Freedom's Treasure (3 page)

Anna startled awake, not sure where she was or what had woken her.
She must have slept harder than she thought. After so much traveling this week it was a familiar feeling and she shrugged it off and made her way to the bathroom. She thought she remembered leaving the door open but maybe the wind blew it shut. She turned the knob, pushed the door open and screamed bloody murder.

Hunter had the towel draped over his head and was roughly drying his hair when the door opened. He heard the scream and had no time to react before a foot slammed down on his instep, a fist popped into his nose and a knee went, well, south for the winter. Instinct had him moving his knee and blocking the shot to his crotch as he whipped the towel from his head and held it waist high with one hand. With the other he reached toward the panicked female.

Anna turned to run, felt a hand reach her shoulder. As she spun around to beat the marauding rapist to within an inch of his life her eyes landed where the towel was falling. Her mouth had opened for another scream and she was barely able to stifle a giggle. Going with the feeling she pointed and started to laugh.

“Jesus Christ, lady! Are you trying to kill me?” It took a moment for Hunter to realize what she was laughing at. He whipped the towel back over himself. “Have a little compassion. It was a cold shower!”

Anna got herself back under control. “Who are you and why are you in my house?” A few giggles kept escaping and her eyes roamed back and forth over the body before her. Long, toned legs led to a narrow waist before a broad chest Anna swore she could show movies on. The man was built! Except for that one unfortunate area, she mused, he could have starred in movies.

“I’m Hunter. I own the place. Your turn.” He spun his finger in the air and Anna turned around to give him a moment of privacy.

“I’m Anna Mylan. It must have been your mom I spoke to in town. Elisa? She sent me out here with the keys. I’m going to be renting for a while. Um, do you usually take showers in vacant houses? It seems like a dangerous habit, not to mention weird.” Highly amused, Anna watched his reflection in a mirror on the wall as he dragged jeans on over his wet flanks. The denim fought every glorious inch. Anna barely contained the urge to lick her lips.

“I was mowing, it was hot, I was dirty, empty shower, etc. Jesus.” Hunter looked for his shirt and remembered throwing it in the truck. He prayed he’d stop blushing some time this year. Attempting casual, he ran the towel over his dark hair once more before draping it over his shoulders. “You can turn around again. How long have you been here? I never heard you pull in.”

“It seems I should be asking you that question,” Anna checked her watch. “Unless you have the quietest machine on the planet you couldn’t have been mowing. I’ve been here about an hour and never heard a thing.” A trail of hair ran down his stomach to where he had yet to button the fly of his jeans and droplets of water glistened across his upper body.

Hunter mimicked her action, checked his watch. He needed to be back in town to meet the boys after school but it would be better to smooth this over. His mother would never forgive him when she heard this story. Traumatizing renters was pretty high on her list of Things Not To Do.

“Look, I have to make a call and then do you want to continue this conversation over coffee?” Anything to get to the truck, get a shirt on and drape some dignity over his now bruised ego. The musical sound of her laughter stayed with him and he wanted to hear more of it so long as it wasn’t at his expense.

Anna thought for a moment. This would be great material for her book. “Sure, let’s go have some coffee. I have to freshen up, assuming you’re finished with my bathroom?” She looked pointedly toward the open door.

Hunter flushed, again. “I’m good. I’m parked in back. Meet you out there?”

“I think I’d better follow you in,” Anna reminded herself she didn’t know this man and it was better to be safe than sorry. “Then you won’t have to drive me back out later and I have some things I need to pick up in town.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Hunter escaped, his tattered dignity waving behind.

As he waited he called his mother to tell her the story before she heard it elsewhere. Yes, Hunter knew they were alone in the woods but his mother had ESP or something, especially when it came to embarrassing stories about her only son. He also asked her to give the high school boys their assignments and said he’d see them tomorrow.

The diner was a few doors down from the real estate office Anna had visited earlier. Hunter sat in his usual booth and watched her make her way through the maze of tables in the center of the room. She moved with a contained energy he found he wanted to release. She’d be a powerhouse, he was sure.

Her electric blue eyes met his across the room and he felt a jolt in his stomach. He dropped his eyes and they landed on a full lower lip, a stubborn chin and a long, graceful throat. He shifted lightly in his seat, rose when she reached the table and waited for her to sit.

Anna had thought long and hard about what she would say to Hunter when they reached the diner. How do you talk to a man you had seen naked before you knew his name? Every opening line she practiced had a double entendre attached and that was
so not where she wanted her mind to go. With those sexy eyes, carelessly disheveled dark hair and, oh my, broad hands, she knew she could be lost before she started. Thankfully, he began.

“So, what brings you to Baldwin, Anna Mylan?” He waved a casual hand and a young girl brought over a pot of coffee, filled their cups and scurried back to the kitchen, blushing the whole way. Hunter could commiserate.

“A change of pace,” she answered shortly, surprised by the husky edge in his whiskey rough voice. He certainly hadn’t sounded like that standing naked in her new living room. She took a deep breath. “Sorry. I should have expected that question. I’m in the process of moving from Grand Rapids. I wanted peace and quiet to write a book.” Some process, she thought, having moved all of her belongings into the cabin already.

“I see. And how did you pick here, of all places? We’re a tiny dot on a medium-sized map,” Hunter idly stirred his coffee and tasted tar he was sure was left over from the lunch rush but he’d take it. Lord knows he’d had worse.

Anna smiled wryly. “You should write for the tourist boards. We used to come here when I was a kid. My parents owned a cabin on a small lake.” She named the lake and he nodded his head.

“Over by the Price place?” he could picture it in his head.

“Does every house have a name? I’ve heard about the Martin place, the Lucas place, and now the Price place.”

“That’s the charm of our town. Everyone knows everyone else. The Martins haven’t actually lived there in about 20 years. There have been three owners since but it will always be the Martin place.”

“And you don’t own that one? But you own my cottage?”

“The family chose to retain ownership and we take care of the rentals for a fee. The last of the Lucas clan died off a while ago but they made a pretty big impact on the town. Half the businesses were started up with money from them. I bought the property about five years ago and we’ve been renting it out since. It has historical significance, don’t you know.” An exact parody of Elisa, Anna laughed. “Technically the A-frame isn’t the Lucas place, it should be the Belvette place.”

“That’s because they took it over for Samuel when he went back South. When he never returned they kept it, right?”

“That’s right. Elisa must have been feeling chatty today,” Hunter shouldn’t have been surprised. Elisa couldn’t help herself. A comfortable silence descended.

“So you’re a landlord and gardener. You buy thoughtful gifts for your mother and you prefer to be clean. Anything else I should know about you, Hunter Williams?” she kept her eyes on him and wondered how she’d write him into her book. Would he be a main character or a secondary character? Perhaps he’d have the elusive clue that would give her heroine the answer to a puzzle. What that puzzle was, she hadn’t quite hammered out yet. 

“Really, doesn’t that say it all? I believe in leaving some mystery. What about you? I know you’re here to write a book. What’s it about?”

Hunter again waved to the waitress and she came by to wordlessly re-fill their coffees. Back at the counter the young girl was studying for her final exam while occasionally looking to their table. They were the only people in the place and Anna could almost feel the spotlight. The man who she thought must be the cook was sitting at a table near the counter, smoking a cigarette and shouting at the sports show on cable while pretending he couldn’t hear them. His stained apron indicated something with a lot of red sauce had been the day’s special.

“I don’t know yet, actually. It’ll be fiction, of course. Who moves out to the woods to write a biography of someone besides Walt Whitman? I feel a mystery with some tinges of FBI. I have notes on my laptop that I’ve been working on for a while.” Anna poured another tablespoon of sugar into her coffee hoping to disguise the flavor.

“Want some coffee with that sugar, Sugar?” His eyes flashed humor at her and Anna’s first leap to offense at being called Sugar took the backseat.

She lowered her voice. “How can you drink this stuff? It’s thicker than my grandmother’s homemade lamb stew.”

Hunter laughed. “I had worse in the service. Becca?” he waved his hand to get the young girl’s attention. She looked at Hunter, blushed and hopped up. “Could we have some water and maybe a hot tea over here?” He looked askance at Anna, who nodded.

“With lemon, please.”

“So why now?” he asked.

“So why now, what?” Anna was confused. “I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want to be rude.”

Hunter laughed. “No! Why now for the book?”

“Oh! Sorry,” she nearly giggled. She never giggled. And what kind of word was giggle anyway? A stupid one, if you asked Anna. Say it enough times and it could mean anything. Avoiding the mental tangent she decided to give Hunter the honest answer, or as close as she had.

“I wrote for the newspaper in Grand Rapids, the social pages. You know the ones, I’m sure. A new bar opens up and someone has to go review it so everyone knows if that’s their type of place.” Hunter nodded. “Basically I got paid to go out every night and explore every aspect of the town and then write about it. My column was popular and I loved it, don’t get me wrong.

“After a while I started writing more about the people that I met while I was out instead of the places. I’d find out all about them, what they were celebrating or mourning, like that.” Becca delivered her tea and Anna thanked her graciously. It tasted like water with a hint of lemon but was far better than the coffee had been.

“If you buy some people a drink, they will tell you the most intimate details of their lives. Soon I realized I knew more about random strangers than I did myself,” Anna trailed off. This felt like a tangent. She waited for Hunter to say something.

“Let me guess, was there a man? The final straw? He breaks your heart, you run off to the deep, dark woods to heal and write his death over and over?” He was digging, had been trying to think of a way to ask this question from the moment she walked into the diner. Maybe even from the moment he realized she had one heck of a right hook.

“No, I haven’t dated in ages. Anywhere I went on a date turned into a review. Dating started to feel like work so I gave it up for a while.” She couldn’t believe she had shared that and was slightly mortified. She quickly added, “I was at a coffee shop last month. Instead of writing a fantastic first chapter of a book I found myself watching the people, writing about them and, of course, giving the place a mediocre review. I couldn’t get out of the newspaper mentality. So, here I am.”

“Yeah, here you are. Is it time to learn how to be Anna again?”

“You could say that.” Several teenagers came into the diner greeting Becca loudly and clamoring for pizza and breaking apart what was nearly an intimate mood. “On that note I think I had better go find the grocery store. There are a ton of things I have to get today before I can settle in. Towels, too,” she started digging through her over-sized purse for her wallet. “I’m sure you have more yet on your plate today.”

“There are a few things, including wrangling three of those knuckleheads over there into getting to work. My employees must have decided to take the day off,” Hunter shot an eagle eye at the guys in question. They all avoided meeting it.

“Do you have a card? In case I need anything with the cabin,” Anna rose from the booth and watched him uncoil from the low seating. He had to be 6 feet tall. Anna craned her neck and vowed not to be caught in tennis shoes next time she saw him. Something with three inch heels would do or maybe she could borrow Elisa’s stool to stand on.