Mountain Man_A Contemporary Romance

  “I won’t,” I grumbled as I took a deep breath and wrapped my hand around the figurine in my pocket. Either I was going to give it to her or I wasn’t. But the time to make up my mind was here because she’d already finished my transaction and now we were just standing there, staring at each other like imbeciles. Gripping the wooden figurine, I pulled it out of my pocket and nearly threw it at her. “Here,” I said, even as I ridiculed myself for my delivery. “I, uh, I made this for you.”

  She glanced down at the object which was lying on the counter, maybe an inch away from her left hand. A smile immediately parted her lips as she reached for it, and picking it up in her tiny hand, she rotated it as she inspected it. When she glanced back up at me, surprise echoed in her stunning blue eyes. “You made this for me?” she repeated, notes of awe sounding in her voice.

  “Yeah,” I answered as I tried to subdue the sudden need to get the hell out of there.

  “How…how did you make it?” she asked as she studied the angel, rotating it in her hands.

  “I carved it,” I answered. “From a branch of a tree that fell down near my house.” I noticed her boss was looking at me with impatience, probably because there was a line forming behind me. But I couldn’t say I cared—especially because I knew neither he nor anyone else in this bank would tell me to hurry up. No—they were all afraid of me—something which suited me just fine.

  “Thank you, William,” Angel said as she lifted her gaze and her eyes shone with real gratitude. “No one has ever given me anything they made before,” she continued.

  “Well, I figured you liked angels since you wear one around your neck,” I answered matter-of-factly.

  “I love them,” she replied and held the wooden angel up to her chest, as if holding it close to her heart. I’d never been envious of an inanimate object before, but I could honestly say I was jealous of that one. “I will cherish it,” she finished as she beamed up at me. “Thank you so much for thinking of me.”

  And I suddenly felt pride surging within me—an emotion I hadn’t felt in a very long time. It felt alien to me. Weird. I cleared my throat and decided I’d had enough for the day. It was time to head back up the mountain where I could surround myself with no one other than Camille (my canine companion), the trees, and whatever wildlife was skulking around in the forest at this time of the day. I nodded farewell to the gorgeous woman as I turned around and started for the front doors. Just as I’d anticipated, there was a line behind me. Well, screw ‘em, cause I didn’t give a shit. I’d just gotten the widest smile I’d ever seen from Angel, and that alone was worth the whole damn trip down here.

  As I reached for the door, I was overcome with the feeling that something wasn’t right. The air was still but it wasn’t a comforting stillness—it was foreshadowing, warning of something. It was almost as if the calm that had previously reigned supreme was now nowhere to be felt. The internal warning was a sensation I knew well—one I’d learned to pay strict attention to because it always acted as a harbinger of a situation that could mean life or death.

  Chapter Five

  Delilah

  It was someone’s gasp that made me look up. And as soon as I did, I felt my heart drop right down to my toes. There were three men standing at the entrance to the bank. Three men wearing black ski masks that only revealed their eyes. Three men holding shotguns.

  It was like something out of a Hollywood movie. The way time seemed to slow down, and speed up all at once. Their determined stances, the looks of dumbfounded surprise on everyone in the bank.

  Of course I knew this could happen to anyone, but it was acutely different being smack dab in the middle of it happening around me. I could taste today’s lunch in the back of my throat, and I willed myself to stay strong and not throw up. The last thing I wanted was to show them even a moment of weakness. I had to remain cool even if my hands were shaking ever so slightly.

  “Nobody makes a move an’ everyone survives,” the one in the middle said as he immediately started forward, holding his weapon out in front of him.

  I had the insane urge to laugh when he said that. I thought they only said lines like that in the movies. But maybe that wasn’t true. Clearly that wasn’t true. The ill-timed laugh died on my lips.

  “Get out of my way,” the man ordered the people who were still standing in front of him. They immediately scattered to both sides of the room.

  And then he was facing me.

  I swallowed hard, panic beginning to spiral from deep within my stomach as it climbed up my throat. I suddenly felt like I might be sick again.

  The man’s eyes were right on mine, his narrowed and dark. I’d never been so scared before. My breathing was coming so fast, I was panting. The only thing I was aware of was the feel of the wood angel figurine I was clutching in the palm of my hand.

  “You, pretty little thing, are gonna help me,” the man said as soon as he was standing right in front of me, the counter the only thing separating us.

  Unlike in other banks, there were no glass panels separating the tellers from the rest of the room, mainly because this sort of thing never happened in Marshall Heights. Well, I guess now it did. Either way, I was face to face with a man with a gun, and there was nothing protecting me.

  I didn’t say anything—mainly because I couldn’t say anything. Instead, I lifted my eyes to the doors and that was when I saw William.

  Almost instantly a wave of relief settled over me and the panic that had been blossoming inside my stomach just moments earlier wilted. I didn’t know why, and it seemed ludicrous even as I considered it, but I couldn’t help feeling that nothing was going to happen to me as long as William Black was here.

  I opened my palm and glanced down at the wooden angel I’d been clutching so fiercely. The tip of her wing had ripped my index finger open and now crimson drops of blood stained her face. But I didn’t care. I closed my fingers around the figurine again and taking a deep breath, I glanced up.

  William was standing at the very front of the bank, just beside the double doors, and he was keeping still, just watching me. As soon as we made eye contact, he nodded at me. I wasn’t exactly sure what his nod meant but I took it to mean that I should do whatever this man wanted me to. I shouldn’t put up a fight because if I did, I could be as good as dead.

  I couldn’t explain why, but I trusted William and hoped to God he had some kind of plan that would get us all out of this.

  “You and you, come out from behind the counter,” the masked man ordered Donna and Richard, my manager. Both of them nodded immediately and with their hands held high, they walked out from behind the teller’s station and into the main room of the bank.

  I glanced beyond the man calling the orders and noticed one of his comrades was still at the mouth of the bank, holding his shotgun in front of him as he fixed his attention on everyone inside, one by one. The third man had already made his way up to the teller’s station and with his back facing me, he held his shotgun out before him, taking turns aiming it at everyone.

  The masked men were so occupied with the people inside the bank that it didn’t occur to them that the real threat might be standing right next to the double doors just a few feet away. I prayed that their attention would remain on us because William needed that.

  I glanced at William again and found his lips were narrowed into a tight white line. He was watching the leader of the gang with pointed, angry eyes. Even though he was right beside the doors and probably could have escaped, he stayed where he was, looking like he was rooted in place.

  “You,” the masked man grabbed my attention again, pulling it back to him. I tightened my hold around the angel.

  “Yes…sir?” I managed, my voice coming out shaky.

  Even though I couldn’t see the rest of his face, it was his eyes that were paralyzing. They were just so angry—so piercing in their fury. I searched them for any sign of empathy, but they were just pits of nothingness. Dark and empty.

  I jump
ed slightly when he threw a duffel bag over the counter. I couldn’t help my surprise that I hadn’t noticed he was carrying it before. Guess the masks and guns took center stage.

  “Empty all three drawers into the bag,” he insisted. “And don’t get no funny ideas.”

  As soon as he said, ‘funny ideas’, I remembered the panic button that was just underneath my counter and directly in front of me. But there was no way I was going for it because he was so close to me, he would absolutely see exactly what I was doing. And then he’d probably shoot me dead on the spot. Instead, I just nodded and opened my drawer as I reached for the duffel bag and dragged it over.

  I placed the angel figurine on the counter next to me as I filled the bag with the cash from the drawer. I closed the drawer once it was empty and then moved to the next. With the key hanging on a rubber bracelet around my wrist, I opened Donna’s cash drawer and emptied it into the duffel bag, following suit with the third and last drawer. Once they were all empty, I started to hand the duffel bag back to him, but he immediately shook his head.

  “You’re forgetting the safe behind you,” he insisted, his dark eyes narrowed on me, angry.

  I felt my heart sink as soon as I realized he wasn’t just going to take his duffel bag and leave.

  “Sorry,” I said as I glanced over my shoulder to the hallway just behind me that ran about ten feet before terminating at the vault.

  “You got the combination?” the man demanded.

  “No,” I answered immediately as my eyes shifted to Richard where he stood against the far-right wall of the bank. He was still holding his hands in the air even though no one was paying him any attention. He looked completely ridiculous. The masked man turned to face Richard at the same time that I slipped my hand underneath the counter and pressed the panic button. It was a silent alert so there weren’t any warning bells or sirens that went off. That was just as well because the last thing I wanted was for the man to realize what I’d just done. And as far as I could tell, my secret was safe. Hopefully Sheriff Dale would be here soon.

  “Walk real slow, and give her the combination to the safe,” the man demanded of Richard who just nodded, his triple chins wiggling as he did so. He hefted his enormous body forward, approaching us at a snail’s pace.

  “Faster than that,” the man yelled at him. Richard jumped in response and then sped up, walking right up to me, his beady eyes wide and sweat pouring from his receding hairline. Suddenly feeling as if I needed something that reminded me of William, I reached for the wooden angel and clutched it in my palm.

  “Twenty-three, seventeen, four, thirty-six,” Richard said as I begged myself to remember the numbers.

  I repeated them in my head over and over again as I watched the masked man push Richard out of the way, nearly knocking him over in the process. Richard righted himself and retreated to the far wall where he’d previously been standing. Then the masked man faced me again before starting around the row of tellers’ stations, heading straight for me.

  Twenty-three, seventeen, four, thirty-six, I said to myself again.

  “Lead the way,” he ordered as soon as he was standing in front of me. He towered over me, maybe almost as tall as William and though he wasn’t as broad, he was still huge.

  It was all I could do to force my feet forward because it suddenly felt like they were stuck in tar. I glanced at William and found his eyes already on me, but I couldn’t read his expression. His whole face was nothing more than a blank slate.

  “Go,” the man barked as he pushed the barrel of his shotgun against my butt. At the feel of the cold steel, I immediately jumped forward and started for the short hallway that led to the vault.

  When I reached it, my hands were shaking as I lifted them to the lock. I’d never unlocked the vault before, so I had no idea how to do it. The lock itself was the size of my head, the vault maybe three feet wide by six feet tall. It was intimidating. I took a deep breath as I tried to calm my erratic heartbeat, reminding myself that panicking right now wasn’t going to do me any good. I needed to do what this man wanted me to, and hopefully he’d leave us all alone.

  I reached for the lock and hoping it worked like my high school locker, I turned the dial, looking for number twenty-three. Once I hit it, I felt heat behind me and then the masked man’s breath on my neck. He was so close, I felt myself recoiling inside, and I clutched the angel in my palm even more tightly.

  “Hurry it up, girl,” he said in a low voice from where he stood just behind me, his bitter breath surrounding me until I forced myself to breathe out of my mouth. The smell of stale tobacco and something else, something rotten, seeped out of his mouth nearly causing me to gag.

  I glanced down and found the barrel of the shotgun resting just beside my right thigh. That meant he was no longer holding it. Why? I wasn’t sure.

  I turned the dial to number seventeen. And then I felt his hand on my butt and my breathing hitched as my heart started thundering against my ribs. Anger and humiliation coursed through my veins in equal measure.

  It was one thing for me to succumb to fear because my life was in danger, but to allow him to grope me in the process? I wanted to turn around and knee him in the groin. And I had a half a mind to do just that.

  Instead, I desperately turned the dial to number four, thinking that if I could get the vault door open, it would pull his attention away from me and back to the task at hand, namely that he was in the middle of robbing a bank.

  In the back of my mind, I wondered why the police were taking so long, and why William hadn’t done anything. Wasn’t he an ex-cop? They were supposed to be trained to deal with these kinds of situations unless the rumors weren’t true.

  This entire time I’d been banking on the fact that the gossip was true, and that he used to be law enforcement, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was just an ordinary man with a past?

  Regardless of what was true, and what wasn’t, for now I was on my own.

  Chapter Six

  William

  Anger.

  Raw and powerful.

  Rage so pronounced and deadly, I couldn’t remember ever feeling anything like this before. But as I watched the son-of-a-bitch palm his filthy hand on Angel, the fury inside of me began to manifest itself in an inferno of rage that fully consumed me.

  I had no idea how she was feeling, but I hoped that she knew that I hadn’t abandoned her. I wasn’t sure if she noticed my small nod, but I prayed that she did because she could use that hope right now.

  From where they were standing, I couldn’t see her face which was probably just as well because if I had to witness those beautiful blue eyes wide with fear, I probably would lose all control and do something stupid. As it was, I needed a clear head. Clarity of thought would allow me to devise a way to ensure that piece of shit never touched her again and to make sure that I stopped all of them before something catastrophic happened.

  Watching the thug directly in front of me, I took the two small steps that would find my back against the wall. Then I very slowly reached down, underneath my jacket, keeping my eyes firmly planted on the masked man in front of me, who was currently looking at the other side of the room.

  When I felt the leather strap of the holster around my waist, I walked my fingers to the butt of the pistol. As a retired cop, I was always armed. The Glock 9mm might as well have been another of my appendages, considering how I never went anywhere without it.

  The waste of human life in front of me was none the wiser, even though his attention was now aimed in my direction. But I wasn’t concerned. He was as predictable as a sprinkler in the way he held the sawed-off shotgun out in front of him, moving it from one side of the room to the other and then back again.

  The other thug was on the opposite side of the bank, all the way at the rear. From where I was standing, the wall was covering me so there was no way he’d be able to see me without coming into my immediate line of sight. That just left the son-of-a-bitch who still had his
hand on Angel. My gaze drifted back to the man I wanted to tear apart limb from limb. If he had any idea what kind of thoughts I was having right now, he wouldn’t be so comfortable with his hand casually touching her as if she was his.

  There was no way I could get a clean shot considering he was still standing in front of the vault which put him out of range. Frustration began to course through me. In general, my target needed to be one to seven yards away from me. Plus, he was too close to Angel, and I refused to put her in danger. Chances were that he would release her anyway.

  I’d seen enough robberies to know that as soon as he got close enough to see his getaway vehicle, he’d discard her, and the three of them would make a run for it. And I would let them.

  This wasn’t my fight, and even though I had been a cop in a previous life, I’d also been on the wrong side of the law enough times to decide I didn’t want to go there again.

  In fact, I wanted to avoid that at all costs. That was the whole reason I’d come to Peak Mountain, to start fresh, to stop thinking about the life I had back in Las Vegas. And now it seemed like that life had just come back to haunt me. The more I thought about it, the more I decided I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t want to risk my freedom again. This was the local police’s fight, and they could have all the glory or lack thereof. I wanted nothing to do with it.

  But then I noticed one of the men was gripping Angel around the waist when they appeared in the front of the hallway. She was carrying the duffel bag as he forced her forward and around the counter. Once they were on the opposite side of the counter, he pushed her in front of him, wrapping his free arm around her chest and gripping her left breast underneath her blouse. That was when I realized the top four buttons of her blouse were undone and her white lace bra was now completely visible, along with one of her rosy nipples.

  At that point, I realized I couldn’t walk away. Consequences be damned. It had just become my fight, and I wasn’t going to walk away until Angel was safe and these bastards were dead.