SHE HAD ANOTHER dream about him that night. Now she could fully imagine his body. His muscles.
She had a very vivid imagination because it was far too easy for her to feel what it would be like to have him touch her. What his rough hands might be like against her soft skin.
He would have rough hands. She knew it.
She baked bread. All day. And she did her best not to think of him, and she tried to remind herself that her dream was just a dream, and it wasn’t him. It was a fake man her subconscious had created.
He wasn’t the real Zane Fox and he had nothing to do with the real Zane Fox, and she needed to remember that.
She baked a batch of cookies and she packed the bread and cookies away. Then she got into her car and drove to the widow Martin’s house, one loaf of bread and a few cookies for her. She delivered three loaves to elderly congregants and when she had done so, felt like perhaps her good deeds had washed her clean of her transgressions. Of her fantasies.
But she could still see them too vividly. And she found herself with half a dozen cookies and two loaves left over, and then found herself at the trailhead again.
She was wearing a dress. And her shoes weren’t practical to walk up there, not now.
And yet, she got out of the car and found herself carrying a basket and wandering down that familiar trail in her red floral dress.
She stumbled on the rocks and kept on going, gritting her teeth. This was insanity, and yet here she was.
It was late in the day, so he wouldn’t be naked.
Maybe.
Maybe he wouldn’t even be there, which wouldn’t help her retrieve her backpack, but she could leave the bread as a peace offering.
So she went on, cursing the rocks without using profanity and trying to keep her thoughts from churning back to her fantasies, or her memory of his naked body.
She arrived at the cabin and didn’t see any movement, and she seriously considered running. Like hell, in fact.
Which was the closest she came to profanity even in her own head.
But she didn’t.
Because she was boring and she was tired of being boring. Because she was stagnant and she was sick of that too. Because the last three days she’d felt alive, and she wanted to keep on feeling that.
So she pressed forward to the cabin, and on a deep breath, she knocked.
She didn’t hear anything.
She was almost relieved. At least that was what she told herself the feeling of the air in her lungs evaporating was. Relief.
Not disappointment. Because disappointment would be ridiculous.
She set her basket down on the threshold and turned away, trying to hide her disappointment even from herself.
But when she was only about ten paces away from the door, she heard him.
The door opened, and then he spoke.
“Well, well, there you are, Little Red. And I don’t think you’re looking for grandma’s house.”
SHE WAS BACK, the little idiot. Zane would never hurt a woman, he would never and had never forced himself on one. He’d never coerced a woman, even. If she didn’t want to, he didn’t want to.
And given the experiences he’d had in his life, he was absolutely opposed.
She wasn’t in danger because he’d make her do a damned thing.
She was in danger because he was almost certain she felt the same electric pull that he did. He also had a feeling it would be too much for her. And that if they touched, neither of them would be able to resist.
She was in a dress today, delicate and sweet, and if anything was revealing of who she was, that was it.
It was ludicrous. All of it.
And he should have let her walk away, but he hadn’t.
He’d always been bad at resisting temptation.
She turned, her gray eyes looking luminous. “No. I was looking for my backpack.”
“Oh, were you?”
“Yes.”
“Not me?”
She cleared her throat, looking admirably brave. “Well, I believe you have my backpack, so by that very token, yes, I was looking for you. But in aid of getting my backpack returned to me.”
“Must be a special backpack.”
She shook her head. “Not really, it’s just mine.”
“I can understand that.” He regarded her for a long moment. “Come on in, Little Red.”
He could see her debate that.
“I’m Shayna,” she said.
“Pastor Clarke’s girl, right?”
She looked a little surprised. “Yes. And you’re Zane Fox.”
He grinned. A warning, not a welcome. “Guilty as charged. On more than one count, in fact.”
“I know who you are,” she said. “I remember you getting arrested in front of the church.”
That stuck in his gut. He didn’t like it. He’d come to terms with a lot of the things in his life, from the indignant to the criminal, but he didn’t like she’d seen him bent over a cop car.
“You must have been knee high to a flea back then,” he said, stepping out of the doorway and sweeping his arm to the side so she’d go in.
“I was eight.”
“I see.”
“But I remember it. And I remember feeling so sorry...”
He cut her off. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Little Red. I did the crime.”
She seemed to ponder that. “I wondered.”
“I did. I held up a liquor store with my father. I held a gun the same as he did.”
“You were what...eighteen?”
He didn’t see the point in following her down that path. She was looking to absolve him because of his age. But that wasn’t an excuse. “When you were eight did you know bad men got arrested?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know stealing was wrong and robbing liquor stores was bad?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So there you have it. No excuses.”
She shrugged his words right off. “My dad is a pastor, right and wrong are kind of his thing. Wasn’t yours a career criminal?”
“He was. Emphasis on was. He’s dead now.”
She nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m mostly sorry for the worms he’s poisoning while he goes back to the dust. The man was toxic, through and through.”
If she was shocked by his crass statement, she didn’t show it. “I’ve heard about him.”
“I imagine in the same breath you heard about me.”
She didn’t deny it. “Do you have my backpack?”
“Just a second.”
He went out of the living room, back into the bedroom. There were only two rooms in the cabin. The living room and kitchen area, and the bedroom. And he took her backpack off the chair in the bedroom and walked back out into the tiny living space.
“Here you go, Little Red.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“What’s in the basket?” he asked, gesturing toward her.
“Oh. Bread. And cookies. I thought you might be in need.” She looked around the space. “I’m surprised by how the place looks inside. It’s a bit...”
“Cleaner than you thought?”
“And newer.”
“I learned to do construction when I got out of prison. That’s a practical skill. I know how to fix things. Good with my hands.”
He didn’t imagine it. She turned pink. Bright pink. From her cheeks down her neck, a color that vanished beneath the neckline of her dress.
If he wasn’t mistaken, her response to him was a bit carnal.
But then, she’d seen him naked coming up from the creek, and she was back. To get her backpack, yes, but also with bread.
Don’t let your imagination run away with you.
Except, he wasn’t a man who did that. Not ever.
He didn’t get caught up or swept away. He was firmly planted in reality, and the reality was, this woman was looking at him and turning pink, and she was back in his house when she didn’t need to be, and she’d brought him bread.
“So you’d say...you’d say you changed your life?” she said.
“Do I rob liquor stores anymore? Is that your real question?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t.”
“Then maybe you should make your real question clear.”
She looked surreptitiously around the room, like she was checking the place out, but he had a feeling she was just avoiding eye contact. There was something on her mind, that was for sure, and it wasn’t backpacks or bread.
“You changed your life,” she said. “And I don’t know how to do that. I’m stuck.”
“I imagine you aren’t stuck in a life of crime.”
She shook her head. “Worse. I’m boring.”
He laughed. “Oh honey, there’s a lot of shit that’s worse than boring. If you’d been to prison, you’d know that.”
“Okay, that’s fair. But I still want to know how to be different.”
He shrugged. “You be different. I don’t know why I’m giving life advice to a little girl in a red dress who looks like she just escaped the local nunnery.”
It was a mean thing to say and he could see that he’d gotten her good. But why worry about that? She should leave. And if he had to poke her a bit to get her to go, that was all the same to him.
She set the basket down on the counter.
“I did not escape a nunnery. I am not a child. I am not just the preacher’s daughter. I am not boring, not on purpose. I just... I just...”
And then she did something wholly unexpected.
Right then, Little Red flung herself across the space, and against his chest, and then she stretched up on her toes and kissed him.