Page 29 of Claimed on the Ridge

Gary thinks I'm in Sitka at my mother's bedside. He gave me a week. Tomorrow that week is over. Tomorrow he'll expect a call, a flight number, a return date, and when none of those come, the careful window my mother bought me with her own money will slam shut. Gary Simmons does not tolerate gaps in information, and a missing wife is the kind of gap he fills with every resource he has.

I run the numbers the way I've been running them since the first mile of highway: how long before he calls the hospital and discovers I'm not there, how long before he calls the police, how long before the police stop looking and Gary's people start. Thesearch radius will expand past Sitka eventually, and someone might have spotted me somewhere I’m not supposed to be.

The bruise under my ribs throbs in time with my pulse. The pain has gotten worse, not better. Trying to earn my keep around this lodge instead of resting has aggravated it, a dull grinding that sharpens when I breathe too deep or twist at the waist.

I've been managing it how I manage everything Gary left on my body: quietly, carefully, with long sleeves and controlled movements, always hoping nobody looks close enough to ask.

I have two problems. The cover story expires tomorrow, and I'm falling for a man whose hands I can still feel in my hair.

I don't know which problem will kill me faster.

By breakfast, the guardedness is back. The old protocols click into place: watch the room, control the face, give nothing away that can be used.

Alex sees it. Of course Alex sees it. He reads me the way I read his boots, and the shift from yesterday's flirting to today's distance registers on his face as a tightening along his jaw.

"Something changed," he says. We're alone in the kitchen. Cameron took Dash to check the road, and the lodge is quiet enough that the fire settling in the next room is the only sound.

"Nothing changed."

He crosses the kitchen. Not asking. Moving. He stops close enough that I have to look up, and his hand comes to my chin, fingers tilting my face the way he tilted it the night he kissed me. The grip is firm. His eyes move across my face, reading me the way he reads weather, and whatever he finds there tightens the muscles along his jaw.

"Kendall." Low. Direct. A warning and a question at the same time.

My body is running its own program underneath the containment protocol. The one that registers his hand on my jawand wants it in my hair. The one that remembers what he tastes like. The one I can't shut down by deciding to.

"I'm fine," I say. The lie is so practiced it comes out smooth, the same two words I've been offering since the first time a doctor asked about a bruise on my wrist and Gary was sitting in the waiting room with his patient, attentive smile.

He holds my chin for another beat. His thumb moves once across my jaw, slow and deliberate, and the gentleness of it from a hand that could snap a fence post is more devastating than the grip itself.

Then he lets go. Not gently. The way a man sets down something he wants to break open but has decided not to. He steps back, picks up his coffee, and drinks it watching me over the rim.

He doesn't say okay. He doesn't say anything. The silence saysfor nowso loudly I can feel it on my skin.

I leave the kitchen before my body can betray anything else.

The bruise decides the issue by mid-morning.

I reach for a pot on the top shelf and the pain shears through my side. The breath that comes out of me is involuntary, a sharp hiss that I cut short too late. The pot stays on the shelf. My hand goes to my ribs and holds.

Cameron is at the table cleaning a carburetor. He looks up.

"That rib's been bothering you for days," he says, and the tone makes it clear he already knows the answer.

I open my mouth to deliver the script and Cameron cuts me off with a shake of his head.

"Amberly's at the clinic. She's good." He pulls his truck keys from his jacket and sets them on the table. "I can drive you, or you can take my rig. Four-wheel drive handles the snow fine and I can give you directions. But you should go."

The offer comes without interrogation or loaded concern, just keys on a table and a direct suggestion. Cameron Sawyersolves problems the way he fixes engines: identify the issue, provide the tool, move on.

"I'll take the ride," I say.

Amberly's clinic is a converted storefront at the end of the main road, a mile from the lodge. Cameron drops me at the door and says he'll be at the hardware store when I'm done.

The truck pulls away. I stand on the sidewalk and realize I haven't been to a doctor without rehearsing first since early in my marriage.

The clinic is small and clean and organized with the kind of efficiency that suggests a tight operation. A woman at the front desk with dark hair pulled into a loose knot and a pen tucked behind her ear looks up when I come in.

"Gayle Watkins," she says. "You must be the lodge guest. Amberly's ready for you in the back."