The corner of his mouth quirked higher, but he didn’t rise to it. Just hung his sweater by the hearth, then crouched again to coax the flames higher. The fire flared, lighting the curve of his shoulders, the slow movement of his hands.
He fumbled with the tie on his pants, tongue darting out to wet his lips as his eyes found mine again. “Want to take a picture, Colette?”
I wrapped the blanket tighter, half for warmth, half to keep from reaching out. “Was that a joke, hotshot?”
He looked up suddenly, eyes catching mine. “You’re staring.”
“So are you.”
The silence that followed was small but electric — like the second before lightning hits, when the world forgets how to breathe.
His mouth twitched, but he didn’t look away. “Maybe I’m just making sure you don’t faint.”
“From what, exactly?”
“Hypothermia,” he said after a beat, too flatly to be believable.
The corner of my lip curved. “Sure.”
He stood then, slow and deliberate, and for the first time I noticed just how much space he took up — how the room seemed smaller around him, quieter. His hair was damp, curling a little at the ends; his shoulders gleamed faintly from the firelight. He moved with a kind of stoicism that came from knowing exactly what he was doing, even when pretending otherwise.
I tried not to stare again. Failed miserably.
“I was right,” I said, mostly to fill the silence.
“About?”
“Youdolook better warm.”
That earned me the faintest sound — almost a laugh, if he’d let it be. “And you,” he said, his eyes flicking briefly toward where the blanket had slipped against my collarbone, “look like trouble.”
“Guess that makes us even.”
He huffed out a quiet breath, shaking his head.
CHAPTER 10
Silas
She was goingto undo me. I knew it already.
The cabin felt too small, too warm, and it wasn’t the fire’s fault.
She’d wrapped herself in my sweater like it belonged to her, sleeves falling past her hands, the hem skimming her thighs. Nothing beneath it, not that I was trying to look. It was just… impossible not to know. Every time she moved, the wool shifted against her skin, soft against soft, and I caught myself thinking things I shouldn’t. About the perfect curve of her breast?—
Stop it, Silas.
She was twenty-eight. Old enough to know what she was doing. Young enough that I should have known better.
When she smiled at me from across the room, it wasn’t even a smile — more like the ghost of one. A spark. Something that reached straight through my ribs and twisted.
I turned back to the fire, pretending to mind the logs, pretending to breathe evenly.
“You’re still staring,” she said again. She wasn’t wrong. I’d been staring since she slipped the blanket around her shoulders and looked at me like I was part of her next adventure — temporary, fascinating, disposable.
She deserved better than a man who’d forgotten how to be interesting. But God help me, for the first time in years… I might just want to be interesting again.
I reached for the coffee tin, trying to think of anything ordinary — measurements, the smell of beans, the scrape of metal — anything that didn’t sound like the way she saidhotshot.
