An arm shot around her waist.
Strong. Fast. And impossibly secure.
She collided with a broad chest for the second time in two days. Once again, the impact knocked the air from her lungs.
“Careful,” Jakob murmured. His breath brushed her ear, warm despite the cold.
Her breath left her in a shaky rush as she stared at the lapel of his coat while her fingers instinctively curled into the fabric. Again “Are you following me?”
His chest rumbled with a low laugh beneath her palm. “I got my, um, king stuff done so came to catch up with you.”
That should not have made her heart leap.
She straightened and stepped back just enough to regain her dignity, but her foot slipped again on an icy patch. Jakob caught her bare hand before she even realized she was falling.
So fast. Too fast.
A jolt of heat shot up her arm, and she gasped softly. Jakob froze too, just for a fraction of a second, like he’d felt it as well.
Their hands stayed linked a moment too long.
The trees around them loomed tall and quiet while the branches creaked softly from the frozen weather. The path lights illuminated their breath in the cold air.
A shout echoed faintly from the resort behind them and made Mallory suddenly aware of how far she’d wandered.
“Why are you out here alone?” Jakob asked, his voice velvet-dark and far too intimate for the distance between them.
Mallory’s panicked brain blurted out the first thought that came to mind. “I…I was talking to a bird.”
His brows shot up and it was obvious that she had genuinely surprised him.
She winced and pointed to the resting starling. “I wasn’t actually talking to it. I mean, I talked, but it didn’t talk back. Obviously. Birds don’t talk, of course. Well, some do, but not that one.”
“So, it didn’t have the common courtesy to answer you?”
She snarked back. “Not yet, but maybe if you hadn’t interrupted us, it would have.”
Jakob closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “Mallory,” he whispered, sounding almost pained, “you’re going to be the end of me.”
Her stomach flipped hard enough she thought she might tip over again.
His thumb brushed her knuckles before he released her, and the absence felt more than the touch itself. Her skin still tingled where he’d held her.
When he opened his eyes again, they burned with an intensity that made her knees wobble.
Somewhere in the distance, the resort lights glowed warm and safe. Ahead of them, the trees whispered softly where the path narrowed into shadow.
And standing there beneath the darkening sky, surrounded by quiet and a man who felt far too steady beside her, Mallory knew, without understanding why, that this wasn’t just her imagination.
This was the beginning of something important.
CHAPTER 5
Jakob
The world shouldn’t have felt different because of one human woman, and yet somehow it did.
Jakob walked beside Mallory and led her along the narrow pathway that led back to the resort. Their boots crunched softly and pines rose on either side of them like silent sentinels.
