Page 54 of Unraveled Love

Shawn opened his door and climbed out. By the time I grabbed my purse and hopped down, Shawn was at my door, holding out his hand.

To the left was that deck, ahead of us a closed double-door garage, and to the right a rocky foot path.

“They’re out on the back deck,” Shawn said, right before I heard their voices.

He walked me around the corner, and I was almost stunned stupid by the view in front of me. Mountains as far as the eyes could see, a massive deck that wrapped around the entire back of the house that was far larger than I’d anticipated. This was not a “small” mountain cabin.

This was a luxurious home whose deck alone could hold a party for thirty, with multiple levels and a balcony off the top floor. At the corner of the house was a hot tub big enough to seat ten.

“I suppose if we have to run and hide, we could find worse places,” Shawn mumbled next to me.

A chuckle burst free, and I covered my mouth. Now wasn’t the time, but he wasn’t wrong either.

This was one hell of a place to be hiding out, and briefly forgetting the reason we were there, I couldn’t wait to explore it.

19

Shawn

The home was gorgeous, the view spectacular. For my first trip to the Smoky Mountains, I really wished I could have taken a moment to enjoy it all.

Later, after all the others went to bed, I had plans for that hot tub, though.

Hell, if I was going to be hiding away from the action I desperately wanted to be involved in, I would be making the most of it.

Briggs and Lincoln stood on the deck with their arms crossed, sunglasses pulled down to cover their eyes. They turned and waited as we made our way to them. “No tail?”

“Not that I noticed,” I replied, and I’d been watching. One eye on the road in front of me, one eye on the mirrors to make sure a car didn’t follow us too long, too closely, or pull off whenever we did.

Sure, there was always the odd chance Daniel was smarter than we’d been. He’d already proven he was damn smart. Plus, if he had Mancussos working with him and they ditched and switched cars at some point, I could have been wrong, but in this, I was trusting all of our instincts. Briggs and Lincoln were former military along with Jaxon. If they felt like we were secure, we were.

There was no clear line of sight into my condo, and the place wasn’t rigged with microphones or cameras—we’d checked while Addi was talking to her mom to make sure. They hadn’t installed cameras outside anywhere we could find, and we’d scanned everywhere we could think of. Add in that we’d used Explorers the security company owned and all of those were regularly swept for bugs, just in case, and the chance we’d been followed was slim to none.

I would have only preferred it benonewithout the side of slim.

I guided Addi toward one of the sets of sliding doors. From what it looked like, there was one off the living room and one off the eating area. The dining table looked like it was made of one slab of wood from the hugest fucking tree in existence, and there were ten chairs around it.

“ETA twenty minutes for Cort and Mason,” Lincoln stated.

He and Briggs followed us into the house, Addi’s jaw dropping with every step we took. “This place is gorgeous,” she whispered.

It was massive. The kitchen could fit a half-dozen cooks and still leave room for other bodies to move around freely. There were eight high-back stools at the island, and off the main eating area to the side of the kitchen was another round table for six.

However hard Jaxon worked to own a palace like this was the amount of work I wanted to be doing over the next few years, because as far as I knew, when he said he had aplacein the mountains, I was expecting a small, two- or three-room hunting cabin, something remote, probably without electricity or running water knowing how he’d probably have no issues with some slightly primitive living.

But this home had four floors, and we’d entered on the second.

More impressive, knowing the wealth Addi came from, was how taken she was it. Because yeah, the home was huge, and some of it was pretty damn fucking cool, but it wasn’t top of the line, it wasn’t all new, and it certainly didn’t scream wealth from the comfortably worn leather sectional and the fact that all the other furnishings were rustic, along with exposed wooden beams that looked like they’d just come from chopping down a tree and skinning off the bark.

Gorgeous? Yeah.

Impressive? Yeah…to someone like me who came from a three-bedroom farmhouse in the middle of three hundred acres.

But to Addi?

I loved that she didn’t need all new and fancy shit to be impressed. She just appreciated what this was for…a large home in the mountains, decorated to fit in with the woods surrounding it.

I slid my hand to her lower back and leaned in. “Want to go take a quick tour with me before the other guys get here?”

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