“Four of us together though… gotta admit, that was pretty crazy.”
“Good crazy or bad crazy?”
“I dunno. Just… crazy.” My cat-that-ate-the-canary smile met his sheepish one. “Hey, I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
He laughed. “Likeit?”
“Okay, fine,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “I loved it. You happy?”
Smiling, he scratched at his stubbled jaw. “Not as happy as you ought to be.”
God, he was handsome. Handsomeandskilled. And hung. Let’s not forget about that.
“Well, yeah,” I finally smirked back at him. “I’m pretty sure you had a good time too, if I remember correctly.”
The wind picked up, fluttering Carter’s sleep pants around his thick legs. I almost laughed at his snow boots, but didn’t. On his forearm though, I noticed something I hadn’t before: a long, vertical scar. The jagged white line of flesh ran from his wrist all the way to his elbow, twisting in a smooth curve.
“What happened there?” I asked, nodding toward it.
Carter looked down, as if surprised to see it, then crossed his arms over his chest. The move buried the scar, as he slowly shook his head. “Nothing worth talking about.”
“Got it.”
He looked a little relieved at my response. I sighed and stretched, then squinted back at him.
“The others are going to be weird about this, aren’t they?” I asked.
“What? No, no, definitely not.” He paused for a moment. “I mean, Sawyer might crack a few jokes…”
“Jokes, I can handle.”
“And Bodie might be… quiet,” Carter admitted. “A little bit, anyway. Normally, he’s pretty straight-laced.”
“He wasn’t straight-laced last night,” I grinned.
“No. No, he wasn’t.”
“Because what we did last night?” I paused, pointing down the mountain. “That was alotof things. But ‘weird’ definitely wasn’t one of them.”
Carter’s smile was warm and comforting. Exactly as when I’d first walked into his bar.
“Hmmm…” I thought out loud. “Just in case, though…”
I rose, stood on my toes, and kissed him. Without hesitation, Carter kissed me back. Our lips fell into a familiar rhythm; our mouths and tongues moving slowly as if we’d been together forever. My mind began recalling the scent of him immediately; the feel of his hands, the sights and sounds and roller coaster of emotions, that came bundled with what we’d done last night.
By the time I broke the kiss to smile up at him, Carter’s eyes were still half closed.
“See? Not weird at all.”
Leaving him in a daze, I skipped past him, and down the path toward the cabin.
~ 16 ~
HAYDEN
I returned to a breakfast already cleaned up, the cabin’s galley kitchen scrubbed spotlessly clean once again. Part of that, of course, was in my master plan. The other part was due to Bodie’s OCD nature, which I had to admit I’d taken full advantage of.
“Ah, the princess is back,” quipped Sawyer, leaning back in his chair. He looked me over with a suspicious eye. “And somehow, she picked up coffee, too.”
