“Something like that.”
She studies me for a long moment, and I can see her filing that information away. Learning me. The scrutiny should make me uncomfortable. It usually does when people try to look too closely.
With her, I don’t want to hide.
“Well.” She burrows deeper into the pillows. “Your sacrifice is appreciated. And noted. And will be repaid somehow, even if you’re too stubborn to accept rent.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Then what do you want?”
The question lands like a grenade. What do I want? I want to cross this room and climb into that bed beside her. Want to learn every freckle, every sigh, every way her body fits against mine. Want to wake up tomorrow and every day after that with her right where she is now.
I want to keep her.
“For you to stop arguing and go to sleep.”
She snorts. “Charming.”
“Never claimed to be.”
“No.” Her voice is softer now, drowsy. “You claimed me instead.”
Before I can respond, she rolls onto her side, facing away from me. Within minutes, her breathing evens out.
She’s asleep. In my bed. In my cabin.
I set down the book I wasn’t reading and scrub my hands over my face. The couch is exactly as uncomfortable as I expected—too short, too narrow, entirely wrong.
I don’t care.
I lie there in the dark, listening to her breathe, watching the firelight play across the ceiling. This woman, this stranger who’s somehow already under my skin, is wrapped in my blankets, her red hair spilled across my pillow, sleeping in my bed like she belongs there.
It’s unsettling.
I tell myself I’m just fulfilling the agreement. Just solving a problem. Just making sure she’s safe until the cohabitation period runs its course and she can move on to whatever life she was living before I brought her up this mountain.
But watching her sleep in my bed, wrapped in my blankets, I know the truth.
I’m not helping her. I’m keeping her.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
Chapter 3
Jessie
I wake to the smell of coffee, the rhythmic thunk of an ax, and the distant crack of wood splitting.
For a disorienting moment, I don’t know where I am. The ceiling’s wrong. Raw timber instead of the water-stained popcorn texture of the motel. The bed’s wrong too—warm and soft and smelling like pine and something earthier underneath.
Tank.
Memory floods back. The auction. The bid. The one-bed standoff I lost spectacularly when exhaustion hit me like a freight train somewhere around midnight.
I sit up, confused by the flannel shirt wrapped around me that I definitely wasn’t wearing when I fell asleep.
It’s Tank’s. The red and black shirt he tossed over the chair before claiming the couch. I’m swimming in it. The hem hits mid-thigh, and the sleeves flop past my fingertips.
