“Dig in.”
Always the gentleman, she thought as he joined her at the table. “I made a bunch. There’s fresh sweet butter. If you don’t like chokecherry syrup—”
“I love it.” She slid several of the lightly browned cakes onto her plate. The aroma that rose from them made her stomach growl loudly. She slathered them with butter and covered them with syrup. The first bite was so delicious that she actually moaned, making him smile.
“I was going to ask how they are,” he said with a laugh, “but I guess I don’t have to.”
She devoured the pancakes before helping herself to more. They ate in a companionable silence that didn’t surprise her any more than Colt making her pancakes in the middle of the night or opening his door to her, no questions asked. It was as if it was something he did all the time. Maybe it was, she thought, remembering the first night they’d met.
He hadn’t hesitated when she’d told him she needed his help. She’d looked into his blue eyes and known she could trust him. He’d been so sweet and caring that she’d almost told him the truth. But she’d stopped herself. Because she didn’t think he would believe her? Or because she didn’t want to involve him? Or because, at that point, she thought she could still handle things on her own?
Unfortunately, she no longer had the option of keeping the truth from him.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” she said, after swallowing her last bite of pancake and wiping her mouth with her napkin. The food had helped, but her body ached all over and fatigue had weakened her. “You had to be surprised to see me again, especially with me showing up at your door in the middle of the night looking like I do.”
“I didn’t even know you knew my last name.”
“After that night in Billings... Before I left your hotel room, while you were still sleeping, I looked in your wallet.”
“You planned to take my money?” He’d had over four hundred dollars in there. He’d been headed home to his fiancée, he’d told her. But the fiancée, who was supposed to pick him up at the airport, had called instead with crushing news. Not only was she not picking him up, she was in love with one of his best friends, someone he’d known since grade school.
He’d been thinking he just might rent a car and drive home to confront the two of them, he’d told Lola later. But, ultimately, he’d booked a flight for the next morning to where he was stationed and, with time to kill, had taken a taxi to a hotel, paid for a room and headed for the hotel bar. Two drinks later, he’d run into Lola as he’d headed from the bar to the men’s room. Lola had saved him from getting stinking drunk that night. Also from driving to Gilt Edge to confront his ex-fiancée and his ex-friend.
“I hate to admit that I thought about taking your money,” she said. “I could have used it.”
“You should have taken it then.”
She smiled at him and shook her head. “You were so kind to me, so tender...” Her cheeks heated as she held his gaze and remembered being naked in his arms. “I’m sure I gave you the wrong impression of me that night. It wasn’t like me to...with a complete stranger.” She bit her lower lip and felt tears well in her eyes again.
“There is nothing wrong with the impression you left with me. As a matter of fact, I’ve thought of you often.” He smiled. It was a great smile. “Every time I heard one of those songs that we’d danced to in my hotel room that night—” his gaze warmed to a Caribbean blue “—I thought of you.”
She looked away to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat before she could speak again. “It wasn’t an old boyfriend I was running from that night. I let you believe that because I doubted you’d have believed the truth. I did need your help, though, because right before I collided with you in that hallway, I’d seen one of them in the hotel. I knew it was just a matter of time before they found me and took me back.”
“Took you back?”
“I wasn’t a fugitive from the law or some mental institution,” she said quickly. “It’s worse than that.”
He narrowed his gaze with concern. “What could be worse than that?”
“The Society of Lasting Serenity.”
“The fringe religious cult that relocated to the mountains about five years ago?” Colt asked, unable to keep the shock from his voice.
She nodded.
He couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d said she had escaped from prison. “When did you join that?”
“I didn’t. My parents were some of the founding members when the group began in California. I was in Europe at university when they joined. I’d heard from my father that SLS had relocated to Montana. A few years after that, I received word that the leader, Jonas Emanuel, needed to see me. My mother was ill.” Her voice broke. “Before I could get back here, my mother and father both died, within hours of each other, and had been buried on the compound. According to Jonas, they had one dying wish.” Her laugh could have cut glass. “They wanted to see me married. Once I was on the SLS compound, I learned that, according to Jonas, they had promised me to him.”
“That’s crazy.” He still couldn’t get his head around this.
“Jonas is delusional but also dangerous.”
“So you were running from him that night I met you?”
She nodded. “But, unfortunately, when I left the hotel the next morning, two of the ‘sisters’ were waiting for me and forced me to go back to the compound.”
“And tonight?” he asked as he pushed his plate away.
Lola met his gaze. “I escaped. I’d been locked up there since I last saw you within miles of here at the Montana SLS compound.”
Colt let out a curse. “You’ve been held there all this time against your will? Why didn’t you—”
“Escape sooner?” She sounded near tears as she held his gaze.
He saw something in those beautiful eyes that made his stomach drop.
Her voice caught as she said, “I had originally gone there to get my parents’ remains because I don’t believe they died of natural causes. I’d gotten a letter from my father right before I heard from Jonas. He wanted out of SLS, but my mother refused. My father said he feared the hold Jonas had on her and needed my help because she wasn’t well.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think they were murdered, but I can’t prove it without their bodies, and Jonas has refused to release them. Legally, there isn’t much I can do since my parents had signed over everything to him—even their daughter.”
Murder? He’d heard about the fifty-two-year-old charismatic leader of the cult living in the mountains outside of town, but he couldn’t imagine the things Lola was telling him. “He can’t expect you to marry him.”
