Charlie

I woke up next to Merle and the night before ran in my head. It was one hell of a night and I was thinking about another round with her, but then I heard knocking on the front door.

Growling, I got up and threw some boxers on so I could answer it. It was early, so whoever it was wasn’t going to get much more than that when I got there. When I got to the door, I jerked it open to let the other person know that this was going to be a short visit.

“Do you still have that girl with you, Merle?”

I nodded my head that I did and I closed the door a little bit more in front of me like he was going to come in and take her away. I wasn’t aware of how close I was with that feeling to being right.

“I need to speak to her. She has a visitor waiting at Molly’s, some guy asking to see her. I didn’t want to send him your way, considering what I thought was going on…”

He paused for a moment and most likely wanted me to confirm or deny it and I wasn’t going to. I knew that he was fishing for gossip and with what was going on at the moment; it didn’t seem like a good idea to push that along.

“She is sleeping right now.”

The grin on his face was larger like I had told him something, even when I hadn’t.

“Well do you want me to send him your way? He came a long way to find her and someone is going to send him your way because they know she works for you. You know how helpful everyone is.”

I knew what he said was true and I was worried about what was going to happen when she went to see the man waiting for her. What would make him come all this way? He was going to try and take her away from me. I never really asked if she was seeing anybody and as much as we talked, it wasn’t a subject that really came up all that much.

“Did he say what it is he wanted or who he was?”

I wanted to know what I was walking into because I hated to be surprised. My mind went to Bill and what all he had done to make sure that the woman he wanted stayed where she was and with him. Was this my moment that I was going to have to do the same?

“No he didn’t say. All he said was that he came from the lower 48, he was in a rush and he had to speak to her right now.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Joel nodded his head that he hadn’t and I could tell that the man didn’t know anything more. If he had, he would have told me so I was going to have to walk into it blind and hope for the best. That was not a way that I liked to do things.

“So what do you want me to do?”

Joel looked like he wanted to come in and see what was going on, but I didn’t want him to have any more information than he already had. He was a horrible gossip.

“Just give me a minute and I will wake her up and take her down there. We have to get dressed and all of that. I will be down there in a few.”

Joel’s face fell a little bit as I cut it short. There wasn’t a lot of excitement in Nome and newcomers always gave the locals something to talk about. He was right to say that someone was going to help him find Merle and I had a better bet of it going the right way I wanted it to if I was there.

I closed the door behind me and made my way in towards the bedroom. I wanted to lock the door and tell everyone that she wasn’t here. I started to wonder why I didn’t have a place high up on the mountain like my friend did. It would make life easier and I would have less stress.

Merle was still asleep and she had the sweetest look on her face. I still wanted seconds or thirds really, but I knew that Joel was right and I didn’t have much time before I had more people knocking on my door. A secret is impossible in this sort of place, even when you want it to be.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I didn’t want to wake her up and it took me some time to get the nerve up to. I just wanted to keep her here with me and again I was surprised at how badly I didn’t want to wake her up in fear that whatever was going on between us was going to change.

I wouldn’t let that happen. I kept telling myself that as I shook her shoulder and watched the smile widened on her face.

“You don’t have to wake me up to ask. I would think that you would have a better way of waking me up than that.”

I closed my eyes at her words and the temptation that lay in front of me. She started to stretch and made sure that the sheet fell down half of her body by the time she was done. Her breasts were out on full display and there was a part of me that was still trying to figure out how I could whisk her away so that she didn’t have to go. I had a growing knot in my chest and now in my pants. They were both impossible to ignore, but one was going to have to be ignored because Joel was still waiting outside and someone at Molly’s was trying to find Merle. It wouldn’t take long for him to find her, it was inevitable.

“Someone is down at Molly’s looking for you.”

She jumped up and the sexy look on her face was gone. “What?”

The knot in my chest tightened. I didn’t like the expression on her face and knew then that it was bad news.