“We’re coming up for Christmas Day.”
“You are? Oh my god, you two are the best. We’re going to have the greatest Christmas. Just you wait.”
“Yeah, we figure you’ll have cabin fever by them. You’ll be slopping around in pajamas you haven’t changed out of for three days. Hair like a rat’s nest. Breath of death.”
“This ain’t no cabin, girls, and I don’t plan on having a fever,” I said, laughing. “Nope, I intend to pamper myself like a queen. Walk in the woods. Eat healthily. Drink water … and wine. And start work on that murder mystery I always wanted to write.”
I poured a glass of wine and settled in by the massive fire that had been built, ready for a match, in the hearth. The house had heating and was the perfect temperature, but I couldn’t resist adding to the ambiance with a roaring log fire. I raised my glass to the screen of the phone, and the girls did the same back.
“There’s a great little town nearby, too. A few bars and restaurants there we can check out. Bring sexy clothes. I plan to find me a mountain man who’ll fuck Rex right out of my memory.”
My friends laugh. “I thought you were going solo. You know, the whole single honeymoon thing. What did you call it?”
“Sologamy.”
“Sounds more like slogamy which I think means hard work,” Casey said. “I like the mountain man idea much better.”
“Hot ski instructor sounds good,” Dani adds. “He’ll be fit, burly, and ready to glide down your slopes, through your wet valley and all the way up to your heart.”
I touched my chest. “This heart is locked. The key has gone, but the rest of me is ripe for some fun.”
Dani tipped her glass to me. “You check out the town talent and we’ll be there before you know it to join in the fun.”
“I love you girls,” I said, not because of the wine I’d consumed on an empty stomach, but because they were genuinely great friends.
“We love you, too, Saylor,” they chorused back.
Later, as I lay in bed, I felt very alone. Not lonely, but alone in a way that made me small and insignificant. I couldn’t imagine Rex in this bed with me. Didn’t even want to. I thought that maybe by coming here I’d rediscover some sort of yearning for him. A pang. A need. A desire. Had I loved him? I couldn’t even muster up any sorrow that my year was ending in an entirely different way from how I’d expected it to.
It felt like a lifetime since I’d done anything meaningful with Rex, and I began to wonder when our relationship had floundered. Without the wedding sitting over the horizon like a looming weather event, I struggled to dredge up a memory that contained both Rex and a feeling of joy.
Perhaps I’d fallen out of love with him a long time ago.
The house creaked as the temperature outside plummeted.
Earlier, as I’d walked through the rooms on my way to bed, putting out lights and closing drapes, I had noticed the snow falling outside. It looked beautiful in its pristine silence. That was something I’d have liked to share with somebody special.
I slept like I’d been deprived for weeks. When I woke, I rose from bed feeling as though an enormous weight had left me. I headed straight for the shower, discovering my favorite shampoo and conditioner I’d brought with me were still in a bag downstairs. I hadn’t bothered unpacking much when I arrived because by the time I’d messed about at the airport car rental company and found my way to the house—having taken two wrong turns—all I’d wanted was a glass of wine and a chat with my girlfriends. Unpacking and organizing could wait until today.
I slipped a T-shirt over my naked body and padded downstairs to find my shampoo and conditioner.
It was his scent I noticed first, and when I turned the corner and saw him, I screamed. There was a man in the kitchen, standing at the coffee machine with his back to me. As he swung to face me I looked around for a weapon, noticing the knives were in a block on the counter, just beyond him.
“Good morning, Saylor,” he said smoothly. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be here?”
Oh, shit. Hunter.
He looked bemused in a ripped-body, smug-faced sort of way. Jeans aren’t supposed to fit a guy as well as his did. A man’s sweater shouldn’t be made of wool so fine that you could perfectly judge the contours of his body right down to the narrow waist. A disconcerting display of washboard abs that turned your mouth dry and your pussy wet. And speaking of pussies, mine was bare.
No panties, bare.
Naked, like a newborn baby, bare.
Totally. Fucking. Bare.
I tugged the hem of my old T-shirt to pull it below the level of my butt cheeks and stepped backward from the kitchen, around the corner, all the way to the staircase then I turned and sprinted, taking the steps two at a time.
What the hell was he doing here?