By the time they reached the lodge, the distant sunlight gave way to shadows, and the cold air had grown sharper. Sebastian led the way inside, immediately heading for the hearth.
“It’ll be warm soon,” he assured her, crouching to stack wood from the corner pile. Within moments,the beginnings of a fire flickered to life, and he carefully fanned the flames until they grew strong, their glow casting soft light across the room.
Maddie, who had been untying the ribbon beneath her chin, shrugged out of her cloak and set it aside. “I don’t think I’ve felt my toes in half an hour,” she admitted with a small laugh, already tugging at her damp boots.
Sebastian turned just as she slipped the first one off, exposing her stockinged foot to the warmth of the hearth. For a moment, he watched her, the sight strangely intimate. The act was unadorned, completely natural, and yet something about the way she unfolded her movements drew him in. She leaned back slightly on her hands, angling her feet closer to the fire with a soft sigh.
“I’m not saying this was your plan all along,” Maddie said, stretching her legs with a satisfied sigh, “but if it had been, I would be impressed.”
Sebastian glanced over from where he was stoking the fire. “What, get stranded in an avalanche with you and risk frostbite for the pleasure of your company? Sounds exactly like something I’d arrange.”
She gave him a sidelong look. “Oh yes. Nothing screams romance like damp stockings and nearly dying.”
He leaned back against the wall, one knee raised lazily, his shirt slightly askew from his rushed dressing. “You know,” he said, voice low, “you could sit here sulking about propriety and scandal and your snow-ruined plans…”
“Or?”
“Or you could admit that part of you is glad the horse ran off.”
Her brow arched, but her lips curved too. “That’s an outrageous accusation.”
“Is it?”
She turned her face toward the fire. “I should be scandalized. Appalled. Marching back to town with righteous fury.”
“And instead?”
“I’m warm. You’ll have to revive me if I fall asleep,” she teased lightly, her head tilting toward him.
Sebastian, rooted where he stood, found only one response necessary. “I trust you’ll manage to stay awake, Maddie.”
Her smile, framed by the firelight, flickered briefly up at him before she turned her eyes back to the flames. And Sebastian, for all his effort to think of something practical or useful, found himself sitting back on the hearth’s edge. Close, but not too close. Or just close enough.
For the first time since entering the lodge, silence claimed them—not out of awkwardness, but because neither wanted to disturb it. It was, as the snow, something simultaneously inevitable and more powerful than either of them alone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Maddie’s fingers flexedslightly against the rug as she leaned back on her hands, the fire coaxing heat into her chilled toes. Her limbs still ached from the cold, but there was a peculiar comfort in this lodge—one she hadn’t anticipated. Maybe it was the low glow of the fire. Or maybe it was the man sitting a breath away.
She risked a glance at Sebastian. He sat beside her now, not touching, not speaking, just close enough to stir the air between them. His profile was softened by the flickering light, shadows playing across the sharp angle of his jaw, the stubborn slant of his brow.
He looked like temptation.
Unfolded. Relaxed. A little tousled in the most dangerous way.
And entirely unaware of the havoc he caused simply by existing.
But that was the trouble, wasn’t it? He didn’t even know what he did to her. Or maybe he did, maybe he did and he still chose to sit this close, still let the firelight dance across that maddening jaw and let his knee rest just inches from hers.
It wasn’t just that he was beautiful. It was his steadiness. The patience. The unexpected softness that had slowly been peeling away her defenses, one moment at a time. When he wasn’t looking, she looked. And when he was looking, she pretended not to.
Because she wasn’t the sort of girl who did this.
She followed the rules. Or at least… she followed the right ones. The ones that let her keep her freedom, however narrowly. She didn’t stay in lodges with men and allow herself to dream of what if.
And yet here she was. Sitting beside a man who had just risked his life for her. Who had called her name beneath the snow like it meant something. Who hadn’t tried to charm her, or flatter her, or coax her into anything she didn’t offer freely, but who still managed to unravel her with a single glance, a single breath.
And the worst part?
