Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (117 page)

***

Packing a small overnight bag with
toiletries and some clothes, Nicole left a brief note for Danielle saying that
she was going home to her parents’ house for a day or two.
 
This was another lie in a steadily
growing list, but who was really keeping track anyway?

After leaving her apartment, Nicole went
to the nearest Hertz location, and rented a red Ford Fiesta.

It was a five-hour drive to Bristol, Vermont.
 
The day was warm and dry, the sky blue
and almost cloudless.
 
Nicole missed
driving—in New York, there was little reason to have a car, and flying
down the road at her own speed made her feel a little more in control.

She kept her windows down, put some
cheesy pop music on, and sang along with the songs—even the ones she
hardly knew.

It was important to get to Vermont as
early in the day as possible, so Nicole stopped only once at a rest stop, where
she got a couple of cheeseburgers from McDonalds and went to the bathroom.

Finally, she was just a few miles outside
of Bristol.
 
The landscape had
changed to one that was very familiar to her from her childhood in upstate New
York.
 
She was used to seeing long
stretches of farmland, trees, barns and tiny houses, pickup trucks parked in
the driveways.

Once she entered Bristol, Nicole felt a
pang in her chest.
 
It was a
beautiful little town, like something from a Norman Rockwell painting.

The first thing she thought when she
drove down quaint little Main Street with its Cup a Joe café, and Danny’s
Barber Shop with the spinning pole out front:

This
would be a wonderful place to start a family.

And then the tears were in her eyes and
Nicole let them stream down her cheeks.
 
She was being silly again, but her hormones were probably going crazy
after all.
 

She pulled into the tiny little two-pump
gas station and a girl that looked around seventeen or eighteen with
strawberry-blond hair, jeans and a halter top, came over to the car.
 
“Hi,” she said to Nicole with a simple
smile.

Nicole noticed the girl had one of those
tribal tattoos on her left bicep.
 

“Hi.
 
Could you fill up the tank with regular, please?”

“Sure.”
 
The girl started the pump and then stood
beside it, whistling an unrecognizable tune, until the tank was full.
 
She put the nozzle back in the pump and
came over to the window.
 
“That’ll
be twenty two, thirty.”

Nicole gave her twenty-five bucks.
 
“Keep the change.”

“Thanks!
 
Much appreciated,” the girl said.

“Do you happen to know how I can get to Beauford
Farms from here?” Nicole asked her.

“Sure,” the girl said.
 
“Keep on going up Main Street, when you
hit the third light from here—you go left on Dawson Street.
 
Follow that all the way down to the end.
 
Then you go right on Wilmington
Road.
 
And then you’ll see the
signs.”

“Would you happen to know of a small
cabin right around that area, near the lake?”

The girl laughed.
 
“Sorry, there’s got to be at least a
dozen cabins that fit that description,” she said.

“Oh, okay.
 
Thanks again!” Nicole said, her heart
sinking.
 
A dozen cabins?
 
Would she even be able to find them
all?
 
And then even if she
did—what would she do?
 
Would
she walk up to each and every cabin, knock and hope that Red would come to the
door?

Still, she tried not to let herself get discouraged.
 
She had about two or three more hours of
daylight and maybe she’d get lucky.
 
If not, she’d have to find the nearest motel to hole up in and start
looking again in the morning.

A few minutes later, she arrived at
Beauford Farms and a store that sold all kinds of stuff; canned jams, apple
cider donuts, fresh produce grown on the premises.
 

There was a sprightly white-haired lady
standing next to a register.
 
She
greeted Nicole with a very friendly smile and asked if she could help her find
anything.

“Actually, yes.
 
But not something in this store.”

The older woman’s eyebrows rose
slightly.
 
“Oh?”

Nicole began describing the cabin and its
possible location, but the woman stopped her mid-description.
 
“Hold on a sec.
 
Let me get my husband, he knows
everything within fifty miles of here.”
 
And she waddled off to a door that led to a back room.

A moment later, she reappeared with her
husband, a tall man—though the years seemed to have bent him over.
 
He wore brown slacks, suspenders, and an
off-white collared shirt.
 
His whole
body was browned from years toiling in the sun, but his light blue eyes were
kind.
 
“My wife says you’re looking
for someone in a nearby cabin.”

Nicole went through all the details she
knew about the place from what Jeb had told her—which admittedly wasn’t
much.

The old man nodded.
 
When she was through talking, he shook
his head.
 
“There are a few cabins
it could be.
 
A lot of cabins by the
lake, and a few that border this farmland too.
 
Could even be one or two I don’t know about.”

“Maybe you’ve met the man who’s staying
there?” Nicole said, grasping at straws now.
 
“He’s definitely not from around
here.
 
He’s in his early thirties,
curly dark hair, kind of exotic looking—“

Suddenly the old man’s eyes lit up in
recognition and he clapped his hands.
 
“Oh, shoot—I know exactly who you mean.
 
I must be losing my mind after all, I
should have thought of him right away.”

Nicole’s heart was galloping again,
practically pounding through her chest.

The old man continued.
 
“He came in here about a week ago and
asked about getting himself a fishing license.
 
We talked a little about that, I gave
him the lay of the land.
 
He seemed
to be growing a new beard.”
 
The old
man chuckled about that.
 
“He kept
scratching at it like it was bugging him.”

“And he told you where he’s staying?”

“I’m sorry, us old folks get sidetracked
too easily,” he said, putting a gnarled old hand on her shoulder.
 
“Yes, he mentioned that his cabin’s over
near our apple trees, just on the outskirts of our farm.
 
I can show you how to get there.”

“Thank you so much,” Nicole gushed.

“Glad we could help.”

Nicole and the old man went outside the
store and he told her how to get to the cabin.
 
It was just back up the road about half
a mile, and then she was to turn right onto an unmarked dirt road next to the
big red barn.
 

The whole thing was like something out of
a movie, she thought.

She gave the old man a hug and he smiled
at her, told her good luck.

Then Nicole was back in her car, driving
faster than she should have been, her hands gripping the steering wheel as if
it might decide to fly away.
 
Her
stomach was tight with anticipation, and fluttering.
 
The fluttering reminded her of what was
inside of her, and Nicole slowed down a little.

I’m going to be a mother, she
thought.
 
For the first time, the
notion didn’t completely terrify her.

Soon, she found the turnoff onto the
long, dirt road.
 
It was wide and
relatively well maintained, surrounded on both sides by forest.
 
Through the trees on the right side, she
could still make out the farmland, and as the road curved, she thought she
could even catch a glimpse of the lake in front of her.

As told to her by the old man at the farm
store, the road would start to snake off to the left, but just before that,
there was another small turnoff.
 
This small turnoff, he’d said, should take her to the cabin in question.

Nicole’s mouth was completely dry, like
it had been the first day she’d met Red in his huge top floor office.

She was leaning forward, her face
practically touching the windshield as she drove the last ten or twenty yards
down the more narrow, bumpy road that took her to a small one-story cabin.

The cabin was surrounded by trees on all
sides, and right behind it, the beautiful blue lake, which stretched magically
out into the distance like some desert mirage.

The whole area was so peaceful.
 
Nicole parked the car and turned it off,
heard almost nothing but the engine ticking loudly for a long moment.

And then she heard something else.

It was a loud rapport, like someone
clapping.
 
Except the clapping,
clopping sound was rather slow and rhythmic.
 
Occasionally it would cease and then
resume once more.

It was coming from just behind the cabin,
Nicole thought.
 
And she had a
feeling she knew who and what it might be.

She got out of the car, almost
delicately, as if her feet might break.
 
She felt unsteady and trembling, but forced herself to be brave.
 

The thought of Red screaming at her to
leave was a strong image, and she tried desperately to shake it from her
mind.
 
If it was really even him
back there.
 
Truly, it could be
anyone.

And then she was approaching the house.

The sound was getting louder.
 
Occasionally there would be pause, and
you could hear something being thrown, clattering into pieces.
 
And then the thunking, clopping sound
would resume.

When Nicole finally reached the backyard,
she knew she’d been right all along.

Red was standing there in blue jeans and
no shirt, chopping wood.
 
There was
a huge stack of logs nearby—cords and cords of them.
 
He’d obviously been at it for a long
time, from the looks of it.

His back was facing her and he was
covered in sweat.
 
She could see,
even from this angle, that his thick, curly black hair had grown out a little
and wasn’t styled at all.
 
Pausing
for the moment, he wiped sweat from his forehead and took some deep breaths.

The axe was gripped in one hand.
 
With his free hand, he reached down and
grabbed a huge piece of wood and placed it on the ground in front of him, then
in a single motion, swung the axe in a high arc and split the wood with one
slice.
 

CHUNK.

The pieces fell to the side.
 
Red picked them up one a time and threw
them into a pile, presumably to be stacked like all the rest at some later
point.

Nicole knew she had to get his attention,
but her throat didn’t seem to be able to emit sound.
 

“Red.”
  

He was in the midst of grabbing his next
piece of wood.

“RED.”
 
She forced herself to scream his name,
but in her nervous state it came out barely loud enough to reach his ears.

Still, he must have heard her, because he
turned around and saw her.
 
His
expression was stunned.
 
And then
his lips clamped together and his brow creased.
 
“What the hell are you doing here?” he
said, finally.

It was the worst possible reaction.
 
Nicole reeled, turning and running back
toward her car, blubbering like a little kid.

She couldn’t really help it.
 
In that second, the look on his face and
the tone of his voice had been exactly the opposite of what she’d been hoping for,
what she’d been praying he might do.

She was pregnant and he wanted nothing to
do with her.
 
That was all she could
think, and she just wanted to get the hell away from him and that cabin and the
entire town.

Nicole ran as fast as she could to reach
her car.

Red was calling her name now.
 
“Nicole!
  
Wait!”
 

She didn’t care.
 
She needed to go.
 
She needed to be somewhere safe,
somewhere she’d be taken care of right now.
 
It was like a horror movie.
 
She didn’t even look back, just ran,
picturing him coming after her with his axe still in one hand—like Jack
Nicholson from The Shining.