"This is actually pretty comfortable," she admitted, sounding surprised.
"Don't sound so shocked. I'm full of good ideas."
A small smile tugged at her lips. "One good idea doesn't make you full of them."
"Guess I'll have to keep proving myself."
She didn't respond to that, just pulled another tablecloth over herself like a blanket and closed her eyes. I settled into the booth across from her, angling myself so I could see both the front windows and her face.
The storm hadn't let up. Snow still swirled past the glass, thick and relentless, and the wind made the building creak and groan like an old ship. But inside, everything was quiet. Warm. Safe.
I watched her breathing slow as sleep pulled her under. The tension in her shoulders eased, her lips parting slightly, one hand curled beneath her chin. She looked younger like this. Unguarded. The woman behind the clipboard and the careful walls.
Something shifted in my chest. Not the sharp, sudden impact from earlier—this was deeper. Quieter. A settling, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.
I'd spent years avoiding anything that looked like commitment. Keeping things light, easy, no strings attached. The guys on the crew had their running jokes about my love life, and I'd always laughed along because it was easier than explaining that I'd never met anyone worth getting serious about.
But watching Kameron sleep in a snowbound roadhouse, wrapped in tablecloths, trusting me enough to let her guard down—I knew. This was it.Shewas it.
The thought should have terrified me. A few hours ago, we'd barely exchanged more than drink orders. Now I was imagininga future with her—something real and permanent—and it didn't feel rushed or crazy. It felt inevitable. Like I'd been waiting for her without knowing it.
The problem was, I had no idea if she felt the same way. What happened in that office could have been the storm, the isolation, the strange intimacy of being snowed in together. A one-time thing she'd regret in the morning.
I couldn't let that happen.
I didn't know exactly how to convince her that this was more than just a blizzard hookup. That I wanted to know everything about her—not just how she looked when she came, but how she took her coffee in the morning, what made her laugh, what kept her up at night. All of it.
But I'd figure it out. I had to. This wasn't the end of something. It was the beginning.
5
KAMERON
Iwoke up to gray light filtering through the windows and the unfamiliar sensation of being watched.
No. Not watched. Protected.
Conner was slumped in the booth across from me, head tipped back against the seat, arms crossed over his chest. His breathing was slow and even, and sometime during the night, his mouth had fallen slightly open. He looked younger like this. Less polished. Just a man who'd stayed up most of the night keeping an eye on things.
On me.
I lay there for a long moment, studying the lines of his face, the stubble darkening his jaw, the way his hair stuck up on one side where he'd leaned against the booth. My body ached in unfamiliar places—good aches, the kind that reminded me of what we'd done in my office just hours ago.
And that's when the doubt started creeping in.
I'd slept with a man I barely knew. Not just slept with—given my virginity to. In a cramped office during a snowstorm, like something out of a romance novel. The kind of story where thehero falls instantly in love and everything works out perfectly in the end.
But this wasn't a book. This was real life. And in real life, men didn't fall for women in a single night.
I sat up slowly, careful not to make the booth creak. The tablecloth I'd been using as a blanket slipped off my shoulders, and the chill of the dining room hit me immediately. Outside, the snow had stopped falling, though drifts piled high against the windows and the parking lot was buried under a thick white blanket.
The storm was ending. Which meant normal life would resume soon. The roads would get cleared, the crew would regroup, and Conner would go back to being the joker who teased his friends about their love lives.
And me? I'd be another story. Maybe not even a story—maybe just a footnote. That night we got snowed in and the manager let her guard down.
My stomach twisted. I'd been so careful for so long. Building walls, keeping people at a distance, never letting anyone close enough to hurt me. And in one night, I'd torn all of that down for a man with a charming smile and a reputation for not taking anything seriously.
What had I been thinking?
