Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Trapped! Can’t get away! yammered a little voice in her head—a horribly familiar voice.
“You know, I think about you a lot,” Luke murmured, pulling her closer, so that she could smell the minty freshness of his breath.
Wintergreen—his breath always smells like wintergreen. I could never stand that smell afterwards. After he tried to…it makes me sick!
“Let me go.” She wanted to shout the words but they came out as a weak, helpless whisper. “Don’t…don’t touch me.”
“I’d like to do more than touch you, darlin’” Luke murmured, his grin turning ugly now…hungry.
Predatory—that was the word, Mattie thought faintly.
“Leave me alone.” The words were stronger this time but they still sounded too weak, too vulnerable.
“I think about you all the time,” he said again. “Little Mattie Porter…the one that got away…”
Suddenly a big hand landed on Luke’s shoulder and he was yanked forcibly backwards. He wound up sprawled on his back in the snow at the edge of the path, a look of shock on his handsome face.
“What the—” he began.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing to my female?” Grath’s voice was a low, menacing growl as he glared down at the other man.
“I…I don’t know what you mean.” Luke blinked, looking convincingly confused. “Mattie and I went to school together—we were just catching up.” He looked up at Mattie, as though he actually expected her to back up his story! “Isn’t that right, Mattie?”
Mattie felt sick. She hated the bitter cold of the New England winter and she hated Christmasville—the shiny, glittery, little tourist-trap that it was. But she hadn’t expected to encounter this particular specter from the past. It was too much.
She shook her head and muttered to Grath,
“Let’s go.”
Without waiting for an answer and offering no other explanation, she walked swiftly down the path, trying to push the past away, back into the corner of her mind where it usually lived.
She wished she had never come home for the holidays.
NINE
GRATH
“Hey, what the fuck, little girl?” Grath left the human male lying there and ran after her. Madeline was upset, he could tell. And he could also tell that the encounter he’d seen going on wasn’t a friendly one.
He’d seen the look of sheer terror in her big brown eyes—a look he had never seen there before. She was always so fearless—so careless of danger. But faced with this one human male, she seemed suddenly helpless, vulnerable in a way that it hurt to see.
He wanted to pound the human male to dust for putting that look on her lovely face but he decided to run after her instead, to see if he could get to the bottom of what was going on.
By the time he got to Madeline, she was standing in front of the hot chocolate cart. The two hot chocolates Grath had purchased were still sitting there, on the metal edge of the cart—both mounded with fluffy white whipped cream that was just starting to melt.
The operator of the cart—an older human with gray facial hair—eyed Grath uncertainly. He probably had reason to doubt his sanity, considering the way Grath had left the hot chocolate and charged off up the path right after he paid for the stuff. But Grath had suddenly gotten a really bad feeling that the female he was Protecting was in trouble and he never ignored his gut instincts—not when it came to Madeline.
“Those are ours,” he said to her now, as he reached the cart. “I paid for them and then had a feeling I needed to go check on you.”
“Oh. Which one has the extra whipped cream?” Her voice was flat—emotionless—but she was keeping her head down so he couldn’t see her face.
“They both do,” Grath said impatiently. “You wanna tell me what was happening back there, Madeline?”
“No, I don’t.” She picked up one of the cups at random and turned away from him.
Grath took the other cup, nodding at the confused-looking vendor as he did, and followed her down the path. He wished he could make Madeline talk to him—clearly she was upset and just as clearly it had something to do with the human male who had been holding her by the hand. But he sensed that she wouldn’t speak until she was ready, so he swallowed his impatience with difficulty and simply walked by her side, sipping the hot chocolate, which he barely tasted.
Madeline was sipping from her cup as well as they strolled side-by-side down the path, not bothering to look at the other ice sculptures. They came to the end of the path and Grath saw that they were at the entrance of the park again, where they had come in. He looked down at the curvy little female beside him and saw that she had a grim look on her face.
“Madeline?” he murmured, making her name a question. “Do you want to talk about it?”