I looked around the room, trying to see it through the eyes of a woman almost twenty years my junior. The attempt sent a sharp pain slicing through my head. To her, it probably looked like a reclusive old mountain man’s bare bones cabin. That figured because it’s pretty much what my cabin was. What did it matter how my place looked? I was the only one who ever spent any time inside.
“You can have the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the couch.” I hauled her overnight bag into my bedroom. Since I used the second bedroom as an office, my bedroom was the only room with a door and a bed. I couldn’t stand to have Rae walking around the living room in a nightshirt. There needed to be a door between us. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll get clean sheets on the bed.”
“I can do that.” She followed me into the room.
“All right.” I pulled a set of clean sheets out of the closet and set them on the edge of the bed. It was just about going to kill me to know she was curled up in my bed. There’d been a reason I’d never brought Rae to my place. I didn’t want to have images of her taunting and teasing me from every square inch of my cabin. Fuck. I might have to move after this. Start fresh somewhere new.
Rae crossed the room and glanced at the pictures hanging on the opposite side. “Are these my dad’s?”
“Yeah.” Lennox had picked up a digital SLR camera while he was in the service and dabbled in amateur photography. He’d uncovered a natural talent, and I’d been lucky enough to get my hands on some of his shots of Mustang Mountain.
“They’re beautiful.” The indifference she always tried to shrug on when we were together faded away. She reached out and traced her finger over her dad’s illegible signature.
Tempted to say something I might regret, I cleared my throat instead. “Are you hungry?”
She lifted her head and turned to me, quickly masking the sadness behind her eyes. “I could eat something.”
“How about a grilled cheese?”
Her eyebrows arched. “With pickles?”
“Of course.” I head toward the kitchen, eager to get away from Rae standing in the middle of my bedroom where I’d pictured her so many times. She’d always loved my grilled cheese sandwiches as a kid. I could remember making them for her on an open campfire when Lennox and I would take her camping while we were home on leave.
The hollow ache his absence left in my life had never healed, though I’d forged new friendships when I joined the Mustang Mountain Riders. The men I rode with were my family now, and I’d never fail them like I’d failed Rae’s father.
She sat on a stool at the kitchen counter while I slathered butter on sliced bread and fired up the gas stove. At least she wasn’t putting up a fight about staying with me. Having her here would take its toll, but I needed to make sure she was safe. While the sandwiches toasted, I pulled out my phone to see if there had been an update from Thunder.
I scanned the long text message he sent.
“Everything okay?” Rae leaned forward. The fresh, citrusy-sweet scent of her shampoo filled my nose.
“Yeah. Thunder said the guys and your roommate are still there. How long has she been seeing that guy?” The thought of Rae being anywhere near a member of the Savage Bones was enough to send adrenaline spiking through my veins. Lennox used to talk about wanting to roll her up in bubble wrap and lock her away so he could protect her. At the time, I thought that was a bit intense, but now I could see the appeal.
“Just a couple of weeks.”
I finished the grilled cheese and slid it onto a plate. “Neither one of you has had any trouble with him?”
“No.” She shook her head and reached for her sandwich.
“Careful, Sunshine. It’s hot.” Knowing Rae, she wouldn’t stand for being confined to my cabin for very long. She’d inherited her dad’s impatience and didn’t like to sit around waiting for things to happen. I’d never met her mom, but based on the photo Lennox shared with me, Rae was the spitting image of the dark-haired beauty he’d hooked up with on leave one summer. When she showed up a year later with a baby on her hip and a single one-way ticket back to Brazil, he became an instant dad. Thankfully, his parents were able to raise Rae while he was deployed.
“Mmm.” She smiled as she tried to talk around the bite of grilled cheese. “I forgot how good your grilled cheeses are. Is it still the only thing you can make?”
I loved joking around with her. “Do I look like I’ve been eating nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches since I retired?”
Her gaze drifted down, skimming over the contours of my upper body and leaving a blazing trail of heat in its wake. “I’m not sure what you’ve been eating, but you look like you still do hours of PT every day.”
Goddammit. My cock twitched. Asking her to check me out had been a bad move. Especially when her lips quirked up at the edges and her eyes warmed in appreciation. Either I was reading the signals wrong, or she liked what she saw.
I shifted my attention to buttering two more slices of bread. “Yeah. Old habits are hard to break.”
“Like treating me as a child.” Her tone changed from teasing to accusing. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m all grown up now. You keep acting like I’m still a toddler or a naïve teenager, but I’ve been living on my own and taking care of myself for years.”
“I promised your dad.” My hand shook as I stacked another sandwich in the pan: bread, cheese, pickles, cheese, and bread.
“He didn’t mean it as a life sentence.” She reached out for my hand, but I avoided her touch.
I lifted my gaze. “You think that’s how I view it? As a life sentence I’ll never be able to shake?”
