Still Not Love: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Read online

  “Yeah, sure. I guess that’s the only reason, huh?”

  I don't answer.

  I simply walk away, escaping into the only private space I can find when there’s not a single wall in this place that can guard me against the feelings she’s awakening inside me.

  She doesn’t follow me into the bathroom's sanctuary.

  I settle on the wooden edge of the large square spa-style tub, the interior gleaming white ceramic. As I lean over to turn on the faucet, it throws my reflection back at me.

  I don't like what I see.

  My face is troubled, distant, and cold. This hardened mask locked in a constant expression of thinly veiled disapproval and disinterest.

  I stare down at my image, even as the water begins washing it out in the polished porcelain, swirling me into nothing but fragments of colors.

  Is this who I am now?

  Is this all that’s left of me, when the rot inside me has slowly been eating away at the soft organic bits of human meat inside this frigid shell?

  I tear away from staring down into the water, and busy myself lighting the candles in the room to fill it with a soft golden glow, before laying out towels. There’s a separate glass-walled shower that I’ll be using later, but for now, I can’t help the instinct to want to make her as comfortable as possible, taking care of her in more ways than one.

  I clench my jaw, hating every second of this. I’m at war with myself right now.

  Everything I say has to keep the wall between us, maintain the appropriate distance.

  For her good and mine.

  But I can’t help the compulsion to give in to these quiet, simple actions that sate my need to look after her.

  That say, more than any words, how much I care.

  I can’t let her get under my skin like this. Not even for a few minutes, and I’m cracking in under an hour.

  If I let down my guard, if I get emotional, I’ll just endanger her even more.

  She makes me lose focus on the world around me.

  That’s the last thing I can afford to do while there's some unknown actor threatening her life.

  Still, I linger until the bath is full, giving myself a little more time to breathe, then shut the water off.

  Then I take a deep, fortifying breath, and step out into the main cabin.

  She’s settled on the bed, one leg swinging over the edge, as she pouts at her phone. When I emerge, she glances up at me, and turns her phone to show me a weather map on the screen.

  “Looks like there’s a bad one coming in,” she says. “I know Dad planned this months ago, but you’d think he’d have called this off when he saw the forecast. I don’t think the campaign money’s going to keep rolling in after people freeze their toes off and get stranded up here.”

  “Under the circumstances, your father couldn't cancel the event. Particularly when this gives us a prime opportunity to potentially identify who threatened you.”

  “It’s like Clue, don’t you think?” She grins, swinging both legs now, leaning back to slouch her shoulders against the wall. “Get all the suspects together in one place so you can watch what they do and wait for them to give themselves away. Somewhere isolated where they can’t leave.”

  With an exasperated sigh, I shrug out of my coat, lay it over the back of the sofa, and sink down on the cushions to unzip my bag. “You shouldn’t treat this like a game. Nor should you be so excited. Someone's already dead, and you and your father are targets.”

  “Whatever, James. I’ve felt dead for years, rotting away in a Portland library. I guess it takes someone trying to kill me to make me feel alive again. Isn't it a riot?”

  “I'm hardly amused.”

  “You never are. Or at least, you pretend not to be.”

  That girl.

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath, praying for patience. Fortitude. Something.

  The thing about Faye is she excels in driving me crazy, and somehow manages to annoy me into enjoying it.

  “Your bath is ready,” I deflect carefully. “You should take it before it cools.”

  “Sweet, finally some warmth. Want to join me?”

  There’s that bitterness in her voice, again – that certainty my answer is no.

  But there’s just a touch of hope, too.

  A glimmer of soft, sweet, compelling warmth, desire, longing. I ignore it.

  I have to ignore it because she can't know how painfully close I am to saying yes.

  So I hold my silence. Listening to a soft, hurt sound as she stands, just a collection of small noises at my back, but I can track her movements by the rustle of clothing, the soft tread of her boots, the creak of wooden floorboards, the sound of the bathroom door opening and shutting.

  Then I’m alone, with nothing but haunting memories and the ache in the pit of my stomach that knows, that just fucking knows.

  On the other side of that door, wrapped in heat and coils of licking steam against naked flesh, is the one woman in this world who can make me human again.

  * * *

  I keep myself busy by checking the weather report.

  Not fucking thinking about the naked, lush woman soaking on the other side of a very thin wooden panel.

  Not clenching my jaw to smother the fire in my blood.

  Not wanting her under me so bad I could lose every bit of genteel self-control I cling to like a drowning animal.

  Faye’s right about what's coming. There’s a severe winter front heading in overnight.

  There’s a good chance the mountain will either trap or dilute the coming snowstorm, but there’s an equal possibility it'll move in directly over us and stay there. Locked in by seasonal winds and high crags, blanketing us in snow, rabid winds, and plummeting temperatures for days.

  It’s in the low teens right now, but it’s projected to drop below zero overnight.

  That tingling on the back of my neck keeps getting worse, though I want to ignore it.

  I don’t like the feel of this.

  Just to be safe, I do another check of the cabin, looking over our stores of food and bottled water, plus the firewood. Cell signal up here isn’t the best, but there’s wired internet if we get buried enough to need to summon help in some way, as long as the power stays on.

  It better.

  That's what sends me back out into the lightly drifting evening snow, wrapped up in my coat and my boots crunching through the top cover as I check the backup generator. The gasoline looks topped up to full, and the rating indicates it can power the cabin at full for up to seventy-two hours on a single tank. There are multiple backup fuel containers, too.

  More than enough time, I think, as long as nothing goes catastrophically wrong.

  Then again, Murphy's Law can be an absolute bitch and a half.

  The moment I think it, I’m struck by an irrational urge to knock on wood.

  Just as I’m completing my perimeter scan, I catch a hint of motion in front of the main lodge and pause, looking across the snow-strewn road.

  Landon stands before the door, a tall, dark figure, bundled up in sleek, black cold-weather tactical gear. His breaths puff out in thick wisps as he speaks, gesturing with a bulky behemoth of a man with a close military cut of dark hair and an easy, engaging, almost fatherly smile framed in rough, graying stubble.

  Hook Hamlin, owner of Pershing Shield.

  And apparently, I'm the only one here who's not completely suckered in by his charm, given the excitement in Landon’s movements.

  But then, I'm the only one here besides Senator Harris who knows who Hook Hamlin truly is, what he does...

  And why he may well be responsible for more than one murder.

  That he’s here, now, is no coincidence.

  I'm well aware that hardship makes strange bedfellows, but I sure as hell don’t trust his alliance with Senator Harris. Supposedly, they’re so deeply entangled, it makes it impossible to conceive of either of them betraying the other.

  If one goes down
, they both do. Honor among thieves.

  Still, someone left that bloodied hand at the Senator’s residence, and it’s generally those closest to you that you can trust the least.

  Or maybe that’s my cynicism talking.

  It’s just as likely some rival contractor wants Harris out of the way. It’s also in Hook Hamlin’s best interests to protect the goose that constantly delivers him golden eggs.

  Fuck. Can it get more complicated?

  I can’t help feeling I should warn Landon, but I doubt he’ll want to listen.

  Not when he's got a professional crush on this man.

  Even worse, he’ll want to know how I know these things, and then I’ll have to explain more to him than just Hook Hamlin’s involvement in some dirty government deals and black market arms trades.

  I’ll have to explain how I let the man funding it go and covered up the murder of one of my closest friends.

  I'll have to expose my soul and send it straight to hell.

  I kick at the blowing snow on the ground, angry at the impossible.

  Landon will never understand doing something so despicable just to keep from hurting the woman I love, but can’t ever have.

  That's why I'll keep my lips shut. Teeth in tongue. Grinding every word until it's this bitter, mangled secret I can keep.

  “Hey.” Gabe’s soft Southern drawl startles me, coming up at my shoulder. For such a large man, he moves with remarkable stealth and silence.

  I turn to watch him approach, sludging through the snow, his gaze fixed past me and on Landon and Hook. “So that’s the big guy, huh? I missed meeting them Pershing folks since they came up in a separate convoy.”

  “You aren’t missing much,” I murmur.

  “Ouch, James. Thought we were all fans of Hook Hamlin here?”

  “That’s only Landon.”

  “Aw, yeah, I don't get the obsession myself, but still...” Gabe's smile vanishes as he scratches his chin. “What’s your beef with Hamlin? You sound pretty sore.”

  “It’s personal,” I snap, but I can’t stop watching him.

  On the surface, Hook seems so disarming.

  The easy way he moves, laughs, and grins with his whiskey-dark eyes. Most people, you can sense a criminal disposition by the guilt that slowly eats away at them until it either boils out on the surface or swallows the last of their humanity. Most people with something to hide can't help projecting it, one way or another.

  Hook Hamlin is a man without guilt, without shame for what he’s done.

  A man without a conscience.

  That's the difference.

  And he’s as easy and calm as a man who sleeps soundly every night, without a moment’s consideration for the lives he’s destroyed. He doesn’t have to wear a mask to hide who and what he is. He hides in plain sight.

  Someone who can commit murder, who profits off illegal weapon trades that kill people...

  Someone who smiles big and easy as he enjoys a snowy evening beneath the dark mountains and brilliant stars.

  “Hey,” Gabe muses. “Is that his real name, anyway? Hook.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “It’s part of his legend, his mystique in this industry, I suppose. A nickname.”

  “What, like...Captain Hook?”

  “Right,” I answer, gritting my teeth.

  The fucked up analogy is too apt. Just like the good captain from Peter Pan, Hook Hamlin is as charming as he is dastardly. He's just missing the infamous claw for a hand.

  “If you’ll recall, there was an alligator who swallowed the clock in the story, right?” I wait for Gabe to nod. “They say when he’s on a target, he’s like Captain Hook. Totally obsessed. That's because he's got a reputation to recover.”

  “Reputation, huh?” Gabe cocks his head, looking so much like a big, overly friendly dog it makes me want to smile.

  “His grandfather made a fortune in mining years ago. He came home from the Second World War a hero, saved a whole division in the Philippines from being cut off by a ferocious Japanese attack. Then Hook's old man ruined it. His father had a terrible gambling addiction. He bankrupted them and ran off with some supermodel he met in Vegas on top of it.”

  “Damn!” Gabe whistles. “If that ain't just a swift mule kick in the balls –”

  “Quite,” I say, brushing snow off my shoulders. “It shaped who Hook became. A man working against time to undo everything his father ruined. He's done well on the reputation front, but the money...he's a rich man by any measure. But it's not a fraction of the billions the Hamlin North Range Mining Company used to be worth. The steel made from their ore changed whole nations.”

  Gabe shrugs. “Funny how some boys just can't learn to be happy when they're ahead and winning.”

  I nod, staring into the night.

  He has no clue.

  Hook may have his grandfather's frantic drive, but like his father, no moral compass. He'll knock down anyone in his way, whatever it takes to bring the Hamlin name and fortune back to being a household name and a Fortune 100 king.

  “No man ever masters time. Hook still isn't where he wants to be, despite his great success. That ticking clock follows him everywhere, inescapable, counting down the moment until he inevitably gets his mark.”

  Or gets devoured. I keep that last part to myself.

  “Huh. I guess that makes sense.” Gabe makes an amused sound and nudges my shoulder. “Well, better get inside. You’re gonna freeze your britches off out here.”

  “I’m fine,” I murmur, still watching Hook as he turns next to Landon, and then they head inside.

  There’s a subtle tension in his shoulders that says he knows I'm here, too. That he can feel my eyes cutting into him from afar, and he’s pointedly not looking at me.

  “I’m just fine,” I lie to Gabe again.

  * * *

  I’m not fucking fine.

  Not when I walk back into the cabin just as Faye steps out of the bathroom, wrapped in a thin, translucent silk robe that clings to her damp flesh.

  The pale, violet fabric slicking over the heavy swell of her breasts and clinging to her hips gives me a deadly view of the lace panties molding between her thighs. The robe’s silk chases after it like it's trying to lick and tease at forbidden flesh.

  Like it wants to do every filthy touch and taste running through my head.

  She freezes with one arm raised, caught in the middle of toweling off damp hair that tangles and pours all over her. It's the reason her robe is so soaked when her hair keeps dripping nonstop, plastering the cloth to her flesh.

  I freeze as well, standing stock-still in the doorway.

  Her wide eyes lock on mine, pink flushes washing over her cheeks, her lips parted but motionless—before she abruptly stammers, “S-sorry! I heard you leave and I –”

  She breaks off with a slight quiver in her voice. A shiver ripples through her body, prickling over her skin, rousing her nipples to hard, straining peaks against her robe.

  I can even make out their color, a deep blush pink against cream skin, making darkened discs against the wet silk, and then I'm thoroughly fucked.

  Remembering every moment of how they felt against my lips, their sweet texture, how they burned in my mouth as I traced my tongue over their tips and flicked and sucked.

  How I kept on until she was owned, writhing under me with her legs clenched together in a pair of pretty little panties just like these, like she could've hidden just how wet she was, how hot, how hungry.

  Fuck.

  My mouth is torn between watering and going desert dry, but I finally remember to move when I realize the cold wind is gusting in and icing her damp skin. Clearing my throat, I turn away quickly to shut the door, giving her my back and sorely needed space.

  “Sorry,” I say stiffly. “If I'd realized you were like this, I'd have knocked first.”

  “Um, I...” Her shaky breath is loud behind me. “I didn’t bring anything in with me. This was all they had in the courtesy stu
ff.”

  “Then I guess you'd better get dressed.”

  There’s an icy pause full of hurt as loud as a scream, even though she doesn’t say a word.

  Until I hear her fling “Asshole” back in a broken hiss.

  I don’t turn around.

  Not with my dick throbbing so hard in my pants it hurts.

  I wait until I hear the flump of her suitcase on the bed, then the scrape of denim and the rasp of the zipper on a pair of jeans. Then, and only then, do I open my eyes.

  Christ, if I look at her right now...I can't trust what I might do.

  This woman is pure medusa – stealing every good sense in my skull and turning every last part of me to stone.

  * * *

  We spend the rest of the evening in uneasy silence.

  Faye curls up to read something on her phone, tucked into the corner of the bed against the wall and huddled there in this small bundle. Sometimes, with the force of her personality, it’s hard to remember how delicate and fragile she is.

  I watch her out of the corner of my eye, see her fine-boned as a bird and all shivering glass edges.

  But right now, it’s that fragility whispering how upset she truly is, being forced into this space with me, after I made it damn clear I couldn't stand to look at her too close to naked.

  It's too bad doing my job means being a giant asshole to a woman who's taken more than her fair share of it over the years.

  Though she’s shut off in her own little world, I know she's watching me too when she thinks I'm not looking. No doubt wondering what she did to deserve this special torture.

  I wish I knew, Faye. I wish like hell I knew.

  I use the time to watch the incoming storm, making contingency plans for an escape route if necessary, using map data showing every possible road, trail, and footpath leading to the resort.

  The ski lift is another option, but any scenario requiring transportation down the mountain that quickly would likely disable the power.

  I don’t like the looks of this storm. I like the idea of being trapped here with a potential assassin even less, although I can’t say I’m fond of being snowed in with Senator Harris and Hook Hamlin, either.