Free Springer, Jan - Be My Dream Tonight [The Desperadoes 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Jan Springer

good to be huddled beneath a warm Navajo-style Indian blanket. It had a rustic image of clouds and lightning bolts woven through it, and the comfortable couch she sat on was red-and-white checkered squares and very long and wide and quite comfortable.
    Trader Jack had a nice cabin. She just wished he’d been around. If he had been, she wouldn’t be feeling so guilty sitting here enjoying his home. The guys had shown her the note he’d left behind, stating he’d stepped on a rusty nail. He’d probably died of blood poisoning, which could have been treated had there been a doctor or a hospital nearby. Maybe if Maddox had been here when Trader Jack had fallen ill, he would have known what to do. He’d been a paramedic before the Catastrophe had struck.
    Eve gasped at that revelation and then smiled. She’d just remembered something. Maddox had been a paramedic in Ontario before the Catastrophe. Kayne had been a builder in a small town in Northern Ontario, and Riley had been a computer programmer in some elite company in the Silicon Valley .
    Wow, she really was getting her memory back. She pulled the blanket tighter around her body and hugged herself while she listened to the softly crackling fire. The fireplace was beautiful, built out of gray basketball-sized rounded stones that looked oddly like the ones that protruded from the glacier-fed streams that were rampant in the valleys of the mountains.
    She was alone in the cabin. Maddox was out in the barn skinning his deer. Kayne had decided to venture up a nearby hillside to where he’d seen a silhouette of what appeared to be a newly constructed windmill of some sort. Riley was sitting outside on the porch, keeping an eye out for any unexpected visitors.
    She assumed they were probably grieving in their own way about the old man who’d died. Alone with their own thoughts, they would figure out a way to deal with it. Just as she would have to do.
    Apparently Trader Jack had had a fledgling trading business here in this valley. He’d told the guys that he put people up through the night several times a month as they traveled through. He used the barter system to get things he needed in exchange for what people wanted from him.
    Eve grinned as she looked around the living room. The man had been a genuine pack rat. He’d collected everything for his business. From the pine rafters, he’d hung everything from copper frying pans to dried herbs to an array of homemade birch bark candle chandeliers. Three of the walls contained pine shelves filled with books, pottery pitchers, granite bakeware, and an abundance of what appeared to be homemade, thick white candles.
    C.J. and herself definitely could have used a lot of this stuff in the little cabin they’d sequestered themselves in. But C.J. had wanted nothing to do with men, and Eve hadn’t seen any reason not to go along with her. Thinking of her friend brought more sadness shifting through her. This time of night C.J. would be snug as a bug in the double bed they’d shared for warmth. With no one to keep her company. No one to ease her fears after the nightmares that frequented her.
    Her sadness scattered at the sound of the front door opening. It was followed by heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, and Eve twisted to grab her rifle from the nearby coffee table. When she spied the six-foot figure of Riley, she placed her weapon down again. Right now, he was the person she wanted to see the most. Some instinct deep inside her told her he was the most compassionate of the trio.
    She waited until he removed his outdoor wear and boots before turning to face him and allowing him to see the tears that were now flowing from her eyes.
    When he saw her, concern burrowed his eyebrows. He cursed softly, and in a few quick strides he sat beside her on the couch. Quickly, he gathered her into his arms. He smelled nice. Of the rough outdoors and of the clean mountain air. He held her tightly, whispering softly into her hair that