Lumber Jacked
Lumber Jacked
Chance Carter
Contents
Copyright
Free Story Offer
Personal Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
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Heart of the Hunter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
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LUMBER JACKED
chance carter
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copyright © 2017
isbn: 978-1-927947-75-3
Free Story Offer
I'm not an average girl. I’ve never been like the others. It’s gotten me in more trouble than I can tell, but what can I say? I am who I am.
I guess I’d say I’m unique. Everyone says that, but in my case it’s true.
And as I sit outside this tattoo parlor, all I can think is that this one takes the cherry. This is by far the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
Or thought about doing. I haven’t done it yet.
You see, there’s a guy I like. Not just any guy. This guy’s the hottest, baddest, sexiest guy you ever saw in your life. He’s got a short, military style hair cut, a strong face, a muscular build, and piercing eyes that flash like lightning.
And I'm about to walk into his tattoo parlor and get him to tattoo my name onto his perfectly sexy chest. Yup! He doesn't even know who I am!
Watch how I do it!
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Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.
Charlotte Brontë
Each time you happen to me all over again.
Edith Wharton
I want to do with you what the spring does with the cherry trees.
Pablo Neruda
To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl in the dark folds of life.
Victor Hugo
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
Paulo Coelho
I love you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.
Charles Bukowski
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.
Roald Dahl
Personal Note
Dear reader,
before you dive into my story, I want to take this moment to thank you for what you have done. You have chosen to read my book, to offer me your trust, and to open your heart to my words.
It is an honor that I cherish.
Few things in life are as intimate or as powerful as the bond between reader and writer. It is something magical, unlike anything else on earth. It defies time and space. Through the power of words, we are creating a connection that will bring us as close together as two people can possibly become.
We will go to a place of extreme intimacy, intense beauty, and excruciating pleasure. Together, we will journey to the very essence of the relationship between man and woman, the moment of orgasm.
This book is about that spark, that moment, when a man and woman share climax. It is mystical, it is spiritual, and it is the one thing in the world that leads to new life. People call it sex, but those three letters fail to do it justice. It is so much more than that, and I am proud to spend the time we are connected exploring its meaning.
I dedicate this book to you, my reader. You have chosen to enter that moment with me, to explore its magic, and to experience its pleasure. It is something that will link us forever.
Chance Carter
Chapter One
Autumn
Autumn Lane sat motionless, staring out the window of the train at the passing, endless forest.
She’d never seen a landscape of such grandeur, and never felt such a strong sense of foreboding. Every passing mile took her further from the world she knew, deep into a forest that looked like something out of an ancient fairytale.
She half expected to see wolves, their eyes glowing in the twilight. Or children lost and scared in the vastness, the branches of the trees reaching out for them like gnarled fingers.
Gone were the familiar fields of the prairies, their comforting towns in the distance marked by a grain silo or a water tower. Gone too were the farmhouses, the gas stations, the Walmarts and fast food restaurants.
In their place were snowcapped mountain peaks, the granite so gray it looked more like steel. The blue sky had been replaced by oppressive low cloud. And of course the trees, millions of them. Thin trunks, spindly branches, and needles more black than green.
She shivered and picked up her phone.
She still had signal.
For the first time since leaving fourteen hours earlier, she called home.
“Mom?”
“Autumn, honey?”
She struggled to keep her voice from breaking. It wouldn’t do to cry on the first call.
“Sweetie, is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, Mom. I’m still on the train. We’re passing through the Rockies now.”
“The Rocky Mountains,” her mother said, awed that any daughter of hers had managed to wander
so far from home. Then she fell into a fit of coughing.
“Mom? Are you all right?”
“It’s the new meds. I swear they’re worse than the old ones.”
Autumn held the phone tight to her ear. “The doctor said they’d take a few days to kick in, Mom.”
“Yeah, and the longer I take to die, the richer those doctors and drug companies get.”
“Don’t say that, Mom.”
Her mother was coughing again.
“I’m sorry, honey. I know I have to be positive.”
The signal began to cut out.
“Mom?” Autumn said, a touch of desperation straying into her voice. “Mom?” She wasn’t ready to let go. “Mom, I love you.”
It was too late. The call had dropped.
They’d warned her when she got on the train there would be no signal in the mountains. She wondered if that included her destination, the isolated town of Destiny, Montana, population two hundred according to the Wiki page.
They were scheduled to arrive just after midnight. She looked at her watch. It was six thirty, time for dinner. She looked at the itinerary she’d been given with her ticket. There would be no more stops before Destiny.
No stops. No towns.
She didn’t dare think what the wilderness would be like when she was six hours deeper into it.
She gathered her things, a book of poetry, an old iPod with a cracked screen, her notebook and pen, an almost empty Coke bottle, and put them in her knapsack.
She didn’t think she was the last passenger still on the train, but she was close to it.
She made her way to the back of the carriage and pulled open the metal door. The noise and cold air rushed around her as she passed to the next car, steadying herself against the shaking walls.
The dining car was completely empty and she let out a small sigh. She’d been hoping for the comfort of other people. She took a seat at one of the tables. It was comfortable in an old-fashioned way, with a white table cloth and a metal lamp screwed to the table.
There was a menu card and she looked it over. Three options.
A slim man in a black and white waiter’s uniform came over.
“Quiet tonight,” Autumn said.
“Always is after Fairfax. This last stretch of the line is a loss-maker for the company.”
“Why do they still operate it?”
“State legislation. This area would be too remote to survive without train service.”
“Nice they do it,” Autumn said.
The man nodded. He was a little older than Autumn, skinny, with a hint of dark stubble on his cheeks.
“I take it you’re here to eat?” he said.
“I’ll have the roast beef.”
“Horse radish?”
“Yes please.”
The man nodded and wrote something on his notepad.
“You want something to drink with that?”
“What have you got?”
“Red wine, white wine, beer, liquor.”
Autumn smiled, flattered. “I’m only nineteen,” she said.
The waiter smirked and looked up and down the empty car conspiratorially. “I won’t say anything if you don’t.”
Autumn looked at him gratefully. After the long and lonely journey, it felt so good to be having an actual conversation with someone.
“How much does a glass of wine cost?” she said, very aware she had all of forty dollars in her pocket and no bank cards of any kind to pick up the slack.
“Don’t worry about it,” the waiter said. “You look like a fun girl. I’m sure we’ll find a way for you to pay me back.”
Autumn didn’t know what to say to that so she nodded mutely.
He left with the order and she thought about what he’d said. Pay him back.
Her mother had told her a million times to be careful, to look after herself, to remember who she was.
The only problem with that advice was that it assumed Autumn knew who she was.
She looked back in the direction the waiter had gone. Pay him back.
She took a twenty from her pocket, half her money, and put it flat on the table. Then she rose, picked up her knapsack, and made her way back to her seat.
She was hungry, but she wasn’t that hungry.
Chapter Two
Grady
Grady Cole pulled into a gas station with an attached diner and killed the engine. It was snowing, it was dark, his baby was crying. A hot meal and a tank of gas seemed about as good an idea as he was likely to have.
“Come on, baby,” he said as he unbuckled the carseat.
Or rather, as he tried to unbuckle it. The damn thing was more complicated than it looked.
He’d picked it up that morning at a shopping mall, roughly thirty minutes after filing the last of the paperwork that gave him custody of his daughter. A month ago, he’d have laughed out loud if someone said he’d be the owner of a carseat, let alone a child to put in it. Now he had both, a little girl with bright blue eyes, dressed in a hospital issued white onesie, and a four hundred dollar carseat that looked complicated enough to take her to the moon and back without injury.
He finally got it open and picked up the crying child, tucking her inside his jacket next to the warmth of his chest.
Careful to keep her shielded from the icy wind, he hurried into the gas station.
There was a kid behind the counter and Grady threw him his car keys.
“Fill that up for me, would you?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And I’ll take this map too,” he said, grabbing one from the rack by the counter. “I’ll be in the diner in the meantime.”
The kid nodded.
Grady proceeded to the diner and took a booth as far from the door as possible.
He kept the child inside his jacket like a baby kangaroo in a pouch. She seemed happy to be there.
She wasn’t crying at least.
He made a face at her and she looked into his eyes in a way he’d never known possible.
He was a father.
He put the map on the table and pulled some papers from his jacket pocket. They had the look and feel of important government documents. They’d been given to him by child services along with the baby and Grady clutched them like they were the only thing between her and certain death.
One was a birth certificate.
He looked at his name, clear for all the world to see in the box marked Father.
The baby was already six months old, but for Grady she hadn’t existed until two days ago when he got the call from the authorities.
He looked over more of the details and noted grimly that the mother’s time of death was four minutes before Destiny’s time of birth.
He shook his head but refused to think of Ravenna. Her decisions had led to her death and it was only by the Grace of God she hadn’t taken Destiny to the grave with her.
“You’re in my hands now, aren’t you?” he cooed.
He offered her his finger and she reached toward it, giving him the world’s tiniest high five.
“You hungry? Because I sure am.”
Child Services had given him a bottle of formula and he’d fed it to the child periodically throughout the day. Now he read over the feeding instructions in more detail. They said at six months she’d be able to eat a little pureed fruit or vegetable. Not much though.
He sighed and looked into her face.
He was out of his depth, but God was she beautiful.
A waitress came over.
“What have we got here?” she said.
Grady opened his jacket and let her see the baby’s face.
“Well, isn’t that just the most adorable little thing.”
Grady nodded.
“You don’t happen to sell baby formula do you?”
“I’ll see what I can find,” she said. “I’m sure there’s something in the store.”
“We’d appreciate that.”
“And for daddy?”
Grady looked up. Daddy. That’s what he was now. He didn’t know if he’d ever get used to that.
“I’ll have a cup of coffee and the chili.”
“Coming right up.”
He continued to read through the papers. In theory, they contained all the information a man would need to keep a six-month-old alive and healthy and he folded them carefully before putting them back in his pocket.
Then he opened the map and spread it in front of him on the table, flattening it out with his free hand. It was enormous, bigger than the table.
He looked over it, searching for the remotest, most peaceful spot he could find. Grady had family ties in California, but he wasn’t in the emotional or mental state to go back there. He wanted a fresh place, a clean slate, somewhere to start a new life with his daughter.
His eyes fell on a tiny dot in the farthest, most remote part of the Rockies, a single windy road and a lone rail line leading up to it, Destiny, Montana.
“Well, if that ain’t a sign,” he said to the child.
The waitress returned and put a cup of coffee in front of him.
“Thank you,” he said.
“We’ve got formula in the store but we don’t have any bottles.”
“I’ve got a bottle in the car,” he said.
He handed Destiny to the waitress and went out to the car for the bottle. He also grabbed a blanket he’d bought when he bought the carseat.
When he got back inside, the waitress was cooing and Destiny was laughing.
“Thanks,” Grady said.
The waitress looked him up and down as she handed back the baby.
“You two make an odd couple,” she said.
Grady knew how he looked. He had tattoos on his arms, stubble on his face, and fire in his eyes. Domestic wasn’t a word anyone would ever use to describe him.
“It’s my first day on the job.”
“Really?”
“Three days ago I didn’t even know this little one existed.”
“And now you’re daddy?”
Grady nodded. He knew the waitress wanted to ask about the mother, but she didn’t say anything so he didn’t offer the information.