Page 135 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

She looked around her small town and she didn’t see those men. Maybe that was the biggest reason she’d always felt stuck.

She knew her fantasies. So well. She knew what she wanted.

She’d never found it.

Right now she felt like she’d run squarely into it.

“I’m...hiking,” she said softly.

“Not here you shouldn’t be, this is Fox land.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You better run, Little Red,” he said, his tone nearly mocking.

“I...”

“You heard me. It doesn’t do you any good to be here. Run away, Little Red, before you get eaten.”

And then she suddenly felt it. The peril, rather than the soft edge of fantasy she’d been tempted to embrace. She was alone in the woods with a large man who was rumored to be dangerous. He’d been arrested, tried and convicted for armed robbery years ago.

He’d served jail time, everyone in town knew it, for a crime he’d certainly committed.

And he was giving her the chance to run. Telling her to run.

So she did. She ran.

She stumbled and her backpack came loose and fell away from her shoulders and she didn’t care. She left it behind as she ran, her feet pounding on the ground as she fled.

And when she reached her car, breathless, her heart pounding, sweat dripping down her forehead, her whole body trembling, she realized that it was the most exhilarating thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life.

SHE’D BEEN FAR too pretty. And too soft.

He knew who she was.

The preacher’s daughter.

That man had been good to Zane back then, and he could remember the wide-eyed little redhead he’d towed along on those charity visits back in the day.

He’d scared her on purpose. He liked to be left alone.

He’d only come back here because a fool would turn down free property, and while Zane Fox had been many things in his life, he wasn’t a fool now.

The place was hardly habitable, and it brought back bad memories. Of fists and screaming, and illegal stills. Of his mother weeping, and going away and never coming back. Of his brothers, who were probably all dead now, and his father, who was definitely dead.

This wasn’t a happy place.

There were so many ghosts, he had half a mind to sell it, after he got something habitable built. Right now, while the land could fetch a decent enough price, it wasn’t going to sell for what he’d like it to. So he’d been working on a new dwelling for the last few months. Building a house on your own wasn’t the most fun task, but Zane never expected life to be fun.

Life, in his experience, cut sharp and deep and mean.

And was very little else but teeth and claws.

She was soft.

Yes, she was soft, and that was why he’d told her to run.

He didn’t touch soft things.

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