DANGEROUS LOVE (OTHER BOOKS BY SADIE WITH SAMPLE CHAPTERS)

THE PROJECT HELLFIRE SERIES

DESCRIPTION:

THE PROJECT HELLFIRE SERIES: COMPLETE SERIES

CONTAINS FIVE SHORT NOVELS THAT FOLLOW THE BLOODLINE OF VIKING KINGS.

Available for purchase on:

Amazon k****e/Cost $5USD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087PJ38DV

Smashword/Cost $5USD

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1017743

BOOKS INCLUDED:

A.W.O.L

(BOOK ONE)

Waking up from a blow to the head, Alexia does so with no memory of who she is or where she came from, but one thing is painfully clear: someone has tried to kill her. Finding herself in a small mountain town in West Virginia, Alexia explores her mind with the help of the local man who pulled her waterlogged body from the icy river. But the more she learns about herself, the more she realizes the danger they are in.

THE STRANGER

(BOOK TWO)

Lacy Taylor is doing her best to help her father save the family farm from the evil industrialist who is driving local farmers off their land so he can buy up their properties on the cheap. Things are starting to look dim until the day a drifter rides into town looking for work. He seems to be the answer to their prayers when he offers his services as a farmhand, giving her family hope of making the planting season. She quickly learns the handsome stranger is far more than he seems with secrets she could never have prepared for.

THE OTHER BROTHER

(BOOK THREE)

Betrayed by her sister, heartbroken Millie Taylor finds she is in a rut trapped in a two- bit town with no hope of ever finding excitement or adventure. With her sister’s pending wedding looming and her sister’s fiancé’s brothers coming in for the wedding, Millie struggles with her anger. When she meets brother, Jove Perez, she is shocked by his abrasive personality. He’s wild, exciting and dangerous, and soon Millie is caught up in a whirlwind romance that could cost her more than just her heart.

FROM THE SHADOWS

(BOOK FOUR)

Terrell wanders this world alone: a drifter, a nobody, a shadow quickly forgotten. For years, he has lived this way, hiding from the world and from his past. His life is simple, or at least it has been until he happens upon a struggling single mom on the side of the road. It isn’t long before things get complicated, and Terrell finds he can no longer run from his past. He now has something he doesn’t want to lose and he realizes it’s time to face his demons. It’s time to make a stand.

LOST IN EGYPT

(BONUS BOOK)

Being a soldier is all Clint Taylor ever wanted to be. He joins the U.S. Marine Corp the moment he comes of age. Stationed in Cairo, Egypt during a volatile time of civic and political unrest, Cpl. Taylor follows orders like any good marine. Wounded in a riot, Clint finds himself taken into the private home of a local family he has been protecting. With the city in chaos and neighbour turning on neighbour Clint finds himself torn between rejoining his unit and protecting the family who has taken him in. Lost in the arms of the young woman who nursed him back to health, Clint finds his heart overruling his head. He would see that no harm come to the family even if it kills him.

SAMPLE CHAPTER:

BOOK ONE “A.W.O.L”

PROLOGUE

No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life. ~ Ernest Renan

West Virginia Mountains…

Angel raced through the darkness of the dense forest of the mountain range. She couldn’t believe they’d found her. She’d been on the run for three months, and the army was always right behind her. She didn’t know how they were tracking her, but she couldn’t let them catch her. If she did, she was as good as dead, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

She could outrun them; she was faster than the average person. She would survive in the wilderness if she had to, Angel was designed to survive the worst environments imaginable. She was the result of decades of genetic research and billions of dollars of military funding. She was one of four genetically engineered super soldiers.

Angel was a test subject in a black ops military experiment called Project Hellfire. She was developed in a test tube and brought to term in an incubator. Tested on as an infant and subjected to extreme and sometimes cruel military discipline and training as a child. She and the rest of Project Hellfire had been sent out into the field by the time they were fifteen. Her upbringing and six years of horrendous warfare had made her the exception weapon she was today.

She might very well still be in the field had she not been deemed a rogue weapon in need of termination. Angel had never questioned orders before until three months ago when she’d been ordered to kill an innocent child. Something in her broke, and she couldn’t follow that order. She knew then and there that by refusing to kill, she would be terminated as a failed experiment, so she ran to save her own life.

Though she was stronger, faster, and smarter than most people, she was not immortal. A well-placed bullet would take her out the same as it would anyone. So, she hoped to lose the soldiers shooting at her in the trees.

Angel ran through the dense brush the branches and thorns ripping at her clothes and skin as she blazed through them, trying to get lost in the darkness. Though she could usually see well in the dark, the thick canopy above blocked out the moonlight making it harder to judge where she was. She knew the soldiers behind her were hunting her with night vision goggles, so she was at a great disadvantage.

She could hear them behind her. They were close. Suddenly a bullet embedded itself in the tree next to her head and Angel bolted right to dodge the next. She pushed her way through thick bushes when a second bullet ripped clean through her right shoulder. Angel grunted in pain but kept running. Suddenly the brush cleared, and the ground beneath her feet was gone. Angel fell off the side of a mountain cliff. She grabbed at the rock to no avail, and she fell two hundred feet to the raging river below, striking her head hard against the rocks on her way down, knocking her out cold.

***

Black Ops Military Bunker, Alabama…

General Peter Hector stood staring at the mirror, looking at the half-blind man looking back at him. The gash across his left eye was healing but had left him blind in that eyes. The sight of it infuriated him. Too furious to keep looking at his mangled eye, General Hector pulled the black eye patch down to cover his eye.

There was a knock at the door, and he bid the knocker to enter. Turning around, he glared at the Sargent that stepped inside and saluted him. “Well.”

The Sargent smiled. “Good news, sir, the report has come back. Project Angel is dead.”

He smiled. “Is she? They have a body?”

The smiled faded from the soldier’s face. “Well, no. She fell off a cliff and into a river. But they are certain she is dead.”

He could feel his rage at their incompetence grow. First, they let her escape the bunker, and now she was missing again. “Your ineptitude has become most taxing. I want a body at my feet.”

“She’s as good as dead, sir.”

“As good as dead and dead are two different things.”

“No one could survive that fall.”

“She was designed to survive. If there is nobody, she is alive. Find her and do not come back here without a bloody body!”

“Yes, sir,” he said, saluting the general again before leaving. They needed to find Project Angel and fast the longer she was out there, the public was in danger. The US government could not have a rouge weapon roaming free among the civilian population.

***

CHAPTER 1

Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day, someone might do the same for you. ~ Princess Diana

Wesley placed his tackle box on the riverbank so he could bait his hook. His best and only friend Joey was five feet away doing the same with his rod. They had decided to go fishing as a means of relaxing from the hellish week. Ever since Wesley got back, life in Hicksville just hadn’t been the same. Wesley had been paroled four months ago, six months before his three-year sentence was completely served. All he had to do was stay out of trouble long enough to run out his six-month parole, and he was scot-free. Only it felt like the other residents of Hicksville were hell-bent on sending him back to jail.

Ever since that fateful night when he caught his live-in girlfriend, Kim, in bed with a lowlife coal miner, almost everyone in this town hated him. In retrospect, he probably hadn’t handled that situation well. He’d kicked in the door and thrown Kim out of the house butt naked, then taken a tire iron to her lover’s legs, fracturing his legs in six places and shattering his left knee, leaving the man walking with a cane for the rest of his life.

That night he had been arrested and charged with malicious assault and had been tried and convicted. But he served his time and behaved himself to get out early. Now he was trying to stay out of handcuffs. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come home to Hicksville, perhaps he should have moved to get a fresh start, but Hicksville was his home and always had been, and he wasn’t going to let people drive him from his home. He had just as much right to be here as any of them did.

However, since he got out very few people still associated with him, Joey and his wife Sara were his only friends. His twin sister Billie was his only family given their father had died two years ago in a hunting accident, but she had been gone for months having run off with some rich city slicker from LA. There were a handful of older men around town that would still talk to him. Old friends of his father, who still treated him with acceptance and tolerance even if they didn’t approve of what he’d done.

People made it very hard for him to live his life. Deliberately picking fights with him in the hopes that he would lose his cool and end up back in a cell or maybe to drive him out of town. Either way, it was clear he wasn’t wanted in this town, but he wasn’t leaving.

After a particularly stressful week of harassment by others, Joey had suggested they go up the mountain to Wesley’s family mountain cabin and go river fishing to distress from the week. Wesley had loved the idea, and they had packed up the truck and gone up the mountain. A quiet day of beer and fishing with his best buddy was exactly what the doctor ordered. It would relax him and alleviate the stress of the workweek.

They stood on the edge of the bank and cast their lures into the water then dropped down into the folding chairs they had brought with them. Joey opened the small cooler between their chairs and stuffed a cold can into the drink holder on the arm of Wesley chair and cracked open his own. Joey took a big sip and then placed the beer in the drink holder of his seat. “I tell you what; I needed this. Sara is so emotional lately.”

“She always gets emotional when she’s pregnant. You think you’d stop knocking her up,” Wesley teased.

“I would, but Sara’s a devout Catholic, and she doesn’t believe in birth control, and frankly, I enjoy s*x,” his old friend said as he grinned.

“You’re twenty-five, and you already have three children,” Wesley pointed out.

“Two-point-five,” Joey corrected playfully.

Wesley rolled his eyes. “I stand corrected.”

Suddenly something tugged on Wesley’s line bowing his rod. He jumped to his feet and tried to reel his catch in. “Wow, that was fast,” Joey said, jumping up excitedly.

“Christ, it’s heavy,” Wesley groaned as he fought his catch.

“It must be huge. Quit playing reel it in.”

“I’m trying.” Suddenly he couldn’t budge it. “I think I’m hung up on something,” he said, pulling on the rod. “Damn it, I know I’m hung up on something. I’m going to break my rod if I keep pulling. I just bought this damn thing,” he was going to have to wade out into the water and detangle his line. “Hold this. I’m going in,” he said, handing the rod to Joey.

Wesley took his flip knife from his tackle box and took off his shoes so they wouldn’t get wet. “You don’t have to do this. Just cut the line. We’ll re-string it,” Joey said, trying to be the voice of reason.

“I’m not losing this lure. I don’t have another one,” he said, placing the knife between his teeth and wading out into the cold water. He held onto the line following it to a cluster of fallen logs a few yards away from where his line was snagged. He found the end of the line and moved the branches and logs around as best he could to untangle his like when he came across a human hand. It was a small dainty hand, a woman’s hand. It was pale and cold.

Wesley moved more of the debris and uncovered a body connected to the hand. It was floating on its back, tangled up in the wood and branches. The body was waterlogged; its long dark hair was wet and matted to her face of which little he could see but what he could was dirty from mud and sludge. Wesley reached out to brush the sopping matted mess of hair out of her face to get a better look. He hadn’t heard of anyone going missing, and he was praying to God; it wasn’t a face he knew.

“What are you doing?” he heard Joey call from the riverbank.

“I found a body,” he called back as he moved the hair. Wesley breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t a local. “I’ve never seen her before. You should call the Sheriff,” he yelled back as he looked the body over. What a shame she looked young. Suddenly her eyes fluttered open and then shut again, and Wesley panicked. “Holy hell, she’s alive!” he yelled, and Joey tossed the rod aside and waded into the water to help Wesley pull the woman from the debris. It took a few minutes to untangle her. They tried to be gentle so as not to hurt her or exacerbate any injury she might already have.

Once they got her free, they dragged her back to the shore and carried her limp body from the icy water laying her out on her back onshore. Joey found his cell phone and made a call to the Sheriff and the local doctor, telling them about the woman they found and asking them to respond quickly. The closest hospital was an hour away, so the town doctor would have to suffice. If he deemed, she needed further medical attention, Wesley would drive the woman to the hospital himself.

While Joey called the authorities, Wesley leaned over on his hands and knees to make sure she was breathing, and she was so he didn’t think CPR was necessary. He now wished he’d had a blanket or jacket to cover her with to warm her, but it had been a balmy summer day, and he had chosen not to wear one.

Joey got off the phone and tucked it back into his tackle box since his clothes were wet. “Sheriff says he’s on his way and Doc Walker says he’ll be here in half an hour. Is she breathing?”

“Yeah, she's just unconscious.”

“Maybe we should take her to the cabin,” Joey suggested.

“I don’t know if it’s safe to move her. Pulling her from the water is one thing, but if she’s hurt badly, we could do more damage by moving her. I think we should wait for Doc Walker to look and assess her first.”

Joey got down beside her. “I got first aid training I’ll assess her,” he said as he ran his hands over her body, trying to judge if she had broken bones or internal bleeding. He pulled back his hand, and it was covered in blood. “Oh God, she’s been shot.”

“That’s it; we are not moving her.”

“On second thought, that’s probably a good idea.”

Wesley sat knelt on the ground with the unconscious woman while Joey spent the next half hour talking to his wife, telling her what they had found and that he wasn’t sure when he would be home. He was still talking to Sara when Wesley heard the Sheriff calling out for someone. Wesley got up and called out to alert the Sheriff to where they were, and then the middle-aged man came down the trail and removed his hat, wiping the sweat on his forehead away with the sleeve of his uniform.

“So, you boys found something interesting today, I hear,” he said as he came to stand over the body. “Joey says you found the body, Wes.”

“I sure did, Harold. Over there in the debris,” Wesley had known Harold all his life. The good Sheriff, like so many of the older men in town, had been his father’s friend. All had loved Wesley's father until the day he was shot and killed in a hunting accident two years ago. Wesley had missed his father’s funeral since he had been incarcerated almost eight months earlier. It was one of his greatest regrets in life.

The Sheriff looked her over and then the river. “She’s not a local, where’d she come from?” None of them could answer that. Hicksville wasn’t exactly a tourist destination; they were a two-bit backwater town in the boonies. No one ever came to Hicksville on purpose. “And what is she doing in the river?” Harold had a lot of questions, and none of them had any answers.

Another voice called out, and the Sheriff called back. Shortly after, old Doc Walker appeared on the scene. The good doctor was well into his fifties and heavy set. His eyes were failing him, and he’d taken to wearing thick coke bottle glasses. He saw the girl and groaned as he knelt and quickly assessed the girl.

“Well, it’s clear she’d been shot, but it looks like the bullet was a through and through. It didn’t hit anything major. There’s no apparent breaks or fractures, and I don’t think there is any internal bleeding,” he groaned again as he heaved his dumpy body to his feet. I can’t properly examine her like this. We’ll have to move her.”

“We can take her to my cabin,” Wesley offered, and then he and Joey carefully picked her up and carried her up the trail to his cabin a short five-minute walk up the trail where everyone had parked.

Sheriff Stanley held the door open, and Wesley and Joey carried her into the house. They put her in the second bedroom, which had been his and his sister’s as children with two single beds. Once she was on the bed, Joey said he was going back to the river to collect their things and bring them back. Wesley stayed in the living room with the Sheriff and left the doctor to undress and examine the woman.

It took twenty minutes, but when the doctor emerged from the room, it was to fetch the mobile first aid kit he brought with him and had left in the living room, then he asked Wesley for some fresh warm water and some rags. Wesley collected the things the doctor had asked for and brought it into the bedroom. “Wes, dear boy, I’m going to need you to be my nurse. I need you to clean the victim while I sterilize and suture the wound. Doc Walker had already cleaned the bullet hole in her shoulder with antiseptic from his kit and began to stitch.

The woman had been stripped down and lay nude under the sheet for modesty. Wesley knelt beside the bed and began to wash the filth and mud from her body gently. As he dragged the cloth across her body, he couldn’t help but notice old wounds all over her body. Wounds that looked bad but long healed.

“Well, Doc, what’s the prognoses?” Sheriff Stanley asked as he stood in the doorway of the bedroom.

“Well, she’ll live. She’d banged up pretty bad; lots of bumps, scrapes, bruises like she fell from a height. She’s got a contusion on the back of her head, suggesting she hit it damn hard. She is probably suffering a concussion. It’s most likely what knocked her out. There are scars all over her body, suggests years of physical abuse. A bullet hole in her shoulder missed anything important. She’s lucky. If you want my opinion, Sheriff, someone tried to kill this woman and dump her in the river, or she fell into the river after being shot. I don’t know that’s your department.”

The Sheriff picked up her tattered wet clothes and searched for identification but found none. “Well, whoever she is, she's got no ID on her. We’ll have to question her when she wakes up. When will she wake up?”

“There’s no telling.”

“Do we have to take her to a hospital?” Wesley asked.

“No,” Doc Walker said as he stood up. “She’s in surprisingly good condition for someone pulled from the river. I think she needs some rest. I’ll stick around until she wakes up to make sure that she’s good,” he then looked at Wesley. “You got coffee grounds or instant?”

“Grounds in the cupboard near the fridge,” Wesley told him.

“I’ll make a pot,” Doc Walker said as he left the room with the Sheriff.

Wesley continued his task at cleaning the woman. He washed the filth from her face pushing her hair back behind her ear. She was dirty but kind of pretty beneath all that mud and crud. Her wet hair was a deep rich chocolate colour, thick and long. It looked like she might have had it up in a bun before she ended up in the river, but it had come loose. She had a round face with soft features.

The sheet left little to the imagination. Her silhouette through the thin fabric was athletic with toned muscle. She was in surprisingly good shape, perhaps better than he was, and he prided himself in fairly good shape. He wouldn’t say she was a bodybuilder; he’d seen female bodybuilders on TV and in magazines, and they didn’t even look like women anymore. This woman was unmistakably feminine with clear muscle definition — soft yet hard in all the right places.

He was half tempted to pull back the sheet and get a good look at the luscious body beneath, but the gentleman inside him told him that would be wrong. Then again, Doc Walker did say clean her up, and he wouldn’t be doing his job if he neglected the parts hidden by the sheet. He was in a quandary. How did he clean her up sufficiently without abusing his position as a caregiver? How did real nurses do this with their patients?

Deciding to move the sheet in sections without ever actually revealing any of her more private areas, Wesley would wash first her arms and then her legs. He pulled back the sheet enough to wash her. He dragged the wet cloth down her shoulder and bicep when he saw her twitch. Wesley’s gaze lifted to and met her wide grey eyes.

Their eyes locked for a moment, and then hers narrowed, and she shot up in bed. Holding the sheet to her breasts with her left hand, her right shot up and closed tightly around his throat. She was on her feet in a flash, and she had dragged him out of bed and pinned him against the bedroom wall. She was a half a foot shorter than him and at least sixty pounds lighter, yet she muscled him with surprising strength and control. She straightened her arm, lifting him against the wall, so he was on his toes, and all with one hand while clutching the sheet to hide her body from view.

The commotion drew Sheriff Stanley and Doc Walker from the other room. The door flew open, and Sheriff Stanley pulled his service revolver and had her in his sights. Suddenly she yanked Wesley from the wall and positioned him in front of her as a shield. “Easy there, little lady,” sheriff Stanley said calmly, trying to control the situation.

“She’s unarmed,” Wesley said, trying to de-escalate the situation before someone got hurt.

“Who are you?” she snarled from behind him in a thick southern accent. “What have you done to me?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Wesley assured. “I found you in the river. You were hurt. We brought you back here to give you medical attention. No one here wants to hurt you. We want to help you.”

“He has a gun on me,” she pointed out.

“He’ll put the gun down if you relax,” he said and looked at Sheriff Stanley. “Right, Sheriff?” The Sheriff nodded and slowly holstered his weapon.

Wesley could feel the woman behind him relax and eventually release him. His hand went to his throat; it hurt. He wouldn’t be surprised if it bruised. Wesley turned around to face the woman. She managed to wrap the sheet around herself without exposing herself to view. She took a step back and looked at all of them. “Where am I?”

“You’re in Hicksville West Virginia,” Wesley told her. “My name is Wesley Hunter. That’s my buddy Joey Gates. We found you in the river. This is Sheriff Harold Stanley and Doc Walker. What’s your name?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. She shut her mouth with a confused and thoughtful look etched on her pretty face. “My name is… my name…?” She didn’t seem to have an answer to his question.

“Don’t you remember your name?” he asked.

“It’s… my name is…?” She really couldn’t remember.

Doc Walker asked her to sit down on the foot of the bed, and he flashed a light in her eyes and asked her if she knew the date or how she wound up in the river she couldn’t answer any of his questions. “It appears that the knock on the head has left her with amnesia. She doesn’t remember anything.”

“Well, that’s going to make tracking down the assailant rather difficult if she can’t answer my questions,” Sheriff Stanley said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Give her time this sort of thing doesn’t usually last. Her memories may come back to her in time.”

“How much time?” the Sheriff asked.

“It’s subjective. Could be a few days, a few weeks, and even years.”

“Years?” Sheriff Stanley gasped. “What am I supposed to do with her while waiting for her to regain her memory?”

“Well, you can check missing persons and see if she fits the description of anyone in the database,” Doc Walker suggested.

“That’s going to take time. I suppose the department could put her up in the motel in town until we figure out who she is.”

“There’s no need for that,” Wesley said quickly. “She’s welcome to stay here. I think she’d be more comfortable in the cabin here than cooped up in that dingy motel in town.”

Sheriff Stanley looked at the woman. “Well, it’s up to you, miss. Would you like to stay here?”

“I’d like clothes,” she said, clutching the sheet tighter around her.

“Well, your clothes were torn and wet,” Doc Walker told her.

“You know what I think some of Billie’s old clothes are in the closet. You two are about the same size. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you borrowed an outfit or two,” Wesley offered, opening the correct closet to show her the options. It was mostly jeans and t-shirts. Billie always had been a bit of a tomboy. “We’ll leave you to dress,” he said, making his way to the door.

“I’d like a shower,” she said, causing him to stop.

“Of course,” she was still filthy. Wesley opened the door to the adjoining washroom. It wasn’t big, but it did the trick. “There are towels in the closet in the washroom and soap under the sink. Make yourself at home.” Wesley then ushered all the men out into the living room and shutting the door behind them to offer her privacy.

“Well, I don’t see any further reason for me to be here. I’m going back to the station to start searching public records for any missing persons fitting her description. If she remembers anything, bring her in, and I’ll take her statement,” the Sheriff said, placing his hand on his head once more.

“Well, I’m not needed either,” Doc Walker said. Bring her into the office in two weeks, and I’ll check the stitches and see if they are ready to come out,” Wesley and Joey stood on the porch as they watched the two men get into their respective vehicles and drive away.

Joey and Wesley went back inside and poured themselves some coffee as they waited for their guest to emerge from the bedroom dressed. They talked about how crazy the whole situation was, and an hour later, the bedroom door opened, and she stepped out clean and dressed in his sister’s clothes. She had found an elastic and was pulling her dark hair up off her shoulders in a sloppy bud atop her head.

Both men stood up a little straighter as they took her in. Cleaned up, she was absolutely breathtaking. “Feel better?” he asked, offering his guest a mug of coffee.

She accepted it. “I would feel better if I knew my name,” she said, holding the hot mug with both hands and leaning against the kitchen counter as she sipped it.

“Well, we got to call you something,” Joey suggested. “Can’t call you ‘hey you’ forever.”

“Well, you might not remember your name, but maybe you can pick a name you know until yours comes back to you. Is there any name you particularly like?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Ok, how about… um, Lorrie?” She turned up her nose at the name. “You’re right; you don’t look like a Lorrie.”

“How about Joy?” Joey suggested, again she seemed displeased with the name.

“How about Alexia?” Wesley offered up another name.

She smiled, “Alexia, I like that name.”

“Alexia, it is then.”

“We can call you Lexi for short,” Joey grinned. She just chuckled. She had a nice smile.

“Maybe I should stay in the motel. I would hate to put you out?”

“It’s no imposition. I live in the valley just outside the town. This is more of a retreat sort of cabin; it just sits empty most the time. You would be more comfortable here,” Wesley insisted. “There’s a little bit of food in the fridge and some non-perishables in the cupboard. I can go to town and buy you some more food and bring it up to you tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she sighed and looked into the cup. “I wish I could repay you somehow.”

“Don’t think anything of it. It’s just good country hospitality,” Wesley assured her with a smile.

“It doesn’t hurt that she’s cute,” Joey teased quietly only to get a jab in the ribs with Wesley’s elbow.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to go back to bed,” she said, exhausted. Her ordeal must have left her wary.

“Not at all. You go to bed. We will show ourselves out,” Wesley said, and they watched her put down her coffee and return to the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

Joey looked at Wesley with a smile and Wesley glared at his friend. “What?”

“Country hospitality, eh?”

“Shut up. Go home to your wife.” They both laughed, collected their things and left the cabin. He’d come back tomorrow with some more food.