It’s not the wind. It’s not the sound of the heavy, icy rain pounding on the roof. I’m not too cold. Not too hot. The mattress is surprisingly plush and comfortable. The scent of cedar throughout the house is pleasant and soothing.
This should be the perfect place to sleep.
But when Cash so much asthinksof moving out in the living room, I hear it.
Swear I do.
Every time I tense, thinking he’s moving, I hear confirmation moments later. A deeper inhale, a shuffle of fabric against thefake leather on the sectional, a glass clinking as it’s set down on a solid surface like he needed a drink in the middle of the night.
Morning takes forever to arrive.
And when it does, the first rays of sunlight show that we have bigger problems.
Ihave bigger problems.
The entire world is a fuzzy sheet of white.
Cash is right. I’m a California girl, and a warm-weather SoCal girl at that.
But even I’ve seen enough of the world to recognize that neither of us is going anywhere when I can barely see the trees around the cabin through the swirling wall of snow. I can only tell where the tree that fell yesterday is sitting because the snow pile on top of it is uneven and lumpy, whereas it’s a pristine white sheet everywhere else.
And it means one thing.
He’s stuck here with me.
I don’t get my alone time.
I whimper in utter frustration, and almost immediately my spidey senses tingle. A moment later, he calls, “Aspen? You okay?” in a deep, raspy morning voice that makes my nipples tingle.
“Stop it,” I whisper to them.
There’s a shuffle outside my door, and the primitive part of my brain wonders if he’ll have bedhead and be in a wrinkled T-shirt, or if he slept without his shirt.
Great time for my libido to betray me.
“I’m fine,” I say.
The shuffling outside the bedroom stops. “You need anything?”
Just to shove the inappropriate attraction to my landlord back into the box where it belongs. “I thought I packed myfavorite yoga pants and I didn’t. I’m fine. I’ll find some way to survive this tragedy.”
“You want to borrow mine?”
I suck in a surprised breath and choke on a dust particle, which sends me into a fit of choking laughter.
“Men can wear yoga pants too,” he says through the doorway, which makes me laugh and cough harder.
His voice gets closer. “The only reason I’m not breaking this door down to make sure you’re alive is because I can hear you breathing.”
“Breathing?” I wheeze out.
I’m notbreathing.
I’m choking and laughing so loudly, they can probably hear me at the next cabin, which is at the bottom of the long, windy road up this mountain.
“Making noise,” Cash says. “Breathing. Same thing where I grew up.”
“Short of weird smells or a serial killer vibe, there’s no reason for you to assume something horrible happened while I was sleeping.” I pull myself together, grab a pair of sweatpants and a baggy hoodie, slip them on, and then open the bedroom door.
