by Jill Shalvis
“I’m covered in flour here, Nick.”
“I know.” He put his hands on her arms and dipped his head a little to look directly into her eyes. “I know because I’m seeing you.”
Her breath caught and she wanted to turn from him rather than give herself away, rather than let him see how much those words meant, because that file on the counter told her it was all too late. “Nick—”
“No, let me get this out, before I can’t.” He took a gulp of air. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve been right here. All along, I’ve been right here.”
“I know. And it was my shame that I didn’t get that. That what you wanted wasn’t your freedom from me, but something else entirely. The opposite, really.”
“Yes,” she whispered, feeling her throat tighten. Oh God, he did get it. Now that it was too late. “The papers—”
“I missed you, Annie,” he said again, his voice gruff and thick with emotion. “I miss you in my bed, and in my life. What happened to us?”
“I don’t know. We stopped communicating.”
“Stopped seeing each other,” he said softly, her words.
“Yeah.” She tried to smile. “It got so…out of control.”
“I don’t know how, but yeah.” He cupped her jaw, then smiled at the flour now on his fingers. “And I know you’ve been trying. I was afraid you’d stomp on my heart. But forget the fears, I want another shot. I can make you happy again, Annie, I know it.”
Her heart squeezed hard. She swiped her hands on her apron, but they were still messy and sticky, and she made a sound of frustration when he came in for a hug. “No, don’t. You shouldn’t. Look at me. I’m a mess.”
“I see it. I’m seeing you, Annie. And I don’t care about the mess.”
“Well, you should.” She ran her gaze down him. “You’re actually wearing a clean shirt.”
He smiled at her, his self-deprecatory, crooked smile. “I’m sorry I’ve been so slow and self-absorbed and…”
“Stupid,” she supplied helpfully, trying to control the wild, crazy seed of hope that had taken root within her belly.
“Stupid,” he agreed.
“Yes, well, we’ve both been that.”
“Maybe. I’ve been locked in my own self-misery at the fact that you wanted a divorce. And then you started in on that whole ‘seeing you’ thing, and I didn’t get it. But then you started paying attention to me.”
“I started seeing you,” she whispered.
“Yeah, it took me a while. At first, I didn’t even notice that you were trying to fix things all on your own. But you’re not on your own, Annie. You never were.” He picked up the file and opened it, showing her the signature line, where he hadn’t signed. Then he took her by the hand and led her to the huge great room, where he tossed the entire file into the fireplace. It went up in flames with a little whoosh, and as it did, he pulled her close, touching her face, his thumb grazing over her cheek. “I see you. You’re covered in flour and you’ve never looked more beautiful to me, not even when you were sixteen and smoking hot.”
“Don’t.” Embarrassed, she pushed his hand away. “It’s at least twenty years and twenty pounds. I know I don’t look anywhere close to that cute young thing you seduced in the back of your truck.”
“Is that what this is all about? Your looks?”
“No, of course not.” She shifted uncomfortably under his direct, patient gaze. “Okay, maybe some. It’s ridiculous, I know.”
“Annie, I don’t want you to look the same. We’ve laughed and loved and lived, and how we look reflects that. Every single line on our faces.”
“Yes, but your lines make you look better. You look just as good as you did when you were seventeen and coaxing me into the back of that damn truck.”
He flashed a grin.
“It’s a little annoying, actually.”
“Yeah?” He put his hands on her hips, then bent so that his mouth could nuzzle near her ear. “Well, then, let me try to unannoy you…”
He was doing a damn good job already. Her nipples hardened and her thighs quivered.
“You look good enough to eat,” he whispered against her ear. “Especially with that flour and sugar all over you. I think I’ll start at the top and nibble my way down…”
Her knees wobbled some more. Nearly forty years old and her knees were wobbling. “I thought we were going to…communicate.”
“Uh-huh.” His voice was husky. Like a man completely confident in the knowledge that he was about to get lucky.
And he was. He so was…
“Can you think of a better way to start communicating than with our bodies?” he murmured, his mouth already quite busy.
No. No, she couldn’t. “But it’s the middle of the day.”
“Yeah.” He lifted his head and flashed a wicked smile, the same one that always had her naked in under two minutes.
He reached behind him to latch the kitchen door, eyes flashing with all sorts of erotic ideas. The lock tumbled into place and so did her heart. “Here?” she whispered. “Now?”
“Here.” He lifted her to the counter, putting his hands on her thighs, pushing them open so that he could step between them. “Now.”
When Katie woke up the next morning, her shoulder was stiff and sore from her fall, her heart hurt like a mother, and the storm had moved in.
By four o’clock that afternoon, it was pitch-dark outside. The winds were whipping up a good howl at over sixty miles an hour and climbing, and the snow was coming down thick and fast.
When the lights flickered a few times and the subsequent power surge made her computer act all wonky, she gave up. She shut down for the night and headed to the kitchen, which was uncustomarily empty.
She had no idea where Annie was. Or where anyone was for that matter. She knew that a group of skiers had arrived an hour before the storm had hit, so she figured everyone was settling them in for what would surely be an epic powder day tomorrow.
She made it back to her cabin for the night; then a few minutes later, she heard an odd scraping noise at her door. Curious, she opened it to…“Chuck.”
He was scrawny and miserable, fur soaked to his skin in spots, sticking straight up in others, covered in white frost, huddling close to the doorjamb to escape the wind. “Mew.”
“Oh, baby,” she whispered, staggering back at the sharp, icy wind that sliced right through her, slapping snow into her face. She couldn’t even see outside; it was nothing but slashing lines of white as the snow was driven sideways by the winds. “It’s okay, come in…”
But he only shrank back.
Apparently, she still didn’t have quite the right touch with the skittish men in her life, but at least he didn’t run off. She hunkered down, making herself smaller, and once she did, the cat stuck his tail straight up in the air and walked past her, and right into her cabin.
He went straight to the kitchen and sat, eyeing her with very cautious care.
“So.” She looked him over just as cautiously, her heart melting at his skinny frame, at the fur that needed some serious care. She wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and warm him up, but he’d never let her get that close. So she moved to the refrigerator, got out the milk, and poured a little into a sauce pan.
Chuck didn’t move. Neither did she. And when the milk was warm, she dumped it into a bowl and set it on the floor. “Try it,” she said softly. “You might like it.”
When he just looked at her warily, she rolled her eyes at herself. When would she learn to give up? She bent to lift the bowl away, but at the last minute, he lunged forward and stuck his head in it.
And started lapping.
Katie stood stock-still, her heart feeling too full for her chest. The only sound in the room was Chuck’s tongue lapping at the milk. And then suddenly a rough rumble sounded, then stopped, then started again, like an old diesel engine cranking over for the first time in years.
He was purring.
Swallo
wing past the lump in her throat, she stayed still so as not to spook him. “So I finally won you over.” She sighed. “And I’m leaving in a few days.”
Chuck kept lapping up the milk.
Yeah. Her throat burned now, but fact was fact. She might have got Chuck to trust her, and even to some degree, Cam, but not enough to claim either of them as her own.
The job had been temporary. She’d gone in singing the praises of that, promising Cam just how temporary she saw it. But just between her and Chuck, she’d fallen for this place. For Wishful. For the people in it. For the character and charm, and so much more.
Chuck finished the milk. Still purring, he lifted a paw and began to clean his face.
“It’s not all bad, my leaving,” she told him. “After all, I got over myself here. I had adventure.”
Chuck switched paws and went to work behind his ears. Either this whole cleaning himself thing was new for him, or he was completely ineffective, because he didn’t look any cleaner.
“I had really, really great sex too,” she told him. “Do you think that’s odd? It took leaving my comfort zone to get the best sex of my life?”
Chuck lifted a leg and went to work on his private parts.
Katie nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s odd. But most of all, I really did fit in. Or at least I think I did.”
“You did.”
She turned and faced Cam, standing in her doorway with the wild storm all around him, which matched the sudden wild storm in her gut. He wore a thick jacket with the hood up. He shoved it back now and unzipped the jacket, revealing a dark fisherman’s cable sweater and jeans.
“You left your door unlocked.” He shut it while she attempted to control the fierce leap of her pulse. “That’s not like you, Goldilocks.”
Yeah. Apparently on top of everything else, she felt safe here. She’d faced her demons and had gotten comfortable. Hell of an attractive combination. And a small part of her wished she never had to leave, because this world with scrawny cats and gorgeous men, with new friends and wide-open spaces, no traffic, and some pretty amazing adventures left to be had, felt good.
Too good.
“Chuck’s in here,” Cam said in some surprise. His gaze met hers, his soft and questing. “You conquered him.”
Her throat tightened. “It took a while. At first he didn’t feel like he could be friends with me. He didn’t think that he deserved it, what with being a wanderlust renegade and all.”
Cam’s eyes never left hers. “I suppose even wanderlust renegades deserve a bowl of milk and a sweet woman every once in a while.”
“Even wanderlust renegades who’ve gone their whole life thinking that maybe love isn’t for them because it’s never worked out. But Chuck understands now, he gets that there’s always a first time.”
Cam let out a low breath and finally looked away, the only response to what she’d just said being a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Still, it’s not a complete success,” she said. “He hasn’t let me touch him.”
He slid his hands into his pockets. “He might never let you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Ever the optimist.”
“Apparently even the mountains can’t beat that out of me.”
“Speaking of that. How are you feeling? Your head—”
“Still on.”
“Your shoulder—”
“I’m fine, Cam.”
He nodded, looking through the living room to her bedroom. Her suitcase was on the bed. She’d been thinking about getting some things packed.
“There’s a big storm coming in,” he said, still looking at her suitcase.
“It’s already here.”
“No, a bigger one’s going to hit the morning. It’s going to hit hard and heavy, maybe sock us in for a few days.”
That wouldn’t be so bad, getting to see one last storm. It could match the one in her heart.
“I wanted to make sure you’re stocked with candles and batteries and everything.”
She looked at him. “So you’re…”
“Leaving in the morning, before the big one hits. Nick and I are flying a group of six hardcore snow hikers out to Desolation Wilderness. From there we’re snow hiking to the peak. It’s a four-day trek round-trip.”
“In the storm?”
“They want it that way. They want to sleep in the blizzard inside a snow cave under the Sierra stars.”
She managed a laugh. “Sometimes I’m very glad I don’t have your job.” She watched the amusement transform his face, turning it from pensive and edgy to open and so attractive he took her breath. “It’s not racing, but you’re into it,” she murmured, happy for him.
“I didn’t think I would be, but yeah. If I can’t be going balls out down a mountain, then this fits too.” His smile faded. “I just wanted to check on you.”
“I’ll be fine while you’re gone.”
“And when I’m back, you’ll be gone.”
She stared at him as the truth sank in. He appeared relaxed enough, but just beneath the surface she took in his tension. It was there in his eyes, his mouth. “You came to say good-bye,” she realized. “Tonight. Now.”
He let out a breath. “I want you to know that I get that I tend to keep myself emotionally distanced from everything and everyone. But you…” He shook his head as if a little overwhelmed. “I’m not emotionally distanced from you, Katie. I never was.”
Her throat tightened. She moved around the counter to come to stand before him. “The day the bridge collapsed, I was tired.”
“Katie.” He reached for her hand, his eyes soft. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to. I want to tell you what I wouldn’t before. I was really tired of my life. My boss was cheating on his wife with the copy clerk and expected me to keep his secret. My last date didn’t call for a second one. Things felt…sucky. I looked at the bridge and thought—” She shook her head. “I thought if I drove right off the edge, no one would even notice.”
His gaze held a raw compassion. “Oh, Katie.”
“It was just a fleeting thought. Stupid and pathetic, and gone before I could blink. I looked around in the traffic and saw all the other people around me.” She drew a shaky breath. “Living their lives, talking, singing to the radio…and I thought, you know what? Life is what you make of it. I needed to make more of mine. And then in the next minute, it happened. A truck cut me off, I got mad, and then I was skidding toward the edge. Only one thing went through my mind.” She looked into his warm, grieving eyes. “I didn’t want to die.”
He closed his eyes briefly and let out a breath. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you didn’t.”
“Everyone else did,” she whispered.
“I know.” He hugged her in close, hard. “I know.”
“That’s why I dreamed. You were right. It’s what I was running from.” She looked up into his face. “I had planned to keep running until I knew the answer to that.”
His smile faded, his eyes filled with all sorts of things that, frankly, took her breath. “I want you to know I’m okay with it all now,” she told him. “I think I finally have my head on straight. I lived. And now it’s up to me to do something with the second chance. Something more than what I was doing before, which was nothing.”
“I feel the same, Katie. Because of you.”
She smiled. “I guess there’s only one thing to do then.” She lifted a hand and touched him, sinking her fingers into his hair, tugging his head down so that their lips were only a breath away. “Have our good-bye.”
“Katie,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers. “I don’t think—”
“Perfect,” she whispered, mirroring his long-ago words back at him, backing him to the throw rug in front of the fireplace where she pulled off her sweater, shucked out of her jeans. “Don’t think…”
And she tugged him down to the floor.
“God. Be sure.” From flat on his back,
he cupped her face and