Nightfall Read Free

recently by
some rich software exec, and Holly had heard about the deal all the
way in Bozeman.
    A yellow light glowed from
the front porch. He parked alongside a neatly arranged stack of
firewood and cut the engine.
    “ Gonna get cold tonight,” he
said as they climbed out. He grabbed a few logs before tromping up
the stairs.
    “ Wait.”
    He turned to look at her. In
the porch light, she saw that he was tall and broad-shouldered. He
could overpower her in a heartbeat if he wanted to, and she was
about to enter an empty house with him.
    “ I don’t even know your
name,” she said.
    “ Colin Denton.” He gave a
slight nod. “I’m the caretaker here, case you were
wondering.”
    She hadn’t been. That’s how
frozen her brain was. It hadn’t even occurred to her to wonder what
this man did for a living or why he happened to be out on the
isolated stretch of highway where she’d crashed her van.
    He arched his brows at her.
“And you are…?”
    “ Holly.” Well, duh. He
already knew that. “Holly Henriksen.”
    The corner of his lip curved
up. He stood there on the porch, not even shivering, in only a
flannel shirt and jeans. He had brown-black eyes and a two-day
beard, and it suddenly struck her how attractive he was—in a
scruffy, lumberjack kind of way.
    “ You want to come in, Holly
Henriksen, so I can see about that cut? Or we gonna stand here all
night freezing our tails off?”
    His tone was teasing, and
something told her he was using it to relax her. It worked. There
was something about his posture, his mannerisms, and his decisive
response to everything that made her want to trust him. She climbed
the steps and waited with her hands stuffed in the pockets of his
jacket as he unlocked the door.
    The cabin was dark inside.
It wasn’t freezing, though, and she guessed he must have had a
heater going earlier in the day. He flipped on a light and she
looked up to see a chandelier made of deer antlers. She surveyed
the layout. A small living area, a large fireplace. At the top of a
ladder was a sleeping loft, where she noticed a rumpled bed. Tucked
beneath the loft was a kitchen with outdated appliances.
    “ It’s small, but it heats up
pretty quick.” He switched on a space heater and then knelt beside
the fireplace to stack the logs. “Hand me some of that newspaper,
would you?”
    She glanced at the wooden
coffee table, where a paper was spread out beside an empty coffee
mug. It was open to an article about drug trafficking along
Interstate 15. It was the Missoula paper—Holly recognized it
because she’d read the same article over breakfast with her sister.
Was it really just this morning? It seemed like weeks
ago.
    Holly handed him the paper,
and he made brisk work of getting the fire going. She edged closer
as it crackled to life.
    “ Thaw out,” he said. “I’ll
be right back.”
    She held her hands near the
flame and closed her eyes as tingly warmth seeped into her toes and
fingers. Even her nose stung. God, she’d thought she’d never get
warm again, and the feeling of heat on her face now brought tears
to her eyes. What is wrong with me? She never cried. But something about the events of
the past hour had her emotions bubbling to the surface.
    Someone tried to kill
me.
    Holly stifled a shudder and
opened her eyes. She heard cabinets opening and closing, and soon,
he was at her side again with a red first-aid kit and a wooden
stool.
    “ Sit.”
    She sat, which immediately
seemed awkward because she was at eye-level with his waist. He
crouched down and opened up the kit.
    “ Nasty gash,” he said,
tearing open an antiseptic wipe. “There’s a cut on your lip, too.
You hit the steering wheel?”
    “ I guess.” She reached up to
touch her mouth. It felt swollen, and she remembered tasting blood
as she’d climbed from the van.
    “ Fair warning—this’ll
sting.”
    Holly’s stomach fluttered as
he rested his hand on the side of her face and tilted her head back
slightly. She