I pick my way back to her and hand her the frozen gallon of water and the bulky backpack. “Please put this inside.”
“Where are you going?”
“See what I can salvage.”
She huffs, sending a puff of white into the air. She’s utterly adorable in this moment. Especially with the way the thick snowflakes are accumulating on her dark brown eyelashes and all over the top of her black hoodie.
“Cash. It’s freezing out here. A bear ate everything. I’m a pop star. We don’t eat. You’re a movie star. You don’t eat. We’re fine. Just get inside too.”
I open the door and gently shove her. “Four more minutes. I’m fine. Please go put this inside.”
“If a bear eats you—one, you deserve it for being stupid, and two, I’ll never forgive you for adding this to my holiday trauma.”
Fuuuuck. “There’s no bear to eat me.”
“There was a bear here in the past twelve hours. How do you know it’s not lying in wait to?—”
I clamp a hand over her mouth, which I should absolutely not do, because now soft Aspen breath is blowing through my gloves and into my palm and prompting me to fantasize about touching her silky skin. Her hazel eyes widen as she locks gazes with me, anddammit, I want to kiss her.
I want to kiss her so badly that my bones ache with it.
And that’s not the cold talking.
It’s not the situation.
It’s her.
It’s always been her.
“There’s no more bear.” My voice is strained from holding back this desperate need to wrap her in my arms, carry her inside, wrap us both together in a blanket, and kiss her until I can’t breathe. “I’m salvaging food. Back in four minutes. Go inside.”
She stares at me with bright, unblinking hazel eyes for an eternity where I don’t feel the cold, don’t see the snow, don’t hear the crack of a tree falling somewhere nearby.
And then she makes another little noise and ducks back into the cabin.
It shouldn’t be possible to have a boner when the weather’s this cold, but here I am, striding back toward my car, my feet slipping, my cock hard as a damn rock.
All because I touched her.
I shouldn’t be here.
And now I’m stuck.
For days.
With the one woman I cannot stop thinking about and absolutely cannot have, with limited food and no way of getting out.
I find two tins of those twirly stick cookies, an entire stollen cake, and one bag of boozy truffles untouched. They go into a bag from the back end, where I find an intact gingerbread house kit too.
If it weren’t snowing so hard that I can barely see the house, I’d clean out the mess so the bear doesn’t get back in the car.
My brother will never let me live this down.
As he shouldn’t.
When I turn toward the house, I spot Aspen on the step outside the door again. “What are you doing?” I call to her.
“Watching you in case you fall,” she replies.
