Chapter 3.2….rough draft – here we go!
Luke didn’t know who to strangle first – the blonde who looked like she could level him with one straight on glare in his direction or Greg, the cousin who just couldn’t seem to leave him alone.
“I was just trying to help,” Mackenzie said. “I just hate the fact that they think they can rule the world.”
“It really wasn’t any of your business, MaKen –Miss Grace.”
“It’s Kenzie. And…I know.” She sighed, looked away. “Reporters just…get under my skin. A job hazard, I guess.”
A job hazard. Luke glanced at her wrist brace. Something had happened, enough for her even now to put a protective hand over it. He had to admit, he hadn’t the faintest idea who Hayes O’Brien, 007 might be, but judging by Cooper’s expression – full out admiration — clearly she was someone.
Someone enough to be the subject of a stalker, according to Greg. Just keep an eye on her, look out for anyone or anything out of the ordinary. She’s mostly spooked, and just needs a place to relax.
Perfect. And he’d have to play tour guide/bodyguard/innkeeper. Luke looked away, back to the road, barely missing a pothole that suddenly gaped in the road. “Be glad she didn’t recognize you. According to Greg, you’re supposed to stay under the radar.”
MacKenzie had to brace her hand on the dash, lurching toward him as the truck jolted.
“Sorry.”
She glanced at him, her expression for the first time soft. “I really am sorry I butted in. And you’re right. The last thing I need is some reporter recognizing me. We’d have the national media on our trail in a second. You just looked…”
She shook her head, as if self-editing.
“What – how did I look?”
She pulled in a breath through her teeth. “Can we just…start over?”
They’d turned off the main highway, and even the winding side road, and now trekked a dirt trail that led to his cabin – or he should say the Alexander family cabin, as Greg’s side of the family technically owned it also. But most of his clan had moved on – further west, some of them down to Georgia. He’d thought the place free and clear for his use…
Until today.
“Not until you answer my question – how did I look?”
“I am around actors way too much, probably. I see things that aren’t there. And, really it isn’t any of my business, like you – “
“How did I look?” Luke glanced at her, a sick feeling needling his chest. He’d thought he’d done a masterful job of packing down his feelings, his guilt, his –
“Tortured. That woman mentioned someone, and you got a look on your face that made me just…oh nothing. I’m sorry. I’ve been around some dark places lately. I’m probably over sensitive.”
Luke swallowed past the burr lodged in his throat, hating that, in an instant, this stranger had seen everything he’d been trying to hide. Or perhaps run from. Or both, depending on the day.
And he simply froze when Candy had mentioned Patsy Gerard. And the fact she’d written a book.
In part, about him.
Or, at least about what she supposed happened. Dark Secrets? Yeah, that was an understatement.
“Why did you say that to me?”
Luke cut his eyes her direction. “Say what?”
“About not being a hero? About being a murderer.” The rain bulleted the windshield and he turned the wipers up higher.
“I think now is a good time to start over.”
She considered him for a moment. “Okay. Sorry. It’s the actress in me. I see something in a person, and I like to know where it came from. It’s a part of getting inside someone’s skin to understand them, and perhaps, eventually, emulate that emotion for the screen.”
She couldn’t emulate watching a child die in front of her eyes. Or seeing your best friend shot down, his blood warm on your hands. But Luke nodded, searching for a topic change.
Like…the fact that while she could read someone at a glance, apparently he had the sensitivity of a moose. “I can’t believe I said…well, what I said to you.” Even as he thought it, one eye closed in a half-wince. He’d practically called her a tramp. “I’m sorry about that.”
She must be trying as hard as he because she offered a laugh. “Yeah, I had to admit, it threw me. But I’ve been called worse…recently.” Her voice ended with a sigh.
“Like what?” He slowed the truck as he came to a narrow bridge. Under it, an offshoot of the Doe River rushed in a white, angry swirl over rocks and downed logs through the woods. Sometimes, after a hard day’s work, he’d come down here, find a notch in the rocks and let the rapids pour over his aching muscles. But after a rain like today, it could sweep him right over, slam his head against a boulder, drown him in three feet of water.
The wooden bridge creaked as he eased over it.
“Is this thing safe?”
“Probably,” he said.
She had taken her hand off her brace and now it whitened on the door grip.
“Really, we’ll be fine. It’s sturdy enough.”
“Where are we going?”
“My cabin.”
She shot him a look. “I…Greg told me it was some sort of vacation home.”
Luke shook his head. Yep, it was decided – he’d strangle Greg first. “Uh…I guess to some. To me, it’s a two room cabin with outdoor plumbing and a wood fireplace useful for hunting and hiding out. Of which, I think you’ll be doing the latter.”
She glanced at him with wide green* eyes. “Did you say outdoor plumbing?”
“Uh…we have a hand pump over the sink, but the, er, facilities are behind the house…”
She closed her mouth, and by the angle of her jaw, he guessed that he’d have to stand in line for dibs on Greg.
She shook her head. “I guess it’s a good place to hide.”
“Greg said you’d been in some sort of trouble.” He kept his words casual, light. No need to spook her more.
She lifted a shoulder. “Greg thinks someone tried to kill me.”
Oh. But her voice matched his, light, easy. As if hoping not to spook him, either.
“That looks like it hurts.” He nodded to her brace.
“A little. But it’s not as bad as the time I jumped out of a moving car and missed the pad.”
Jumped out of a moving – “Are a stunt girl?”
She laughed. “First movie. Overzealous. I thought I should do all my own stunts. Not anymore.”
“How long have you been in the movie business?”
“About six years. I got a lucky break out of college – found Greg, and he landed me a bit part in an action adventure movie – maybe you saw it? – it was called Lethal Chase. From there, they cast me as Haley O’Brien, 006.”
“Is that like James Bond’s partner or something?”
She gave him a long, almost disbelieving look.
“Sorry, I don’t watch movies.”
“Oh. Well, no, she’s a….take off of Bond, only she’s American…whatever. I’ve done three of them now.”
Silence pulsed between them. Then, “Why not?”
“Why not…what?”
“Why don’t you watch movies?”
“I prefer quiet. Reading. And…I don’t have electricity.”
She closed her eyes, shaking her head. “That’s just awesome.”
He smiled. “You’ll get used to it. I live off the grid, so I still have lights – via the river we passed. And gas lights if I need them. But you learn to go to bed early and get up with the sun.”
“Get up with the sun—that’s usually when I’m going to bed.” But she said it with a tone that suggested she might be stretching the truth. And, underneath that glitz and sparkle – and especially since she still wore Cooper’s raincoat – he suspected that she was a read-a-book-in-bed, get-up-early-and-run kind of girl.
“Umhmm,” he said. They rolled into a clearing and stopped before the Alexander family cabin. Luke sat in the seat, watching Kenzie out of his periphery as she surveyed her…vacation home.
A low-hanging porch with smooth-as-tanned leather, polished wood beams holding up the roof disguised much of the cabin’s beauty – the leaded glass windows, the hand-carved door, the Riverstone fireplace that cut through the center of the cabin for heat, as well as cooking. “How old is this…cabin?”
“About…maybe, a few…decades.”
She slowly turned in her seat. “Guess for me – how many…decades?”
“Eight?”
“Nice. And I suppose those logs are hand hewn?”
“Cut right there, from the property.” In fact, the Alexander family passed down a sort of superstition about great, great grandpa still lurching about the eighty acres of Cherokee forest, putting tar in the gaps in the logs, or fixing the roof, especially on cold nights when the wood moaned. It made for a delicious ghost story for Trevor.
And yes, it might have something to do with the fact that Luke had never installed electricity. Or plumbing.
Besides, he also had the silver stream, parked on the other side of the house, if he got desperate.
“Ready?”
But her gaze stuck on a small building down a thin trail toward the back of the house. “Is that the…”
“Biffy. We call it a biffy. Or throne, depending on your mood.”
She winced. “Right. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”
He hid a grin. “Stay put – I’ll come around and—“
But she’d already hopped out, made a dash for the porch. Ho-kay.
He caught up just as she eased open the door and stepped inside.
Calling it two rooms veered on the side of generous – no one really considered the loft a second room since it didn’t have a door. Or walls. As he peered over her shoulder, he shot a small prayer of gratitude to the army for teaching him how to make his bed and keep his room clean. In front of the fireplace – on one side of the two-sided hearth, an overstuffed denim sofa faced the heat, flanked on either side by homemade hickory furniture. Books stacked beside the chair balanced a cold cup of coffee.
His gaze whisked across the Hudson Bay blanket over his double bed in the corner, the duffle of clean clothing he had yet to fold and put in the trunk at the end of his bed. A bowl of hardened oatmeal remains sat on the sink – he hadn’t pumped water yet into the kitchen sink – although now his rain-barrel on top of the cabin would surely be filled to overflowing. A red picnic table he’d rescued from a park cleanup crew filled most of the space on the other side of the hearth.
The pungent odor of kerosene mixed with creosote and wood polish, and for the first time he realized how backwoods the place smelled. Like he really might be Daniel Boone.
“You have a big family,” Kenzie said, stopping at the wall near the door, surveying the generations of photos taken. She peered close to a group of teenagers. “Is that Greg?”
“He was redneck. Don’t let him ever forget that.”
She tapped the photo, then sighed and turned, surveying the place in silence. He watched her face. Yes, she did have freckles, and underneath all that bling, a solidness about her that intrigued him. Did her own stunts, huh?
And, despite his annoyance, okay, it did feel just a smidge good to have someone take up for him. As if she might be on his side.
MacKenzie Grace. Maybe it was time for him to watch a movie.
What if someone really did want to hurt her? Clearly, they’d gotten away with it the first time. But Greg had seemed just enough worried to ask Luke to babysit. Which meant this stalker just might find a map and head east, to Tennessee.
And that scenario could only be slightly better than the one flashing through his mind since Candy had dropped the little bomb about Cindy’s book.
Luke pushed away the image of reporters stalking him through town…
And then there was the people he’d left behind. The ones who would love to track him down, right here to this cabin, and finish what they started in Columbia.
He blew out a long breath, leaned against the doorjamb, folding his arms. Yes, maybe he should be doing the hiding, right along with Kenzie. Because if his whereabouts really got out – not in Tennessee, but into the world at large, she wouldn’t be the only one with someone trying to kill her.