A Promise Of Home (A Lake Howling Novel Book 1) (35 page)

“We’re celebrating our engagement, Rosebud.”

“Cool!” She climbed off his lap and went to greet Belle, who folded her gently into her arms, and then her father, whose smile was almost as wide as Jake’s.

His girl had worked it all out now. Howling was home and she was one of them. Smiling, Jake took the beer Buster handed him and went to join her.

THE END

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• Here's a sneak peek of book two in Lake Howling Series,
The Texan Meets His Match
- Ethan and
Annabelle's story, available now.

After swallowing another mouthful of soda, Ethan headed for his safe. He opened it, took out some cash, and counted out five thousand dollars. He put them in a roll, then pulled on a jacket and placed the roll in the inside pocket.

She obviously needed cash and he had lots, so he’d give her some and she’d think it was from the sale of her car. There was no other way Annabelle Smith would ever accept money from him.

She frustrated the hell out of him. The first time they’d met, she’d acknowledged him then hadn’t looked at him again. Ethan wasn’t a vain man, but he understood that women found him attractive. Annabelle had never looked at him as anything but a pain in her very sweet, tight butt. She’d curled her lip at him, snorted, scoffed, abused and generally shriveled his manhood whenever he was in a five-foot radius of her, and the hell of it was that Ethan wanted her badly.

Her scent drove him crazy, an elusive, subtle mist that he could smell whenever she was near. Her car had smelled of her and his body had reacted predictably. Her mouth was usually painted in bright colors and it was like a beacon screaming
kiss me
.

This is insane, Gelderman. The woman can’t stand the sight of you and you still want her.

He swallowed the last of his soda, crushed the can, then went into his bedroom to pack an overnight bag. Maybe that was why he wanted Annabelle Smith so much, because she showed no interest in him. That put his sanity into question, because he had plenty of warm, willing women in his life, but he wanted the cold, abusive one.

He zipped the bag shut, picked up his keys and headed out the door, then took the elevator to the basement. He left the building at the wheel of his Bronco, and ten minutes later he pulled into a park beside the water and went to find the woman who occupied far too many of his thoughts.

Stopping before her, he realized she was sleeping. Her body now relaxed, head resting on the hard wood of the backrest. Ethan had no idea how she’d managed to achieve that state, given that around them were cars, plenty of people and a fair amount of noise.

He’d never observed Annabelle Smith still, her luscious mouth silent. She was a beautiful woman. Her face was oval, her nose perfectly straight, cheekbones brushed with soft color, and her lips a deep raspberry that invited him to touch. He’d fantasized about that mouth wrapped around various parts of his body or kissing him senseless. She always dressed in bright colors; it was her thing, Jake had once told him. Today she was wearing emerald pants, a scarlet top and sandals. She looked like an exotic bird, although now something had clipped her wings, and he wanted to know who or what.

Stepping closer, Ethan ran a finger down her cheek. “Annabelle, honey, time to go.” She didn’t wake slowly, instead sitting bolt upright, eyes wide with panic. “Hey.” He touched her arm. “It’s me, Ethan.”

Her eyes closed again briefly, and then when she opened them, there was Annabelle Smith.

“Christ! You nearly stopped my heart, Gelderman.”

“Well, now, that would be a shame.” Ethan took her things to his Bronco and she followed.

“Did he like the car?” She climbed in beside him, already fully awake. Ethan envied that; he always took a while to function after opening his eyes.

“He did. He went straight to his bank and gave me this.”

Ethan started the car as she began to unroll the notes. He saw her hands clench briefly before she began counting.

“But surely this is too much?”

It was, but Ethan was relying on her lack of knowledge about car prices to pull this off. “I drove the car up, then said for him to take a look and name a price.” He shrugged as he slipped on his aviators. “He did, I agreed, and that was that. We need to sort out the paperwork, but other than that you are now carless.”

Her hands clenched again and Ethan had more proof that selling her car had been hard. Obviously she needed the money, and he was sure that phone conversation he’d overheard had something to do with it.

“Thank you, Ethan.”

He placed his hand over his heart. “God’s truth, Annabelle, I’m not sure I can take much more of you thanking me, when in the normal course of a day you would have abused me at least twice by now.”

She snorted. “It’s not like I don’t want to. It’s just that now that you’ve done something nice for me, I need to hold off a bit.”

“It’s unsettling, is what it is.”

She opened her bag and he noticed it didn’t contain the normal clutter that he’d seen inside other women’s purses. Like her car, it was neat and tidy.

“You a neat freak or something?”

“I like things orderly, Gelderman. There’s no crime in that.”

“You want me to take you to the bank so you can deposit that?”

“No…thanks.”

“It’s a lot of money to have lying around, Annabelle.”

“I know that.”

So she didn’t want to put it in the bank, which just confused him even more. Did she owe it to someone?

“Something in your bag is buzzing, Annabelle.”

He watched as she pulled out her cell and turned it off. Her face didn’t invite him to ask why, so he left it alone…for now.

Twenty minutes later Ethan drove through the gates of the small airfield where he kept his bird. He had phoned ahead and they had it readied for him, so it was sitting outside the hanger when he arrived. He pulled the Bronco inside, then got out, and Annabelle followed.

“You ever crashed that thing?” She looked nervously over at his gleaming helicopter where it sat on the landing pad.

“Honey, if I’d crashed it, then it wouldn’t be still in one piece, but several of them. More importantly, I wouldn’t have been able to put them back together.”
Or me
, but he kept that thought inside his head.

“I’m not sure that’s reassuring, Gelderman.”

“You scared, Annabelle?”

“Hell, yes!” Ethan watched her fingers dig into the strap of her bag.

Most people would bluff their way out of it, spin him a line, or act tough, but not her; she told the blunt truth.

“So let me get this straight. You’ve never been up in anything?”

“Define ‘anything.”

Ethan just looked at her.

“No, all right? I’ve never been off the ground and never had a hankering to do so.” She was glaring at him, brown eyes darker now she was angry.

“Oh, now, this is just too much fun,” Ethan said as he took her things out of the back seat and headed to where his bird was standing. “Annabelle Smith has a weakness.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed as she stomped after him but didn’t say anything else until he’d finished his pre-flight checks.

“Okay, we’re ready.”

She muttered something like
I’m glad one of us is
under her breath, but came forward as he signaled to her.

“In you get.”

Annabelle climbed into the seat and tried to breathe. Why had she agreed to this? Her lungs had seized and fear was clawing at her throat. As Ethan strapped her in, she tried to think rationally. Surely he wouldn’t put her in danger; after all, he flew in this metal death trap all the time.

“You can talk to me and I’ll hear your words, okay?”

She nodded as he fitted a set of headphones over her ears. He then jogged around the front and climbed into his seat. He fastened himself in, then pulled on his headset, and suddenly she panicked. It robbed her of rational thought and had her reaching for the headset.

“I can’t do this!”

He stopped her by grabbing her hands, caging hers inside his, gripping them hard enough so that she was forced to look at him.

“Yes, you can. The brave, strong woman I’ve come to know can do anything, and this, flying in a harmless helicopter, will be something you’ll enjoy if you let yourself. Annabelle, you need to trust me on this.”

“I-I don’t think I can.” She was totally undone, fear making her pathetic, and it was because of her weakness that he was able to lean over and lay a soft kiss on her lips before she could react.

“Hey!” She swung at him as he released her hands, but he was out of her reach.

“That’ll give you something else to think about.”

It did, for about 2.5 seconds. The feel of his lips pressed to hers had produced an instant flare of heat, but now it was gone and the panic was back. Clenching her eyes shut, she pressed her hands over them and prayed that the inside of her eyelids was not the last thing she would ever see. She should have caught the bus, but no, she’d allowed Ethan to provoke her into flying with him.

In minutes, she heard the whomp-whomp of the blades and they were rising.

“Mother of God, I’m going to die.”

He laughed softly into her headset. “Open your eyes for me, honey. Come on, you have to see this.”

Annabelle felt his hand touch hers.

“Pl-please keep your hands on the wheel.”

“Collective pitch lever,” he corrected her.

“I’m about to die and you’re correcting me on the correct labels for your instruments?”

“Oh, I didn’t realize we were talking about my instruments,” he said, laughter in his voice. “I have other names for them.”

“You’re such a dickhead,” she muttered as she opened her fingers and looked through them, then slowly dropped them to her lap as he started talking, pointing out landmarks.

“Wow!” she said as they flew over the stunning landscape. Her heart was still thumping in her chest and her palms were sweaty where they now gripped the edges of the seat, but she couldn’t take her eyes off what was before her.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

Annabelle couldn’t take it all in. She saw sparkling expanses of water and huge towering trees. Land rolled into hills and dipped into valleys. It was spectacular, amazing, and she could feel her smile getting wider with each new sight.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, Ethan. It’s amazing.”

“Maybe now when I tell you to trust me you should give it a shot.”

“Is that Tillerby Lodge?” Annabelle saw a long, low building to her left. It sat close to a lake, surrounded by trees, with a mountain at its back.

“It is, and I think you can relax your fingers now before you lose the circulation.”

“Ooooh!” Annabelle squealed like a small child as he circled lower for her to take a closer look. She saw horses running across the pastures, and then she found a person. Whoever it was raised their hands high, and she waved back.

“It’s like…like—”

“Flying,” Ethan inserted.

“Like nothing I can explain,” Annabelle corrected, pressing a hand to her chest again. She still felt the fear, but she wouldn’t have missed this for anything. “The perspective is so different from up here, seeing it all at once, the water, trees, hills and valleys—it’s like being in a painting instead of looking at one. That probably sounds weird, but I can’t explain it any other way.”

“No, it sounds about right to me.”

She looked across at him and he smiled, the smile of a boy who was showing off his favorite toy, not a man who was trying to charm her. If possible, it made him look sexier.

God, she was hot.

Ethan sucked in a breath as she looked away from him. Her smile had reached all the way to her eyes and her giggle had been sweet and so different from anything he’d ever heard from her before, light and carefree. She was like a small child seeing something for the first time. Ethan loved being up here, because it stepped him away from life for a brief break. His troubles always fell away when he flew, all the shit with his family left on the ground, his thoughts focused totally on the beauty of flying. He wanted that for the woman beside him, wanted to give her a few minutes of peace from whatever was riding her.

Annabelle kept talking. Even her voice was different, lighter somehow.

“Look at those redwoods! They look huge even from up here.” She rattled on and Ethan let her. “How long have you been flying?”

“I was eighteen when I started.”

“Does anyone else in your family fly?”

“Just the uncle who taught me. He’s my father’s brother and had no kids of his own, so he took me under his wing.”

She smiled at him again, another genuine one that made his stomach clench.

“You were a lucky boy.”

He had been, but not because he had loving, supportive parents. No, he’d been lucky because he had lots of money and plenty of food and a house many would envy. But more importantly, he’d had his Uncle Mitch to keep him on the rails, even though he’d continually tried to step off.

They flew over tall stands of trees, then long ribbons of water, and Annabelle made plenty of noises as she encountered each new sight. Small humming sounds, gasps, a little squeal, and Ethan wondered what sounds she would make in bed. The image of her naked, straddling his thighs, made his eyes cross with lust.

“Is that my lake?” She was pointing a long finger.

“Sure is. By air it’s a short trip.”

She watched Lake Howling grow bigger before her eyes. “Where will we land?”

“That cleared space out back of Jake’s place.”

“No way is that big enough.” The smile dropped from her face. “Tell me you’re not for real?”