Chapter 22

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Ella woke up inside Colton's old truck. She vaguely remembered his waking her just before dawn and shuffling her in here in a blanket. He hadn't said where they were going, and she'd been too tired to ask—then she'd promptly fallen back asleep as soon as the engine had started.

"Is this a kidnapping?" She popped a hand over her mouth when the last word came out as a yawn.

He smiled over at her. "Maybe, since you've been unconscious for a couple hours. It was starting to feel that way."

She un-cocooned herself from the blanket so she could stretch. "I can't believe you still have this truck. You were driving this thing around back in high school. It's ancient."

"Hey, now. Respect your elders. This truck is my most prized possession."

She smiled. It had been his most prized possession back in high school also. She reached up and patted the dashboard. "I apologize, beautiful."

Colton nodded in approval. "Good. Now she might get us there without breaking down."

"Where are we going?"

"One of my favorite places on the planet. Fairytale. "

She blinked, looking out the window. "We're going somewhere that reminds you of a fairy tale?"

"No, we're going to Fairytale, Colorado."

She laughed and untucked herself from her blanket a little more. "Is that a real place? I've never heard of it."

"It is a real place, but it's even smaller than Oak Creek, so I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it. It's in Northwest Colorado. I decided we needed a break, away from everything. Lilah is going to cover anything you need at work, and Bear has given us the full day off from camp."

Just for a second, she almost argued but then decided he was right. They did need a break.

"How long have we been driving?"

"A couple of hours. But it will be worth it, I promise."

That sounded fine to Ella. Honestly, merely driving with him was a treat. She wished she hadn't slept for so long, but she knew she'd needed it.

"Do you want me to drive? I've gotten more sleep than you have."

He smiled, reached over, and grabbed her hand. She told herself not to read too much into that, but the gesture made her want to break into a grin.

"No, I'm fine. We are almost there now anyway."

A few minutes later, a little town seemed to pop out of nowhere in the middle of the mountains.

"Oh my gosh."

Colton slowed so she could get a better look. The town was absolutely charming, which, given its name, shouldn't have surprised her.

Both sides of the street were full of quaint little shops with matching burgundy-and-gold awnings overhanging the storefronts. The sidewalks were lined with old-fashioned streetlamps. Cast-iron benches rested next to flowerpots bursting with vibrant colors.

Ella's nose was damn near pressed up against the window, she was so enthralled by this enchanting little town. "It really is like a fairy tale."

"And pretty much all the businesses here have leaned into the name. Beanstalk Brews and The Glass Sipper."

She chuckled. "I say if you're going to do it, go all in. How did you know about this place?"

"I've got a couple of friends who were born and raised here—Beau and Ezra Prince. One is law enforcement, one starting a security company."

Surely he was joking. "Their last name is really Prince ?"

Colton grinned. "Yep. The Prince family helped found the town a few generations ago. There are ten brothers in total. The Princes of Fairytale."

"It sounds like an enchanting place to hang out." She waggled her eyebrows at her pun. "Are we stopping here?"

"Nope."

"Aw, man. I'm disappointed." She craned her neck to look out the window as they passed out the other side of the little town. It truly wasn't very big.

"How about if we come back another time?"

"Deal. But if we're not stopping here, then where are we going now?"

"To a cabin in the wilderness."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You do know we have those just outside of Oak Creek, right? In our billion acres of wilderness surrounding the town?"

She giggled as he poked her in her ribs. "You just wait, smartass. You tell me if it's worth it when we get to our destination."

She knew it would be even if he was taking her to the most unremarkable place in the country. They were together, they were laughing, and Colton, despite not having gotten much sleep, seemed relaxed and nowhere near any sort of panic attack.

So, whatever cabin it was, she was sure it would be great.

About twenty minutes outside of Fairytale, he pulled off on a side road and then parked his truck in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. "We need to walk from here. But not too far, so don't worry."

He grabbed a small bag from the truck and held it up. "A change of clothes for both of us."

"I don't guess you have a picnic basket in there also?" She didn't necessarily like highlighting that she needed food, but she wasn't one of the size-zero models he'd been known to date in the past. She was already a little hungry.

"There will be some stuff in the cabin."

She was careful to keep her face neutral, but she grimaced internally. She'd been raised in Oak Creek, so she had spent a little bit of time in various hunter's cabins as a kid. Yes, they tended to have some canned goods and emergency rations. They weren't very tasty, but they would suffice. Or hell, it wouldn't kill her to fast for a day.

They walked for about twenty minutes and finally came up to the cabin.

Yep. There were definitely cabins just like this scattered all around Oak Creek. But she wasn't about to say that to Colton.

But evidently, she didn't have to. "Oh, ye of little faith."

But his eyes were bright as he punched in a code on the cabin door, and it opened. The fact that there was a code on the door should've clued her in, but she was still expecting the sparse provisions of a normal hunter's cabin as she walked inside.

She could not have been more wrong.

When Colton flipped on the light, Ella's jaw dropped in amazement. The inside of the cabin was small but beautifully styled. There was a decent-sized kitchen area, along with a couch, side table, and a large fireplace, then a very comfy-looking king-sized bed on the other side of the room.

But the most impressive fixture was the steaming hot spring nestled in the corner, inside the actual cabin.

"Oh my gosh." She couldn't stop spinning slowly in circles and taking it all in. "Wait. How is there electricity here?"

"A mix of solar plus clever usage of the spring that also flows out back. And the spring is also a natural heat system. "

"It's magical." There was no other word for it.

"The Prince family built a very simple cabin around a hot spring decades ago and then have been steadily improving it for years. I try to come here as often as I can."

"I can see why. It's beautiful and so romantic."

This was where he brought his women. It had to be. She closed her eyes and pushed away the thought. Even if this was where he brought women, she wasn't going to let that ruin the time they had together in this magical place.

"Hey." She opened her eyes as his fingers traced up her arms that she had crossed over her chest. "What just happened?"

"Nothing. It's silly."

"Tell me."

She shrugged. "You bring your lady friends here. I don't blame you. This is a great place."

He pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. "You're the only woman—the only person at all —I've ever brought here. This is my haven I come to when I want to get away from everything else and think."

She rested her head against his chest and sighed. "Even if you had brought women here, it would be okay."

"I know the press—and hell, Tony and the rest of my public relations team—try to make me out to be some sort of player or ladies' man, but that's not how I am."

"It's okay. Someone of your popularity is bound to have a lot of?—"

He shook his head, cutting her off. "They want to make it seem like I'm with a different woman every night because it perpetuates the adventurous hero stereotype—" he made exaggerated air quotes with his fingers "—but I have no interest in that. For a while, it was fun, but it hasn't been that way for a long time."

She felt bad that she was making him defend himself. "Colton?—"

He pulled back so that they could look each other in the eye. "I haven't been with anybody since you at the wedding. And even before then, it'd been months. I don't want you to get the idea that I think of women as disposable. And I very definitely don't think of you that way."

With those chocolate-colored eyes locked with hers, it was impossible to doubt the sincerity of his words. She reached up and cupped his hard jaw with her hands. "Thank you for bringing me here. Now, let's get into that hot spring."

He smiled and the tension was broken.

Once their clothes were off, they didn't make it into the steamy water right away, and even once they did make it in, they couldn't keep their hands off each other. Not that Ella was complaining at all.

Colton sat with his head leaning back against the edge of the spring, eyes closed. Ella was on the other end, also lying back, loving the feel of their legs entwined and how he gently rubbed his foot up and down her calf, as if he couldn't stand the thought of not touching her, despite the two rounds of lovemaking they'd just had.

"This is the best cabin ever," he muttered. "I suspected that was true before today, but today cemented it for me."

"I wish we could stay here and let all our problems figure themselves out back home. Speaking of, how did the sting operation go?"

He explained what had happened and that they hadn't had any luck.

She immediately knew the issue. "Well, the problem was that you were sitting there alone."

He shrugged. "We were trying to make me seem approachable in case the stalker got the nerve to come up and talk to me."

Ella sat up a little straighter in the water. She wasn't law enforcement or any sort of profiler, but she did know what it was like to be someone who couldn't get Colton Harrison out of her mind.

"I'm not sure that approaching you is her endgame, despite the letters."

"What do you mean?" His eyes popped open .

"I feel like everything she's doing may be more to feed the fantasy in her mind than it is to actually meet you."

He stopped rubbing her leg with his foot. "Honestly, that was my thinking too, until recently, when all this took a turn for the more crazy. I might not have ever really pursued catching her at all if it weren't for that. The knife through the pictures and the talk about being together forever."

"If you want to catch her taking a picture of you, I think you're going to have to be doing more normal stuff. Sitting alone at a bar isn't normal for you."

"Normal, like going on a date?"

Ella nodded. "Sure. As a matter of fact, that might get her jealous enough to force her into action. Maybe you have a lady friend that you can call up and ask to help you out?"

The thought gutted her, but if it got the stalker out in the open, then that was the only thing that mattered. Plus, it wasn't like she and Colton had any sort of commitment to each other.

"A lady friend I can call up?" He cocked his eyebrow nearly to his hairline.

"Yeah, you know, like an ex-girlfriend or someone."

He held his hand up to his face, his pinkie at his mouth and his thumb at his ear, simulating a phone. "Hi, is this Ella? I was just wondering if you would go on a date with me tonight. A date to catch a stalker might be a little untraditional, but at least doing it with you would make it amazing. Please say yes and save me from a maniac."

She laughed. "You know I'm not your normal type of date. I'm not sure of your normal type at all."

She didn't want to spend too much time thinking about his normal type: thin, leggy blondes.

He "hung up" his phone and swam over to her, placing his arms on the edge of the rock ledge on either side of her, trapping her in.

" You are my normal type now. So, if you don't have any plans for tonight, let's get back to town and see if we can catch a bad guy."

Maybe not the most traditional of dates, but she would take it.