Rising Heat (63 page)

Finally, Hawk looked up and straightened. I was amazed once again by how tall he was. He had to be at least six-foot-five. I had to look up just to see his face. Standing just over five feet tall, that was pretty typical, but this guy… he was
tall!

“Show me outside.”

Well, he knew how to be terse, didn’t he? Then again, he wasn’t offering platitudes, which I appreciated. “You want me to show you where I went for my walk? Where I heard the noises?”

He nodded. I led the way out of the house, closing the door behind me. As I stepped off the porch, he stopped me.

“Lock the door.”

I looked up at him a moment and then did as he requested. While I was glad to see that he was taking me seriously, the thought of not even being able to leave my house without locking the door, even for a few minutes, left me feeling even more vulnerable than before.

“Might as well get into the habit of doing that, whether you’re going for a walk, checking your mail, or running errands in town. This area is remote.”

He walked beside me as I headed toward the woods.

“Don’t let that give you a false sense of security though. I’m not trying to scare you, but anyone who is serious about getting in your house will be able to manage it. Like I said, I don’t think we’re dealing with precocious teenagers here. You might look into getting an alarm system, or at the very least a dog.”

My heart was thumping again, not just because he was standing so close to me as we walked side by side toward the woods, but because I once again realized how serious the situation was. A dog? An alarm system? A private detective? What next?

“You might even look into buying a gun.”

I shook my head and glanced up at him, my voice conveying my frustration. “Look, Mr. Hawk… Hawk,” I said. “I’m not rich. I make enough to get by, but that’s about it. Do you know how much it costs to install an alarm system?”

He shrugged. “Depends what type of system you have installed. You can hardwire or go wireless, monitored or unmonitored. On average, about seven-hundred dollars. On the high-end, about fifteen-hundred.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have that kind of disposable income, at least not at the moment. I just relocated. I spent a lot of my savings simply moving.”

“What about a dog?”

“A dog is fine and well for alerting me to the fact that someone might be out there, but then what?”

“A gun.”

“I don’t even know how to use a gun. And those cost money too.”

He shook his head and glanced down at me. “You can get a decent gun for four to five-hundred dollars.”

“And you? How much do you cost?” I realized right after I said that, he might take it the wrong way. My God, you’d think I was asking how much he charged for sex. I quickly glanced up at him despite the wave of heat making its way up my cheeks. He glanced down at me, and I saw a slight grin that lifted the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s go check out the woods. We can discuss details later.”

I kept my mouth shut after that. I showed him along the faint deer trail that I had taken this morning. Now, in the full light of day, it didn’t seem oppressive, scary, or frightening in the least. After we had ventured about a half-mile or so into the woods, I looked for the funny looking tree that I had noticed out of the corner of my eye the first time I heard a branch snap. I paused, turned a slow circle, and pointed. “I was right about here when I heard the sound over there.” Hawk glanced around and then down at me.

“Stay here.”

He moved off into the trees. Though he was wearing boots, he didn’t make a sound as he moved among the leaves, the pine cones, and the fallen pine needles. How did he do that? Suddenly, he disappeared. Where did he go? The woods grew silent.

I glanced around, recognizing only a few tree types; ash, sugar maple and birch. It smelled like pine and earth, of damp loamy soil mixed with the decay of leaves. Soon, the forest would erupt in gorgeous color and I could hardly wait. The deep, lush red of the red maple, the orange-red of the sugar maples, the yellow-gold of the beech and alders.

Not even a bird chirped. Despite the fact that I knew he was within calling distance of wherever Hawk had disappeared, I once again felt a flutter of unease. What if the guy who had been watching me, who I could’ve sworn was watching me this morning, was out here right now, watching both of us?

I was just starting to seriously wonder if Hawk had left me out here alone when I heard him call my name.

“Tracy!”

It wasn’t overly loud, but I could tell he was at least twenty-five, maybe thirty feet into the woods. I ventured into the trees in the direction I had seen him move. After fifteen feet or so, I wasn’t sure which way to go.

“Where are you?”

His head and shoulders appeared in the distance. He waved one hand so I could see him. It looked like he was standing in some kind of gully. I quickly hurried the rest of the way so as not to keep him waiting. Before I reached the gully, or whatever it was, he disappeared again. I picked up my pace.

Before I knew it, I was standing on a precipice to a gully with a steep slope. To my surprise, when I tried to stop, my foot slipped on the loose soil and my momentum propelled me forward. I wasn’t exactly falling, more like running down the slope, scrambling to keep my feet under me. And Hawk was right in the way.

I slammed into him with an
oomph
that knocked the wind out of me. It was like running into a brick wall! Unfortunately, he’d been turning toward me, looking up in alarm as I careened down the slope. My momentum knocked us both to the ground. All of a sudden, his arm was around me. He twisted his body slightly so that he would take the brunt of the fall.

When we landed, I was lying flat on top of him. I felt every contour and bump of his body. Unfortunately, one of my arms was caught between us, my hand literally groping his balls. His right hand was squished palm side over my left breast and his own chest.

I felt the heat of his hand, the bulge of his genitals. My nipples instantly hardened. Oh my God, could he feel it? I dared to quickly glance up into his face and felt the heat of yet another blush warm my cheeks. Oh God. He was grinning. Sensations coursed through me. I don’t know how else to say it. My pussy throbbed. Oh did it throb, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

I don’t know who started the movement, but in the next moment, his lips were pressed against mine, or mine were pressed against his. I guess it didn’t really matter whether he was kissing me or I was kissing him. My blood hummed. The kiss was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

Firm yet not demanding. His lips were so soft, contrary to every other part of his body, which I now felt awakening beneath my hand. I tried to pull my hand away from his crotch, but that was a mistake. Doing so only made me feel his hard-on. Nearly the undoing of me.

I couldn’t believe the thoughts coursing through my brain. At this very second, I wanted nothing more than to be straddling him, his shaft plunging deep inside me. I wanted to feel his lips on my nipples, between my legs. I wanted to feel his warm skin underneath my fingertips, to wrap my own hand around his cock.

What the hell!

A
fter several awkward moments, at least on my part, Hawk made a sound in his throat. That sound initiated movement on my part. I tried to scramble off of him and ended up putting my elbow in the pit of his stomach. Then, trying to get my balance, I ended up kneeing him in the groin. He made another sound, closed his eyes, but other than that, he remained perfectly still for several moments.

“Oh my God, Hawk, I’m so sorry,” I gasped. I was beyond mortified, but to my surprise, he merely grinned.

“Not to worry,” he said. “No pain, no gain.”

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but didn’t want to ask him to explain. Very carefully, I climbed off of him and rose to my feet. He did too, then brushed himself off as he took a step away from me. I had never been so embarrassed in my life. Well, yes I had, but no need to get into that right now. I focused my thoughts away from the feel of his rock hard body,
everywhere
rock hard, and once again focused my attention on what we were doing out here in the middle of the woods.

I took a deep breath and made myself look at him. “What did you find out here?”

He pointed a short distance away. “Take about five steps, but no further. Toward that big gnarly pine. Look down on the ground and tell me what you see.”

I did, carefully counting my footsteps. Then, peering around, I didn’t see anything at first. Then I did. My heart skipped a beat and once again I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising. A footprint. It looked like a hiking boot of some sort.

“That print’s not more than a day old,” Hawk said, approaching. He gestured. “There’s a few more footprints that I followed paralleling the trail. Looks like whoever it was kept about twenty feet or so behind you.”

I turned to him, my eyes wide. “So I wasn’t imagining it. Someone
was
following me.”

He nodded. “You have good instincts, Tracy.”

“And there’s no sign of bear, deer, or anything else that could have made those noises?”

He shook his head again, gesturing. “There is a small broken branch up there. I think if you had gone for your walk at any other time during the day, the sound might not have been as noticeable. But early in the morning? Sound has a way of playing tricks on you out here, but in the morning is when you hear things that you don’t hear at other times during the day. Listen.”

I paused and listened. I didn’t hear anything. I glanced up at him and shrugged. “What? I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s right. It’s coming on noon. The deer have grazed and pretty much settled in for the day. Same goes for the rabbits and the ‘coons. But what specifically
don’t
you hear.”

I gazed up at him for several moments, confused. And then it dawned on me. The silence. “I don’t hear any birds.”

“Because something has scared them away,” he explained.

I glanced around, eying every shadow cast by every bush and tree, turning a half circle. “What?”

“Well, us for one thing,” he commented, pointing the way through the trees back toward the deer trail. “But there’s something else. Use all your senses. Can you tell what it is?”

Try as I might, I didn’t see or hear anything else. “I don’t know.”

“I’m catching a whiff of wood smoke, a lingering scent. Follow me.”

Again, I followed him along the deer trail for about twenty more yards, and then once again he stepped into the woods, about ten or fifteen yards off the trail. Then he stopped and pointed. To my surprise, I saw the remains of a small campfire. My heart skipped a beat and I felt a cold sensation rush through me. I glanced at the remains of the campfire, at Hawk, and then turned toward the direction of my house. I moved toward the campfire, stood behind it, and realized with a sense of horror that from this perspective, someone could see the back of my house.

“He was watching me last night,” I mumbled, unable to keep the tremor from my voice.

“Yes,” he said.

He led the way back to the house. I felt numb. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling most. Anger, fright, or a combination of both. It made me angry to think that somebody was watching me. I hadn’t done anything to anybody to warrant this kind of attention. I didn’t want it! I moved out here for peace and quiet. I wanted to work in solitude, not worry about some nut job out there watching me.

“What should I do?” I finally asked.

“I’m going to help you,” he assured.

While I was glad to hear that, I was also waiting for the other shoe to drop. How much was this going to cost me? I came right out and asked. He gave me a discerning look, tilting his head slightly to the side.

“Are you open to bartering?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you said you’re a website designer, right? And that you don’t have a lot of disposable income on hand.”

“That’s right, but Hawk, I can pay you in installments if you’ll—”

He held up a hand. “How about this? You don’t have a lot of disposable income and I don’t have a website. I’ve been meaning to get one, but I’ve put it off. How much do you usually charge your clients to build them a website?”

“Well, it all depends,” I said. We had reached my porch. “It depends if you want plain or fancy, how many pages, the type of information or graphics or interactivity—”

“I’ll tell you what, Tracy. I’ve done a few of these types of cases, and in most situations, I’ve managed to resolve them in about a week. I would typically charge about five hundred dollars for the local jobs, give or take. What would you say about designing a simple, serviceable website in trade?”

It sounded fair, but I still didn’t know exactly what he’d be able to do about this. Again, he seemed to read my mind.

“Starting tomorrow, I’m going to hang out on your property for a day or two, see what I can discover. You won’t see me, so don’t bother looking. I also don’t want you giving my presence away, so you have to pretend that I’m not even around.”

I thought about that. The thought of having Hawk on my property certainly made me feel a little safer, but at the same time, he would be watching me too. Great. Two people watching me. One I didn’t want to have anything to do with. The other, well, the thought of Hawk watching me sent a shiver of excitement down my spine. I tamped it down. This was serious.

“That sounds fair enough,” I said. “But what happens if he doesn’t come back in the next couple of days?”

“We’ll get there when we get there,” he said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a business card.

I took the card, which was very basic. His name. His address. His phone number. “Private Investigator” in one corner. He turned toward his Jeep.

“I’m going back to my office, do some digging. I’ll be back at some point tomorrow, but like I said, you won’t see me and I don’t want you looking. Okay? Just pretend that everything is normal.”