Hollywood Harlot

Chapter 4

A few hours later and feeling pretty good, Bella was walking beside Jake as they followed a lantern-lit path to one of the cabins.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing a cabin with me.”

Bella smiled and giggled a little.

“It’s perfectly fine with me,” she said as she wobbled a bit on the walkway. Jake grabbed her arms with both of his big, strong hands to steady her, and then grasped her hand firmly in his own.

He raised an eyebrow at her, “You and Jordyn had a pretty good time, huh?” he teased.

“I’m sorry, I actually haven’t had a drink in over a year. It hit me hard,” she sang.

Jake laughed. “No need to apologize. I’m glad you had fun. And I’m glad Jordyn got to spend some time with you. It’s nice to see her so happy.”

“She’s great. Gage seems great. Jess is great. You’re all great,” Bella continued her little song.

Jake squeezed her hand and stopped to look her in the eye. “Even me?” He asked quietly.

“Especially you,” she said. “Why would you ask that?”

Jake shrugged and continued their trek down the path. “Not everybody thinks I’m great.”

This time it was Bella who stopped. She stood up on her tip toes to reach all six foot plus of him and gave him a delicate kiss on his cheek. “Really great,” she said, then continued walking.

Jake smiled but didn’t say anything, and they finished the short journey in comfortable silence.

Jake unlocked the door and escorted Bella inside the tiny replica of the main lodge. Everything inside was made of real wood, rustic carved metal, or stone, and it was the most beautiful house she had ever seen.

“Oh, Jake, this is unreal,” she said. “Who are you, exactly?”

“Well, I’ll tell you this much. This is my family’s lodge.”

Bella looked around at the granite countertops in the sparkling kitchen, the colorful slate floor, and the exquisite paintings of moose and pine trees hanging on the walls.

“Like, this is your family cabin? A time share or something?” she asked.

Jake shook his head. “No, my parents own the Snow Mountain Lodge. I grew up here.” As he spoke, Jake began moving about the cabin, turning lights on and adjusting the temperature on the wall.

Bella’s eyes opened wide. “You grew up here? Why would you ever leave? It’s perfect!”

He sighed. “I actually know that now. But I had to learn it the hard way. And my career took me from New England, so I can’t be here right now.”

He walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the stainless steel fridge. He led her down a hall to a room at the end and opened the door, handing her the bottle.

“This is your room,” he said. “I have to go get Jess at the hospital, but I’ll be back soon. Drink plenty of water and try to get some sleep. And call me if you need anything.”

Bella nodded, barely even noticing the massive king size bed with a beautiful green and brown perfectly themed patchwork quilt draped delicately across.

“Don’t you want me to come with you?”

Jake smiled and ruffled her hair playfully. “Actually, I do want you to come with me, but I know it’s better for you to sleep this off. I want you well rested for tomorrow, it’s going to be a big day. And today has been pretty long, too.”

Bella pouted her lip out a bit. “I want to come, too.”

She yawned and looked toward the bed.

“It’s been a long day. You get some rest and I’ll go get my sister. I’m not exactly sure what she’ll need from me anyway, so it’ll probably be easier to grab her on my own.”

She nodded. “Okay, just be careful please, out on the roads.”

He squeezed her shoulder and started walking toward the door. “You don’t need anything else?”

She shook her head sleepily and with a final smile, he disappeared out the door.

Bella glanced around the perfectly themed room. Every detail, down to the pinecone knobs on the dressers, was perfect. The bed was made from genuine logs and featured a six foot wide painting of the woods above it. Plush carpeting for cold winter days and tasteful woodwork around the windows and doors completed the feeling of “cozy cabin bliss.”

Bella walked to the bed and sat down, suddenly exhausted from the day and from the warm drinks Jordyn had been so generous with. Sitting on the pillow, she saw a paper bag with a note attached.

“Hope you don’t mind, I guessed at your sizes. These should work until you can pick out some clothes yourself. Sweet dreams. -J”

She gently traced her finger across the sprawling words. His handwriting was very nice, actually. And even though it was extremely sweet for him to pick up some clothes for her, she couldn’t help but wonder how many other girls he had done the exact same thing for. He was clearly a bit of an expert at entertaining girls he’d hired for a week at a time.

She peeked into the bag. At the very top there was a pair of fuzzy green slippers and matching long pajamas pants and tank top. A robe completed the nighttime ensemble.

“Kinda sweet of him to have remembered I like green,” she thought.

She carried the bag into the attached bathroom and nearly dropped it in the floor when she entered the en-suite. The bathroom alone was almost bigger than her entire room at the Highway 78. Matching slate from the kitchen served as the floor, and beautiful copper tiles accented the natural-looking walls. A deep sink made of hand-painted pottery sported a bear and moose walking through a mountain trail, and the large mirror was framed by smaller logs to match the beams throughout the cabin.

“Wow,” she said simply, stripping her winter jacket that she’d taken from resort shop and hanging it on a rustic metal hook on the back of the closet door. Next she stripped her capris, shirt, and underwear off, folding them into a little pile on the bathroom counter, and slipped into the silky smooth green pajama set Jake had gotten her.

She looked around the bathroom as she changed, taking it all in. Even before she had given up literally everything when she had fled to the motel, she had never lived a lavish lifestyle, or had been wealthy by anybody’s standards, though she’d always had enough to get comfortably by. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be raised not only in such a romantically beautiful setting, but in an apparently opulent manner as well. Shaking her head, she walked back into the main bedroom and fell asleep almost the moment her head hit the deliciously soft pillows.

*******

The next morning, Bella stretched under the velvety soft sheets as she slowly opened her eyes. It took a moment for her to adjust to the bright sunshine beaming in through the windows, and when she looked outside, she was shocked by the sparkling blanket of white that covered the entire world.

She pushed back the covers and headed out into the main house.

“Jake?” she called, quickly surveying the great room, and walked to the wooden kitchen table in a cozy sunlit nook in the corner of the house.

“Wanted to let you sleep. Come up to the main lodge to meet me for brunch when you’re ready. Wear the clothes by the door, it snowed all night. -J.”

Bella’s heart sank a little when she realized she wasn’t going to see Jake for a little while.

“Eww,” she whispered out loud in the cabin, disappointed in herself for already missing him, when she’d promised herself she wouldn’t care about anyone else for a very long time, if ever again.

She put the note back on the table and walked to the refrigerator, knowing before even opening it that she’d find it fully stocked. Sure enough, it was filled with milk, juice, water, fruit, eggs, butter, and all the basic necessities. She shook her head, marveling at all of the wonderful things that just appeared at her fingertips, and drank a glass of orange juice before heading back to her room. She was anxious to get up to the main lodge and get the day started.

Back in the paper bag, Bella found a pair of jeans and a large, over-sized sweater. She rifled through the other odds and ends of clothing, but there weren’t any pairs of underwear or bras in there, so she put on her b*a from the night before and slipped the jeans on over her n***d body. She briefly wondered if it had been a simple oversight for Jake to forget panties, or if he’d done it intentionally, not wanting to get such personal items for her, but she decided it didn’t matter, and grabbed her phone from the nightstand.

She pressed the button to light up the screen, but it stayed black.

“Battery,” she mumbled to herself, thinking of her charger, still plugged into the wall by her bed back in North Carolina.

Shrugging, she slipped the phone into her back pocket, making a mental note to ask Jake for a charger when she saw him at the lodge.

She quickly pulled on the warm boots, gloves, and hat he’d left by the door before she put her jacket back on. All zipped up and snug, she glanced back once into the cabin to make sure everything looked okay before she stepped out into the winter wonderland that was apparently Spring Creek, Vermont.

She gasped at the snow. The entire world had been painted white as she slept the night before, and it looked perfectly untouched, like something from a movie. She glanced around her, seeing another cabin further down the hill and behind some trees, and turned in the direction of footprints left in the snow. Snow was once again falling from a bright white sky, swirling around her in perfect little dances. She lifted her face up into the snow and laughed. It had been years since she’d lived where it was cold enough to snow, and even longer since she’d played in it. Playfully, she reached down and scooped up a handful of it. It was fluffy and light and felt wonderful in her gloved hands, and she smiled again as she trudged along tossing the snow into the air, not realizing the snow had begun falling faster.

She had been trudging through the foot deep snow for about half an hour when she realized the footprints she’d been following had disappeared. Bella stopped suddenly in her tracks and spun around, taking in a 360 degree view from where she stood. The pine trees appeared to have grown thicker, but other than that, there was nothing obvious within her eyesight. Her cabin had disappeared completely from view, and no other building appeared around her, either. Bella squinted her eyes and scrunched up her nose, trying to remember the walk from the main lodge to the cabin the night before, but she’d been so tipsy, she hadn’t noticed much except for how handsome Jake had looked. Bella smacked her face with her open palm and shook her head. Jake! She’d text him for help. Reaching for her phone out of habit, she groaned when she saw it was obviously still dead.

“Okay, this can’t be that hard,” she said out loud, trying to comfort herself with her own voice. The snow was falling in earnest by then, quickly piling up around her. “It can’t be that far from here, I know I didn’t walk that far last night. It has to be just over this hill.”

Slightly to her right, the land sloped gently up, so she couldn’t see beyond the other side. She must have somehow veered slightly off course, but she guessed if she just got to the top of that snowy ridge, the lodge would appear in front of her.

Comforted by having a plan, Bella trudged on and up the hill. The snow was higher than it had been, so walking was slower. Suddenly, she cursed herself for not having brought at least a bottle of water along, but who knew the trek from the cabin to the lodge was going to become a cross-country hike? Shaking her head again at her predicament, Bella put one foot in front of the other.

It took her much longer than she had expected to get to the top of the slope, but when she reached the mini-summit, she was amazed by how thick the trees had gotten. She looked down the hill to where she expected to see the lodge, and her heart dropped when she saw nothing but what appeared to be miles of snowy landscape dotted with pine trees. She looked back in the direction she had just come, but her footprints were already disappearing in the growing blizzard, and the wind had picked up enough to make the swirling snowflakes no longer romantic feeling, but literally blinding, impeding her view. For the first time, fear gripped at her stomach, and Bella knew without a doubt she was lost in a blizzard in the snowy woods, and she was all alone.