She nodded, but still couldn’t help feeling a little unsettled about all this.It was beyond creepy to think someone might have been watching her or caught her on camera earlier without her having a clue.Worse yet to think they might have followed her into town and waited until she left before breaking into her vehicle to steal the backpack.Again, without her noticing.
“Do you still have a picture of that paper you took?”
“Yeah.”She picked up her phone and found it.Enlarged it to zoom in.The text was slightly blurry.“It’s in a weird sort of code.Must mean something important, to go to the trouble of encrypting it and then laminating it.Any ideas?”She handed it over.
He studied it for a minute.“No clue what any of it means.”He sat back in his chair, his quiet, masculine presence soothing her rattled nerves.
Looking at him, she was reminded yet again of what he’d faced overseas in the Army, and later as a military contractor.He’d been in command of Peyton’s unit in Syria when they’d come under attack.Her situation was almost ridiculously benign in comparison.
“The break-in could have been random, someone hoping to steal something that would get them some quick money.And even if it wasn’t that, whoever took the backpack might not have been trying to recover the sheet.They might have just been looking to find out what you’d taken.”
“True.”She picked up her cooled tea, downed the last of it in one gulp.He’d already finished his.She had no idea how much longer Rafe would be in the woods out back.“Want more?”
“No thanks.”
“I’ll go make up the bed in the guestroom for you.”
“I can bunk on the couch.”
“No, you’re sleeping in a bed.”
Amusement gleamed in his dark eyes.“I’ve slept in a lot worse places than on a couch.”
“Exactly why you deserve a comfy spot.I’ll just go grab the sheets from the dryer.I didn’t get a chance to take them out before I left.I got the best memory foam toppers for the beds,” she said over her shoulder on her way to the laundry room down the hall.“They feel like sleeping on a cloud.”
“Okay, that makes me want to climb into bed right now.”
And just like that, all she could picture was that long, powerful body lying in her guest bed—right on the other side of the wall from hers.
Or even better, inherbed beside her.On top of her.
Her internal temperature went up twenty degrees at the ideas swirling around in her brain.
Banishing those mouthwatering images from her mind, she busied herself with pulling the sheets from the dryer and making up the bed.The sheets were bamboo for breathability and to stay cool against the skin during the summer heat, but hopelessly wrinkled after being left in the dryer all day.
She smoothed them out on the bed as best she could, telling herself Tripp wouldn’t care that they were wrinkled.When she was done she draped one of her grandmother’s quilts on top.
“I’ve got some spare toothbrushes in the guest bathroom down the hall,” she called out, propping the fluffed pillows against the headboard.Somewhere over the past few minutes, a new edginess had taken hold.Caused by knowing she would be alone in her house with the object of her fantasies all night.
She grabbed some towels from the closet.“I’ll put some fresh towels on the—” She squeaked to find Tripp filling the doorway behind her, one muscular shoulder propped against the jamb as he watched her.
“You scared me,” she said with a little laugh, ordering her heartbeat to settle.Oh, he was delicious.
“Sorry.”He straightened, his dark gaze intense.“You’re nervous.”
Shit.“No, I—Just a little off-kilter at the moment.”But not for the reasons he probably assumed.“I’m glad you’re here,” she clarified.“There’s no way I would ever sleep if you weren’t.”Him staying over was a double-edged sword, that was all, and her nervous system was already overloaded.
“You sure?”
His deep, quiet voice made her forget whatever she’d been about to say.He was so close, his stare unbearably intimate as the silence enveloped them.
She couldn’t look away.Couldn’t resist the urge to move closer, pulled toward him by some invisible force.Inescapable.
Inevitable.Four years of feelings and repressed desire finally bursting free.
Tripp’s hand came up to cradle the back of her head.Willow stared into those dark, hypnotic eyes, unable to move.Unable to think or catch a full breath as her heart thudded painfully.
They both jumped apart when Rufus erupted into a warning howl from the kitchen.From nothing to DEFCON 1 in an instant.
