Wild Homecoming (Dark Pines Pride Book 1) Read online

  And…crap. That was why Jackson hadn’t wanted to spend the night with her. Something about consent and alcohol. If she’d cut back, she might have ended up with him.

  So, maybe it was better she’d had too much to drink? Because then she wouldn’t have made that mistake.

  That delicious mistake.

  She slowly sat up and placed her feet on the worn carpet. More water. She needed to drink a ton of water, get hydrated again. And it was Saturday, and sunny, and she’d hate herself if she didn’t go for a walk by the lake.

  *

  As she made her way along the trail, she thought about last night. That was the great thing about her nature walks—she could let her mind wander.

  It was also the terrible thing about these nature walks—sometimes she obsessed about stuff. Up until now, she’d mostly obsessed about her staggering debt and the awful place her ex, Cory, had put her in, signing up for credit card upon credit card in her name, using information he’d stolen from her purse and her computer. He’d been a true con artist, stealing her heart and her money all in one fell swoop.

  But now, she was thinking of something entirely different—Jackson. Was this any better, though? Could she afford to get caught up in another romance? She didn’t think so. Except the way he’d looked at her last night, his blue eyes sincere and hopeful—the only thing it had stolen from her was her breath and her desire for any other man in the world.

  She wanted Jackson. It was crazy, happening so suddenly. She’d been ready to go home with the guy, or bring him to her place, and they’d only just met in person last night. He definitely had a strong effect on her.

  She’d been vulnerable once before, though. Could she stand to be vulnerable again?

  Branches cracked behind her, and she spun around. Black bears weren’t uncommon up here, nor were bobcats or mountain lions. She froze in place, listening and peering through the trees. There was nothing—it was probably just a rabbit or something.

  She continued along the trail. Up ahead, it would open up and she’d be able to look over the lake below. She’d brought her camera with her to take some photos, which she could then work into a collage project at home. The coffee shop next to where she worked sometimes displayed her art, and she’d sold a couple of pieces to tourists who wanted a memento of their time near Mount Rainier. She wasn’t in it for the money, though; making the art was cathartic, and used an entirely different part of her brain than what she used while cleaning teeth.

  The trail was soft from recent rains, and she inhaled the humid air. It smelled green and blue and conjured to her mind images of earth from space. That was an idea she might be able to work into her collage.

  Another crackling noise came from behind her, and she spun around again, but there was again nothing there.

  Her heart beat a little faster in her chest. The first time, sure, maybe she’d been imagining it, or it was a rabbit moving quietly around. But now that she listened, she noticed that the songbirds had fallen silent.

  All her senses were now on alert, the hairs raised on the back of her neck. Something could be following her, watching her, and she’d never know it.

  If she continued forward, she’d reach the point where the lake was visible and she could take the photos she wanted for her collage. If she turned around, it would put her closer to whatever was in the forest, but at least she’d be on her way back to her car.

  Whatever was out here, she’d never be able to outrun it. Folks in town had spoken of mountain lions up in this area, and even Jackson had once mentioned them. She didn’t know a whole lot about them except they were cats. And cats loved to give chase.

  No chasing. She’d move slowly and steadily back to her car, and show whatever it was that she wasn’t prey. She fished her pepper spray out of her cargo shorts and held it at the ready. Some large rocks were at her feet. Becca had looked up wildlife safety with her once, and they’d learned that repelling a mountain lion could be accomplished by looking bigger and also by throwing things at them. But if she bent down to pick up the rocks, she’d look smaller, momentarily.

  She reached down for the rocks and gathered them in her hand, then stood up as quickly as possible. She backed up to an old pine stump at the side of the trail and stood on top of it to make herself look taller. Then she yelled at the top of her lungs and threw the rocks into the woods.

  Reaching down quickly again, she gathered more rocks and stood up. Then slowly, she moved sideways on the trail, keeping the shadowy woods in sight. Every few seconds, she yelled and threw another rock. Her pepper spray container dug into her palm.

  Once she reached the parking lot at the trail head, she could see her car, still the only one there. She couldn’t hold back anymore—she sprinted to her car. She unlocked it with the remote in her fist, scrambled with the door handle, and then fell inside, panting. She smelled like sweat and fear—until now, she hadn’t even known that fear had a scent, but whatever it was—pungent, acrid—it was all over her.

  Shakily, she put her keys back in the ignition. Deep breaths. Don’t hyperventilate. Just slowly ease your foot onto the gas and drive away. Home wasn’t too far off, just a twenty-minute drive, and then all would be well. Comfortable, behind doors, away from nature which, for the first time, had tried to betray her.

  Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to stop before she left the parking lot. She squeezed the steering wheel once and then twice, strong, pulsing movements. She could do this.

  And just as she pressed down on the gas again, she saw it—the long, golden tail of a mountain lion, whipping back into the trees.

  *

  An hour later, Summer sat at her craft table, a mug of hot tea in front of her, and thousands of pieces of paper scattered around her. Archival-quality glue stick in one hand, and a printed photo of the lake in her other hand. Honestly, she didn’t need new photos of Paris Lake, she just liked taking them. Different views from different seasons—she had just about everything.

  She’d found an indigo blue image and was looking for the best place to put it. She knew the bright splash of color would look great in the lower left corner, drawing the eye there so it would then travel up and outward to the other elements of the collage. Her only problem was how to situate it. After another moment’s careful consideration, she turned it on its side. The trees now looked like long, jagged teeth coming at the sky from the side.

  It creeped her out, but it also looked really good. She glued the image down and leaned back to admire her work.

  Her phone sat in the chair next to her, charging. Jackson still hadn’t messaged her, and she tried not to be annoyed. Hadn’t he said he would be in touch? She hadn’t been so drunk that she’d imagined things last night.

  She set down her glue stick and opened up the SocialBook app. Nope, nothing from Jackson.

  Well, she wasn’t going to sit around waiting for him. She might want to protect her heart, but he’d started something with her last night and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to finish it. If nothing else, they could get together, possibly hook up, and then…go on their merry separate ways.

  She wasn’t crazy about the idea of goodbyes, but already she was getting way ahead of herself. First, she needed to find out if he was still interested. She tapped on his profile image, which was one of the mountain lion photos he’d sent her, then typed out a message.

  SMG: Hey, just wanted to say it was great to finally meet you in person. I hope we can get together again before you leave town.

  There. Short, to the point. Not a lot of emotional involvement, which was what she wanted out of this sort-of-relationship. Get some great sex, get the guy out of her system. He’d said there would be no regrets. Now she wanted to see—and feel—him deliver on that statement.

  She stared at the screen for a full minute, willing the little ellipsis to show up and tell her that he was responding right away. Nothing. She was tired of doing everything through SocialBook, anyway. Without allow
ing herself to overthink it, she added her phone number and told him to text her when he had a chance.

  Now all there was to do, was wait. She returned her attention to her collage. The image she was creating was positioned on the page in such a way as to leave wide frames of blank white space outside of it. But what would happen if she took a little risk and added something, like an image of a leaf, that came beyond the framed image and brought the collage forward, inviting the viewer in?

  She was toying with that when she heard it—a low growl outside her front door. Just like when she’d been in the woods, every hair on her neck stood on end. Maybe the mountain lion had followed her home. Ridiculous. She’d driven here and the lion couldn’t have had any idea where she lived or how to follow her car. It was probably just a dog or cat, fighting with another animal.

  She walked over to the front window next to the door and peered out, but saw nothing. Strange.

  A second growl came from somewhere outside the kitchen. She made her way over there, as quietly as possible, and slowly inched the faded yellow curtains away from the window. The kitchen overlooked her pitifully overgrown side garden, and she saw nothing except collapsing trellises for withered pea plants, and the rotting planks holding up the raised beds where she’d abandoned her tomatoes.

  The growl came again, this time from the back. Or was she imagining it? Could the growling be in her head? Becca had taken a psychology class or two in college—maybe she could explain hallucinations to Summer and tell Summer that no, she wasn’t crazy.

  Summer closed the kitchen window and locked it, then ran to the front door and back door and locked both of those. She looked out the window of her bedroom that faced the back yard. She didn’t expect to see anything…and she didn’t.

  Whether or not that growling was in her head, she didn’t feel safe. She closed and locked the rest of the windows in the house, grabbed her phone, and went to her closet. She felt like a little kid again, hiding out in the closed, dark space, but it seemed the best possible option. If she heard another growling sound, she’d call Becca, and then she’d call Animal Control, whether or not that made her look crazy.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jackson sat in his motel room, staring at the ugly walls. Will would hate it here. He appreciated beautiful things, wood-paneled walls, wood floors, a touch of nature everywhere they stayed. He was all about color and design and art.

  Jackson knew that every shitty motel room they stayed in was a personal affront to Will’s sensibilities. And yet, Will had continued to make that sacrifice every now and then when they all needed space from each other, or to get out of the travel trailer for a while.

  Will had taken good care of them, protected them when Jackson couldn’t. And he’d suffered for it, with his leg giving him trouble since.

  And what had Jackson done? Behaved like a complete dick, yelled at Will, and abandoned him and Hayley so he could chase down this silly dream.

  He wasn’t the man for Summer. He wanted her, but sometimes it was more important to love from afar, to keep someone safe. And she could—he gasped at the pain cutting through his heart—she could find someone else and be happy and safe.

  He sent Will a text.

  Jackson: Hey. I’m sorry.

  Will: You ready to meet up with us? We stopped in northern Washington, hoping you’d change your idiotic ways.

  Jackson shook his head. Just like Will to only rub it in a tiny little bit. Just enough to sting.

  Jackson: Just so you know, the Clausens are gone.

  Will: Okay.

  Jackson: I was right that it was safe to come back.

  Will: And?

  Jackson paused. There was so much he could add to that. He could say, and I’ve found the love of my life, or and maybe we should rebuild our house, or and I don’t know what to do. But instead he wrote one line.

  Jackson: And there’s nothing for us here.

  Just then, a notification from SocialBook popped up on his screen. New message. He flipped away the text app and switched over to SocialBook. It was a note from Summer.

  He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Now she wanted to be in touch? After running from him (metaphorically) for over two months, she was now wanting him to write back to her. She wanted to get together.

  Shit.

  He’d just resolved to put her from his mind, because he was no protector. He wasn’t forever material for any woman; he was just some dumb shifter who couldn’t manage to keep anyone safe.

  But this was Summer.

  Another message came in. This time, with her phone number.

  Her phone number, coming from a woman who hadn’t wanted to show him a picture of herself or tell him her full name. Now she was trusting him with her number. Wow.

  Jackson touched the screen of his phone, just to feel closer to her, but it accidentally brought up the calling app. With Summer’s phone number right there, and the prompting questions, Call? Send text message?

  Well, fuck if he knew. He wanted to talk to her, sure, but…did he deserve to?

  Probably not.

  Could he actually manage to ignore her?

  Definitely not.

  Will texted him again. Hey, so are you coming, or what?

  Jackson closed the box asking him to call or message Summer and wrote back to Will, I can’t.

  Will didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. Jackson could practically hear him saying, “Dammit, Jackson,” even across all this distance.

  He found Summer’s number in SocialBook again and touched it, pulling up the options of calling or texting. He needed to hear her voice, so he selected call and waited while her phone rang.

  “Hello?” Her voice was quiet.

  “Hey, it’s Jackson. Are you whispering?”

  She gave a little laugh. “Um, maybe.”

  He whispered, “Why?”

  “Um, weird story. I’m hiding in my closet right now.”

  He shot to his feet, grabbed his keys, and headed for the motel door. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, just some weird noises. I’m fine, really, just freaked out.”

  “Can I come over?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and he listened to her breathing. “Yeah. That would be nice, actually.”

  She gave him her address. He was familiar with the street, Huntwood being so small, and didn’t even need to put the address in his GPS.

  “I’m going to put you on speaker while I drive, okay?” he asked.

  “I’m really fine,” she said. “Just freaked out. I haven’t even heard the noises in a while.”

  He climbed into the tiny rental car, folding up his legs and cursing the rental agency for not giving him the Ford Escape. “I’m on my way,” he said, starting the car. “It doesn’t matter if there’s any noise or not—if you’re freaked out, you deserve to have someone there with you.”

  “Thanks,” she said, her voice still quiet. “It’s nice to know you’re on the line.”

  “Good.” He did California stops at all the stop signs and tried not to growl at the couple of stop lights that had the audacity to turn red before he reached them. He couldn’t handle feeling this worried about her. Hearing her voice would help alleviate his panic. “So, what was the noise?”

  “It was weird, it was this growling sound, but it came from different windows.”

  “That is weird,” he said. “Some kind of animal, walking around your house? But why?”

  “I don’t know, I’m not baking anything, and it’s not like I have an animal here that would attract it or anger it. It’d be something else entirely if, I don’t know, I had several cats or little dogs or something that might attract a predator.”

  “Right.” He turned down her street. The houses were spaced out, maybe a quarter mile between them. Nice and quiet, lots of privacy. “I’m nearly there, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  His heart was in his throat, preventing him from breathing easily. He just needed to
see her safe. How had he gotten so wrapped up in her, so early? He’d barely spent more than two hours with her.

  He saw her house number at the front of a little house, maybe a one-bedroom. Cute little flower pots in the front, an overgrown garden at the side. He smiled, remembering one of her texts about trying out gardening before deciding it really wasn’t for her.

  After pulling to a stop, he grabbed his phone and jumped out of the little car. “I’m here,” he said, putting the phone to his ear. “I’m going to walk around the house really fast and make sure there’s nobody around.”

  Someone growling—what kind of dick did that? It could be a shifter, purposefully trying to scare her. He shook that idea off. There was no scent of shifter, just a lingering scent of cologne in the air. He sniffed once, memorized the sharp sandalwood base in it, and then focused on visible signs of someone messing with her house.

  The screens and windows were intact, and the latch on the back door was fine, too. “Everything looks good,” he said, before making his way around to the side of the house. “No sign of anyone.”

  He couldn’t tell her that he’d smelled that someone had been here, because no human nose would’ve been able to detect it.

  If she was his mate—and he was pretty damn sure that she was—he’d need to tell her that he was a shifter. But first he needed to know that she wanted him around even as a human.

  “Thanks for looking around,” she said.

  “Okay, I’m coming to the front door,” he said. “But you don’t have to let me in if you don’t want to.”

  She laughed. “Of course I’ll let you in. I’ll be right there.”

  The call abruptly ended and he looked down at his phone screen, smiling. Despite her fear, and despite the scents around her house, he was really happy to get to see her again.

  She opened the front door and then pushed open the screen. “Come on in.”

  He bounded inside, not needing to be asked again. Still, with whatever weirdness was going on, it might be safer for her to be out of the house. “What do you say to going on a picnic?” he asked.