She set down one pup, then the other, as she shrugged out of her puffy coat.And left it lying on the floor, he noticed.Something he wanted to use as more evidence that she was a walking disaster of epic proportions, especially here in his ruthlessly tidy little house.But, sadly, he suspected she left it on the floor so it wouldn’t leave a puddle on his couch.
Then she scooped up the puppies again and took them with her as she went and squatted down in front of his fire.She ended up cross-legged, holding them in her lap and cooing at them.Murmuring soft little words as she kissed them on their heads and used the towels to rub each pup in turn.
Only when she seemed satisfied with the state of the puppies did she look up at him again.And when she did, she frowned.“Your guy could stand to warm up a bit more too,” she said.
Feeling simultaneously chastened and outraged that she dared chastise him at all, Tennessee found himself doing her bidding anyway.He walked across his own goddamned living room and sat himself down in front of the fire next to her with three damp bundles of mournful little puppies between them.
What the hell washappeningright here in his own house where there was never any chaos of any kind, he could not have said.
“They all look pretty good despite being out there for who knows how long,” Matilda murmured, but Tennessee got the distinct impression that she wasn’t talking to him.
She checked each of the puppies all over, then handed each towel-wrapped bundle to him as if he’d signed up for all of this.As if he was complicit in her… whole thing.
He didn’t know why he was letting this continue, but then again, was he really so far gone that he was thinking he might toss a woman with literal puppies out of his house in the middle of the night?In the driving, howling snow?
That he had to ask was probably answer enough.
Tennessee settled for glaring at her, but that wasn’t helpful.She was still wearing that impossibly yellow hat.It was still blinding.Her icicle braids were melting, dripping onto the scrub top she wore, leaving a spreading stain of water on each shoulder that she didn’t seem to notice.
He couldn’t look away.
Not even when he realized that the long-sleeved shirt she wore beneath the scrub top was patterned and the pattern was mushrooms and foxes and what looked like ferrets with spectacles.
Looking at Matilda made him feel like he was losing his sanity.
“I wish people wouldn’t have puppies if they were just going to discard them like this,” Matilda was muttering.This time she was talking to him, he understood, when she lifted her head and leveled that frown on him.Like he’d mounted an argument.“Look at them.They’re adorable.”
“All puppies are adorable,” Tennessee said gruffly.“All baby animals, specifically mammals, are adorable.It’s how they stay alive.”
Matilda lifted that disconcerting gaze of hers to his.Those gray eyes that almost every member of her family seemed to have.On her, they couldn’t seem to decide between gray and blue, but they were always grave.
She didn’t look away.Or blink.“Being cute isn’t going to help them survive a February snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains, Tennessee.”
Now she was talking to him as if she was a schoolteacher and he was an errant student, and he did not know how it was that she felt empowered to do that.In his house,which she had entered and commandeered against his will.He also did not know why he was reacting as if he wasn’t older than her, significantly more responsible than her, and more to the point,notsome close friend of hers that should expect her to drop in on him at any time.
He wasn’t even sure Matilda Starkhadfriends.She never seemed to have any use for people.Only animals.
“Matilda.”
He tried to sound pleasant, but that was a stretch at the best of times, and this was an absurd situation that needed to end.And quickly, because he had his usual early morning coming in hot.
So Tennessee tried again.“What the hell is going on?You have your own house where, according to everything I have ever heard about you, you have any number of animals at any time.Why are you here in mine instead?”
Chapter Two
Tennessee Lisle wasmaddeningly stern.He was effectively humorless in all social situations she’d ever witnessed.He usually stared at her like she was a bug that ought to be pinned to a wall and studied for deformities, and he stared at her a lot.
He was also quite possibly the hottest and most attractive man that Matilda Stark had ever seen.
Tennessee was a grumpy pillar of the Cowboy Point community.An obnoxiously good cook, who singlehandedly elevated that diner of his into something special that had tourists lined up around halfway down the street in summer.The head of his historic family even though he was not wizened and ancient like the only living Stark of the previous generation, Matilda’s uncle Steven.
And, not least, he was an oblivious idiot.
Matilda had been head over heels in love with him for as long as she could remember, a personality flaw on her part that she had spent years attempting to iron out.To no avail.
Probably because she’d never operated an iron in her life.
Tonight she had seized the opportunity presented by a litter of sweet little puppies to approach the problem from a different direction entirely.She’d assumed that proximity would sort the whole thing out for her, the way it did in the books her sister loved to read and now sold, but she’d miscalculated.
