2. Doc

Nadia

Iwoke from a dead sleep feeling creeped out and confused.

It was dark. A kind of dark-dark I'd never experienced. There was moonlight coming in the windows, but not much, and everything I could see was shrouded in shadows.

For a second, I didn't know where I was.

Then I remembered I'd moved into Weaver Cabin outside Misted Pines, Washington, that very afternoon.

I started to relax, thinking that was why I'd woken. I was in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar feel.

And then I heard it.

What woke me.

It sounded like scratching on the window.

Not the brush of pine needles.

Something like…

Fingernails.

Full-body pinpricks of fear and adrenaline assaulted me as I lay perfectly still, listening to that sound.

It kept going.

The last of the sleep left me as I listened, and as such, the sense of vulnerability of being recently unconscious also faded away.

It couldn't be fingernails.

Right?

I was a down-to-my-soul city girl.

My dedulya took us to rustic places, but only if there were five-star hotels in the vicinity, or luxurious houses with daily maid service and a personal chef available.

I'd been fishing (once, because I didn't like it).

I'd been hiking (I liked that all right, if there weren't too many bugs, though I much preferred hiking the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris—what could I say? I was my mother's daughter).

I'd never been camping (and had no desire to do so, note aforementioned bugs, but also, who in their right mind would want to sleep on the ground?).

I didn't mountain bike, canoe, bird, climb, and no way I'd ever hunt.

Truth be told, I had no idea why I'd picked this cabin.

Wait. I did.

I needed something completely different. A shake-up of my life. I needed to be away from the people and places I knew in order to figure out who I was, now that the only thing I was sure about was, who I thought I was, wasn't me.

What I did know: I might be in the middle of nowhere, but I wasn't in a horror movie.

Whatever that noise was had an explanation. Someone who was used to the outdoors, nature, etcetera, would know exactly what it was.

But that someone wasn't me…yet.

And I wasn't going to climb out of bed and figure it out. I could investigate tomorrow.

The scratching continued, and it was creepy as all hell.

Honestly, it didn't sound natural.

But it had to be.

I reached to the nightstand, grabbed my ear buds, put them in, took my phone from charge and cued up a sleep story.

With the narrator murmuring into my ears, I couldn't hear the scratching anymore.

Even so, it took me forever to fall back to sleep.

The next morning,I was stiff and grouchy from lack of sleep, and it being fitful when I got back to it.

Even though it was early May, there was a chill on the morning, so I'd put my pink cashmere robe on over my sleep shorts and cami, pulled on some socks, and I was sitting cross-legged on the wicker loveseat on the back porch, cradling my coffee and scowling at the lake.

What I wasn't doing was figuring out how to hack through the mental detritus that covered the entrance to the path I needed to take to learning who I was, now that I knew who I thought I was, was a total lie.

I was also realizing I lived in a one-room cabin—as adorable as it was—that had some books, a bunch of boxes I needed to unpack, which would probably take me an hour, and a TV that was supposed to be connected to Wi-Fi so I could load my apps on it, which might take fifteen minutes.

This meant I had a little over an hour of things to do, I was in a crappy mood, not only that day, but the entire year yawned before me, and I had no idea how to crack the seal on figuring myself out, but also, I didn't have any motivation to do so.

It was on this cranky thought, I heard noise, then caught movement out of the sides of my eyes.

It was the same side of the house the scratching came from last night (though, last night, it sounded like it was at the window by the reading nook, which was closer to the front of the house, and this new sound came from closer to the lake).

Therefore, I tensed, and those pinpricks of fear came back, attacking my skin.

Then he came into view.

With grave emphasis on he.

Sweat slicked body, covered only by a pair of cutoff jean shorts, and running shoes on his feet (sans socks—I mean, who ran in jean shorts and shoes with no socks?).

His dark hair was too long. Not long-long, like lumbersexual long, but the wet curls not only hugged the sides of his face, but also all around his neck. His all-over-tanned body was fit and buff—ankles to neck lean, defined muscle. He sported chest hair, fuller between his bulging pecs, a smattering from collarbone down to everywhere, a dense line leading down the center of his six-pack and into his shorts.

And he had a masculine face hewn by a loving hand. Strong nose. Hollowed cheeks. Prominent brow. Square jaw covered in dark scruff.

Gazing at him, I felt a stirring, the power of which I hadn't felt in seven years.

In fact, considering it had been seven years, that stirring felt more powerful than any I'd ever had before in my life.

His head turned to me as he ran into the clearing. He stopped, put his hands on his hips, that gorgeous chest rising and falling with his quickened breaths. He started walking toward me, and he smiled.

A slash of perfect, white teeth made a normally extraordinary visage deliciously criminal.

"Hey," he called.

The sound of his deep voice shook me out of my stupor, and I replied, "You're in my yard."

He stopped walking and his head swiveled slightly on his neck, shifting a bit to the side, his ear dipping toward his perfectly muscled shoulder.

"Sorry?" he asked.

"You're in my yard," I repeated.

He looked down at his beat-up running shoes, then again to me.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Run through it every morning a few times when I'm home."

The when I'm home bit was intriguing.

I refused to be intrigued.

"Well, I live here now and"—I swung my coffee cup out—"as you can see, I'll be taking my coffee on the back veranda in the mornings. So from here on in, if you'd refrain."

His lips were quirking as he asked, "The veranda?"

I swung my coffee cup again. "The back porch."

"I know what a veranda is," he shared. "Just don't know anyone who'd call it that when it's attached to a shack in the woods."

I was offended, not only on my behalf, since I now lived there, but on Dave and Brenda's. They clearly put a lot of work into this place and kept it in tip-top shape.

"This isn't a shack," I refuted with some heat. "It's a cabin."

"Same thing."

"Hardly."

He pointed toward the south but didn't take his eyes off me when he proclaimed, "It takes me five seconds to run through your yard."

His inflection on yard was not at all missed.

Sure, it wasn't a yard, per se, but instead, a big patch of dirt with a healthy scattering of trees that ended in a lake.

It was still my yard.

"I'm Doc," he introduced himself, taking another step forward, clearly not of Dave's bent to keep his distance so I, a woman alone in the wilderness, would feel safe. He was now only maybe ten feet away.

And I knew with no doubt I couldn't outrun him, and I definitely couldn't overpower him.

That muscle.

Lord.

And this was Doc, my helpful neighbor who was going to teach me how to use the generator.

Fabulous.

"The next part is you telling me who you are," he prompted when I made no reply.

"I'm a woman who functions a lot better after she's enjoyed two solitary cups of coffee." I lifted my cup. "This is cup number one, and I'm not halfway done."

This amused him, greatly, and I knew that because the smile he gave me was bigger, wider and whiter than the last one.

That stirring came back.

Terrific.

"I'll be quiet when I do it," he assured. "And I won't bother you."

"You won't run through my yard," I returned.

"You won't even know I've come and gone," he told me.

I had a feeling every heterosexual woman in a hundred-mile radius knew when he'd come and gone, certainly if he ran in cutoff shorts through her yard, so I wasn't buying it.

"I won't because you won't be running through my yard," I retorted.

"It isn't a big deal," he said, and he still sounded amused, not like he was getting annoyed, which made this whole conversation worse than if he'd stop being a man, listen to me and do as I requested without an irritating conversation.

"Is there a reason I'm repeating myself?" I demanded.

He dropped his head and lifted his hand to me. A hand, not incidentally, that was big, had long fingers, looked strong, and I could see even at this distance, was calloused from work. But he didn't do this to hide him losing his temper.

It was to hide his laughter, something he failed at doing, since those powerful shoulders were shaking with it.

Who was this guy?

No.

Nope.

I didn't want to know.

I arranged my face in another scowl, which only made him bite back a bark of laughter when he lifted his head and saw it.

Obviously, this made my scowl scowlier.

"You don't want me running through your yard, you got it," he acquiesced (finally!). "I won't run through your yard."

I nearly said thank you, but decided against it, because I shouldn't have to thank him for not doing something he shouldn't be doing in the first place.

I didn't run.

But I did know, if you did, you ran on roads.

You ran on sidewalks.

You ran on public trails.

You didn't run through people's yards.

When no one lived there, okay (sort of).

But I lived there now, so…not okay (definitely).

Therefore, I just stared at him.

He didn't hide his hilarity (though it wasn't vocal) when he said, "Nice to meet you Solitary Coffee Lady."

I did nothing but raise my brows.

His hilarity became audible with his chuckle, which was as rough and attractive as the rest of him.

He then turned, ran through my yard, and disappeared in the pines.

Ugh.

Whatever.

I sipped my coffee.

Stared at the lake.

Put that conversation behind me.

And felt the crushing weight of a year in the pines with nothing real to do, except the impossible, settle on top of me.

The sun was shining, glinting off the peaceful waters of a lake that was a good twenty yards away.

And still, I felt like I was drowning.