Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,1
Milwaukee, but here on Runaway Mountain, where her nearest neighbors were deer and raccoons, she could blast her music as loud as she needed.
The cold, wet wind of an East Tennessee February carried the scent of decaying leaves and skunk. This wasn’t the right weather to be outside in only a tank top and underpants, but unlike a dead husband, being wet and cold was something Tess could fix.
A broken flagstone caught the toe of her ballet flat, sending it flopping into the weeds. One shoe on, one shoe off. Sending all her emotions into her feet. A sharp stone dug at her heel, but if she stopped, her anger would burn her up. She forced her hips to move, tossed her head so that her wet, tangled hair flew. Faster and faster. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. Once you stop—
“Are you deaf?”
She froze as a man charged across the rickety wooden bridge that spanned Poorhouse Creek. A mountain man with shaggy dark hair, a fierce nose, and a jackhammer jaw. A bear of a man—sycamore tall and oblivious to the rain—wearing an untucked red-and-black-checked flannel shirt, paint-splattered boots, and jeans designed for hard work. She’d read about these mountain men—hermits who holed up in the wilderness with a pack of feral dogs and an arsenal of military rifles. They went without human contact for months—for years—until they forgot their origins.
She stood there immobilized in her old bikini underpants and a wet, white cotton tank top that strained over her breasts. Braless, furious, half-wild herself, and very much alone.
He charged toward her, oblivious to the rain, the wobbly, wooden bridge swaying behind him. “I put up with this crap yesterday afternoon, and yesterday evening, and at two frigging o’clock this morning, but I’m not putting up with it any longer!”
She took him in with a series of quick impressions. Defiant waves in the unruly, too-long hair that curled wet against his neck. His workman’s clothes were rumpled, and a dozen different colors of paint spattered his cracked leather boots. His beard stubble wasn’t long enough for a crazed hermit, but he looked crazed nonetheless.
She wouldn’t apologize. She’d done enough apologizing back home for the burden her grief had put on her friends and her co-workers, and she wouldn’t do it here. She’d chosen Runaway Mountain, not only for its name, but also for its isolation—a place where she could be as impolite, as grief-stricken, as angry at the universe as she wanted to be. “Stop yelling at me!”
“How else are you going to hear me?” He snatched up her Bluetooth speaker from its dry spot underneath the splintered remains of a picnic table.
“Put that down!”
He jabbed at the power switch with a big, blunt-fingered paw, shutting off the music. “How about a little common courtesy?”
“Courtesy?” She relished having an outlet for the injustice life had thrown at her. “That’s what you call storming down here like a wild man?”
“If you had any respect for all this . . .” He made a slashing gesture toward the trees and Poorhouse Creek, the harsh lines of his face so rough-hewn they could have been carved with a chain saw. “If you had any respect, I wouldn’t have had to storm down here!”
And then she saw it. The moment he became aware of her dress—or undress. Eyes the color of slate grazed her disparagingly. But disparaging of what? Of her wet, tangled hair? Of her body, heavier than it should be from trying to suffocate herself with food? Her legs? Her ratty underwear? Or maybe just her audacity for taking up space on his planet?
Who was she kidding? With her breasts straining against a wet tank top, she must look like a grotesque cliché of a drunken college girl on a Cancun spring break. Her head swam, high on the rush of her anger. “All you had to do was ask politely!”
His gaze cut through her, his voice a low, deep growl. “Yeah, I’m sure that would have worked.”
She was clearly in the wrong, but she didn’t care. “Who are you?”
“Someone who’d like a little peace and quiet. Two words you don’t seem to comprehend.”
No one had reprimanded her since her husband had died. Instead, they all acted as if they were still standing in the funeral parlor with its overstuffed furniture and nauseating smell of Stargazer lilies. Having a target for her anger was sickly intoxicating. “Are you this rude to everybody?” she exclaimed. “Because if you are—”