Jameson’s jaw tightened at that, pulling me closer against his side.
“This has been the best vacation of my life,” I announced somewhere around three in the morning, my head using his chest as a pillow. I could feel his heartbeat beneath my cheek, steady and strong. “I feel more relaxed right now than I have in years. Maybe ever.”
It was true. There was a looseness in my muscles, and a quietness in my mind that I’d forgotten was possible.
“Good,” Jameson’s voice was a satisfied rumble. “That was the goal.”
“I’ve decided something,” I said, tracing idle patterns through the hair that led down to his happy trail.
“Yeah?”
“I’m quitting my job.AndI’m getting a cat.”
He chuckled. “Big decisions. Hopefully, it’s going to be a normal house cat and not a mountain lion. What else have you decided?”
I thought about it, and aboutallthe possibilities that suddenly seemed open to me in a way they hadn’t been before tonight.
About Red Oak Mountain and rustic cabins and blue-eyed mountain men who made me feel alive for the first time in years.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted shyly.
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head and didn’t push for more, and I loved him a little more for that.
As the fire crackled low and Jameson’s breathing deepened toward sleep, I lay awake wondering what he thought about what we’d just done. Had it meant something to him, or was I just another tourist passing through?
He’d said he avoided relationships, and that it was easier not to let people in. Was tonight an exception or just a pleasant diversion from his solitary life?
I almost couldn’t believe it had happened at all.
This morning I’d been a burned-out data analyst on a solo vacation, trying to throw away a ring from a man who’d never really wanted me.
Now I was naked in the arms of a stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger at all, in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, with a broken historical bed as evidence of exactly how thoroughly I’d beenwelcomedto Red Oak Mountain.
My friends back home weren’t going to believe it when I told them about my little Ozark getaway. But part of me wished this wasn’t just a diversion from real life. I wanted tonight to be my new reality.
Something inside me clenched with fear as it dawned on me that Ilikedthis man.
I liked him in a way I’d never managed to feel about Colin, even after two years together.
And now that I knew Jameson existed, Ididn’twant to let him go again.
That’s when I realized this little vacation of mine was going to end in heartbreak.
Would one night with him be enough? Could I hold the memories of this man close to my chest through all of my remaining days?
Because something told me I’d never feel this way about any other man again.
Chapter 8
Jameson
The storm had passed sometime in the night, leaving behind the clean smell of rain-washed earth and the distant drip of water from the eaves.
The fire had burned low.
And sometime between midnight and morning, reality had crept back in.
Leah was a tourist.
