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Saw me?
My back stiffens. “When?”
Given the things I was taking care of and double-checking since her unexpected arrival, paranoia that she might have somehow escaped her confines, followed me out onto the property, and seen what no one is supposed to makes a rock lodge in my gut.
It would be impossible with the cameras.
I would have been alerted.
I would have known.
But that tiny kernel of doubt blooms while I wait for her to explain.
“Yesterday, leaving the house and heading into the woods with your axe.” She returns her focus to me, shifting her weight again, leaning more heavily on the leather furniture to support her weight. “Where did you go?”
I release a tiny, relieved breath. “Nowhere you need to worry about. Nothing on this property is any of your concern, including what I do and how I spend my time.” I allow my gaze to drift down to her foot. “Take care of that. Stay off it as much as possible until it heals enough to remove the stitches.”
My fingers itch to lift her into my arms and carry her back to her room to ensure that she won’t be hurting herself simply by moving, but I fight the chivalrous urge. Something left from a different lifetime that has no place here with Callista.
I’ve done what I can to make her stay more bearable, but I can’t give in to any silly impulses that having a beautiful, vulnerable, lonely woman around might bring out in me.
That part of Weston Barker died a long time ago.
The Beast doesn’t care about the comfort of intruders or how to make their lives easier.
Yet I still find myself yearning to help her, to offer her anything that could lessen the stress of being stuck here.
Clearing my throat, I swallow back an apology for the situation that sits on the tip of my tongue. “And make your lists of what you need.”
Her soft, pink lips part on an annoyed huff, her cheeks reddening. “How about some fucking answers?”
If only it were that easy, Beauty.
I sought answers for years, tried to find the meaning in all this, tried to find a way to break the curse that haunts me day in and day out, that keeps me from sleeping at night.
And after all that time, those answers still elude me.
Walking toward the front door, I fight the urge to actually offer her one. I pause with my palm on the handle and turn back to her, leveling her with my hard gaze, hoping she’ll get the message this time and stop asking. “Those, I can’t provide you.”
Chapter Four
WESTON
It was only a matter of time, but I’m surprised it took this long for him to muster up the balls to drive up here.
Maybe it shouldn’t.
The man is a spineless piece of shit, allowing his daughter to sacrifice herself for him to a man with a reputation like me. It doesn’t matter that Callista claims he forbade her from coming. He should have removed her from the equation, assured she couldn’t run off and do exactly what he told her not to by giving herself to The Beast.
Instead, he left the country.
Left her exposed and to her own devices.
Permitted her to come to Barker Mountain unimpeded.
The fact that Harold Fox took three days to finally come after Callista really ought not to rattle me. But it does. Because the longer that woman is here, occupying the same space as me, living and breathing in my home, the more I realize what a fool he was for exposing her to any of this.
She’s far too intelligent, observant, inquisitive, and feisty to be stuck here with a man like me—almost twice her age and not even half her virtue.
