new red sweater she felt ready to face whatever life threw at her.
Benjamin grabbed her oversize suitcase from the back of his truck and together they walked up the stairs to the small porch and the front door.
Benjamin knocked and a deep voice replied. He opened the door and Layla stepped inside. Her first impression was that the place was downright cozy with a fire crackling merrily in the stone fireplace and a thick throw rug covering an expanse of the gleaming hardwood floor.
“What in the hell is she doing here?” The deep voice came from a recliner and a stunned surprise fluttered through her as she got her first glimpse of Jacob Grayson.
His dark hair hung almost to his shoulders and his jaw was covered with a thick growth of whiskers. She could tell from the hollows in his cheeks that he’d lost weight, but his shoulders were still broad beneath the navy sweater he wore and his jeans hugged the length of his long legs.
It was his eyes that made her breath catch in her throat. Dark as night and filled with the shadows of hell, they bore into her with intensity. He looked at her, her suitcase and then at Benjamin. “What the hell is going on here?”
A bubble of laughter unintentionally escaped her. “I guess you didn’t get the memo,” she said. “I’m your new roomie.”
Chapter 2
Jacob recognized her immediately even though the last time he’d seen her Layla West had been about nineteen years old. Even back then she’d liked her jeans tight and her heels high and it looked as if nothing had changed. She’d be about twenty-eight now, definitely not a kid anymore.
There was some small part of his brain that processed the scent of her sexy perfume in the air, part of him that was drawn to the shine of her long blond hair, but the bigger part of his brain stared at Benjamin through angry narrowed eyes.
It would be just like his well-meaning brothers to set up something like this in an effort to pull him from his self-imposed isolation. Nothing like a hot, sexy woman to pull a man back into life. Yeah, right, he thought bitterly.
“Is this some kind of a joke because if it is I’m not laughing.” What he wanted to do was shove both Benjamin and the lovely Layla West right back out the door. Instead he got out of the chair and approached where Benjamin stood.
“Of course you’re not laughing,” Benjamin replied tightly. “That might make you human.” He dropped Layla’s suitcase on the floor and looked at her. “Layla, would you excuse us for a minute?”
He grabbed Jacob’s arm and pulled him toward the door. The two men stepped out on the porch and into the cold night air. “This is not a joke,” Benjamin said, a touch of uncharacteristic anger in his voice. “This isn’t about you and any issues you might have, Jacob. We’ve all pretty much left you alone out here for the last six months. We’ve asked damn little of you and hoped to hell you’d pull yourself together.”
The cold December wind sliced through Jacob’s sweater almost as effectively as the disgust in his younger brother’s voice. He jammed his hands into his pockets and waited for Benjamin to finish whatever it was he wanted to say.
“Layla was attacked this evening when she got into her car after work. She managed to get away but she didn’t see who was responsible. We need to stash her someplace where nobody will know where she is for a day or two while we figure out what’s going on.”
“Why don’t you put her at your place? You could hide her there. Edie doesn’t strike me as the loose-lipped kind of woman.” Edie and Benjamin lived at the ranch house up the lane.
“Edie isn’t, but you know Walt. He means well but he has never met a secret he could keep.” Benjamin jammed his hands into his coat pockets.
Jacob sighed, knowing his brother was right. Walt Tolliver was Edie’s grandfather, a nice old man who had become something of a local hero after being responsible for bringing to light a scheme involving illegal experiments on the dead of Black Rock. Walt meant well, but Benjamin was right, the old man had never met a secret he could keep.
“A couple of days at the most,” Benjamin said. “Surely you can force yourself to be civil for that long.”
Maybe he could pretend she wasn’t there for that length of time, Jacob thought to himself. “Whatever,” he finally said, the cold seeping deep into his bones.
He stepped back in the door where Layla stood poised for flight next to her suitcase.
“Take off your coat. Relax, you’re staying,” he said grudgingly as he threw himself back into the recliner where he’d been seated before they’d arrived.
“Great, this should be fun,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. She took off her coat and draped it over her arm. “Where do you want me to put my things?”
“There’s only one bedroom,” Benjamin said. “I’m sure my brother would want you to have it.” He pointed to one of the doors off the main room.
Layla looked at Jacob as if to see if that was okay. He nodded. Most nights he slept in the recliner or on the sofa anyway. Besides, if he was lucky she’d stay in the bedroom and out of his hair until Benjamin came back to retrieve her.
“We’ll stay in touch,” Benjamin said to Layla as he backed toward the front door. “You’ll be safe here, Layla. Just give me a call if you need anything.”
With that, Benjamin left. Jacob picked up the remote control to the television and turned the volume up enough that conversation would be difficult. He knew it was rude and he didn’t care.
He’d stopped caring about anything six months ago when he’d left his job in Kansas City with the FBI and had returned to Black Rock and this cabin. All he wanted was to be left alone with the crushing guilt that never left him and the images of dead women that haunted him.
“I guess I’ll just get settled in,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the television.
He watched as she pulled the suitcase toward the bedroom, unable to help but notice how her jeans cupped her curvy behind. As she disappeared into the bedroom he got up and grabbed a beer from the fridge.
In the past six months beer had become his best friend. Although he never got falling-down drunk, he drank just enough to dull his senses and aid in a little selective amnesia.
Hopefully it would take her at least an hour to unpack that suitcase, which had looked big enough to hold a month’s worth of clothes, and hopefully she’d only be in his personal space long enough to wear one of the outfits she’d packed.
He took a long pull on the fresh beer and tried to ignore the scent of her that still eddied in the air. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smelled the pleasant scent of a woman or touched warm silky skin in a fevered caress.
The only women in his life in the last year had initially been faces on flyers who had eventually become bodies in crime scene photos. And their deaths had been his fault.
He shook his head and took another deep swallow of his beer to dispel any horrible visions that might drag across his brain. He didn’t want to think about those women, knew that dwelling on them would cast him into the darkest of despair.
As
