I needed to get some sleep. I had a full day in front of me tomorrow. There were enough claims on the mountain that I’d be busy here for at least three days.
But as I was slipping closer to sleep, his arm drifted across the blanket, settling near my waist. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him through the quilts, a warmth that made my whole body ache.
My feet still felt like ice. They were always running cold. And that one moment when our legs had collided, I’d felt the heat rolling off of him.
Maybe I can warm up for just one second.
I wiggled my feet toward his legs, just barely brushing against him. The relief was immediate, his body heat seeping into my frozen toes, and I let out a breath of relief.
He didn’t wake. His snores continued, soft and steady, and his arm stayed where it was, a warm weight that I wanted desperately to roll toward.
But I stayed where I was on the far side of the bed until sleep finally came for me.
Chapter 4
Clayton
A crack of thunder woke me up.
Lightning flashed through the curtains, and I lay there staring at the ceiling while Rachel shivered beside me.
The space heater was doing its best, but its best wasn’t much against an Ozark cold snap with no backup. My only fireplace was in the living room, and I mentally put installing a woodstove at the top of my to-do list. As soon as I found a couple thousand dollars to throw at that project.
I did some fast math. I could do the work myself, which would save money, but the materials wouldn’t be free.
Even without the cost of installation, it would still run me about 5K, which was 5K higher than what was in my bank account right now.
Rachel made a small sound in her sleep, something between a whimper and a sigh, and her whole body trembled under the blankets.
Everything in me yearned to warm her up, even though IknewI should stay on my side of the bed.
Not just because she was a paying guest in my home and not a woman who’d followed me back after a night of flirting. But also because she wasnotmy kind of woman.
Rachel’s blood probably only pumped when she saw an enticing spreadsheet. She was the kind of woman who probably had a color-coded system for her sock drawer. And, on top of that, she was a big-city woman, and I was most definitely a small-town kind of guy.
What the fuck. Am I planning our wedding here?
It wasn’t my fault that my body had gone rogue and wanted to fuck her. But it’s not like I was trying to catch her for good.
I wonder what it would be like to sleep with a woman like her?
I didn’t really have a type, but my previous girlfriends had all been born and raised right here on Red Oak Mountain. They were soft, tender women with sweet dispositions. The only master’s degree they had was in batting their lashes at a man. And that training started early, so it was in their DNA.
Rachel, from what little I knew of her, didn’t have anything in common with the women of Red Oak Mountain, except I suspected she knew how to wield her sex appeal as a weapon, just like they did.
I’d caught a glance inside her luggage when she’d started unpacking last night. She had all her things carefully encapsulated in matching bags inside a tiny carry-on travel bag. What kind of woman does that? One who thinks it’s a priority to own matching travel organizers.
That, coupled with the impractical heels and topped off by the fancy nails, told me everything I needed to know. Rachel was accustomed to a certain lifestyle that was way above my paygrade.
Dating a woman like her would be expensive.
But she was cold, and I knew exactly how to fix it.
I got up quietly and grabbed the extra blankets from the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, the ones my mom had quilted years ago when she still had the sharp eyes needed for it. I layered them over Rachel, studying the loose strands that had escaped from that tight bun she’d had it in earlier. She looked softer like this. Less like a walking corporate policy manual and more like a woman who’d had a really long day.
The blankets helped, but not enough. She was still trembling in her sleep.
I climbed back into bed and shifted toward the center of the mattress, close enough that I could feel the cold radiating off her even through the layers between us. Then I slid my arm across her waist, keeping the blankets between us like a force field.
