She laughed before she could stop herself and then slowly let her body relax against his heated front. “Upside down, huh? I don’t think so.”
“Hmmm,” he rumbled, pulling her closer. “Go to sleep, Agent Laurel Snow. I need my beauty rest.”
This intimacy with him was too alluring. Too appealing. His playful after-sex side was no doubt reserved for only a special few. Her eyelids grew heavy.
Then his phone buzzed.
He reached down to the floor to shake out his pants and retrieve his phone. “Rivers,” he barked. His body stiffened behind her. “When? How many? Okay. Get a full team, and I’ll meet you at the base in twenty. I have my pack here.” He clicked off.
She turned around to face him. “What happened?”
“Lost snowmobilers on Titan Cliffs. They were supposed to be back hours ago, but nobody called it in.” He stood.
She sat up, holding the covers to her chest. “You could drop me off on the way.”
He was already turning to grab clothing, distancing himself in more ways than one. “No. Your house is in the opposite direction. Just get some sleep. I’ll take you home later.”
She kept the covers in place. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted anything more than one night. Even so, she waited until he’d loped into the kitchen before dropping the covers and fetching her clothing.
Her right inner thigh still ached from his bite.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Laurel spent the morning knitting and working through the puzzle of the case in Huck’s quiet kitchen. She finished her coffee just as he strode through the doorway and hung his snow-filled coat on the hook in the alcove. “Hi.” Aeneas ran for the kitchen and jumped on his bowl of food, shaking snow off as he landed.
“Hi.” Huck’s eyes were bloodshot and his movements slow. “Sorry it took so long to make it back.”
“No problem.” She poured another cup of coffee and walked barefoot across the kitchen to hand it to him. “I assume search and rescue is part of your job.”
He accepted the coffee and drank half of it down. “Thanks.”
Should she feel awkward? She did. Yes, she felt awkward. Interesting. Long ago, she’d banished that feeling from her repertoire. People didn’t understand her, and that was all right. So why now? “Um, did you find the lost snowmobilers?”
“We did, and they’re all going to be fine. Two are at the hospital being treated, one for frostbite and the other for a broken leg. Three others are fine but hungry and tired.” He rolled his shoulders and then kicked off his boots, holding his coffee with one strong hand. “They got caught in a spill and were smart enough to dig in and stay warm. We had to carry one guy out on a litter, and that’s why I’m so late.” He glanced at her face, his expression inscrutable. “That’s quite a bruise. How’s the rest of you?”
“Slightly sore but nothing bad,” she said. A purple lump had risen beneath her right eye, and with the bandage above her eyebrow, she looked as if she’d taken a bat to the face. The bruises across her ribs and down her side were uniformly purple, as was the strap mark across her upper chest. “I did borrow some ibuprofen.”
“Good.” He looked at the clock hanging next to the mantel. “I’ll take a quick shower and then run you to work. Monty texted earlier and requested a task force meeting sometime early next week. We might need to use your office. Apparently Fish and Wildlife is having trainings in their conference room all week.”
“Your office,” she reminded him. “You’re with Fish and Wildlife.”
He shook his head. “I work for F&W, but I’m not part of the office. My desk there is temporary.”
A horn honked outside. She winced. “I wasn’t sure when you’d get here, so I called Kate to pick me up.” Then she looked down. “I was able to wash and dry my skirt, but my sweater was a mess, so I borrowed this shirt. Is that okay?” The shirt was long and gray, and tucked into her skirt, looked fashionably too big.
“Uh, yeah.” He drank the rest of the coffee and turned to look out the window. The distance between them widened enough that even a woman unable to read subtext caught the tension.
She slipped into her boots. “Thank you.” Maybe contemplation later would explain why this felt so uncomfortable. “I’ll see you at work.”
His smile was both tired and relieved. “Yeah.”
She hurried to the door, securing her laptop in her bag with her gun and phone in it. “All right. See you then.” She opened the door.
“Laurel?”
She partially turned around. “Yes?”
“This was a one-off.” He set the cup on the table by the door, his expression unreadable. “Just thought I’d make that clear.”
