Chapter Six
Oh, boy. If looks could kill, Liam would have disintegrated on the spot. He’d give Claire that, but she’d thrown the first punch when it came to unfortunate aliases. He might suck at playing whatever game was required of romance, but he had three brothers. He was a pro at returning jabs.
That perfect mouth of hers stopped short of delivering any kind of retort, which was just as well. She could mull that one over all she liked, because she’d most certainly started it. He changed the subject, though his neck prickled. With the look she’d given him, he half-expected a guillotine to appear out of nowhere, slicing through thin air…and him. “That open window back there,” he said, tipping his head in the direction of the porch. “Better to leave it that way. Maybe he’ll find his way out. Is there a way to close off the kitchen?”
“Yeah.” She gestured for him to leave ahead of her, sounding a bit dazed. Which beat her being pissed.
He glanced back at the raccoon, which was now nudging open a cabinet door. “How long have you had food here?” Liam asked.
“A week.”
“Anything missing before?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. I usually keep everything elevated, in case there are mice.”
He stepped out of the room, then waited while she slid shut a pocket door between the hall and the kitchen. “Nice touch,” he said. He hadn’t seen that on the way in, but then again, she’d been screaming bloody murder. He’d hardly slowed down to notice any details, as much as he tended to do so otherwise, especially when it came to big old buildings and unusual architecture.
And gorgeous runaway brides.
She had barely acknowledged his remark, other than to glare, though with her lips pressed into a thin line, he figured she was trying not to say anything. He didn’t blame her. It wasn’t like they were going to make a conversation out of it, or at least not a comfortable one. They may have had more in common than either of them bargained for, right down to the desire not to talk about it.
“The latches on these types of doors are almost useless,” she said tightly as she flipped the tab on the pocket door, “but hopefully he won’t be too motivated to leave the place where the food is.”
“Hopefully he doesn’t like wine,” Liam murmured.
“Or gossip. Or TMZ.”
Ah, there it was. “Favorites of yours?”
A heated moment passed, long enough for him to wonder if it was just as much about attraction as it was her irritation that he had eyes and ears and hadn’t been living in a bubble. Then she brushed past him and down the hall to the main room.
Okay then.
He followed, surprised by the chill that met him there. Maybe it was all the heat they were spewing in the hall, but more likely it was the fact that the fire seemed to have snuffed itself out. Seconds later, the power flickered and died.
When she finally spoke, he figured it would have something to do with the lack of electricity, but instead she said, “This doesn’t leave this lodge.”
“What doesn’t?” He had a pretty good idea, but figured the more they got out in the open, the less awkward things might be. Besides, commiserating might be healthy. He hadn’t exactly found empathy back home. Even Ethan, the most reserved of his brothers, had had a good chortle at his expense. Weekly.
“I came here to get away from being that person,” Claire said. “No one here knows me as her, and I want it to stay that way.”
“And I took this job to get out of the city where everyone knows me as that person. Do you really think I’m going to make public any association with the Runaway Bride?”
She let out a slow breath. “Okay, good point. One with which I wholeheartedly agree.”
“Then you can stop glaring at me. Unless it’s because you think I’m hot, at which point I might suggest you rework your come hither look.”
“I am not giving you that look.”
“Which was my point,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. “There will be no hithering. Yeah, I think you’re hot—”
“Stupendously hot,” he added helpfully.
She rolled her eyes. “But as previously mentioned, I am incapable of making good decisions about men. I don’t care how fling-worthy you are. I’m done.”
Fling-worthy? His every muscle tensed. “You’ve thought of…flinging with me?”
One of her eyebrows hitched upward and a smile teased her lips. “I have news for you. Half the women in New York City and probably the country have thought about flinging with you. And likely a good portion of the men.”
“And you’re one of those women?”
“Doesn’t matter. This has bad idea written all over it.”
“So no sex.”
She glanced at him in surprise. “No sex.”
So they agreed on something. Only she’d just told him she’d thought about having a fling with him. “So, wait. You actually thought about sex? Because I was just hoping you might meet me for coffee one day.” There it was. An actual downgrade of topics, from sex to coffee, that made mere coffee seem totally plausible. Maybe he’d win that bet after all.
But nope. She wore incredulity. “You weren’t thinking about sex?”
So much for that theory. “Of course I thought about sex. I just wouldn’t expect you to think about sex. You hired me, which would make it awkward. Although that is a fairly solid premise for porn.”
She gave him a look he couldn’t quite read, though that was probably for the best. “Did you really just say porn?”
Yeah, so this was why he couldn’t manage a simple causal relationship. Because every woman wanted a porn reference on day one. He shrugged. “Must be a cliché for a reason.”
“Yeah, when the Hot HVAC Guy comes, why wouldn’t it be?”
He had no idea if that double entendre was on purpose, and he had no intention of asking. He just left it there, floating alongside his mention of having coffee. The one she would never agree to, because there was definitely no reason the two of them should ever be seen together outside of those walls. Which was fine, other than there was no way Liam was letting Sawyer win this bet.
What was not fine was what now sounded like a raging blizzard was happening, shuttering him inside the lodge with a woman who’d admitted seeing him and thinking about sex. Only they’d agreed not to have sex. And thinking about not having sex was the least conducive way on earth to not think about sex, because ultimately, it meant thinking about sex.
“I might need some of that wine after all,” he said with a sigh.
“You get the bottle open, and I’ll share.”
He gave her a blank look. “You have wine and no way to open it?”
“I didn’t remember everything, okay? I kind of…fled.”
He sighed and extracted his pocket knife. “Hand it over.”
Rather than doing so, she eyed the knife, and her grip on the wine tightened. “What are you doing?”
“Opening the bottle,” he said blankly. “Assuming you let me touch it.”
She clutched it tighter, her knuckles whitening until he thought she’d break it open herself. “You don’t like wine,” she stammered, “but you know how to open the bottle with a knife?”
“Do you want it open or not?”
She gave him a wary look and passed him the wine. At least it wasn’t sparkling wine, he noticed, and got visions of that stuff exploding in his face, like Champagne did in the movies. That would be just about perfect. But it was just an ordinary, non-sparkling Pinot Grigio, so he worked his pocketknife in the cork at an angle and slowly twisted. After a few moments of effort, the cork started to ease out. He aimed the bottle away from himself and Claire, just in case, and twisted another quarter turn, exerting some force.
The cork flew off, taking his embedded pocket knife with it.
Together, they hit the back of the firebox and dropped to the embers, which apparently weren’t as snuffed as he thought because a small flame almost immediately licked the cork.
While he stood there spilling wine.
He righted the bottle about the time Claire grabbed it. His abrupt motion combined with her grip dragged her into full-body contact, knocking him a half step back. He steadied her with his arm, the immediate effect of which left him holding her.
Not thinking about sex.
She smelled like fresh air and snow and just a hint of chainsaw exhaust, which really should have been a reminder for him to back away while his parts were intact, but she was also looking at his mouth. He wondered if she had any idea that she’d moistened her lips, or that her back had curved ever so slightly into his one-armed embrace.
“That was your part you just spilled,” she said lightly.
“Yeah. It was.”
She blinked and took a sudden step back. Cold swirled in after her, and he shivered. Then he remembered his favorite knife was in the fire. But her gaze lingered, the attention of those amazing blue eyes more than he was willing to give up. At least until a popping sound emanated from the fireplace.
“Any idea if there’s plastic in that cork?” he asked
“No.”
He looked around for something to drag his knife and what was left of the cork out of the fire. The last thing they needed was to burn plastic and deal with toxic fumes. They’d probably be lost in the cavernous room, especially considering the cork was only partially synthetic at best, but worrying about that gave him an excuse to do something other than watch Claire’s attention linger on his mouth.
He knew what that meant. Nothing she hadn’t already said—nothing they hadn’t both agreed to deny—but putting it out there hadn’t done anything to diffuse the situation. If anything, the flames licked higher.
“Do you have a poker or anything?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, at the same time he noticed it on the hearth, lost to the deepening shadows. “I should bring in some wood.”
“Is it sheltered?” he asked, walking over to the fire. “Because if it’s covered in snow, it’s not going to burn.”
“You’re kidding me. Wet wood doesn’t light?”
He ignored the sarcasm, opting instead to grab the poker and fish his knife and what was left of the cork out of the firebox, dragging it to cool on the hearth. Then he gave her a look. “Where’s the wood? I’ll help you.”
She glanced in the direction of the front window, where snow plastered against the panes despite the shelter of the porch. “I’m thinking the wood is wet. I could bring some in to dry.”
“It’s cold and damp in here, and opening that door is going to make it ten times worse. Anything in here we can burn?”
She gave him a look. “No.”
“No? Really?”
“Everything in here is important to me. These are pieces of my family.”
“Your family doesn’t want you to freeze.”
“Let me think about it,” she said. “In the meantime, we have blankets and body heat.”
“I thought we agreed against body heat.”
She glared, something he managed to catch despite the waning light.
“Do you have a backup generator?” he asked.
“It exists, but it needs to be checked out by an electrician. And the way this snow is blowing, it’s probably buried under a drift.”
“Blankets it is, then.” A generator would haven’t done much good anyway without fuel. “I’ll give you a hand.”
He found a flashlight in his stash of stuff and followed her upstairs.
“The linens were all washed and stowed before my uncle left the lodge. I’ve got some downstairs already. They don’t smell as fresh as they probably did when they were put away, but they’re not bad.”
He was barely listening. Instead, he scanned the space with the flashlight, looking for something to burn. He would have been more insistent about breaking a chair or something, but he couldn’t imagine tossing anything that had belonged to his grandparents in a fire. Not when body heat and blankets were an option. A last resort, but an option nonetheless.
“Over here with the light,” she said.
He shifted the beam in her direction and watched as she pulled what looked like a quilt and a few light blankets from a shelf. A broom leaned against the shelving. “How about that? Can we burn the broom?”
“It won’t last long.” She handed it to him anyway.
Back downstairs, he held it at an angle and stepped on it to snap it in half, then broke the halves. Then he arranged all the pieces on the embers. He had to blow on them a few times, but the straw finally lit.
“Thanks for coming to the rescue earlier,” she said when they were both settled by the fire, the stone hearth serving as an impromptu table for the deli he’d rescued. “I feel a little ridiculous, but it’s not every day you find a masked intruder pilfering through your kitchen.”
This day was full of those not every day occurrences, but he didn’t need to tell her that. Instead he said, “You would have handled it without me.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to, though.”
“Good. I don’t mind playing the hero.”
“Pfft. A hero would have saved the chocolate.”
“Noted,” he said dryly. But she smiled, and so did he, and he realized he’d forgotten who she was and that bet with Sawyer and everything else. He liked this version of her. He was a laid-back guy, and the television version of her was pretty, but this lodge version was stunning. She probably didn’t think so—not if she was comfortable in all that makeup she normally wore—but the idea of kissing her without a layer of lipstick between them was a huge turn on. He hated the taste of lipstick. It was like goopy plastic.
“Do I even want to know what you’re thinking?”
He jerked his gaze from where it had apparently gotten lodged on her mouth and managed a grin. “I don’t think you do.”
“Was it at least flattering? And not along the lines of how I scream at fuzzy things?”
“Absolutely flattering,” he said, trying not to laugh at her description.
Her gaze lingered on his, then dropped briefly to his mouth, then lower before she shook her head and dug into the stuff he’d pilfered from the kitchen. “We have turkey, Swiss, pickles, and bread. And mayo packets. I had them throw those in for me because I figured I’d forget condiments when I stopped at the store.”
“Sounds perfect, and I appreciate your willingness to share.” He eyed the wine bottle. “Most of it, anyway.”
She put meat on both sandwiches, stopping short of using it all. He reached around her and piled on the rest, then threw a pickle on each for good measure.
“Eat,” he said. “It’s not like we’re putting leftovers back in the fridge tonight. At least I’m not.”
She eyed the stack of meat sandwiched between two thick slabs of French loaf. “That looks like something from one of those Food Network challenge shows.”
He paused before he could take a bite of his own sandwich. “Are you saying the pickle was overkill?”
“Yeah, the pickle is the problem.”
He averted his gaze from her eyes, and especially from the lingering visual tour of her body that had him thinking food was the lesser of his basic needs that night. “Eat. You’ll need your strength to fight off that overwhelming attraction you’re feeling for me now that I’ve saved your life.” His own words gave him pause. That was almost not awkward. Maybe he could talk to a woman after all. Or maybe it was just her.
“By giving me an extra pickle?” she asked. “This is how you’ve saved my life?”
He laughed. “Is that what makes you swoon? A pickle?”
“Depends on the size of the pickle.”
At that, he almost choked on his sandwich. She’d probably waited until he had the stupid thing crammed in his mouth before she let that one fly. She didn’t even glance his way as she handed him a napkin, but he saw her smile.
It was a hell of a combination. A woman he found he could actually talk to and she was smiling at him.
Which really only meant one thing: he was in over his head.
And he wasn’t hating it.