She licked his face, then turned her attention to me, sniffing my hand before pressing her head against my palm for scratches.
“She likes you,” Wolfe said, looking up at me. “She doesn’t like everyone.”
“Smart dog,” I said.
He stood, pulling me into his arms. Midnight circled our legs, tail still wagging, as he held me in the doorway of his cabin.
“Stay,” he said. “Not just today. Stay with me.”
It was crazy. We’d known each other for less than twenty-four hours. But nothing in my life had ever felt as right as this moment, standing in his arms while the snow fell softly outside and his dog pressed against our legs.
“What about my cabin with Teddie?” I asked. “My stuff?”
“We’ll figure it out. We’ll get your stuff. Teddie can visit whenever she wants.” He pulled back to look at me. “I’m not saying we have to have everything figured out right now. I’m just saying I don’t want to spend another day watching you from across the roadhouse, wishing I had the guts to talk to you.”
I laughed, reaching up to touch his face. The beard was soft under my fingers.
“You don’t have to watch from a distance anymore,” I said. “I’m right here.”
He kissed me again, deeper this time, and I melted into him. Midnight barked once, apparently feeling left out, and we broke apart laughing.
This was my life now. This man, this cabin, this ridiculous perfect dog.
I’d come to Mrs. Norris’s house hoping to earn some extra money and catch up on schoolwork. Instead, I’d found something I hadn’t even known I was looking for.
I’d found home.
EPILOGUE
WOLFE
The cabin was quiet when I got home.
I eased the door shut behind me, careful not to let the cold air rush in. The woodstove was still glowing, casting the living room in that soft orange light I’d come to associate with home. With Meghan.
Midnight lifted her head from her spot on the rug, her muzzle gray now, her movements slower than they used to be. But her tail still thumped against the floor when she saw me, and I crouched down to scratch behind her ears.
“Good girl,” I murmured. “Everyone asleep?”
She licked my hand once, then settled her head back down with a contented sigh.
I pulled off my boots and left them by the door, then padded down the hallway in my socks. The first door on the left was cracked open, and I pushed it wider, letting the hall light spill across the twin beds inside.
Noah was sprawled on his back, one arm flung over his head, the blankets kicked halfway off. He was four now, all energy and questions and that same dark hair I saw in the mirror everymorning. I tugged the blanket back up over his chest, and he didn’t stir.
In the other bed, two-year-old Mary was curled on her side, clutching the stuffed dog Meghan’s friend Teddie had given her at her baby shower. She had her mother’s brown eyes and her mother’s easy warmth. I brushed a kiss across her forehead and slipped back out, pulling the door almost closed behind me.
Four years. Sometimes it still didn’t feel real. The expanded cabin, the two kids, the life I’d never let myself imagine having. All because a snowstorm knocked out the power in an old woman’s house, and I’d been too far gone on a girl I’d never spoken to.
I continued down the hall toward our bedroom, rolling the tension out of my shoulders. Late shifts always left me wired, but the sight of my kids safe in their beds had already started to unknot something in my chest.
I pushed open the bedroom door and stopped dead.
Meghan was on the bed, propped up on her elbows, completely naked. Candlelight flickered across her skin, catching the curves I knew by heart now—the swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist, and the soft fullness of her hips. She’d let her hair down, and it spilled across the pillows behind her.
She smiled at me, slow and knowing. “Took you long enough.”
Her words hit me like a spark to dry tinder. All the exhaustion from the late shift burned away in an instant, replaced by a rush of heat that pooled low in my gut.
