Lost in Paradise Read Free

but…where was the cabin? How far did she travel down that river?
    “You’re in a cabin on the outskirts of Paradise.” Moving closer, he knelt next to the bed and reached out.
    Stacia flinched back, She didn’t know this man. Why would she want him touching her?
    “I’m not going to hurt you. I was just going to introduce myself.” He held out his hand again, palm up. “I’m Noah Gibb.”
    “I’m Stacia Naylor.” She still didn’t want to touch the man. She didn’t know a thing about him. Wasn’t she at enough of a disadvantage without giving the man possession of her hand?
    When she didn’t offer her hand, he felt her forehead. “I just wanted to see if you had a fever. There’s a bottle of aspirin in the bathroom if you have a headache. You’ve got a pretty bad lump on the back of your head.”
    “You have a bathroom here?” Stacia sat up with a grimace as her head pounded. The place didn’t look big enough to have a separate room for washing.
    Reaching up, she felt the back of her head. He was right. She had a huge lump back there. “Do you think I could take a shower?” A nice warm shower sounded lovely. Maybe it would ease some of her aches and pains.
    “Of course you can take a shower. We have a generator to run the well, water heater, and a small refrigerator while we’re here.” He grinned. There isn’t much in the fridge. We’d planned to live off the land while we were here.”
    Her gaze shifted to one of his large hands. “Canned ham is living off the land?” She grinned. If he’d wanted to appear macho, he should have lost the ham before announcing his arrival.
    “Well…” He grinned. “We had been eating fish from the river, and wild onions and potatoes that someone had thoughtfully stored in the root cellar last fall. When you arrived, we thought it best to get one of the canned hams someone left down there and make a stew.”
    “Ham stew?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why not slice it and fry it? You could also fry up the potatoes and onions. You could even cook it all in the same pan. It wouldn’t be stew, but I suppose it would be close and have more flavor than something that would simmer all day in a pan of water.”
    “I knew I liked you, the minute I laid eyes on you.” He smiled again. “That’s a wonderful idea.”
    “Great. I’m glad you liked it.” She moved to sit up and frowned. She’d planned to ask him to direct her to the bathroom and the shower. “Why am I naked?”
    “Oh. I should have mentioned that,” he said as he walked away. It was as though it was perfectly normal for him to undress strange women in his cabin on the outskirts of Paradise—wherever that was. “You were wet and freezing. We thought it best to get you out of your wet clothes.”
    There it was again. That we word. It had barely registered the first time he said it. He must have a wife or girlfriend with him. If so, maybe it wasn’t as bad as she thought and that the woman had undressed her. It was unsettling to think of a strange man undressing her.
    “You said we before. Are you up here with your wife?”
    Noah laughed as he dug a large frying pan out of the cabinet next to the sink. “Hardly. I don’t think anyone wants to marry the ass I’m up here with.” Still smiling, he placed the pan on the stove. “We’re up here because it was our turn to stay here for the weekend. We have special…duties while we’re here.”
    “Oh.” Stacia pressed her lips together. That was a mean thing to say about a person, even if he was up here because their boss had ordered them up here to work. “Isn’t kind of mean to assume no one would want to spend time with her?”
    “Her? What?” He frowned as he turned to look at her. “I’m not up here with a woman.
    “Oh, God.” She held the blanket tighter about her. “Your companion is a man?” She looked down at herself, her face burning as she realized it had been a strange man who undressed her after all. “Which one of