The Woodsman (Lust in the Woods Book 1) Read online

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2016 Alexa Sinclaire

  ISBN: 978-1-77339-012-3

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Melissa Hosack

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To man-buns and coffee, two things everyone should have more of in their life, no questions asked.

  THE WOODSMAN

  Lust in the Woods, 1

  Alexa Sinclaire

  Copyright © 2016

  Chapter One

  Katy

  “I mean, he never even called, Katy! And I know he wasn’t busy last night because he was totally online posting comments on his stupid friends’ photos of that concert they all went to. So I’m just going to call him and see what his deal is because, seriously, it’s so not cool what he did. I mean, I spent way too much time getting my outfit together for that night. And I waxed for that guy. Waxed. Not the cheap stuff either. I went to Ruby Rose and got a deluxe package done, and you know what that means. As far as I’m concerned, I’m way too invested in this dude to just let him off the hook. He was supposed to call.”

  Before I could get a word in, Charlie started all over again.

  I loved Charlie. I did. She was fun, sassy, and basically was my only friend, but still my best friend, in this random town I’d ended up in, despite my life plan to live in a studio apartment in Paris and write poetry.

  But then that was the result of me following my man, who I thought was the man of my dreams, to the middle of nowhere because he decided he wanted to renovate his great-aunt’s decrepit house he unexpectedly inherited. And sure, I’d had doubts he was actually the man of my dreams, but I was young and full of crazy hormones, and I’d believed life was short. Then I found myself single and serving overpriced coffee. To make matters worse, I was living in a dirt-cheap, rundown cottage in the woods that felt like it was originally built for a horror movie set. All because the man of my dreams wasn’t that at all. Actually, he was just a man I should have ditched as soon as he uttered the words, “I just want to find myself” while being unemployed and asking me for gas money.

  Life suddenly didn’t seem so short when working for minimum wage. In fact, life felt really, really long.

  Especially when Charlie was having a relationship crisis.

  And by relationship, I meant the random dude who asked for her number a few weeks ago, took her out once, gave her one mediocre orgasm, and then never called back.

  In Charlie’s world that constituted a legitimate relationship. It wasn’t my job as her best friend to point out that her definition of what a relationship was needed work if she wanted to avoid ending up in her current situation again and again. It was my job to provide the shoulder to cry on when she needed it and remind her that she was hot, sassy, and a great catch.

  Anyway, who was I to provide relationship advice? I’d given up my rent-controlled Seattle apartment to follow Daniel here. Six months after arriving, we’d broken up. Despite Daniel’s shortcomings in his approach to hard work, mainly being he didn’t believe in doing it, the breakup had been pretty amicable. I could have been bitter. I could have turned into a massive shrew and insist he pay me back the money I’d used to help him get going on his project. But I didn’t because I was a firm believer in taking responsibility for my choices. I’d happily and willingly drained my savings account to make our life enjoyable in this latest project, even though it was really his latest project. Looking back, it was stupid, plain old stupid. But we all make stupid mistakes. Especially when it came to men.

  There came a day when I looked around the tent we were living in—yes, that’s right. We were living in a tent since the derelict house wasn’t actually habitable due to the lack of water, electricity, or a functioning roof on it—and realized we’d been living here for months and yet the only evidence of Daniel doing anything constructive was finding new ways to make bongs from material he’d found in the equally dilapidated garage. I’d realized I was done.

  Done.

  I was done with only being able to take showers at the pool.

  I was done with the mediocre sex that came with the huge amount of pot floating around Daniel’s system.

  I was done with trying to get the smell of weed out of my clothes.

  I was done with Daniel.

  Sure, he was cute, so cute, but in a lost puppy way. He was stoned more than he wasn’t, something that hadn’t been the case when we first got together. I realized that at twenty-four years old, this whole tent-stoner situation was stupid. Almost too stupid for words. Especially since I was pretty sure I’d never really loved him. Not in the way I wanted to, in the way I sensed deep down inside me was possible.

  He made me laugh. He made me feel excited about life, about taking adventures with him, but never more so than any other friends. There was warmth and kindness in our shared life, but no passion. No soul stirring yearning, no volcanic need to be around him or touched by him, no feeling of fear that my life would never be the same if he wasn’t in it.

  I’d deluded myself into thinking love was the same as companionship. All that was friends with benefits with a bit of commitment thrown in at the last minute. I was wrong to think that was love. What I felt for him was all of the above and those were good, yummy things, but not the sort of things you sacrificed everything for come hell or high water. I tore off the Band-Aid I’d so comfortably worn around our relationship and walked away.

  Daniel was pretty sad about the breakup, although honestly I couldn’t really tell because he was so damn mellow. But I just wanted out, not a battle of building resentment toward a man whose main priorities was where to get the cheapest generic potato chip.

  I packed up my stuff, spent two weeks in Charlie’s apartment while I got on my feet, convinced my manager at the coffee shop to take me on fulltime, and got enough saved up for the rent on my spooky cottage.

  I started to plan for Paris.

  I wasn’t going to let go of Paris. I couldn’t. The odds of getting there weren’t great, I knew this. The stupidity of my last big life decision, to follow Daniel here, hung over me like a mustard-colored cloud of negativity and fear. I was adventurous, I was bold, but I couldn’t be stupid again. That fear scared the hell out of me. There was some sort of ironic lesson there, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

  Paris was too huge to mess up. There was money, tickets, visas, a language barrier issue, and so many other things I had to figure out. This was not a throw-a-backpack-on-and-buy-some-more-hippie-skirts-and-take-up-smoking-rolled-cigarettes sort of thing. This was a let-this-be-the-best-and-most-successful-move-of-your-life sort of thing.

  Which meant I was sorting my life out.

  In order to have the dream.

  Planning.

  Saving.

  Avoiding men like the plague, especially those who didn’t have solid incomes and solid goals.

  Let’s not forget ignoring my libido like it was an irritating case of dry skin. After many, many months of not getting what I needed from Daniel, it almost felt bad for my health to avoid sex. But I wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of woman, not that there was anything wrong with that. It just wasn’t m
y jam.

  “Don’t you think that’s what I should do? Hello? Are you even listening?” Charlie’s whine finally broke through. I glanced at her. Her hot pink gel nails tapped rhythmically against the counter in frustration, and her scowl marred her usually gorgeous face.

  “Am I listening? No, Charlie, because I’m pretty sure the question is the same one you asked me two hours ago when we started work, and my answer is the same. What I’m listening to is the noise of customers. You know who the customers are, right? In case you don’t, there’s one standing right in front of you, actually.”

  I turned back to the coffee machine and started making the double-espresso vanilla macchiato Mrs. Elberts ordered every day on her way to work at the hospital in the town over. She didn’t even need to give us her order, but Charlie did need to ring up the cash she handed over.

  Something Charlie had apparently forgotten.

  I still had no idea how Charlie hadn’t been fired yet. The amount of complaints made against her for ignoring customers was staggering. The thing was, Mr. Stanford Gross, our manager, had a soft spot for Charlie. Charlie never deliberately ignored customers. Butterflies distracted her, text messages popped up on her phone, a deep yearning to convince me to get a makeover suddenly overtook her—it didn’t matter. Distracted was Charlie’s middle name. Mr. Gross, as I liked to call him, because the man was such the opposite of gross with his fantastic bone structure it wasn’t even funny, except I kind of thought it was hence why I called him Mr. Gross, could never bring himself to fire her.

  I handed Mrs. Elberts her coffee and gave her an apologetic smile.

  Wiping off the steam from the coffee machine with my back to Charlie, I decided her silence meant two things. She was either texting the guy she wouldn’t stop talking about, or she was giving me the silent treatment. Both of which were too ridiculous for me to acknowledge.

  “Can I get a black coffee?” A low, rough male voice rolled over the counter and tickled up my spine.

  “You mean, like an espresso?” Charlie’s voice was tinged with irritation. Black coffee was not a menu option, and Charlie, despite her lackadaisical work effort, loved coffee and all the extras that were now practically obligatory when buying it. In Charlie’s world, there was no black coffee. Even a flat white wasn’t cool enough for Charlie.

  “Aren’t those really small? No, I just want a black coffee.” His voice hit me again and I turned to get a look at the face that matched the sexiest voice I’d ever heard. Part of me hoped it didn’t have the same impact on me the voice did, because dear God, my ovaries couldn’t take it.

  “Well, we don’t have black coffee. We have espresso, we have double espressos, we have black Americanos, we have iced-coffee, we have—”

  I stepped over next to Charlie, realizing I had about ten seconds to diffuse her temper before she did something that was intentionally rude and got herself fired. In so doing, I also tried to get control over the fact that my body was having some sort of weird pheromone-induced reaction to the giant of a man standing on the other side of the counter. Because unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how I looked at it, the giant was gorgeous. More than gorgeous.

  He was a sexy lumberjack. A giant sexy lumberjack.

  Come on!

  Chapter Two

  Obviously he wasn’t literally a lumberjack, but he looked like he’d fallen out of an L.L. Bean catalogue, bounced his way through GQ, and had come out the other side ready for horny women all over the world to drool over.

  Rugged good looks did not even come close to describing him. A full, dark beard covered his lower face. His hair, which was slightly lighter than his beard, was pulled back in small bun. A broad upper body was clad in a thick fleece-lined red plaid shirt. It was buttoned up halfway, revealing a dark blue Henley covering his chest. Despite the bulky plaid, the breadth of his shoulders and the clearly defined chest that the stretched top was enough to see this guy just didn’t work out. Those muscles were real. Probably from all the wood-chopping and lumber-lugging. Or whatever it was lumberjacks did.

  Except he wasn’t a real lumberjack.

  He couldn’t possibly be a real lumberjack.

  “Jesus Christ, I just want a black coffee. Are you seriously telling me you don’t sell that?”

  “Don’t you start swearing at me, you outdated-man-bun-wearing-hipster.” Her hands moved to her hips.

  “Okay, Charlie, I need you to go take a stock check in the back and I’ll deal with the customers for now.” I steered her away from the counter and turned her toward the stock room.

  “Seriously, hun, not cool,” I whispered. “Go take a breather.”

  My girl was having a bad morning. Despite her feisty attitude and rambling nonsense, I knew she was hurting. She’d slept with a guy and he was now avoiding her. Nobody liked rejection. It wasn’t rocket science, and just because it was one night, it still sucked. I hated she’d misinterpreted his actions. But this was not the time or place to work through those issues.

  Without saying anything, she walked off with a huff and I turned back to Mr. Lumberjack, hoping he hadn’t stormed out.

  Of course, had he stormed out, it would have really helped me because at the moment I was having to desperately control the urge to vault over the counter and climb him like a tree.

  A tree.

  Okay, my lumberjack fantasy thing was getting out of control.

  “I’m really sorry. She’s having a bad morning. I’m happy to make you a black coffee.” I gave him my best smile as I rang up the order and took the cash he slid across the counter to me. Fortunately, there was no one waiting behind him and I took my time.

  Turning to the coffee machine, I started rambling.

  “Charlie’s actually really nice, ask anyone around here. You just got her at a bad time. It happens sometimes, but not that often. So really bad timing for you. But if you come back again, you’ll see I’m right. She’s super sweet.”

  You idiot, stop telling him how great Charlie is. Charlie has no problem getting her own dates.

  Apparently my brain ignored the message and I kept right on talking.

  “But I mean, even if she’s not in a good mood again, you should come back. Not that you should come back for any other reason than we have great coffee. Because we do have really great coffee. Black coffee. Plain and simple. I mean, who needs all that flavoring and stuff people put in it? And milk. We all know how bad milk is for you, right?” I turned to face him, sliding his cup onto a saucer. He hadn’t specified whether he wanted it in a take-out cup, but there was no way I was going to encourage this guy to leave.

  He stared at me, and I swear I saw a hint of a smile on the dark pink lips peeking through his beard. “Are you waiting for an answer?”

  My brain had apparently stopped working because I couldn’t remember the question I’d asked.

  “About milk. You seem to be waiting for an answer,” he said.

  That’s when I realized I was holding his coffee ransom, as if I was waiting for something. An answer to my moronic milk comment, he’d deducted.

  “No. Not really. Milk’s not that bad, right?” Oh, my God, Katy, stop ending your sentences with questions like a total idiot. “Anyway, here’s your just-black coffee, and please accept this blueberry muffin as an apology for what happened before. Your man-bun looks super cool, despite what Charlie said. Super cool.” I plated up the blueberry muffin and handed it over, feeling the burn on my face for having used the phrase “super cool”, not once but twice to this guy. About his man-bun.

  There was no way he couldn’t see the crimson color covering all of my visible skin, so I bit the bullet and looked at him. The hint of a smile had quietly bloomed into a small but actual smile, and I couldn’t help but grin back.

  “Are you new to the area? We haven’t seen you around here before.” Smooth, Katy. Maybe you should ask him his star sign next.

  “Yeah.”

  That was it.

  “Okay, we
ll, we’re open all week. And I’m usually here. I’m Katy, by the way. Katarina, but no one calls me that. Just Katy.”

  “Thanks for the muffin. Your braids are super cool too, Katy.”

  Like some lovestruck heroine in a movie, I touched the ends of the long braids that fell past my breasts, as if I didn’t even remember I had braids.

  His gaze flicked down to my chest before he picked up his coffee and muffin and walked away. Fortunately, he turned away before he had a chance to see my nipples pebble and my mouth drop open.

  The bell on the door brought me out of my hormone-induced daze, and I turned to grab a bottle of water from the under-counter fridge, needing to get a grip, before I dealt with the next customer.

  Twenty minutes later, he got up to leave. I tried to catch his eye, but he kept his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets. Despite his joke about my braids, the guy was pretty sullen. Still, it was the first inkling of attraction I’d felt toward a man in a long time. So why the hell hadn’t I given him my number? I should have at least made an effort to bend over to clean a table in eyeshot of him. Or something like that. God, had I even forgotten how to flirt? Why didn’t I give it a real shot?

  Because he looked like a lumberjack that had just come out of the woods, I told myself. And while the whole woodsy wild-man look revved up my libido like nothing else, it also smacked of reclusive, emotional weird behavior I didn’t have time or energy for.

  Right. That totally was it.

  Chapter Three

  Sam

  I didn’t want to think about her. I really didn’t. But she’d been in my damn head all day. Katy. Katarina. Kat. I liked Kat, but she obviously liked Katy, so that’s what I’d call her.