Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance by Shaye Marlow Read Free Book Online Page B

a bit like a wolf.
    “Oh no.  Oh no.”  I dropped the basket of clothes I’d had
propped on my hip, not caring when the clothes tumbled to the ground, and spun
to look out toward my neighbor’s cabin.
    Had he shot my dog?
    Now, Mocha and I didn’t have the most traditional dog/owner
relationship, but I loved that dog.  And somewhere deep in her tiny brain, I
think she was maybe fond of me too.
    With no real memory of my feet moving, I was already halfway
down the bank, moving toward his cabin.  The beach passed in a flash.  I
barreled up his lawn, stomped up the steps to his front porch, glanced in
through the screen door—and froze.
    He was seated on a big leather couch, presenting me with his
profile as Fast and Furious revved across the big flat screen on my right.  Just
beyond him, along the far wall, I spotted the saws that had been plaguing me
for the last few days.
    And lying next to him on his leather couch?  My dog, Mocha,
the traitor.  She looked supremely comfortable, her head in his lap, her feet
dangling off the cushions.  Which was all sorts of crazy because she was
skittish as hell, she hated men, and she never cuddled.  And , she
wasn’t allowed on the furniture.
    As I stood there, trying to process this new development, Gary
the blueberry murderer ate a potato chip, and then fed her one.  He fed my
healthy dog a potato chip.
    But none of that was what really got my attention. 
No, what really got my attention was the bare expanse of his shoulders and the
side view of his beautiful, naked chest.  He was slouched on the sofa— slouched !—and
his muscles were bulging.  He had a Daniel Craig body, all broad-shouldered and
ripped and tanned.  His fantastic chest was decorated with the perfect amount
of dark hair sprinkled down the center and trailing into the waistband of a
pair of lounge pants.  I say ‘sprinkled’ because he looked downright edible.  He
was a loud-ass, but I was having the crazy urge to run my tongue down his happy
trail. 
    The thought came as I stood gawking in his doorway:  All
I’d have to do is put a bag over his head and a gag in his mouth, and I could
really enjoy that body.
    “Enjoying the show?” Gary asked.
    I looked up into his smirk.  He wasn’t talking about the
movie, I realized.  He’d caught me ogling.
    “I thought you shot my dog,” I said.
    He frowned at me is if I were the evil one.  “Why
would I do that?” he asked, feeding the dog in question another potato chip.
    She took it with pathetic gratitude, licking his hand,
making it seem like I starved her.  The sight put my teeth on edge.
    “She’s on a diet.  And you put a bullet hole in my panties,”
I said.
    He frowned at me again, obviously irritated I kept
interrupting the longest car chase I’d ever seen.  “Every diet includes potato
chips.  And—did you just say I put a hole in your panties?”
    “A bullet hole,” I stressed.
    “In your panties.”
    “They were hanging on the line.”
    He gave me this masculine smirk that made me either want to
smack him or fuck him.  “How do you know it was me?” he asked.
    Another potato chip.  The future flashed before my eyes, a
future in which my dog gained fifty pounds and never came when she was called, because
she was always over at the neighbor’s, being fed Barbecue Lays.
    “You were out bumbling through the woods all day, randomly
shooting at poor, defenseless animals.  Of course it was you.”
    He squinted at me, probably trying to decide if I was a
tree-hugger.  My jeans and flannel button-down over a T-shirt said not.  But I
liked my neck of the woods just exactly as it was.  Not pocked with
bullet holes and divest of adorable feathered woodland creatures.
    “I do not ‘bumble’.  And how do you know the hole wasn’t
already there?” he asked.  “Or made some other way; holes can be made lots of
ways.”
    I was trying to hold my temper.  I really, really was.  And
for some reason I wasn’t going