Page 7 of Possessed By the Mountain Man
“You done?” he asks.
“For now.” I flash teeth. “You can thank me when the lodge wins Best Dressed on HauntedStays.”
“I’ll pass.” His gaze hooks on my mouth again. “You messed up your lipstick.”
“Did I?” I swipe the corner with my thumb.
He watches, wolf-still. “Leave it.”
“Why?”
“Looks like you’ve been kissed.”
Heat slides low in my belly. I look away first.
I raid the kitchen for my emergency candy stash because sugar solves everything except the man in the other room. I set the bowl on the counter—mini Snickers, Sour Bats, wrapped caramels—and dig for a lollipop labeled POISON APPLE when the porch door creaks.
A masked bandit waddles inside.
I freeze. It freezes. We blink at each other.
“Thorne,” I whisper. “Do you have…pets?”
He appears in the doorway, brows flattening. “No.”
“Then why,” I whisper-shout, “is there a raccoon in the kitchen?”
The raccoon clocks the candy, rights its little paws like a burglar, and launches onto the counter with shocking athleticism. Skittles explode across the surface like confetti. The bowl rocks. I lunge.
“Absolutely not, sir?—”
Thorne moves faster. One step, two, and he’s between me and the masked thief, big hands out like he’s facing down a suspect. “Back off,” he orders—at me.
“Atme?” I sputter. “That criminal just mugged my Snickers!”
The raccoon bares teeth. Thorne bares bigger ones. For half a second, I’m sure he’s going to growl.
“Scoot,” he tells the raccoon, dead calm.
It doesn’t scoot. It takes a caramel and sits on the stove like a gremlin.
I grab the nearest weapon—a roll of paper towels—and wave it like a baton. “Shoo!”
“Try using your inside voice, witch,” Thorne says dryly, edging to the back door.
“My inside voice is extremely effective,” I inform him, then hiss at the raccoon again. “Sir. Leave.”
It hisses back. I squeak and scramble onto a chair. The chair wobbles. Thorne’s hand shoots to my waist, holding me steady like I’m a flight risk.
“Get down,” he says, voice a command I feel in my knees.
“Not until you relocate the bandit.”
He steps into the raccoon’s space without fear, opens the back door, and whistles low. A sound I don’t know lives in my bones until I hear it.
The raccoon pauses, considers, then clambers down with the caramel in its mouth and waddles toward the night like it owned the place and decided we were boring.
Thorne shuts the door and turns to me.
