The greatest prize of all.
19
Hew couldn’t sleep.
He blamed the lumpy mattress on the trundle he’d pulled from beneath the daybed. Springs poked through the foam to stab into his backbone, and his feet hung over the edge.
Also, he was cold. He’d drawn the short straw when it came to the shower line. By the time it was his turn to wash off the dust from the road, there hadn’t remained one single drop of hot water. He’d been chilled to the bone by the time he toweled off, and he hadn’t managed to warm up since. The paper-thin quilt he pulled up to his chin might as well be a sheet of air for all the good it did him.
As if the lumpy, too-short mattress and the brewing bout of hypothermia weren’t enough, Knox Rollins snored. Not a subtle sawing of logs. Oh, no. It was a full-on lumberjack’s chainsaw of sound.
Hew wasn’t sure how Sabrina was sleeping through it.
Is she sleeping through it?he wondered, cocking his ear toward the bed above him.
No whisper of breath. No rustle of sheets. No squeak of the bedframe.
Hopefully, that meant she was getting some rest. Because by the time she’d emerged from the bathroom, her hair freshly washed and her face freshly scrubbed, she’d epitomized the phrasethe walking dead.
If exhaustion were a person, it would be Sabrina Greenlee.
Holding his breath, he listened harder. But it was impossible to hear anything over the roar of Knox’s obstructed airway.
Seriously, the man needed to see a specialist.Maybe get a mouthguard or one of those fancy-dancy CPAP machines that made a person look like they’d been attacked by a facehugger from theAlienmovies.
Hew tried to drown out the noise by shoving his pillow over his head. It helped. Sort of.Not enough.
Sighing heavily, he slipped the pillow back beneath his skull, gritted his teeth, and considered marching into the living room and yanking Britt up by his short hairs. After all, it had beenBrittwho’d assigned them all their sleeping arrangements.
Sabrina, Knox, and Hew had all been told to bunk out in the bedroom, with Sabrina in the queen bed, Knox on the daybed shoved into the back corner, and Hew on the trundle. Julia and Britt were in the living room, with Julia on the sofa and Britt on a pallet on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Initially, Hew had thought Britt was taking one for the team, sacrificing himself to the floor's uncompromising hardness while the rest of them had soft spots to sleep in. Now, he realized the rat bastard had played them all and had saved the best piece of real estate for himself.
A warm, roaring fire? An entire wall away from Knox whohadto be rattling the shingles on the roof?
Yeah. That sounds like heaven.
Hew was about to throw back the thin quilt and remedy the situation, but Sabrina’s soft words cut through the darkness. “You’re quiet. But you have an unquiet mind.”
He blinked in surprise. “What makes you say that?” he whispered.
She was silent for a moment as if contemplating her answer. Then, “It’s the way your eyes take in every detail of everything happening around you even when you’re pretending to be bored to death.”
Huh. Well, how about that?
Most people thought just because he preferred to sit in a corner and watch a conversation rather than join in, or just because he liked finding a quiet spot to read, that meant he was a Zen master. That he had a still mind to match his still mouth and body. But, in reality, the opposite was true.
If he was awake, his brain raced a mile a minute…cataloging,calculating. The only time he got a break was when he was asleep. And even then, he would come awake at the slightest noise, the subtlest movement.
Of course,thatis probably a consequence of my upbringing.
“Plus,” she continued to whisper. “I can hear the wheels turning in your head. They’re spinning so fast they’re emitting a low hum.”
He chuckled. “Not sure how you can hear anything above Sir Snores A Lot.”
He couldn’t see her smile, but he could hear it in her voice. “And just think, this is your first night with him. Imagine if you were me, and this was night number three.”
I’d rather someone put my balls in a vice,he thought uncharitably.
