Damn it. She’d fixed his cup without even thinking about it. “It’s not hard to remember you take your coffee black.”
He stepped closer. “But you still remembered.”
She did her best to ignore the way her skin reacted to him being so close and sipped her coffee. Not bad for instant, but she wasn’t going to give up her French press.
“Rowan, about what happened—”
She moved around him. “I’m going to shower and get dressed, then take you to your car.”
* * *
Rowan carriedher clothes and the few belongings she’d brought with her to the car and put them on the floor in the back. Going back inside, she passed Luke standing in the middle of the cabin.
“Is there something I can help with?” he asked.
“No. I need to turn off the generator and then we can go.”
“What about the food in the fridge?”
She glared at the fridge, blew out a breath, and thought seriously about leaving what little food there was just to cut down the minutes she had to spend with Luke, but she didn’t know when Claudia’s parents planned on visiting the cabin. They probably wouldn’t appreciate being greeted by spoiled food.
“I need to get that, too.”
“I’ll grab it,” he said.
“Sure. There’s a couple of grocery bags under the sink.” She grabbed the keys for the padlock and left through the back door without waiting to see if he found them.
She shut off the generator and made sure the lock was closed tight. Back inside, she hung the keys back on the hook and threw the bolt on the back door. Luke pushed opened the front door as she reached for the handle and she took a quick step back to avoid getting hit with it.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s fine. Did you get everything out of the fridge?”
“Yes. I also grabbed the trash bag and put it in the trunk of your car—I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s fine.” She wasn’t annoyed he’d put the bag in her car. She was annoyed she hadn’t thought to grab it and he had. Which made absolutely no sense at all—it was trash. Who cared?
She did, because even for something so insignificant, she’d had to rely on him for it. The sooner they got down the mountain, the better. “Do you have anything else you need to get?”
He rubbed the palms of his hands down his t-shirt, over the front pockets of his jeans, then around to his butt. “Nope. This is all I have.”
She barely stopped herself from her initial, knee-jerk reaction of asking if he wanted to check again. They didn’t have that kind of relationship anymore. They didn’t have any kind of relationship.
Instead, she gestured toward the door and her means of escape. “Let’s go then.”
She pulled the door closed behind them and stowed the front door key back in the lockbox. Settled into the driver’s seat, she started the car and plugged her phone into the charger. Trying to ignore his warm, looming presence in the passenger seat, she turned the car toward the road.
“Now that I’ve got you here,” he said.
She turned her head enough to look at him out of the corner of her eye.
“We need to talk about this.”
“We don’t need to talk about anything, Luke.”
“I missed you, Rowan.”
She pressed the brakes hard, forcing him to brace his hand on the dash to avoid hitting it, and the car slid on the road. “I missed you too, Luke. I missed you for a long, miserable year. I missed you every time you didn’t return my calls or texts. I missed you every time you didn’t answer an email. I missed you right up until the time you showed up to the Academy of Country Music awards with some up-and-coming country star on your arm and I realized I had to stop missing you. So I did.
