Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
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.