“Because you mentioned a little…scientific inquiry, earlier.” She placed her hand on mine, and urged my touch higher, the daring, darling girl.
“Ah, yes. The experiment. For science, of course.”
“For science, of course.” She hesitated a moment. “Um, but I have one question.”
“What’s that honey?”
“The B and B, while nice, doesn’t exactly abound in privacy. And I’m assuming you probably live with your brothers…”
“I do,” I affirmed.
“So…is there somewhere private we can go?” She licked her lips nervously. “Our little scientific inquiry might be best carried out in private, if you know what I mean.”
I leaned close, whispered in her ear. “Meaning, you want somewhere you can scream, huh, Eva?”
She gulped as I traced the gusset of her underwear, under the table. “Yes, precisely.”
“Precisely?”
She nodded. “Precisely.”
I withdrew my touch and stood up, extended my hand to help her out of the booth, murmuring in her ear as I tossed enough cash on the table to cover our meal plus a generous tip. “I think I know just the place, actually.”
“Lead the way, then,” Evangeline said, and I didn’t miss the fact that she was fairly buzzing with excitement.
Damn. The girl waseager.
The thought that floated through my head, then, scared the actual bejeezus out of me:
How am I supposed to give this chick up, when she decides to leave?
6
Evangeline
Baxter handedme up into the giant pickup truck, gently closed the door after I was in, and then climbed behind the wheel. He thumbed the volume on the sound system a little louder, and then guided the truck out into traffic. I wasn’t sure where he was headed, obviously, but I began to feel a little nervous when it became clear, after thirty-some minutes on a two-lane highway, that he was taking us well away from the city.
I glanced at him. “Um. Where are we going?”
He grinned at me. “Oh, just a little place I know about. Why?” He glanced back at the road as he turned off the tiny highway and onto a dirt track. “Wondering if maybe I’m a chainsaw murderer?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “No, Baxter.” But then as the dirt track led deeper into the forest, I began to feel the tiniest smidgen of doubt. “Maybe a little?”
He laughed. “Relax, princess. Trust me a little, okay?”
“I’m trying. But you have to admit—this is starting to resemble the plot of a Lifetime movie where the heroine gets kidnapped by the burly, good-looking villain. I mean, the woods, the dirt trail, the deliberate build-up of my…um…libido…?”
He laughed even harder, slapping the steering wheel with one hand. “I mean not that I’ve ever seen any of those movies, but I do see your point.” He let out another chuckle of amusement. “Listen…I contracted for a handful of fights with this big-time dude from the Bay area. That was a couple months ago, now. Well, I won those fights I was contracted for without even breaking a sweat, and he wanted to book me for a whole bunch more. Sounded good to me, since his money was nice and green and came in handy dandy black duffel bags. Then after a few more fights, he got into some tax trouble with the assholes at the IRS and needed to offload some investments, I guess. One of which was this cabin way up in the woods. So then, a week or two ago my guy calls me up and asks if I’ll do a fight for him in exchange for the deed to the cabin. I took the fight, cleaned up like a boss, and took ownership of a sweet little place in the forest some thirty minutes from Ketchikan. I’ve only been up here twice, once to check it out, and once to clean it up and stock it with some staples.”
He gestured ahead of us as we crunched through dirt around another blind corner and then emerged into a clearing about a hundred yards in diameter. There was a patch of grass growing in a circle around which ran the dirt driveway, which butted up against the porch of an adorably quaint little log cabin. It looked old, but well maintained. There was an actual red well pump outside, near the porch, with a wooden bucket turned upside down beside it. A picture window with plate glass was situated beside the door, a red tin roof, a stone fireplace. Honestly, it looked like nothing so much as the setting for a Thomas Kincaid painting. All it needed was a gas lamp burning in the window and a trickle of smoke from the chimney. Behind the cabin, I could see hints of water from a lake or a pond.
“This is amazing, Baxter!”
He shrugged. “Wait till you check out the inside. I literally just got the place, and I’m not much of a decorator, as you can probably imagine, so it’s how the guy had it, but he had good taste, I think. Not even my brothers know about this place, actually.”
I glanced at him as we climbed the stairs up to the porch. “No? Why not? You seem close to them.”
He laughed. “Oh we’re close all right—tooclose. The second they know about this place it’ll be ‘Hey, Bax, can I use the cabin? Hey, Bax, can I get the cabin for the weekend? Hey, Bax, can Dru and I use the cabin?’ I’ll never get the place to myself again once they know about it, and I ain’t even spent the night in it yet. So I’m keeping it to myself until I’m ready to share it. They’d all do the same thing, so it’s not like it’s…dishonest or anything.”
