An isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere, with no power, no wifi, and no neighbours within screaming distance? Phoebe King’s dream come true. And you can pry it from her cold dead fingers before she’d even dream of leaving.
Even when a handsome stranger from the fire department shows up, warning of an impending wildfire. Because leaving? That means confronting all the demons from her past.
A shame for Phoebe, then, that Mysterious Handsome would rather do anything than let her fingers become cold and dead… including kidnapping.
A sweet and sassy holiday romance for readers longing for the safety to simply be themselves.
Chapter 1
There was a knock at the heavy wooden door at the front of the cabin. Clutching my pine-green blanket that warded off the winter chill, I closed the zombie book I was reading and leaned forward, nearly falling out of my oversized chair, and stared down the empty hall.
The cabin had no address.
There wasn’t any indication there was a house out here except the wheel ruts left from my twice-monthly trip to the nearest town, and the mail truck, if it was ever forced to come up here.
Everything ran on wind and solar power, what little there was to run. I didn’t have cable, internet, or cellphone service here. I used solar box lamps in most rooms and the most entertainment I had was a flooded window well where, one spring, I had tadpoles.
Like everything else in my life, they’d gone away years ago.
The knock came again, shaking the frame of the old timber.
How bizarre.
I dropped my feet to the ground, and shuffled over. For maybe the thirteenth time since I’d moved in, I wondered why the front door hadn’t included a peephole. That would have been useful about now, or the other twelve times in eight years someone had knocked on the door unannounced.
Cautiously, I opened the door, struggling against the whine of the hinges. It was never locked, but that didn’t matter because I never used the front door and it wasn’t inclined to move for anything short of extreme force. I managed to get it open a crack to see someone standing on the dilapidated front porch holding the broken screen door open. “You’re not Angie.”
Figured. Angie drove the mail truck and knew to come around back, or at least to the side patio.
The person in front of my door was tall, well past the six-foot height of the door, broad shouldered with a loose, blue flannel shirt over a well-washed gray tee. He had spring green eyes, pushing towards an almost unnatural yellow, with shaggy brown hair and the start of a beard.
We made eye contact.
I leaned out the door just enough to look pointedly at the sign hanging at eye level:
- No, I won’t sell the land.
- No, I won’t sell the house.
- No, I won’t buy anything.
- No, I don’t want your religion.
- No, I don’t want to be good neighbors.
- No, I don’t know you.
- No, we’re not long lost cousins.
- No, I’m not that person you thought you knew.
- Yes, you should leave without knocking.
The sign was right where I’d left it.
It had taken me nearly a week of trial and error to create a resin pour over ink that I liked and that didn’t ruin the paper, but it held. The answers to all the stranger’s questions were clearly visible.
“¿No sabes leer inglés?” I asked in a flawless Mexico City accent.
“Happy holidays to you too, Sunshine. I read English just fine,” the stranger said. His accent was pure Willamette Valley Oregonian with the teensiest suggestion of northern California.[1]
I looked, again, at the list.
The stranger narrowed his eyes. “I’m from the volunteer fire department. Are you David King?”
“No. He’s dead. Is that all?”
My door was half-closed before a hand the size of my face stopped it. “Sorry, who are you?”
“Phoebe King, David’s daughter. He left me the house when he died.” I tapped my sign. “It’s not for sale, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Goodbye.”
“Phoebe?”
“Yes. Phoebe, the shining one,” I said with a sigh. “Not to be confused with Phobos, the god of fear and panic, which would probably be a more appropriate name.”
My would-be hero all but audibly blinked. “Do you always introduce yourself with a full story of your name?”
“No. Generally I don’t speak to anyone at all but you seemed to want a conversation.”
“Actually, I’m here from the fire depart—”
I held up a finger, stepped back inside, and turned the corner into the tiny front room, possibly meant as a coat room, where I kept mail and documents. The fire department one was in the red folder next to the dead hedgehog cactus in the red clay pot with a firebird on it.
Returning with the slip of paper, I held it out to the man.
“What’s this?” He stared at it in bewilderment.
“You said you could read English! The answer is there, in black and white with my signature in blue pen. I talked to your fire chief. I understand that if my house burns down I will have to pay out of pocket. I told the chief to let the house burn. If I’m in it, so be it. This is the legal form clearing the department of all wrongdoing. Go away.”
A large foot got between the door and the door frame as I tried to push it shut.
Through the gap I glared at the intruder. “Whatever the question is, the answer is no. Go away.”
“Listen, there’s a wildfire coming, you should evacuate.”
“No.” I’d noticed the air smelled a little smoky this morning, but I figured it was someone getting an early start on warming their house with a woodfire somewhere across the valley.
“The fire is out of control and swinging this way, there’s a shelter forty miles down the highway.”
“I only go as far as Fair Oaks.”
“Fair Oaks is evacuating.”
“Right. Hold on.” I scurried back to my document shelf and pulled out the DNR,[2] the will leaving everything here to Iris Muhly[3] or the charity of her choosing, and a copy of the phrase Go Away And Leave Me Alone written in every language I knew.[4]
When I turned around, the man was standing in the doorway.
I blinked. I didn’t even know the door could open that wide.
He scowled.
“Here.” I handed him the papers. “Go away.”
He folded the papers in half, and then in half again, pressing the creases down neatly before tucking them into his back pocket. “You got a suitcase, lady?”
“No.”
“Bags?”
“No. I came up here for a daytrip.”
“When was that?”
“Eight years, four months, and three days ago. It was a Wednesday in late May. The wildflowers were in bloom and there were bees trying to turn the grill into a hive. I had to stay late, to clean it up.” I could still smell the honeysuckle and clean wind, hear the buzz of the bees and the silence, the great, engulfing silence that drowned out all my screams.
Even more important, nothing up here beeped.
I’d go mad if I had to listen to another clock ticking away the seconds between life and death, another monitor beeping as something failed.
The man was staring in horror now, eyebrows punched together and raised, lips pressed in a moue of concern.
Looking around at the nothingness that filled the empty front hall, I clicked my tongue, nodded, and held a hand out to the door in the classic Midwestern gesture that said, “Please leave before I get my shotgun.”
The stranger probably misinterpreted it because he was from the west coast, where, apparently, someone pointing at the open door meant, “Please come in and sit a spell.”
He walked right in, down the long, dusty hallway into the green space where I’d spent most of my life for the past eight years.
The eastern wall was stained glass, a chaotic medley of colors depicting a fairy forest. My first winter at the cabin the wall there had been too thin, and cold air had seeped in like the breath of death, so I’d gone to the workshop and done the best I could with what I had. The following autumn I’d welded hooks to the thick, black iron lines between the glass so vines could grow along it. I had the classic spider plant,[5] but thornless blackberries and thick pomegranates too, winding up the walls around the room.
Their roots were planted on the north wall with the window that flooded each spring and sometimes had tadpoles. There had been a hole in the cabin wall and the plants from the outside garden were coming in. Killing them all was unthinkable, so I’d extended the walls, added woodfire oven-and-sometimes-kiln and a solar oven, and put roofing where it was needed to keep the wind out.
The flooded window, now dingy and dry, looked into the overgrown courtyard where the leaves rustled bright October orange in the autumn. At this time of year, though, the skeletal branches reached for the unforgiving sky, silently pleading for spring and a new chance at life.
The cabin’s west wall was a bay window meant for giants, with a huge bench stuffed with green and purple pillows, narrow shelves filled with books and rocks between the five arched windows that stretched up into the darkness of the cathedral ceiling, and piles of abandoned projects. Embroidery. Knitting. Hand sewing. Journals. Recipe books.
Somewhere in there I was pretty sure was a mortar and pestle with the dried mountain blueberries I was crushing for ink.
If the stranger had looked up, he would have seen the rope ladder that went up to the second floor and the loft where more pillows made a bed[6] and a telescope looked out over the mountains and foothills to the south.
There were stairs, but they were at the front of the house by the old kitchen and the office I’d come to clear out.
As soon as the office was done, I could go.
But I’d have to drive on a highway to leave, and I couldn’t do that.
So I stayed.
I’d stayed so long that even the thought of leaving had faded away.
Sometimes I remembered I was supposed to go back to the life I’d had.
There were papers that needed reviewing. Editors who wanted meetings. People who wanted to talk to me. Questions I would be expected to answer.
If I could find a way to drive on the highway, I’d go back to all that. But I couldn’t.
The office needed cleaning, and I hadn’t done that yet.
Besides, there was still food in the fridge, and the plants needed watering. It wasn’t time to leave yet.
[1] Before life in the cabin I’d sat through a lot of linguistics, amongst other things, although knowing where his accent was from wasn’t particularly helpful.
[2] Do Not Resuscitate – if I became severely incapacitated, I wasn’t coming back again. Once was enough.
[3] I’d never talked to her, but I saw an interview she did once that was broadcast to the diner in Fair Oaks and something about her seemed as lost and lonely as I was, so I figured she’d enjoy the randomness of the gift.
[4] Except ASL because I couldn’t draw the signs, but 23 out of 24 isn’t bad.
[5] Chlorophytum comosum
[6] Getting a mattress and bedframe delivered and set up upstairs had been too overwhelming, so I’d skipped it.