheek. She took over with the ice pack, and my hand fell to my knee.

“Anyway,” she said with her eyes downcast, “I never got the chance to thank Toby for the tour. This place really does have a lot to offer.”

I could feel her gearing up for more nervous rambling, just like yesterday.

“Yeah?” I asked. “What’s your favorite part?”

Her eyes jerked to mine, and she bit down on her bottom lip. I watched that little movement with great interest.

“All of it,” she said. “ATVs. Horses. Shoes for walking in the snow.”

“Shoes for walking… Do you meansnowshoes?”

She nodded. “That’s what I said.”

I leaned in a fraction of an inch. “Sarah… Have you ever gone snowshoeing?”

She rolled her lips inward and pressed them tight.

“Hiking? Camping? Fishing?” I asked.

“Um…”

“Then what are youdoinghere?” An even better question: how much easier would my life be right now if she’d never come?

“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes going wide.

I shook my head and put out my hands in a gesture of complete befuddlement. All my employees were here because of how they wanted to spend their time off. “Why did you apply for the housekeeping job?”

Her attitude switched on a dime. Gone was the nervousness. She lifted her chin and looked me dead in the eye. “I came up here because I wanted to experience something different.”

“That’s it? There’s a lot of ‘different’ in this world.”

“No one I know has ever moved up into the wilderness, and it’s not like you don’t have indoor plumbing. I didn’t think living up here would be that far out of my comfort zone, and I was right.”

I studied her. I’d sensed it before—that feeling of something being not quite right about her. The scent of fear was back in the air, but she wasn’t afraid of me. Not entirely anyway.

It was something else. Something that had caused her to come all the way up to Evergreen.

My hackles rose when I finally recognized the nuanced scent I’d been detecting all this time. Sarah’s fight or flight instincts were at war with each other.

She was like an animal that wanted to run but was trapped in a corner, so it hissed and made itself look bigger than it really was, hoping to scare away the threat.

“What are you running from?” I asked, confident in my conclusion.

Her lips parted, and though I heard her slow intake of breath, she shook her head.

I stared into her eyes, looking for her secret—a secret that might have even rivaled my own. “Are you in some kind of danger, Sarah?”

She blinked, then whispered, “Not yet.”

“Not yet,” I repeated softly, looking into her beautiful, haunted eyes.

A second later, as if waking from a nightmare, those eyes widened. Then Sarah squared her shoulders and raised her chin.

I smiled, thinkinghere comes the fight.

“Did you have a chance to look at the link I sent you?”

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