Page 64 of Claimed on the Ridge

I carry the .308 to the desk and set it down. Through the door, left cracked out of habit, the firelight reaches across the hallway floor. The leather creaks again in the main room. She's still on the couch. On the road, two men are moving toward my mountain.

15

KENDALL

The office door swings closed but doesn't latch. Alex leaves doors cracked the way other men leave lights on, an old habit worn into instinct. I've learned this about him in the space of days, and I don't want to think about what that says about me.

His blanket still holds his warmth. I pull it tighter around my shoulders and stare at the embers in the hearth.

The fire has burned low. Nobody has fed it since before the brothers arrived, before the kitchen table became a tactical briefing where I pulled up a chair nobody offered and gave four men everything I knew about the man who broke my ribs.

From the office, I hear metal on metal, muffled by the wall. I catch the click of a mechanism, then something heavy swinging open. Whatever he's doing in there, he didn't want an audience for it.

I sit up. The blanket slips to my waist and the cold air raises goosebumps across my bare skin. My clothes are scattered between the leather chair and the hearth, a trail that starts with a flannel and ends with denim kicked toward the fire. I get dressed in the low light, pulling on clothes in the order I find them.

The kitchen is dark. The light from the main room reaches the edge of the counter but not the table.

My notepad is where I left it, the pen clipped to the spine. I flip to the second page, the one I filled during the meeting while I briefed the brothers on Gary's patterns, his resources, the way he operates.

I pour coffee. It's been sitting since before the meeting, bitter and cold, but my hands need something to hold.

The office door opens. His footsteps come down the hallway, heavy and deliberate. Alex appears in the kitchen doorway wearing jeans and nothing else. He flips the light on. When he turns to reach for a mug, I already know what's on his back. The marks are mine, and the possessive satisfaction of knowing they're on his skin runs hotter than it should.

"You could put a shirt on," I say.

"Could." He doesn't.

He pours coffee without speaking. His hands were on me less than an hour ago. Now we're standing in his kitchen, and neither of us has decided what to say about it.

"The call," I say. "The one you needed to make."

"Made it."

"Who?"

He drinks the coffee before he answers.

"Amberly. She's staying in town. If the men come back to the clinic, she'll call me."

"That's not what kept you in there."

His jaw shifts. I've been reading jaws since early in my marriage, and this one says I've hit on something he isn't ready to discuss.

"What's in the office, Alex?"

"Equipment."

"What kind?"

"The kind that keeps people alive."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer you're getting tonight."

Gary used to talk like that, the same tone and the same finality.

"The deadline on'For now'is getting shorter."