Sophie Oak: Once Upon a Time in Bliss

Her mom was certifiable. “Is she schizophrenic?”

“No.” Nell huffed. “Delusional, perhaps, but she doesn’t hear voices, and she’s never been violent. She’s a loving mother and a very kind friend. I blame her artistic temperament, but CPS in Atlanta didn’t see it that way.”

He made the left turn and the land became flat, moving toward the valley. “You went into foster care.”

He didn’t like that idea. She was too soft to handle it. A woman like Nell would need someone strong to protect her. Foster parents were a crapshoot. He’d had a couple who cared, but several who had just seen him as a paycheck. A vision of a young Nell being forced into that life assaulted him.

“Not for too long. My mom complied with everything they asked her to. She immediately went into counseling and started saying all the right things. I remember when she was finally able to pick me up. She smiled and was so calm until we were two blocks away and then she broke down. She hugged me and begged me to forgive her. I was eight. She didn’t talk about her family again around anyone until we got here. It’s funny. In some ways I feel like I got my mother back when we came here. She and this guy named Mel argue all the time about who’s worse. Evil faeries versus aliens. They tried to call a town hall meeting and take a vote to see which one would win, but the mayor is too afraid that he’d then be forced to enact a safety plan, and that could get expensive.”

The town sounded a little off, too, but that didn’t bother Bishop. He would likely find the place wildly entertaining—like reading a comedic book or watching a movie. He would sit back and let them entertain him.

And he would let Nell entertain him, too.

She chattered on as though silence was something to be ruthlessly beaten back. Bishop preferred silence, but he found her voice rather pleasant, soothing even as she talked about how she’d left her place in Denver to come to this remote small town and how she was trying to be a writer.

He didn’t have to talk. It was refreshing in a way. He could sit back, and she would take care of that part. Every now and then she would ask him a question about himself and he would sidestep it, turning the conversation back to her.

All he had to do to keep her talking was point out some terrible thing that was happening in the world. Nell had a plan. She had letters to write to dictators and corporations to protest.

She was an idealist of the highest order.

Would she protest him if he didn’t give her a proper orgasm? He wasn’t particularly worried. He intended to make sure she was perfectly satisfied right down to her Birkenstocks.

“That’s the cabin.” She pointed through the windshield to a small cabin by the river. It was a real, actual log cabin with a small front porch and a neatly kept yard. He pulled into the gravel drive. She was right. It was very isolated. The road wasn’t even paved.

“Where does the road go?” There was a dirt road that led away from her cabin toward another mountain.

“It leads up to Elk Creek Pass. There’s not much up that way. There’s a ski lodge and a bar called Hell on Wheels, but I’ve never been to either one. I know the gentlemen who run the bar. They’re very nice.” She opened her door and slid out.

He needed to train her. It was his job to open her door and hers to wait until he could help her out, his hands sliding over her curves and keeping her balanced. He was a little disgruntled as he followed her, but he held his tongue.

The cabin was old, the chinking in need of work. About the only thing that he’d seen that looked new on the place was the mailbox. It had been painted with gold and green, the name “Finn” done up in pretty flourishes. It was also not where it was supposed to be. Someone had forcibly removed the cheery mailbox, and it had ended up on the porch. He picked it up as Nell pushed the ruined door open.

“I think he just kicked it in.” Nell seemed very good at stating the obvious.

Bishop examined the door. Cheap. Thin. Possibly built in the thirties when he would guess the cabin had been built. He stepped inside. The whole place was complete chaos.

The couch had been slashed, the small coffee table broken. Broken dishes littered the tiny kitchen floor.

This was an act of pure hate. Someone hated one of the Finn women. The question was which one. He studied the place, trying to keep a cool professional distance, but it was hard. He’d seen violence over and over again, but something about the thought of Nell having to face it with nothing and no one but her mother at her side sparked a certain anger in him. They were two women, one of whom he suspected was very ill, alone in the world.

He turned and someone had used spray paint to ruin the paneled fireplace.

Die Bitch

Not grammatically correct and a bit rude in Bishop’s opinion. Inelegant. The paint was a wretched purple. He’d probably gotten it on sale. Yes. He could figure this out.

“Do you have any violent ex-boyfriends?” Bishop sifted through the pile of magazines that had spilled from the broken coffee table. Mostly news magazines with a liberal bent, with some arts and crafts manuals sprinkled in. The Finn women were serious-minded. No tabloid rags for them.

Nell frowned, reaching down to pick up a legal pad. “Callie thought I should keep things the way they are until Rye gets a chance to look at it. I can’t stand the mess.”

“He’ll need to take some pictures, but you don’t have to be here for that. Could you answer my question?”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “About the boyfriends? No. I don’t have any boyfriends I would imagine could do this. There haven’t been that many, but they were all selected for their beliefs in nonviolence.”

So she’d dated wimps. It didn’t really surprise him, but it made him wonder if she’d ever had really good sex. Probably not. She probably wore shapeless dresses that she’d chosen for the cruelty-free nature of their fabric. He would be shocked if she’d ever had an orgasm. She’d likely selected her lovers based on their political beliefs and not on whether or not they could make her come. He was damn straight sure he could make her come. “How about your mother?”

Nell shook her head. “My mother hasn’t had a boyfriend. She claims my father was the only man she could ever love, and he died when I was really young. I often wonder if losing my dad is what caused her to drift into her fantasy world.”

He wasn’t about to go into all the ways her mother was insane. “Do you have any idea who could have done this? Who have you pissed off lately?”

She had to have pissed off someone. She’d pissed him off in the very short time he’d known her. She’d also gotten his cock hard, and that meant something to him.

Her gorgeous lips turned down. “Probably a lot of people. Look, I protest a lot of things. I believe in standing up for what’s right.”

She was a cute idiot granola girl. Yeah, he got that. “Do you have a list of the companies or people you’ve protested in the last year or so?”

If he had a list, he could figure out if her protests had actually cost someone money. The loss of money could make a person hate pretty damn quick. The faster he figured out who was after her, the faster she could have perfectly worry-free sex.

Nell nodded. “I can print out my schedule for the last year. I’m very organized. I’ve been thinking about using the Internet to bring activists together.”

“You do that. The printout, please,” Bishop said as he walked around.

The cabin was tiny. It couldn’t be more than seven hundred square feet. He counted two whole bedrooms and poked his head into a bathroom that wouldn’t hold more than one person at a time. He looked into the smaller of the two bedrooms. There was a double bed with a pretty pink-and-white quilt that had been slashed to pieces. He could see the room as it had been, pulling back the chaos and forming a picture in his mind of the way Nell’s room should be laid out. There was no question the room was Nell’s. She would never take the larger room. She would have given that up to anyone she was living with. She needed a keeper.