Tempted by a Dangerous Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

normal. I had pushed Zachary. No matter that he never would have rushed Corbin like he did me. I owned my part in his death, and there was a foreign coldness deep inside me that hadn’t been there before. I wasn’t sure it would ever leave. So easy to think of it as the frozen edges of a part of my soul that I’d lost, or that I’d damaged irreparably. I felt old.
    I remembered how rude I had been that morning and winced. Corbin deserved an apology. I didn’t want to take him for granted; as inexperienced as I was at relationships, even I knew that—it was something I had watched my dad screw up so many times.
    At the moment I was very happy that I had vehemently denied my feelings for Corbin in the safe house. My growing attachment to him plus my breakdown would have been enough to send anyone packing. I had lied, one of the few things that Corbin couldn’t stand, but I would have lost him if I hadn’t.
    My breath was coming fast and steady as the trail suddenly grew steeper. The poles were necessary now for balance and speed. By the time I reached the next level-ish area, I was completely winded.
    I wondered how far ahead Corbin was, and if he was still enjoying this torturous little jaunt. I pressed on, and twenty minutes later I was rewarded with a stunning view of a deep valley. I stared out over it, mesmerized by the graceful evergreen trees dusted with fluffy snow. Such beauty in the world.
    And I didn’t want to miss it.  

    ~~~

    A couple of hours later, I spotted Corbin just ahead. “Ready for a break?” he asked as soon as I reached him.
    I nodded, too winded to speak.  
    “Good.”
    Before I had time to catch my breath, he started off again. This time, he veered away from the trail.  
    “How is that a break?” Shaking my head, I dug deep, found a reserve of energy, and followed. He went slower now.
    “Step where I do. Bumping into stuff with snowshoes on can be dangerous.” He used his poles to locate buried rocks. A few minutes later the back of a log cabin came into view. “You asked where we’re going? There.”
    “That was hours ago.”  
    “I’m a man who likes to take his time,” he drawled. “By the way, you keep rolling your eyes like that and you’ll set off an avalanche.”
    “You weren’t even looking at me!”
    “Baby, I could feel it.”
    There was a sharp incline to scramble up. Corbin climbed first, sort of duck-walking as he went. He stopped at the top, turned one of his hiking poles around and extended the handle toward me.
    “Such a gentleman,” I panted. I bunched my poles together in one hand and grabbed on, and Corbin easily helped me up. I followed him around to the front of the cabin.  
    He undid his snowshoes, then took mine off. He banged them against the side of the cabin. Hardened icy clods of snow shook loose.
    After digging in his pocket for keys, he unlocked the front door and pushed it open, then stood back, allowing me to enter first. It was so much brighter outside that I couldn’t see much beyond the door, but there was a bench, the upholstered seat threadbare. I pulled off the water backpack and sat. Every muscle in my body sighed in relief.
    “I’m going to get some firewood,” Corbin said. He left before I could offer to help.
    The cabin was smallish, one enormous room subdivided between kitchen and non-kitchen, with a hall at the back. The place didn’t need a third of the furniture in it. The kitchen alone held two tables and about twelve chairs, some of them stacked neatly in a corner. Three mismatched couches made a U-shaped area, a sort of shabby mirror of the luxury multi-sectional sofa in the house we had left.  
    The walls were bare, but the manic floral curtains that hung above the kitchen sink and along the adjoining wall did their part to liven things up.
    Corbin came in, no wood. “You have to see this.” There was an excitement in his eyes that had my heart turning somersaults in my chest. I found myself smiling as I zipped