Chapter 3

Anthony woke up the following morning to the sound of rain against the cabin roof and an ache in his foot. It took him a moment to remember what had happened last night. Namely, that this Thea person had stolen his phone and had stomped on his foot so hard that when he looked at it in the morning light, there was a nice-sized purple bruise on it.

He grumbled, his stomach also grumbling. Thea had locked her door and refused to come out, and Anthony had decided to let her win—this time. Although he was pissed enough to break down her door if he had to.

After a quick shower and shave, he ventured downstairs. He smelled something cooking, and when he went into the kitchen, he found Thea singing as she cut fresh fruit. She also wore tiny shorts with the most ridiculously tight tank top, which only increased Anthony’s irritation. Why couldn’t she be anything but an attractive woman with an ass that was totally distracting? He wished she smelled like anchovies and never brushed her teeth.

“You’re still here,” he said flatly. He moved past her to the fridge to find that his missing food had been restored. He grunted. Pulling out some bacon and a carton of eggs, he cracked some eggs for an omelet. He wasn’t a great cook, but he could feed himself if he had to. Normally his cook would make him his meals, but just because he was rich didn’t mean he was helpless.

Thea ignored him, continuing to sing. Her singing voice was nothing amazing, although at least it seemed to be on key, he thought sourly. She placed fruit in a glass bowl and turned to the stove, pouring what looked like pancake batter onto a griddle. Anthony’s mouth watered at the scent.

But more importantly, he needed to get his phone back. Shooting Thea his most intimidating glare, he said, “Give me my phone back.”

“Most people say ‘good morning’ when they first see someone in the morning,” she replied in a sugary voice.

“It isn’t a ‘good morning,’ because you’re still here and you’ve stolen my property.” He tore open the bacon package, and to his immense delight, Thea’s expression turned green at the sight. “You want some?” he taunted.

“I don’t eat dead animals. Can you cook that after I’m done?”

“No, because I’m hungry.” He found a skillet and set it on the stove next to Thea’s pancakes.

She stood next to him now, and as he heated oil in the pan and was about to place the bacon in, she said, “Fine. I’ll give you your phone back if you wait until I’m upstairs. Deal?”

He grinned and flipped off the burner. “Deal.” He put out his hand, and she pulled the phone from her back pocket. He hadn’t thought those shorts were remotely big enough to allow her to keep his phone in her pocket. Electricity danced along his veins at the realization that his phone was warm from her body.

Thea sniffed and returned to her pancakes. Anthony opened his emails, grimacing at how many had landed in his inbox just since last night. Thankfully, there was nothing urgent, although Cara had emailed, texted, and called, concerned about why he hadn’t called her after Thea had hung up on her.

He ignored Cara’s messages for now. He had something more important to get to the bottom of. He needed to call Ted and figure out this damn mess.

Anthony tapped his foot as Ted’s line rang and rang. Finally, he picked up.

“Ted, finally. This is Anthony Bertram. Are you aware that you’ve booked the Peaceful Waters cabin for not only myself, but another person?”

“What? I’m not sure I understand. You want someone else to come up to stay with you?”

Anthony gritted his teeth. “No, I’m saying that there’s another person here who says she has booked the cabin at the same time as me. Her name is Thea. Ring a bell?”

Ted inhaled, and Anthony heard papers being shuffled. Then Ted barked in the background, “Marjorie! Marjorie, where are you!” His voice rose with every word.

Ted returned to the line. “Mr. Bertram, I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened. There must have been a mix-up. Marjorie is in charge of finalizing reservations. Let me find out what happened, and I will make this right.”

Anthony wasn’t interested in waiting. Hearing Thea come into the living room, he said, “I booked this cabin months ago. This is unacceptable. Make it right, or you’ll never do business again. Understood?”

Ted stammered something and promised to get to the bottom of things before Anthony ended the call.

He was about to call Cara when Thea said behind him, “Was that really necessary?”

He turned to see her holding a plate of food. His stomach grumbled from the sight. “This isn’t just some tiny mistake. They’ve fucked up everything because somebody is completely incompetent. So, yes, it was necessary.”

“Sometimes mistakes happen. It’s life.”

“Mistakes don’t happen for people like me.” He walked toward the kitchen, pausing next to her for a moment. “Enjoy your meal. It’s the last one you’ll have here in this cabin.”

“That sounds ominous. Are you actually going to kill me now?”

“Like I said last night: I’m considering it.”

She stabbed a bite of her pancake with a wide smile. “Even rich assholes like you don’t want homicide on their hands. Bad PR, don’tcha know.”

Anthony stilled at that word, but Thea only bit into a piece of pancake like she hadn’t said anything of note. Did she know about his company’s PR disaster? Then again, how could she? She hadn’t known who he was last night.

“My assistant will find you a hotel room,” he said brusquely. “You’ll be leaving by this afternoon.”

“In this weather? Did you look outside?”

He hadn’t, and when he glanced out the window, he saw rain. So it was raining in the Pacific Northwest. That wasn’t exactly a deterrent for anyone from around here.

“Unless you’re actually a witch, you won’t melt in the rain,” he said.

“Funny. But apparently there are mudslides everywhere. Actually…” She set her food down and went outside without another word.

Annoyed, Anthony followed, not sure why he cared. The rain pounded down, and both he and Thea gazed upon a driveway that had turned into a sea of mud. Water streamed away from the house toward the bottom of the hill. Based on the clouds overhead, the rain wasn’t going to let up anytime soon.

“I can drive in rain, but I’m not about to get swept away in a flash flood,” said Thea.

“Then I’ll call in a helicopter. I know people.”

She gaped at him before bursting into laughter. “Are you serious? That’s ridiculous. And where would a helicopter land in the woods?”

“They’d figure it out if I wanted them to.”

Thea laughed again, shaking her head. Anthony gazed out onto the rainy landscape, his stomach sinking. If the weather continued, this could get very, very bad. Gripping the door frame until his knuckles turned white, he pulled out his phone and started making calls.

Despite her laughter, Thea was fuming. She imagined all sorts of terrible scenarios that ended in Anthony Bertram’s doom: falling off a cliff, getting run over by a tractor. Being sucked into quicksand. Was there quicksand in Washington State? If not, she’d go find some and bring it back and toss him into it.

At the moment, Anthony was making very important phone calls. His voice had returned to its usual haughty tone, and the only satisfaction she received was hearing his frustration. When he caught her looking at him, he sent her a sardonic glance and headed upstairs.

She speared a bite of pancake, now cold. She hoped he tripped on the stairs.

He was going to get rid of her, was he? Not fucking likely. She would tie herself to the fridge before she let him throw her out. She had just as much right to be here as he did. And she wasn’t in the position to go on vacation whenever she wanted to. Rich assholes are the worst, she thought as she finished her cold pancakes.

Thea poured herself a cup of coffee and added some coconut milk creamer to top it off.

If she was going to stay here, that meant she’d be stuck here with him. Did she really want to spend the vacation she’d been desperate for with Anthony Bertram, the man she loathed? The man who would kill her if he knew about her involvement with that viral social media campaign?

Not that she felt guilty about that. On the contrary. She was absurdly proud of how she, Mittens, and their friends had gotten the word out and how quickly the posts had gone viral. If they weren’t something that resonated with people, why would millions have shared the posts?

Thea headed upstairs. She heard Anthony bark something into his phone. She felt badly for his poor assistant. She hoped he paid the girl way above her pay grade, because she obviously deserved it.

Shutting her bedroom door and locking it for good measure, she opened the blinds, only to see that it was still raining. Thea blew out a breath. Well, like she’d told Anthony, she couldn’t leave in this weather. Even her four-wheel drive would slide right off the twisty, muddy roads into some ravine. Thea didn’t really want to die just because Anthony was pissed off at Ted.

Thea sat down at the desk in the corner, pulling out the graphic novel she was close to finishing. A tale of a woman who discovers she has the power to see the future, the story had gotten dark and twisty with each panel that Thea drew. She’d intended this particular story to be one volume, but the story had expanded so much that Thea could see multiple volumes in the future.

Although what did it matter how many volumes there were when Thea couldn’t find the courage to show anyone her work? She began to sketch the next page in pencil. She was so distracted, though, that she realized that she’d skipped a necessary panel for that page. Grumbling, she tossed that page into the trash and started over.

Thea had begun drawing seriously in elementary school. Her parents’ marriage had been crumbling, and her mother, Beatrice, had been struggling with untreated mental illness for years. Art had become a way to escape. She’d go to her room and draw for hours as she’d tried to ignore her parents’ fighting.

When Beatrice had died when Thea was twelve, Thea had had to shoulder much of the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. Trent, her older brother, had done his part, too, although Thea had taken on a more motherly role. Thea’s younger siblings—Ash, Phin, and Lucy—had all been under the age of twelve at the time, too young to take care of themselves much.

Thea had stopped drawing during that time. It had only been when she’d reached high school that an art teacher had taken in interest in her and her work. Mrs. Blake had encouraged Thea to draw and even to enter school art contests. Thea had won a swath of blue ribbons and trophies for her work.

After high school, Thea had attended art school for all of a semester before the bottom had fallen out. At an art show showcasing her work, Thea had proudly shown not only snippets of the graphic novel she’d been working on, but other drawings in charcoal and pastels.

“Do you know who that is?” Anna, one of Thea’s classmates, had whispered in Thea’s ear.

“No, should I?”

“It’s Henry Thatcher! The art critic!”

Thea froze, delight and terror filling her in equal measures. Everyone at school knew how much influence Henry Thatcher had not only in the Seattle art scene, but internationally, too. He could make or break an artist’s career with a column only a few sentences long. But if he saw promise? That could be the catalyst to take an artist to superstardom.

Henry was short and bald, and he spoke very little as he perused the students’ art. Thea had no idea why he’d deign to come to some student art show. Maybe someone had asked him and he’d done it as a favor?

He stopped at Anna’s oil paintings, saying nothing for a long moment. Anna shot Thea a nervous glance. Finally, Henry pronounced, “Good,” and nothing else.

Anna inhaled sharply, and when Henry turned to continue on, she did a little happy dance right then and there.

When it was Thea’s turn, Henry gazed at each of Thea’s pieces in turn. Thea waited—hopeful, scared, but excited. Her work had consistently won awards and honors already. Her teachers rarely found fault in her work.

But everything came crashing down within a second when Henry said, “Nothing about these pieces inspires me. They’re very drab and lifeless.”

And that had been that.

Thea had been crushed. She’d struggled to draw after that because she could only hear Henry’s words in her head with every stroke of her pencil against paper. Her professors were worried about her sudden lack of commitment. She failed to turn in assignments; she stopped going to class. She fell into a dark place, where she would be nothing but the poor kid from a dysfunctional family.

Before her first year of art school had even finished, Thea had dropped out and hadn’t drawn a single thing for seven years. But when she’d begun working at Ferguson’s law firm, she’d needed an outlet for her boredom and frustrations.

But Henry Thatcher’s disparaging words had somehow frozen Thea in time. She’d crafted query letters to agents that she’d never sent. She’d posted her work on a blog but had deleted it an hour later. The thought of sending her work out into the world paralyzed her with terror. She hated that she was such a coward. It was a phobia she’d yet to overcome.

Her phone rang, breaking through her trip down memory lane. “Why are you calling me like some old person?” she answered, smiling.

“Because I’m driving,” said Mittens.

“You know you’ll get pulled over for doing that.”

“Tough titties. You said you needed to tell me something. Did you run into a pack of mountain lions up there?”

“Nothing that intense.” She inhaled, messing with her pencil. “There was actually a mix-up. There’s someone else here in the cabin, too.”

“What? Are you serious? That’s bullshit. You paid for that. I hope you kicked her out. Or is it a guy? Wait, is he hot? If he is, don’t kick him out. Use him for sex and then kick him out.”

“He’s not a guy you’d want to sleep with, unless you want to, like, die. Believe it or not, I’m stuck in a cabin with Anthony Bertram. Like, the Anthony Bertram.”

Mittens gasped, and Thea was worried he’d swerve into oncoming traffic. Mittens made a few more incoherent noises before yelling into the phone, “This is amazing! Oh my fucking God!”

Thea frowned. “But he’s an asshole.”

“Yeah, I know. But now you have an opportunity to get even more dirt on him. Oh my God, oh my God. I’m going to hyperventilate. I need a paper bag. Thea, you can seduce him and get all of his dirty secrets! We can take that fucking company down!”

“I’m hardly some spy that can seduce a man’s secrets out of him.”

“You’re cute, he’s a hetero guy. Heteros have no taste. Use that va-jay-jay for the greater good.”

Thea heard what sounded like sirens in the background, then Mittens said, “Oh shit, the po-po is here. Talk to you later!”

Shaking her head, Thea tried to return to her graphic novel, but she couldn’t stop thinking about what Mittens had said. Thea wasn’t about to seduce Anthony Bertram. She also knew that this was the prime opportunity to discover something about him that could bring him and his evil company down.

A few moments later, Anthony banged on her door. “Thea, I need to speak with you. Right now.” He barked at her like she was some lowly soldier in the army. Or worse, like a dog.

She’d needed the reminder that he was a huge asshole. Mittens was right: this was a prime opportunity. She needed to take advantage of it.

“I’ll be right there!” she singsonged as she thought, You’re going down, Bertram.