Two days passed, and Kitty and Logan found themselves falling into a pattern that delighted them both. Kitty cooked breakfast. They shoveled the walkway to the workshop together, and Logan worked all day while Kitty read and planned out her future. At nightfall, he shoveled his way back to her, made them dinner, and they fucked all night long, to their mutual delight.

His nightmares lessened. He didn’t hit her again, which relieved them both. And while he wanted to tell her, to talk to her about Sela, she’d been fine with his dictate that when she left here, they were done. He had told her, that second night, that he couldn’t have her as an assistant. He needed to cancel the trial period after, and she’d agreed. So they would no longer be attached even by employment, which really sucked for him and yet was the best thing for both of them.

He had no idea what she’d do after she left him, but he had no doubt she’d be successful at anything she attempted.

Logan appraised the glittering necklace in front of him. Mrs. Hennessey would love it. Her first initial entwined with her husband’s, to approximate the shape of a flower. The garnets and white sapphires complemented each other, and he’d added a stylized H that acted like a stem. Added some tiny emeralds to it. The pendant was set in platinum.

Hennessey would pay well for this birthday present.

Logan cleaned up, put the necklace in a velvet bag, and stuck it into his safe. Night had fallen. He’d been away from Kitty too long.

Urgency pushed him out the door, eager to see her again. Sink into her. Love…um, fuck her into oblivion. His stomach rumbled, and he conceded that dinner should be in his plans, as well.

He pushed the workshop door open, grabbed the snow shovel, but to his surprise, no new snow had fallen. The air bit deeply. Looking up, he saw stars. With leaden legs, he crossed the walkway to the back porch, set the shovel inside the shed, and hit the mudroom. Seeing Kitty’s red snowsuit hanging there, as it had the past two days, warmed his heart. He shucked his snow boots and stripped off his suit, hung it next to hers, and padded into the main house.

The kitchen was empty, as was the living room. The fire had died down, so he added more wood to it from the stone wood box, made sure to build it high before continuing his search for Kitty.

He found her in the bedroom. She lay fast asleep, sprawled across the bed, a book face down on the spread beside her. He couldn’t help but smile at her footy pajamas, red with big white hearts sprinkled all over them.

Logan sat on the edge of the bed, brushed the hair off her cheek, and kissed her. “Kitty. Do you want dinner?”

“Hm?” She blinked sleepily. Stretched and winced. “My muscles are sore.”

“Poor thing. Do you want food?”

She opened her eyes wide then. Smiled up at him. “Hi, handsome.”

“Pretty woman. You’re too damn cute in those footy pajamas. Hungry?”

“Starved. Have I told you that I love men with a footy pajama fetish?

“You’re luscious.” Logan drew the zipper down to where it bared the slopes of her breasts. “A feast for my eyes.”

Kitty put her hands behind her head. “How did today go in the studio?”

“Brilliant, and done. She’ll be happy, ergo, he’ll be happy.” He sat back, enjoying the sight of her. “What did you do all day?”

“After shoveling snow, I came in and thawed out in the bath, as per usual. Took a nap. Did some future planning. Made myself a fabulous sandwich, picked up DH Lawrence’s Women In Love, and I’ve been reading ever since. Took another nap, apparently.”

“Too much Lawrence can have that effect. I’m going to get dinner on the table. Want to join me?”

She cocked a brow. “Does gravity still work?”

He burst out laughing. Pulled her into his arms and kissed her until his heart thundered and his cock poked out against his long underwear. When he finally let her go, her face glowed with happiness.

She put a hand to his cheek. “You laughed. You honestly laughed.” Wonder was in her voice.

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re funny, sweet, and have a heart as big as the sun.” He touched her curls. “So damn beautiful.”

Kitty sat up, and he moved back to give her room. “Logan. Do you realize that this is the first time I’ve heard you laugh, ever? That the last time I saw you smile was a year ago, when you kissed me under the mistletoe?”

“No. Really?”

“Think about it. Go on, get changed, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen in a bit, okay?” She kissed him and went to the bathroom.

He changed from his long underwear to jeans and a t-shirt. Fuck. Had it really been a year since he’d smiled? Or since she’d seen him smile, anyway. True, he’d seen her less than half a dozen times since then, but still. No smiles?

Frowning, he went to the kitchen. Pulled out steaks he’d taken out the night before, and set them on the counter to get to room temperature.

He chopped mushrooms and onions, tossed frozen stir-fry vegetables into the microwave to heat up, and thought about how he’d been over the last year.

Why had he kissed her last year? So many reasons…partly, because she was so vibrant and alive. Partly, because the anniversary of Sela’s death drew near. And partly, because he had tried to shake a married woman who wanted in his pants and had refused to take ‘no’ for an answer.

By the time Kitty joined him, dressed in fleece jammy pants and a long t-shirt, her breasts bouncing free, he hadn’t come to any mind-blowing conclusions. Gratitude surged through him, that she was here. He usually went on a two-week drunken binge; but this time, she was here.

She had brought him work. She brought him life. God. After all the death.

“All what death?” Kitty sat at the island, her chin in her hands, her eyebrows raised.

“Fuck. I said that out loud.” He shook his head and finished off the sautéed mushrooms with a splash of sherry.

“Yeah, you did. Does it have anything to do with the nightmares?” So concerned for him.

Unexpected tears pricked his eyes. He blinked, turned away to find the grill pan. “Not tonight. Remember? No future. No past. There’s just now, and us.” He put the pan on the stove and remembered to smile at her. “Wine?”

At her nod, he brought out the bottle of Cabernet he’d opened earlier and poured her a glass.

“You treat me like a queen. Seriously, no one’s ever been this attentive.” She took the glass he gave her and raised it to him. “Cheers.”

“What kind of guy have you gone out with in the past? Curious minds, and if you don’t want to you don’t have to, considering my whole no past rule.”

“You only want to know because you’re curious?”

Logan used a peppermill generously over two thick steaks. “You’re in your mid-twenties, you have a rocking body and a generous heart, and you’re not taken. Makes me wonder how I got so lucky.” He heard her sigh but didn’t look her way, concentrated instead on heating the grill pan.

“In high school, it was all about the boobs. The guys would ask me out just so they could cop a feel and tell the other guys they’d done it. In my junior year, I transferred to an all-girls’ school, and surprisingly had the same issue. Straight girls, gay girls, they all wanted to feel up my girls.”

There was a melancholy to her recitation.

“I’m sorry that happened to you.” Logan had an irrational urge to go punch the nameless, stupid high school kids in her past. He put the steaks, pepper-side-down, onto the grill pan.

“It’s all a part of being a curvy woman. Since I went straight into the workforce after high school, things got weirder. I learned not to work for older men. Women were usually cool, but sometimes not.” She shook her head and sipped. “Good wine.”

“Yeah, it is. I have a wine cellar that I haven’t shown you. So if there’s a thermo-nuclear war, we go down into the cellar, and drink ourselves silly.”

Kitty laughed, a burst of relief. “That sounds fucking awesome.”

“There’s a bed down there, and a toilet, so we’re good for fucking.” Damn but he liked hearing her laugh.

She giggled some more. “The last guy? He said the size of my breasts was obscene. That I should get a reduction. After he referred me to his brother-in-law the plastic surgeon, I nearly cut off his balls. But, since I don’t ever aspire to being a prison bitch, I just kicked him to the curb. Hard.”

Logan sent her an admiring glance. “I think you’re my new superhero.”

She fluffed her hair. “I’ll need a cape.”

“Red, with white hearts? Seriously, I love your footy pjs.”

“I can get you a pair. They make them in men’s sizes, you know.” At his horrified look, she burst into laughter.

“That’s a style I shall let pass me by.” Logan flipped the steaks. “I didn’t ask you. How do you like your steak cooked?”

“Well done.”

He turned to her in horror. “What?”

She shrugged. “Sorry. That’s the way I was raised.”

“I can’t do it. Tell you what. I’ll cook yours a bit past medium, and you can take one bite of my medium rare. Deal?”

Kitty wrinkled her nose. “Fine. If I have to.”

“Honey, trust me.”

She looked up at him with those blue, blue eyes, her hair wildly curly around her shoulders, and smiled.

“Oh Logan. More than you can possibly know.”

Once again he had to turn away from her. This time because she took his breath away. He couldn’t remember anyone giving him such trust, ever.

He put together a salad and weighed his next move with her. Dinner, of course. But the rest? The sex?

For some reason, he wanted to push her boundaries. She had a resilience about her that he wasn’t used to in women, and he craved knowing what she liked and what she didn’t. He wasn’t convinced she knew, herself, what she liked, though they’d made amazing strides in that area in the past three days.

He plated their meals and set them on the island, brought the bottle with him before sitting next to her.

She lifted her glass. “Cheers.”

“Here’s looking at you, kid.”

She laughed and they clinked glasses. “This has been the best few days of my entire life.”

Heat crept up his cheeks. “Yeah, well. Thanks. But you haven’t tried your steak yet.”

She lifted a brow and cut into her steak covered in mushrooms. “I thought you only used sauces and things like mushrooms to hide the taste of…” she chewed and swallowed. “Oh my God that’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. You, sir,” she said, pointing her steak knife in his direction, “are the King of Cooking. This is fan-fucking-tastic.”

“Why thank you. Thankyouverymuch,” he drawled in his best Elvis impersonation. God. When was the last time he pulled that one out?

Kitty laughed and as she ate, plied him with questions. Did he get many bears up here? Any troublesome animals? How about deer? Which season was his favorite? Did he like hiking? Skiing? Any snow sports? Surely he had a garage and a car, but where is it?

Finally he gently tugged the curl by her ear. “Hey now, let a guy get a word in edgewise. Yes, there’s a garage. You passed it. It’s lower down, closer to the main road. Easier to shovel out just a short part of the drive, if there’s an emergency.”

“What about the animals?” she prodded.

“You live in Sherwood Creek, which is in the mountains. How do you not know about the animals?”

She averted her gaze, poked at what was left of her salad. “I’m a city girl.”

Astonishment rocked him. “How long have you lived up here?”

“Sixteen months and a handful of days.” She flashed him a smile. “I was on vacation when I saw the sign on your office door, saying you were looking for an assistant. Getting this job changed my life.”

Logan sat back. “How did I not know that?”

“Well. It’s not like we were ever chatty about personal stuff.” She drank the last of the wine in her glass. “You didn’t want to know. You didn’t want entanglements. Wren emphasized how I should keep my distance.”

He thought back. “You couldn’t start right away. Was that because you needed to find a place to live?”

“And then I had to move my stuff up here from Los Angeles. Wren ended up moving in with her boyfriend before they got married, and I was able to move into her apartment. A bit of luck, as you know housing up here is brutal.”

Something suspiciously like regret snuck through his thoughts. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want to lose the job. This is much better than waiting tables in North Hollywood, let me tell you. No one looks down at me because of my size.”

“Your size? Now I’m confused.”

Kitty shot him a look of exasperation. “Honestly, Logan. Have you looked at me? I’m not…I never would have made it as an actress in L.A. I’m simultaneously not fat enough to be the fat chick, and not skinny enough, or blonde enough, to be the romantic lead.”

“Hollywood is a state of mind. Unfortunately, it’s a racist, sexist state for the most part.” Bitterness he couldn’t hide laced his words, hung between them. “You’re better off up here. There’s a good small theater in town.” At her smile, he smiled back. “But you of course know that.”

“You feel bad now for hiding. Don’t.” She put her hand on his cheek, and he felt her touch to the depths of his soul. “We’re here now. Right? And when the snow stops and the plow comes, and after we dig out my car, I’ll be leaving.”

Her gaze was steady on his, no flinching, no sadness that he could see, just a calm acceptance of his rules.

Logan’s heart beat heavy in his chest. The sky was clear that night. They didn’t have as long as he expected, just a few more days, tops. He wanted to say something, but no words came to him. Her gaze on him quieted his inner torment, made him want to lose himself in her.

Using restraint, he merely kissed the inner face of her wrist and smiled.

“If you’re done, I’ll clean up.”

“I’m done. Sure you don’t want me to?”

“No. I’d much rather you get in the bath. Don’t fill it too full, as I’ll be joining you there.”

Her face lit up. “Yeah? That’s a fantasy come true,” she purred, and stood, moved between his knees, her breasts barely brushing his chest.

That fast, he was hard for her. Damn it. He took her face in his hands and stared into those blue eyes dancing with mischief. Need swept through him so swiftly he lost his breath, and did the only thing he could think of under the circumstances.

Kissed her hard, deep. Drew her in against him, her tummy to his crotch, his hands tight on her hips.

He kissed her until her breath grew heavy and she pressed her breasts against him with a little moan. He kissed her until her scent wreathed around his head and made him dizzy. He kissed her until he couldn’t imagine not kissing her.

She broke it off, panting, her hands busy with his zipper.

“Nope.” He plucked her hands away from him, held them tight. “Not yet, my girl. Into the bath with you, so I can get the dishes cleaned up.”

Her dark brows rose. “Then I will clean you up,” she said, and leaned in to nip his lower lip. “Don’t be long, baby.” She left with a saunter, pulling off her t-shirt as she went.

In spite of himself, Logan’s lips twitched. Sassy, that was Kitty all over. No one had ever called him ‘baby’ before. He stood, adjusted his dick, and got to work on the kitchen. The sooner he finished cleaning up, the sooner he’d get to fuck that woman until neither of them could see straight. Then maybe he’d sleep through the night without a nightmare.

Maybe.