Stealing Joy Read online

  “Hey Doggo, is your master around here?” I called out after the creature, but it took off in the opposite direction.

  I guess that meant no.

  A few moments later, it came crashing back into the clearing with a stick in its mouth. Oh, it wanted to play. Its tail wagged, and it ran about half the distance to me before turning and trotting away. It did that a few times until I clued in and followed.

  It never got close enough, but it was clearly leading me on a chase.

  “Doggo, your people are soon right?”

  It yipped and wagged at me. So, I kept following.

  I kicked something. Pain shot up my leg and exploded in my head. My feet were numb with cold. I never knew numb toes could hurt so badly. I cried out and sat with a heavy thud. I think that’s when I started crying. I don’t know.

  Doggo left me behind. Maybe it wasn’t really leading me anywhere. The moon was still up, so I scanned around looking for anything. About thirty yards away was a fallen tree. The log was pretty big, so I figured it would provide a little protection. There were enough leaves and forest floor litter against it; maybe I could get some additional protection from the cold if I buried myself.

  I found a sturdy stick and hobbled over to the log. It was cold enough I wasn’t worried about bugs. Hell, I was worried about my toes. I’d sleep with a bunch of cockroaches if I thought they would keep me from getting frostbite. And that was a very real worry at the moment.

  I began digging dirt and leaves away from the log, giving myself a hole to crawl into. I sat and dug deeper, creating a space for my feet. I poked at my toe, the one I stubbed earlier. I don’t understand how it hurt so badly. I couldn’t feel it at all now. I wondered how long my socks had been wet. That wasn’t good.

  The dog came back. Only this time, it approached me all the way. Close enough I could tell he was a he, and monstrously large. He whined and head-butted me. I should have clued in that he wasn’t someone’s dog. He was too freaking big, and no collar. He was friendly, and I was tired, so I didn’t think about it.

  It was clear he wanted me to keep moving.

  I buried my hands into his fur, oh gods he was warm. “I can’t, Doggo. I can’t. I can’t walk any farther; I can’t feel my stupid feet.”

  I wiped my snot against his neck, and he didn’t seem to mind. He sat there, big and warm, and panting at me. I guess he figured out I wasn’t going anywhere. After a bit, he took off. One second, he’s sitting there keeping me warm, the next he was running away through the woods.

  “Fine, leave me to die on my own. I was going to die anyway,” I yelled after him. “At least this way, it’s on my terms.” I always heard freezing to death was easy—you’re cold, then you fall asleep.

  It hadn’t started snowing, but it sure as hell felt cold enough for it. My breath made smoke. I wasn’t in a good mental place to enjoy that fun little bit of science as my warmer breath caused condensation in the air.

  I pulled the stupid camo coat around me. I hated camo, no color. Maybe that was the point. But I loved color. I loved my own color. I yanked a section of hair so I could look at it. Brown.

  We were at least a hundred miles away from the delightful fairy B and B when we remembered all of my clothes were left in the dryer. Neither of us remembered, we were told.

  We were singing along to the radio, I mean who doesn’t sing along when it’s Bohemian Rhapsody, right?

  Gordon’s phone rang.

  “Answer that for me.” Not an unreasonable request since he was driving.

  “Gordon Dryer’s phone.”

  “Mrs. Dryer, this is Mrs. Fey.” She sounded worried.

  “Is everything okay? There wasn’t a problem with my credit card was there?” I knew there wasn’t. I made sure I had a zero balance and a nice fat available credit limit for this trip. And she knew we weren’t married, my card didn’t say Dryer on it.

  “Oh no, dear, it isn’t that. You left your clothes.”

  I groaned. She was right. I had totally forgotten I had tossed my clothes into the dryer after dinner and planned on pulling them out this morning.

  “What’s up?” Gordon shot me a glance before turning back to keep his eyes on the road.

  “We left my clothes.”

  “Oh shit. If we go back, that throws off our entire schedule. Look.” He thought for a moment. “Have her bundle them up, and we’ll swing through on our way home next week.

  I conveyed the information to Mrs. Fey. She agreed and hoped our trip continued to be a success, even if I had to buy new outfits along the way.

  We were up and out so early, I hadn’t even thought about putting anything cute on. I slid back into the comfy sweats Gordon handed me and climbed out of bed and into the car. Gordon had a schedule. We had places to be.

  “I’m sorry about your clothes. When we stop for lunch, let’s find a place and go shopping. I need to pick up a few things for tonight’s surprise.”

  Each night was a planned surprise. I was happy and excited, even more so when he tossed the makings for s’mores in our shopping cart when we finally stopped at a store.

  I was a little confused when he pulled into a campground for our second night. But Gordon made it all better. Apparently, he arranged ahead of time for our cabin to be all set up with a fire pit, ready and waiting. Dozens of roses in vases festooned our cabin.

  Okay, Gordon was doing really well on this trip. A fairytale B and B, and now a secluded, deluxe cabin full of roses. The bed was covered in petals. It was beautiful and so romantic. My heart hurt thinking about how lucky I was.

  I pulled his camo coat around me and tucked in next to him by the fire.

  “Gordon, this is all so perfect,” I purred.

  He stroked my hair. “I never want you to regret coming with me.”

  “Never.” I hugged his arm as he roasted marshmallows.

  Those were probably the best s’mores I ever had. They certainly were the last ones.

  Gordon kissed me on my temple, handed me the stick with the marshmallow, and stood up. “I’ll be a minute.”

  I sighed and looked into the fire. This trip was magical. The fairy B and B, Gordon telling me he loved me, and now a campfire under the stars, and when I was ready, a thick comfy mattress and cozy blankets.

  I watched the fire move and dance, rotating the marshmallow and watching as flames turned the treat from a toasty brown to blue with its own fire. I blew it out, waited a few seconds, and peeled that sticky burned sugar off with my teeth. S’mores were good—fire burned marshmallows were better.

  I wondered what Gordon was up to tonight. I loved each little surprise along the way. To be honest, if we ended up in Vegas in a little wedding chapel, I would say I do.

  The cabin door slammed open; the hinge was broken. I turned to see Gordon with a huge grin on his face as he bounced out of the cabin and back to my side.

  “Are you almost done out here?” His hands massaged my shoulders.

  I was torn, stay and get rubbed, or go inside and get rubbed even more? “I don’t want to move, but it’s warmer inside isn’t it?” I moaned, possibly a little whine in my voice.

  He nuzzled my ear and I felt little zaps of excitement down to my toes.

  Toes I might not be able to keep if I couldn’t get warm. Wet socks, half buried under dirt and leaves, lost in the freaking woods and now snow. The coat had a hood that zipped into the collar. I unrolled it and pulled it up around my face. It was that thin plastic fabric, really meant to keep water off your knit beanie, not meant to provide warmth. But I pulled it up anyway.

  I slept in bursts and fits, only to wake up shivering. At one point, I dreamed I was warm under heavy blankets. But by then, the cold was too deep in my bones and I couldn’t stop shaking. I remembered being thirsty, but too exhausted to move. At another point, Doggo was back and curled around me. I wasn’t sure how he managed to be at my back and in front of me so I could wrap my arms around him, and be curled up over my feet, but he did.<
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  I watched as Gordon kicked the fire under the ash build up. We didn’t want to leave it burning, even if it was in a fire pit. He gently led me up the stairs and into the cabin.

  Once we were inside, he took his coat, kissed the side of my neck, and led me back to the bathroom.

  It was warm and steamy.

  I gasped, “You set up a bath for us?”

  “For you. Your very own personal spa and masseur for the night.” Gordon bowed with a sexy quirked grin on his face.

  I grabbed him and kissed that face. I loved his lips. And tonight he tasted a bit like campfires and fall.

  “May I?” He was ever so polite as he began removing my clothes. It was sexy as hell as he tended me for a bath. Once he removed everything, he guided me to the tub and helped me in.

  The tub was one of those huge bubble jet things, but apparently, that function had been turned off. Either way, it was big and deep, and Gordon had scattered rose petals in the water.

  I closed my eyes and sank down. Gordon got behind me and pulled my hair back into a clip. “What kind of fizzy bath bomb would you like?”

  I turned to see what he was showing me and got a snoot full of baking soda and Epsom salts. I couldn’t smell a thing. I sneezed like crazy. “I don’t know, what smells good?”

  Gordon held a small selection up to my nose. I went with the rose one mostly because it matched the theme, and not because I could smell it.

  “Okay, now I’m going to give you a shoulder and neck massage, and then a hot oil treatment.”

  “You’re spoiling me.” I felt so relaxed. I wasn’t going to have any functional limbs for monkey sex by the time he was done with me. All I’d be good for was to lay there and maybe grunt. This felt wonderful. I was going boneless.

  “That’s the point, sweets. Take care of my girl. My apartment doesn’t have the panache to pull something like this off.”

  “Yeah, this tub is something else.” I closed my eyes and let the warmth of his hands lull me into a half sleep. When he began playing with my hair, I may have fallen all the way asleep.

  I woke up wrapped in towels, blankets, and Gordon. He curled around me and snored lightly. I don’t remember climbing out of the tub, and I didn’t think he was brawny enough to have picked me up. It didn’t matter. I was in love, and so happy.

  The next morning, I felt muzzy headed and things were off kilter. I thought we had paid for the cabin the night before, but Gordon insisted that I needed to go to the checkout and pay. He was going to finish cleaning things up while I took care of the bill. The checkout clerk said it was paid for and looked at me like I had four heads.

  I shrugged and chalked it up to Gordon getting me out of the way to be sneaky. I didn’t mind, so far a cabin full of roses is what I got when he surprised me. I was good with it. I had been right; he wanted to make breakfast without me trying to fuss over him.

  The man was brilliant; he managed to make buttery grits, bacon, and eggs over an open fire. Everything was wonderful until the hot buttery grits somehow ended up all over me. Some freak of misbalance flipped the pot over like a catapult, and the contents splattered all over my new clothes. Yeah, so it was maybe twenty-five bucks worth of big box clothes, but they were still my new clothes.

  “Sweetheart, are you okay?” Gordon was by my side and wiping the hot corn mush from me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I huffed. “Will you grab me some clothes from the car? I need to go change.” This vacation was being extremely hard on my wardrobe.

  I made it to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I screamed. I screamed like the first murder victim in a slasher flick.

  Gordon crashed through the bathroom door. “Bailey, what’s the matter?”

  I had my hands in my hair trying to pull it away from my scalp. “My hair! What’s happened to my hair?”

  “Did you get grits in your hair? Do you want me to help wash it?”

  “No, I don’t have grits in my hair. Why haven’t you said something about my hair before now?” Why hadn’t I noticed it in the mirror? Shower foggy mirror, not wearing makeup today. Somehow, I managed to brush my teeth and get dressed without looking in a mirror. I guess no one could really call me vain.

  “Your hair is fine. It looked fine before. Why? What should I have noticed?” He genuinely looked confused.

  “I don’t know? How about the fact that it’s brown?” I shook my hair at him.

  “You feeling okay, sweets? Your hair has always been brown. What color should it be?”

  “Red. I mean orange. I’m a fucking redhead, a ginger. I don’t have brown hair.” Was he color blind? Holy crap, all this time I thought he loved my colors, and I was different shades of gray to him.

  “What color is my T-shirt?” I held out the fabric to him.

  “Bright blue?” His answer was spot on. Right, red-green color blindness was a thing, maybe that’s why he thought I had brown hair.

  I pointed at a leftover rose petal.

  “Red. What’s going on, Bailey?”

  “My hair was orange, pink, and bright last night, and now it’s dull and brown,” I sobbed. What had happened that I had brown hair? Could the hot oil treatment have gone wrong? I began digging through the garbage.

  Gordon caught my frantic hands and pulled me against his chest. He stroked my brown hair and made shushing noises. “You’ve never been a redhead, Bailey. Redheads are crazy, you know that’s not my type. That must have been some wild dream you had. You know how sometimes dreams can seem so realistic, but they aren’t? Like that time you were mad at me for hours before you realized the argument we’d been having was in your dream and wasn’t real. It’s okay. You were pretty sacked out last night after the tub. You might not be fully awake yet.”

  At first, I had my eyes closed and I leaned into him. But as he talked, I opened my eyes and stared into the distance. There was proof here somewhere that I was not insane. Got it. My nails were still blue. See, Bailey, you do like color.

  I pushed out of his embrace. “Yeah, that sounds reasonable. Did you bring me in some clothes?”

  He handed me a shopping bag with some of the things I bought the day before. He left me to get changed. I sat on the tub and thought about his lies. I was too a redhead, and hell, even his pick up line, which I confess, worked really well on me, was, “I’ve always been fascinated by redheads.”

  I looked in the bag. More lies. It was a bag of lies. I dumped the clothes on the floor. Everything was gray or brown. The only color seemed to be the denim and the bright blue I was currently wearing.

  These were not my clothes. These were not the clothes I put into the shopping cart.

  I pulled off the food smeared T-shirt and jeans. I was a natural redhead, and that meant the carpet matched the drapes. I confirmed with a quick look in my panties.

  “Fuck!” I stood in the middle of the bathroom in my drawers looking down my own panties like I’ve never seen pubes before.

  “You okay in there?”

  No, I was not okay. “Yeah, I kicked the tub.” What the hell was happening to me?

  Whatever had been done to the hair on my head was also done to the hair on my hoo-ha.

  I cried. I stood there and cried. I was losing my mind.

  And then I sat on the potty and cried some more. Eventually, I needed to pee, so I did. And then I noticed something important. The hair dye that had been used on my pubes didn’t have very good staying power. The inside front of my panties had brown transferring onto the fabric—not I don’t know how to wipe myself brown, but hair dye.

  The person who did this to me must not have realized dye didn’t always take to my hair. It’s one of the reasons my pinks, purples, and fire engine reds were always being redone. My hair hated chemical dyes. And that went for the pubes also.

  I took in a big shaky breath. Okay. Gordon was playing whacked out mind games on me. I was in a cabin, in the middle of the woods. So much horror movie fodder right there. I had no way of
getting away from him if I made a break for it right now. Or did I?

  I splashed cold water on my face and got dressed. I picked up all of my things and carried them out to the car. Gordon was sitting by the fire pit waiting on me.

  “Hey, I think I left my credit card at the check-in desk. Why don’t I go see if they have it, and you pull the car around?”

  “Sure thing, sweets.”

  He was too agreeable; maybe this wasn’t going to work.

  The door chimed as I entered the campground offices. “Hello? Hello?” Why the hell was nobody around? I poked behind the desk, thinking I’d make a quick phone call. Of course, there was no phone. I mean, there was a cradle for a cordless phone, but no phone.

  I riffled through some papers, careful to not mess anything up. I didn’t find a thing.

  Two beeps on the car horn and I jumped out of my skin. I put my hand on my chest, willing my heart to slow down. I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t going to.

  I pushed my way into the “employees only” part of the office, and still, there wasn’t anyone around. There also wasn’t a back door.

  I was curled up in a tight ball behind a filing cabinet when he found me. I put up a pretty good fight, but he hit my head pretty hard with something, a glass ashtray, I think. That’s when I got the black eye. After that, everything was really hard. I couldn’t focus. I had no strength.

  I had no fight when I was lifted in a pair of strong arms. My face rested against warm skin. A deep voice rumbled through my pillow. Chest. My face leaned against an extremely strong male chest. Crisp hairs tickled at my nose. I tried to wipe at them but I couldn’t move my arms. I tried to blow at them, but I don’t think I was particularly effective.

  There were other male voices. They said she, she, she, she. I heard fever and growling. Oh good, Doggo was here and he was trying to protect me.