Tempted by a Dangerous Man (4 page)

“And then he tried to grab me… and I moved and pushed him.” I swallowed as I remembered it clearly. “Not hard, but if I hadn’t touched him, he would still be alive.”

“It was a freak accident,” Corbin insisted. “If you shoved him a thousand times, even if you
tried
to kill him, I don’t think you could have managed it twice. Look at me.”

I blinked open.
 

“For him to have hit as hard as he did, I think he would have done you serious harm if you hadn’t reacted. It was your body’s natural response. Push away the danger. Your body doesn’t regret it. I don’t regret that you’re here, with me, in one piece. If I had seen him trying to hurt you, I would have snapped his neck with my bare hands, and not a court in the world would convict me.” The intensity in his eyes made me shudder. “Say it,” he said. “Tell it back to me.”

“Tell you what?” I whispered.

“Tell me again about how he came at you, but instead of blaming yourself, tell it objectively. Just the facts. What an outside observer would have seen.”

I blinked. “I guess he grabbed the photos from me. I snatched them back and ran into the main office. Zachary… tried to tackle me, but I pushed him away, and he hit his head on the desk… and died.”

My last words hung in the quiet mountain air.
 

“Take a deep breath,” Corbin said. “Now let it out.”

I exhaled and stared at my hands in my lap. Corbin drew his thumb down my cheek. “How are you?”

“Worried,” I said. “And I still feel shitty about it.”

“You can regret that he put you in that position, but don’t regret protecting yourself. Don’t you ever regret that.” He released my face and stood, then sat on the rock and handed me my sandwich.

“Can you tell me the story from Zachary’s point of view?” Corbin asked.
 

Ugh.
“I would really prefer sex therapy. I’m not a big talker.”

“Neither am I,” Corbin said. “But maybe we can try, together.”

“Thought people don’t change.” My lips twisted wryly.
 

“Not unless they have a good reason to.” He ripped open a bag of dried apricots and shook a few into his large palm.
 

I took one, ate it, then said, “Henry sent Zachary to the office to see who triggered the alarm. The woman tried to run past him but he tackled her and sat on her.” I winced, remembering how rough Zachary had been. “Then he called Henry who said to let her go, so he did.” I snuck a glance around at Corbin. “Do you think it’s a problem that Henry knows I was there?”

“We’ll deal with that later. Continue.”

“Zachary… he took the photos. The girl grabbed them back and ran. He lunged at me.” My mouth had gone dry, the words choking up inside. “At
her
. And she pushed him away. He slammed—” My voice broke. Somehow, it was easier to feel empathy for the nameless girl than for myself. “Into the desk.”
 

Corbin pulled a lip balm from his pocket and handed it to me. “Ok, just one more question,” he promised, calm determination in his eyes. “Would he have tried to grab you if you were Rob or me? Or if you had been holding a gun?”

“What?” Even as I spoke, realization dawned on me, and the horrible, heavy weight seemed to shift.
 

That was the thing I had needed to hear. Not that it was a freak accident. Not that Zachary was a despicable person.
 

I didn’t reply to Corbin’s question, because we both knew the answer. Zachary would never have tried to take advantage of a man in such a way. He had decided, based on my size, that I could be physically handled. Restrained. Treated like a child instead of an adult. He saw me as harmless and therefore inferior to him.
 

If I had been Corbin, Zachary would not have snatched the photos from me in the first place. He damn sure wouldn’t have dragged me around by my hair. And Zachary would still be alive.

“What a fucking bastard,” I whispered. New resolve eroded the edges of my guilt. I would not carry
this
blame with me. I refused. Even as I promised myself that, I knew it wouldn’t be so easy… but at least I could see a path forward, an escape from the obsessive, circular thinking that heaped fault at my feet.

“You could have said that at the house,” I told Corbin, afraid that if I didn’t keep talking, the realization would somehow drift away, leaving me divorced from myself again. “Strapping crampons to my feet and making me scale the Himalayas wasn’t necessary.”

“You weren’t ready to hear it.” He nudged my sandwich with his. “Please eat.”

I looked down helplessly at it. “You do realize that I’m not a python?”
 

Corbin raised a dark eyebrow.

“My jaw doesn’t unhinge,” I said. When he didn’t look amused, I added, “You’re not the only one allowed to make snake metaphors. Or don’t tell me you forgot.”
 

“That was several days ago.” The corners of his mouth curled. “So you want me to squish your sandwich? Cut it into little pieces. Or drop it in a blender.” He tilted his head thoughtfully, and his eyes gleamed. “I can think of some ways to help you stretch your jaw.”

I flushed. “I don’t know… you didn’t seem all that interested earlier.” It was even harder to eat when I couldn’t stop smiling.
 

He laughed. A few minutes later, he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and balled up his trash. “I’m not asking this in a judgmental way, but why didn’t you call the cops? It was an accident, after all.”

“Well… I was trespassing. My dad had changed the alarm code, so there’s no doubt on that point. The guy was dead, and I did push him. The photos had Zachary’s fingerprints on them. My dad and Rob had both touched the photos previously, and they know about them, and they would have gotten dragged into it.” I stared at the remainder of my sandwich. “Mostly, my brain wasn’t functioning, to be honest. If you hadn’t found me, maybe I would have called them, eventually.”

“Hours after?” Corbin frowned. “That would not have been good. I agree that his death would look suspicious. I was just curious.”

“What would you have done?”

Corbin took a sip of water. “Exactly what you did. Someone runs at me, I’m not going to wait to see how badly they want to hurt me before I react.” His eyes dropped to my lips, lingered there. “Unless it’s you.”

His answer made me feel better, and the flirt at the end went a long way toward reassuring me that he and I would be fine. I bit into my sandwich, and half the ingredients fell into the wrapper. “Does Zachary have kids? I keep thinking…”

“No, baby. He was scum. No one will miss him.” He turned to face me, grabbing my lower arms. “The most important thing, by far, is that you’re safe. You know what scares me? I’m worried that if someone does something like that in the future, you might second-guess your instincts and end up hurt. You did what you should have. You didn’t know Zachary’s intentions, what he would have done. But I do. He was a sneaky, underhanded man. He lived a world of lies, bribery and blackmail. Do you understand?” His face hardened. “He wasn’t hoping to give you a manicure.”
 

Stunned by the intensity behind his words, I could only stare. Corbin slowly released me. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then shook more apricots into his palm.

“Where is he?” I asked finally.

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Will… will he be found?”

“Not unless I want him to be. Finish eating. Plenty of trail ahead.”

After Corbin packed up the leftover food and trash, we set out again. As before, he quickly disappeared.

This time, I didn’t mind. Now that I was calmed down, I appreciated the time alone. I walked, sometimes trying to match my footsteps to his tracks. Soon the mindless rhythm of propelling my body through space took on the slightly meditative quality as before lunch. Except this time, my mind wasn’t blank, hiding.
 

Talking with Corbin hadn’t set everything back to normal. I had pushed Zachary. No matter that he
never
would have rushed Corbin like he did me. I owned my part in his death, and there was a foreign coldness deep inside me that hadn’t been there before. I wasn’t sure it would ever leave. So easy to think of it as the frozen edges of a part of my soul that I’d lost, or that I’d damaged irreparably. I felt old.

I remembered how rude I had been that morning and winced. Corbin deserved an apology. I didn’t want to take him for granted; as inexperienced as I was at relationships, even I knew that—it was something I had watched my dad screw up so many times.

At the moment I was very happy that I had vehemently denied my feelings for Corbin in the safe house. My growing attachment to him plus my breakdown would have been enough to send anyone packing. I had lied, one of the few things that Corbin couldn’t stand, but I would have lost him if I hadn’t.

My breath was coming fast and steady as the trail suddenly grew steeper. The poles were necessary now for balance and speed. By the time I reached the next level-ish area, I was completely winded.

I wondered how far ahead Corbin was, and if he was still enjoying this torturous little jaunt. I pressed on, and twenty minutes later I was rewarded with a stunning view of a deep valley. I stared out over it, mesmerized by the graceful evergreen trees dusted with fluffy snow. Such beauty in the world.

And I didn’t want to miss it.
 

~~~

A couple of hours later, I spotted Corbin just ahead. “Ready for a break?” he asked as soon as I reached him.

I nodded, too winded to speak.
 

“Good.”

Before I had time to catch my breath, he started off again. This time, he veered away from the trail.
 

“How is that a break?” Shaking my head, I dug deep, found a reserve of energy, and followed. He went slower now.

“Step where I do. Bumping into stuff with snowshoes on can be dangerous.” He used his poles to locate buried rocks. A few minutes later the back of a log cabin came into view. “You asked where we’re going? There.”

“That was hours ago.”
 

“I’m a man who likes to take his time,” he drawled. “By the way, you keep rolling your eyes like that and you’ll set off an avalanche.”

“You weren’t even looking at me!”

“Baby, I could feel it.”

There was a sharp incline to scramble up. Corbin climbed first, sort of duck-walking as he went. He stopped at the top, turned one of his hiking poles around and extended the handle toward me.

“Such a gentleman,” I panted. I bunched my poles together in one hand and grabbed on, and Corbin easily helped me up. I followed him around to the front of the cabin.
 

He undid his snowshoes, then took mine off. He banged them against the side of the cabin. Hardened icy clods of snow shook loose.

After digging in his pocket for keys, he unlocked the front door and pushed it open, then stood back, allowing me to enter first. It was so much brighter outside that I couldn’t see much beyond the door, but there was a bench, the upholstered seat threadbare. I pulled off the water backpack and sat. Every muscle in my body sighed in relief.

“I’m going to get some firewood,” Corbin said. He left before I could offer to help.

The cabin was smallish, one enormous room subdivided between kitchen and non-kitchen, with a hall at the back. The place didn’t need a third of the furniture in it. The kitchen alone held two tables and about twelve chairs, some of them stacked neatly in a corner. Three mismatched couches made a U-shaped area, a sort of shabby mirror of the luxury multi-sectional sofa in the house we had left.
 

The walls were bare, but the manic floral curtains that hung above the kitchen sink and along the adjoining wall did their part to liven things up.

Corbin came in, no wood. “You have to see this.” There was an excitement in his eyes that had my heart turning somersaults in my chest. I found myself smiling as I zipped up my coat and went outside with him.

We went down a curved path, and Corbin pointed. “I almost scared her off.”

I stared. Ahead of us was a small shed, the door ajar. Inside the shed there seemed to be enough chopped firewood to heat a city. No woman, though.

“Who?”

He slanted a look my way, his dark eyebrows rising. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“Who? Scared
who
?”
 

Corbin was trying not to laugh. And then I saw her—a beautiful owl perched regally in a tree next to the shed. She was mostly gray and dark brown, with orange plumage woven through. A white patch almost shimmered on her chest.

Her head twisted, then she shook herself, stretched out one of her wings. The whole time, her huge yellow eyes watched us.
 

“How do you know it’s female?”

“Other than the red lipstick?” Corbin pulled me in front of him and hugged me close. Warmth rolled over me. “Size. The female is larger.”
 

We stood there a long time, watching the owl, our bodies pressed together. I loved feeling the rise and fall of his chest behind me. I could have stayed like that forever.
 

“Thank you,” I said. “For helping me. I’m sorry I was so—”

“It’s ok. And you’re welcome. I’m sorry that you have to go through this. I wish I could be with you every night, keep the nightmares away.” He nuzzled the side of my neck, and I melted.
 

The owl abruptly spread her wings and took flight. She flapped over our heads, so close that I felt her pushing the air, saw that thick feathers covered her feet.

Corbin kissed my head—or my hat, rather—and then released me. “Go warm up.” He headed toward the shed.

I started to follow, but he waved me away.

“Might as well,” I insisted. “I’m out here.”

“I need to check the wood. There’s a leak in the back.”

“Let
me
check the wood,” I said in my sluttiest voice.

No response. Grinning, I bent and scooped up a handful of snow. I quickly formed it into a fairly lethal snowball—Rob and I hadn’t gone easy on each other as kids. When Corbin stepped out of the shed to squint at a log in the daylight, I let the snowball fly.