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  And Autumn was clinging to him so tightly, tighter than he’d ever felt her, and she was crying.

  Tears of pure love.

  “I adore you with a passion that could destroy the world,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Autumn

  The next day, Autumn felt like a new person. She felt like she’d been filled with a confidence and power that she’d never known before. She no longer felt afraid of the things that had frightened her before.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she announced after breakfast and Grady nodded.

  “I’ve got to take Destiny to the doctor in town for her check up,” he said. “I’ll bring back something for lunch.”

  It was a clear, sunny day and the last of the winter snow was melting rapidly. It wouldn’t be long before the entire forest turned green with life. She watched Grady and Destiny leave and then put on her coat and boots and started making her way down the road toward town.

  It felt good to be out in the forest and she wasn’t even afraid of the fact that the wolves were in the area. After what had happened the night before, she felt somehow as if they were on her side, as if they were family now and wouldn’t hurt her.

  They’d accepted her and Grady.

  She knew exactly where she was headed too. Somewhere she’d been meaning to go but had lacked the courage. The Raven’s Nest.

  She felt strange as she marched down the long driveway of the hotel, and her mind brought her back to the night she’d first arrived. She’d been a different person then. A girl, frightened and timid. Now she was a woman in every sense of the word, strong and loved and sure of her place in the world.

  The Hildegards must have seen her approaching because they both came to the front door to confront her as she approached.

  “What can we do for you?” Mr. Hildegard said, not a trace of friendliness in his voice.

  “You’re here to beg for your job back, aren’t you, you filthy little slut,” Mrs. Hildegard said.

  Autumn looked up at the two of them and for the first time felt sorry for them. For how lonely they must have been, and how desperate they were to steal money from a girl who was working for them. Not for the first time, she wondered what had happened to their daughter, but this wasn’t the time to ask.

  “I’m here to collect my pay,” she said.

  Mrs. Hildegard laughed. “Oh you are?”

  “Yes,” she said, standing her ground.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll pay you for,” Mr. Hildegard said. “I’ll pay you to get down on your slutty knees and suck my cock.”

  Mrs. Hildegard thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard and burst out laughing.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Get down on your knees the way you were always supposed to.”

  “You were hired for one thing and one thing only,” Mr. Hildegard said.

  “One thing?” Autumn said.

  “Your aunt told me I’d be in your panties inside of two weeks. That’s why you were here. And you never spread your legs so much as a single inch.”

  Autumn shook her head in disgust. Where had they gotten such ideas? Had Aunt Shirley really led them to believe all that? She couldn’t imagine her aunt doing that, but then, when she got jealous, Aunt Shirley was capable of anything.

  There was a chill in the breeze and Autumn looked up to the sky. Menacing storm clouds were rolling in from the mountains.

  “Just give me what you owe me and I’ll be on my way,” she said.

  Mr. Hildegard spat on the ground. It was clear he had no intention of doing the right thing. Mrs. Hildegard seemed to be enjoying the showdown. No doubt, she hadn’t liked the fact that Autumn had escaped without giving her a chance to get in a few final insults.

  “I’m not leaving without what’s owed to me,” Autumn said.

  “Wife,” Mr. Hildegard said. “Go get my shotgun.”

  Mrs. Hildegard stepped inside the hotel and came back a moment later with a big, old fashioned shotgun. It looked like it packed quite a punch.

  She handed it to her husband and he aimed it at Autumn.

  Autumn sighed. She took a deep breath. She knew what the old Autumn would have done, she’d have done the sensible thing and walked away. But this wasn’t the old Autumn.

  She started walking toward the Hildegards. Mr. Hildegard put his finger on the trigger but Autumn didn’t slow down.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Try it.”

  At the same moment, a wolf howled from the forest just beyond the hotel grounds. It gave a strange emphasis to Autumn’s words, as if it was backing her up, and Autumn felt as if maybe it was.

  From the look on the Hildegards’s faces they felt the same way.

  “There’s no need to get threatening,” Mr. Hildegard said, his voice faltering.

  Autumn thought it was ironic that the man with the gun should say that, but she didn’t allow the expression on her face to change.

  “Go and get me my money,” she said.

  Mr. Hildegard looked shocked by what was happening. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d allowed this girl to get the upper hand, especially since he was the one holding the shotgun, but somehow it had happened. He looked to his wife for support but she didn’t say a word. The wind had gone from her sails too.

  Silently, Mr. Hildegard went inside and when he came back he was holding an envelope. He didn’t look at his wife but handed the envelope to Autumn. She checked inside and saw it contained the money she was owed for the work she’d done.

  “Thank you,” she said and turned to leave.

  She took a few steps back down to the driveway and then stopped.

  She turned back to them. They’d never looked so pathetic and weak before.

  Addressing Mrs. Hildegard, and thinking of her own mother, she said, “I’m sorry you lost your daughter. I don’t think I ever had a chance to tell you that.”

  Mrs. Hildegard’s mouth moved to say something but no words came out.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Autumn

  Autumn felt triumphant but she didn’t have long to enjoy it.

  As she walked home, the storm clouds closed in ever closer. First the wind picked up, then the rain, and before long she was in the midst of an all out storm. She’d been warned about them, the mountains giving up their last fight before they fully relinquished the winter, and the wind was fiercely cold. The rain had ice in it and Autumn wasn’t sure if it was hail or some other type of frozen rain that didn’t have a name in the part of the country she was from.

  She started running back to the cabin, trying to shield herself as best she could from the weather. It was amazing how quickly it had come out of nowhere.

  She realized how easy it would be to get lost, even in broad daylight. She was amazed she’d ever been found last time she got lost.

  She kept running, and the only thing that kept her going was the thought of Grady and the baby waiting for her in the warm cabin when she got home.

  She saw the light in the windows first, and as she approached the cabin, Grady came running out to meet her.

  “I was worried sick. You shouldn’t be out here in this.”

  “It was sunny half an hour ago.”

  Grady picked her up over his shoulder and carried her the rest of the way back. She laughed but was glad of it.

  When they got inside he put her on her feet.

  “You must be frozen. Run a bath. I’ll shutter up these windows.”

  Autumn did as she was told and brought Destiny into the bath with her as Grady put up the shutters. When she got out of the bath the cabin was dark as night. It was the first time she’d seen the shutters up and they didn’t let in much light.

  She started lighting the fire as Grady tied down the loose things outside that could get blown away. When he came in he was as soaked to the skin as Autumn had been a few minutes earlier.

  “I left the water in the bath for you,” she said.

  Grady we
nt to warm up in the bath and when he came out, she’d made tea. She also had some homemade apple pie heating up in the oven and was whipping cream to go with it.

  The power lines were being whipped around and the light flickered.

  “I better light some candles,” Grady said.

  A few minutes later they were safe and cozy in their cabin, all locked up with the storm shut firmly out. The fires were burning, keeping the inside cozy and there must have been fifty candles lighting up every nook and corner and giving the whole house a magical, glimmering feel.

  They spent the day playing games by the fire. They had a deck of cards and Grady knew a surprising number of ways to pass the time.

  As the wind battered everything outside, howling through the trees and sending snow flurries high into the air, they drank tea, ate pie, and played to their hearts’ content.

  “You ever played strip poker?” Grady said after a suitable number of more innocent games had been exhausted.

  “I can’t say that I have,” Autumn said.

  It had gotten dark outside and Destiny was beginning to fall asleep.

  “Well, if you heat up some of that delicious stew you made yesterday, I’ll show you how after dinner.”

  She put a pot of the stew on over the fire and brought Destiny to her crib while it heated up. When she got back, Grady had served two bowls and cut some bread. They ate quietly, listening to the wind outside and looking into each other’s eyes for much longer than was strictly necessary.

  “So,” Grady said as he ate, “when am I going to make an honest woman out of you?”

  “You want to set a date?”

  “Of course I do. I’ve got you on the hook now. You agreed to marry me. I want to seal the deal before you think better of it.”

  Autumn laughed. “That’s one decision I’m never going to waver on.”

  Grady grabbed her and lifted her on to his lap. They finished their stew and afterwards he got up and opened a cabinet above the sink which they both had an unspoken agreement was his. While Autumn was in charge of every other part of the kitchen, this one was Grady’s. He had a few snacks up there that they both knew Autumn wouldn’t like, nuts with strange flavors on them like hickory, jerky made from different types of game including bear meat and deer, a bottle of twenty-five year old scotch, pipe tobacco that she’d never seen him smoke, and a few dusty old bottles of wine.

  It was one of the wine bottles that he brought down, and Autumn was sure she’d never seen anything that looked so old. The label on it was worn and faded and she could just barely make out a few French words and a date. The year was 1928.

  “That is one fancy looking bottle of wine, sir,” she said, watching him from her seat at the counter.

  “I bought this in France,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you were in France.”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know, missy.”

  “There’s a lot about me, you don’t know,” she said.

  He laughed and began carefully inserting a corkscrew into the bottle, being very gentle with it. He slowly turned the corkscrew and coaxed the cork out, being incredibly careful not to let it break apart.

  “It’s so delicate,” Autumn said.

  He looked at her. “Like all beautiful things.”

  She blushed as he removed the cork with a flourish and set the bottle down in front of her. The fragrance of the wine wafted up. It was intoxicating.

  “I don’t suppose this wine was very cheap,” she said.

  Grady shook his head. “It wasn’t.”

  “When did you buy it?”

  “A long time ago. Feels like a different lifetime. I was on a job for the Brotherhood. We were stealing jewels from a Russian mobster who’d stolen them from a famous Swiss jeweler.”

  “To give them back to the jeweler?”

  Grady laughed. “Eh, not quite,” he admitted. “We’re not that altruistic.”

  “So you were just stealing them for yourselves.”

  “Basically,” he said.

  “And you thought, I’m a rich international jewel thief, I deserve some of the finer things in life.”

  He grabbed her playfully and squeezed her in his arms. She wasn’t sure why she was teasing him but it was so much fun to do, and he sometimes made it surprisingly easy.

  He looked at the bottle.

  “I was hiding out at a remote farm. The old man who owned the farm showed me his cellar, and you wouldn’t believe the sorts of wine he had. It was incredible.”

  “Have you ever tasted wine like this?” she said, smelling the top of the bottle.

  Grady shook his head. He got up and brought two wine glasses to the counter. Then he poured them each a small taste of the wine.

  “No, never. I grew up on a vineyard. I know the difference between wine I like and wine I don’t like, but I’m not what you’d call a connoisseur. I’ve never tasted anything as old as this.”

  “It’s strange, when you think about it,” Autumn said, holding the glass to her face and inhaling the fragrance again.

  “What is?”

  “The things this bottle of wine has survived.”

  “The farm was taken over by German soldiers during the Second World War,” Grady said. “The farmer had to hide the wine or the soldiers would have taken it.”

  “Wow. It really is a piece of history.”

  He looked into her eyes and held up his glass to make a toast. “We’re a piece of history, Autumn. You and me. Our love will change our world. It will make a difference to us and to everyone we know and love. It will last and it will leave it’s mark on the world, just like all those people who came before us and lived lives of real, true love.”

  Autumn’s eyes filled with tears. She looked at the man she loved, the man who was going to make her his wife, and took a sip of the ancient wine.

  It tasted like nothing she’d ever had before. It tasted like wine but it tasted different too. It was … she wasn’t sure how to describe it.

  “It’s … magical,” she said.

  “You’re magical,” Grady said.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Grady

  “Three aces,” Grady said with a grin on his face that said it all.

  Autumn threw down her cards.

  “If I didn’t know better,” she said as she pulled off her sweater, “I’d say you were cheating.”

  She’d already removed her pants and each of her socks.

  Grady hadn’t lost a single hand, and was still dressed in the full splendor of his pants, his lumberjack shirt, and a light blue t-shirt underneath.

  With the fire burning and the storm beginning to die down outside, he was starting to feel too warm. He was beginning to think that maybe he should purposefully lose a few hands just to cool off. But then he’d miss out on the pleasure of forcing Autumn to slowly strip for him, and that was a sacrifice he was unwilling to make.

  “You sure you’re not catching a chill?” he said, his eyes glistening with triumph.

  “Shut up and deal,” Autumn said.

  “I’ve always been one to do as I’m told by a woman in her underwear,” he said, dealing the next hand.

  He dealt them five cards each and asked Autumn how many she wanted to change.

  “None,” she said defiantly.

  Grady’s eyebrows rose. She was a cheeky one.

  “Getting cocky,” he said as he switched out two cards for himself.

  She’d have to remove either her panties or her bra this time, he thought to himself with glee as he flipped over his hand.

  “A pair of fours and a pair of sixes,” he said. “Beat that.”

  Autumn shrugged and threw down her cards carelessly. Grady looked down at them and had to look twice.

  “Full house?” he said.

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  He pulled off his shirt and quickly dealt the next hand, eager to get Autumn out of those undergarments. He pictured her down on her
knees, her head bobbing up and down on his cock, when she lost.

  “You know what the stakes are, right?”

  “The stakes?” she said, looking up at him.

  He dealt another hand as he spoke. “Loser has to perform a favor for the winner.”

  “A sexual favor?”

  He nodded and asked how many cards she wanted.

  “None,” she said for the second time in a row.

  “You are getting cocky,” he said, taking two for himself. He threw his cards on the table. “There you go, three jacks. Now take off that bra, sweetie.”

  Autumn laughed. “Haven’t you learned yet? Girls always beat boys.”

  She lay down her cards one at a time. Grady counted one, two, three queens.

  “What the?”

  “That’s right, mister. Now I think you should get out of those uncomfortable pants.”

  Grady sighed as he whipped open his belt and flung his pants over the side of an armchair.

  “All right, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

  He dealt another hand, and for the third time in a row he lost. He lost the next hand too, and the next. That left him without either of his socks, or his t-shirt. He couldn’t believe he was down to just his boxer shorts, while Autumn still had on her panties and bra.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “You’ve bewitched the deck.”

  “I’ve done no such thing,” Autumn giggled.

  She put her hand on his cock and it immediately stiffened beneath his shorts.

  “Right,” he said, his cock sticking up from the center of his shorts, forming a tent. “Five cards. Here you go. How many to change?”

  “None,” Autumn said.

  Grady shook his head. She hadn’t changed any cards for the past five hands and she was kicking his butt. Without looking at his own cards he decided not to change any either. He turned them over and couldn’t believe what he saw.

  “A flush,” he said, looking down at his five clubs.