MY HEART POUNDING SO HARD I could hear it in my own ears, I kept pretending like I wasn’t freaking out and looked to where he said the cabin was. There was only snow and more snow.

I leaned forward. “Where?”

He slowly drove us up a short but steeper incline. “On the left.”

The road leveled out, then just ended with a thick of snow-covered trees in front of us. “The cliff side?” On the left was nothing but down.

“Roofline is there.” He pointed.

Oh my fucking God. “That’s the cabin? Is it hanging on the side of the cliff?” You could barely see it from the road.

“Half cut into the mountain face, half on stilts.”

Stilts? “Is that even safe?”

“You’ll be fine,” he reassured, turning the SUV to the right, where all of a sudden, we were facing a garage door half buried in snow. “Stay here.” He grabbed his gloves and opened his door.

“Wait!” I quickly shrugged off his jacket and handed it to him.

He took it without making eye contact. “Be right back.”

Getting out of the SUV, he put the jacket and gloves on, then trudged a couple yards to the garage door. Messing with what looked like a padlock on the side of the garage before digging in the snow at the foot of the door to reach a handle, he then shoved the whole thing up.

A cavernous garage came into view, complete with a drift of snow still standing in front as if the door had never been lifted. The headlight beams illuminated a swath of the concrete floor and wood walls, and I could see some hanging tools and a locked metal cabinet in back.

Shade kicked some of the snow away, then made his way back to the SUV and got behind the wheel. Without comment, he drove through the drift and into the confined space.

I’d never been so happy to be in a garage in my entire life.

“Wait here.” Shade threw the SUV into Park but left the engine running. “I’m going to clear a path.”

Hopping out before I could say anything, he quickly shut the door and grabbed a snow shovel from where it hung on a peg on the wall.

I turned in my seat to watch him.

He first walked in the tracks the tires made, then in shin-deep snow across the width of road we’d come in on, moving toward the steep-pitched roof that was practically eye level. When he got to what looked like the edge of the world, he paused and scanned his surroundings. Looking like he was about to go over the cliff and plummet to his death, but also looking like he was listening for something, he stood perfectly still as snow fell on his dark hair.

Then he shook his head and took a step forward.

I gasped, but he only went down a few feet.

Visible only from the waist up from my vantage point, he began to shovel snow.

I couldn’t see what he was clearing, but it didn’t matter. In the almost unnatural illumination of a snowstorm at night, I watched a man who looked unstoppable methodically scoop, lift and throw heavy shovelfuls of dense snow over his shoulder.

His mouth not opening from the exertion he was putting out, his movements fast but not hurried, his arms didn’t falter once under the weight of his task.

I’d never seen anything sexier.

And it was over in minutes.

Swinging the shovel over his shoulder, his gaze alternating between the road we’d come up on and the snow-covered pine branches overhead, he strode back toward the garage as if walking in deep snow was nothing.

He put the shovel back in its place, then opened the driver door, but he didn’t get in. Taking off the jacket, he tossed it at me. “Put that on, princess.” No inflection in his tone and sounding distracted, he didn’t glance at me as he cut the engine and grabbed his keys.

I slid my arms into the warm jacket that smelled even more strongly of him now.

He shut the driver door and opened the door behind it to grab his bag. Before he closed it, he glanced at me. “Problem?”

I realized I was sitting there just staring at him.

I knew he was former military. I knew he could protect me. I knew he could disarm me with a crude comment as easily as he could with a compliment. He shot like a sniper. He went down a cliff in a vehicle like a stunt driver, and he kissed like a god.

But until this very moment, I didn’t know what it was about him that was so damn captivating.

He was simply unstoppable. Shamelessly so.

Everything about him was dominant, ruthless, and brutally honest. I didn’t think there was anything he couldn’t do if he set his mind to it.

I envied that.

I wanted to be that.

I wanted to be near someone like that.

My father wasn’t like that. He was conniving, and he used people, and if there was a way to cheat something or someone, he took advantage. My stepmother was the opposite. She walked without a footprint, she was so gentle. But Shade, if that was even his real name, he was just… genuine.

“Princess.”

I jumped. “Sorry. Coming.” I opened my door, and he closed his. It felt symbolic in a snowstorm at the top of the mountains.

He met me at the back of the SUV and opened the lift gate. “Grab only essentials. Leave the suitcases here.”

“Okay.” Already wearing the warmest things I had, I rummaged through one of my suitcases and grabbed a couple shirts and pants and underwear and socks. I reached for my sneakers. “How long are we going to be here?” The cold already seeping through his jacket, I started to shiver.

He took my sneakers out of my hand and tossed them back in the suitcase. “Those will be useless up here.” Reaching for my pair of Uggs that I wouldn’t have even considered wearing outside the house in Miami, he grabbed them and shoved them in his bag. “Come on, you’ve got enough. We need to move.” He took the rest of the clothes from me and unceremoniously dumped them in his bag.

I closed the suitcase, and he shut the lift gate.

It dangerously felt like we were a team.

Then he pulled the garage door closed, locked it, and took my hand.

Everything somersaulted—my heart, my stomach, my nerves.

Holding me tight as if he’d done it a thousand times before, he issued instructions. “Walk in the tire tracks, then in my footsteps.”

“Okay.” The tracks and his steps were already disappearing from the heavy snow that kept falling. Balancing on the toes of my boots, I started picking my way across the driveway.

“Kick it up a notch, princess.”

“I’m going as fast as I can.” Walking in heeled boots in the snow was shockingly more difficult than running in them on broken asphalt.

Apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough for him, because in the next instant I was scooped up into a bodyguard’s strong arms.

Air left my lungs in surprise and plumed in the cold air in front of us. I wrapped my arms around his neck and tried to pretend like I wasn’t secretly thrilled. “Let me guess. I wasn’t doing it fast enough for you?”

“That’s a whole lot of sexual innuendo for a small-as-fuck nineteen-year-old, princess.”

A secret thrill chased the already prevalent goose bumps covering my body even though he called me a teenager again. “You know, you kissed me back,” I half teased, half fished to see what he would say.

His arms stiffened, but he didn’t say anything.

Feeling daring, I pushed it. “I can’t mention it now?” Maybe kissing him again wouldn’t be the worst idea I’d ever had.

Trudging through the snow, not breaking pace, he looked down at me. “Woman, don’t test me.”

Even in the nighttime snowfall, I could see his eyes were a lighter brown circled by a darker brown. “I’m not trying to.” Was I? Because I didn’t think you could test a man like him. He didn’t seem like he would even allow it. He was all alpha and completely dominant, and I very much suspected you either committed one hundred percent to taking him on or you’d be left in his wake.

“Yes, you are.” He walked down a couple steps and set me on my feet under an overhang. Punching in a code on a keyless entry, he pushed open a heavy wood door. “In you go.”

I stepped inside and was struck by the view of the mountains in front of me from a two-story-tall wall of windows.

Tossing the bag he’d been carrying on his shoulder onto the floor of the entryway, he reached for a winter parka that was hanging on a peg just inside the door. “Close the door after me. I’ll be right back.” He put the heavy coat on and stepped outside.

Alarm hit. “Where are you going?”

His back to me as he walked off the way he came, he tossed his reply over his shoulder. “Firewood.”

A second later, he disappeared around the side of the cabin. “Be careful,” I called out into the night.

“Shut the door, woman. You’re letting all the heat out.”

His reply carried across the eerily quiet night, like the snow had blanketed all sounds except his footsteps and his voice. I listened for a moment, then closed the door.

Turning, I took everything in.

Small but modern kitchen, huge leather couches, bigger fireplace, area rugs over polished wood floors, wood walls, a staircase on the left going up in one direction, down in another, and the wall of windows.

Growing up, I’d been around the world.

From Sweden to the Caribbean, New York to LA, Mexico to Canada. I’d stayed in five-star hotels, Italian villas and even an ancient castle.

But I’d never seen anything quite like this place.

It was as if we were on top of the world.

Walking to the windows where a slider door led out to a narrow deck, I wondered what the view would look like in the summer. I couldn’t imagine the tall pine trees without snow on their limbs. Despite feeling so isolated and almost trapped, I didn’t know if I’d ever seen anything more picturesque.

Beautiful to me had always been the white sand and sparkling clear turquoise waters of Miami Beach. Beauty was the smooth trunks and feathery fronds of royal palms swaying in the ocean breeze. Home had always been the scent of ocean air and summer rain.

But up here, the mountain air that smelled like cold and faintly of pine was all at once unfamiliar and peaceful. I’d never been anywhere so quiet or smelled somewhere that was so pure. Maybe it was the snow or being so far away from civilization, but the place definitely fit Shade. The solitude alone seemed to match something soul deep in him. I could see how the mountain’s natural seclusion would appeal to him.

The front door opened, and with it came a rush of cold air.

I turned.

Shade stomped his boots off in the small entryway, then locked the door behind him as he held a pile of dry wood in one arm.

“I’m surprised it’s not wet.” I nodded at the wood.

“Again with the innuendos. Now you’re just fucking with me, princess.” He walked past me toward the fireplace and squatted.

Heat hit my cheeks. “I’m princess again?” Not that I completely hated it, it was growing on me, but I liked it better when he called me woman. I liked the tone his voice took on when he said it. His already deep cadence would dip, and he’d say it like he meant it only for me.

He tossed a couple logs in the fireplace. “You’re always princess, woman.”

Still wearing his leather jacket, I crossed my arms against the chill in the cabin. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

He crumpled up a few sheets of newspaper from a pile on the hearth and shoved them under the logs. “Then change it.”

Something in the past few seconds had shifted without me. From his second mention of sexual innuendos to now, he’d become colder. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it was me who had become warmer and I was only imagining what I wanted to see. “I’m not the one who nicknamed me that.”

Grabbing a few sticks from a pile next to the newspaper, he broke them over his knee and added them to the crumpled newspaper under the logs. “You know what I’m talking about.”

I couldn’t read the tone, or lack thereof in his voice. “I can’t change the fact that I’m Leo Amherst’s daughter.” Or that I had a trust fund I’d gain access to when I turned twenty, ensuring I’d never have to work a day in my life if I didn’t want to.

“Can’t or won’t?” he challenged.

Defensiveness hit, and I fired back with words that would never change the fact that I was who I was. “What’s that supposed to mean? Just walk away from everything my father has done for me?” Suddenly upset that we were talking about this, that the conversation had even turned in this direction, but even more upset that I was defending my father, I stupidly kept talking. “I’m not doing that.” I didn’t dare admit to him that I’d thought about it for years.

“I didn’t say to walk away from your trust fund.”

My back stiffened. “Who says I have a trust fund?”

He smirked. “You don’t?”

“That’s irrelevant,” I snapped.

“Sure, babe.” He let out a half laugh that was all at once condescending and judgmental. “You won’t have to ever bust a nine to five, but that’s not relevant.” He wadded up one more piece of newspaper and shoved it under the log with enough force to tell me he was as irritated with me as I was embarrassed.

My stepmother had been drilling into me since I was little that I needed to either work or go to school or do something like she did with her charity. And until this very moment, I hadn’t seriously considered how I looked to the outside world.

If I was being honest, I’d always taken growing up wealthy for granted. I’d even despised it sometimes, especially in the first days of rehab when the counselors wouldn’t shut up about my easy access to money and drugs.

But standing in front of a man who’d spent years defending our country so he could afford a hideaway at the top of the mountain away from all the people he’d served to protect, I felt every one of those zeros in my bank account, and right now it wasn’t feeling good.

“I’m not going to do drugs anymore,” I blurted.

“Good.” Using a match, he lit the newspaper and stood to his full height.

The fire quickly caught, and a warm glow filled the living area.

I’d never made a fire in my life.

Walking past me, Shade went toward the front door and hung his coat on the same peg he’d retrieved it from, and for some reason that made him seem even more human and me even more spoiled. I didn’t hang my clothes up. I didn’t even do my own laundry. I had a housekeeper who did all that. I didn’t even cook for myself.

Opening a hall closet and pulling out a shotgun, Shade checked the part where bullets or shells or whatever you called them went, then he set the gun upright by the front door.

“I thought you said no one was following us,” I accused, feeling small and spoiled and inadequate.

“Never said that.” Short and dismissive, his response felt like the beginning of a wall going up between us that I didn’t know how to stop or, worse, why I thought there’d never been one to begin with.

“Yes, you did,” I argued. “You told André their cars wouldn’t make it up the mountain.”

He spared me a glance as he walked toward the kitchen. “Doesn’t mean they won’t follow us.”

“You said no one knew about this place.”

“Did I?” He opened a door that looked like a cupboard but was actually a small pantry. Stepping inside, his height and width barely fitting, he pushed on the back wall that had narrow shelves with canned goods, and it opened. He stepped into a larger space, and the lights automatically came on.

“Whoa.” I felt like I’d stepped onto a movie set.

A desk with three monitors, two TV screens on the wall, a desk chair, a couch and a small kitchenette took up most of the space, but on the back wall was a floor-to-ceiling cage that was loaded with weapons and ammunition and what looked like every kind of tactical gear you’d need if you were walking into a war zone. “Is this like a panic room?”

“I’m a Marine. I don’t panic.” He turned on the three monitors. “Bedroom is upstairs. Shower has toiletries. Help yourself.” Dismissing me, he sat down in the desk chair.

For some reason, it felt shittier than when my own damn father ignored me. “And don’t let the door hit me on the way out,” I muttered as I turned to leave, not even bothering to point out the difference between a panic room and actual panicking.

“You got a problem?” he called after me.

Only a six-foot-whatever one. I glanced over my shoulder. “How tall are you?”

His dark eyes took me in for a second before he answered. “Six five. Why?”

A six-foot-five-inch problem. Fantastic. “No reason.” I took a step.

“Halt,” he barked as if issuing a military command.

Nerves shot up my spine and feathered across my neck. My stupid self so needy for attention from him, even my body betrayed me and reacted to his hostile tone as if he weren’t snapping out an order but luring me to bed.

This time I turned to face him and crossed my arms, but I couldn’t even manage the universal body language of disdain. The sleeves of his jacket too big and too long, they just flopped around me like extra skin. Not that it mattered anyway because he wasn’t even looking at me.

I told myself I didn’t care and dished out attitude anyway. “What?”

“You’re sleeping upstairs.” He typed on a keyboard in front of the middle monitor on his desk, and images of the winter wonderland surrounding us began to pop on the screens. “Help yourself to whatever you want in the kitchen.”

“Let me guess, you’re all out of Fiji water,” I replied snidely, behaving exactly like the trust fund brat he’d accused me of being, because I didn’t know what was happening and it felt shitty.

“The cabin has a water filtration system.” Using his feet to push his chair back, he wheeled over to the cage. “You can drink water from the tap.”

I held on to sarcasm like my life depended on it. “Gee, you’ve thought of everything.”

Unlocking the cage, he stood from his chair and stepped inside. “Your attitude’s showing.”

No princess, no woman, why yes, it was. “So what?”

“I pulled over and ran you on the access road on the side of the highway earlier today because physical exertion is a natural anxiety and stress reliever,” he stated unemotionally as he grabbed a phone from a pile of them on a shelf. “If you need to run again, there’s a treadmill in the downstairs gym.” He stepped back out of the cage, shoved the chair over to the desk and sat.

I felt like I’d been slapped in the face. “Wow. Good to know.”

He powered on the cell, then glanced up at me with a completely locked expression. “What else do you need?”

“Did I say I needed anything?” What an asshole.

“Simple question, Summer.” With the phone in his hand, he laced his fingers around it and rested his elbows on his knees.

“Summer,” I mocked my own damn name. “Well, that’s the kiss of death.” I hated him like this. I hated it more than I ever knew he had the capacity to not be like this.

His expression still vigilantly locked, his eyes on me, he didn’t reply.

Out of nowhere, a rush of jealousy hit me, and I was spinning down a sinkhole.

Did he ever bring his psycho ex here? Did he fuck her in the bed he said I was supposed to sleep in? Did he shower with her in the damn bathroom he’d told me to use? Did he ever give her his smile before he told her she was nothing to him?

Did he ever treat her as coldly and detached as he was treating me now?

Because all I’d seen was heat and anger from him toward her, and that wasn’t the mark of a man who didn’t give a damn.

Dropping my crossed arms, I shrugged out of his jacket and let it hit the floor. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

I turned and fled before he saw the tears in my eyes.