“You can’t be serious,” I mutter weakly. “What did I do to deserve this?”
Winnie snorts. “You never got the chance. I married Brad straight after school and made my own mess.” Her usual smile droops at the mention of her ex.
All Cord issues forgiven, I snuggle closer. “Hallmark Channel?” I suggest, ever hopeful.
“No way. GOT reruns?”
“Ahh, the gore. Nopity.”
Finally, Winnie talks me intoPride and Prejudice and Zombies,though I make a strong case for the Colin Firth 1995 version. She drifts off about halfway through, and I trudge on alone.
After a while, my senses dull to the messy scenes, but the female characters remind me too much of my own state. I flick the movie off. In her bedroom, Sally snores as loudly as her mother. Living in a townhouse hasn’t been my natural state for years, though I’m grateful for a place to crash. Even so, the warmth in the close four walls is stifling. Any building is too crowded after the open air of the forests and months of sleeping on the ground.
Grabbing my wolf blanket that’s growing frayed at one end—not a bad thing, I prefer that it sees some use than none at all—I slip out the front door to sit on the stoop. The cold night breeze is a poor replacement for frigid mountain air, but right now, I’ll take it. My back pocket buzzes. I extract my phone with no small degree of awkwardness, unwilling to move too much in my huddle of warmth.
A single-word message flashes on the screen.
CORD
Cold?
Dark leather boots appear at the edge of my vision. I look up into Cord’s face. Shadows hide his eyes.
“Not really.” I tilt my head to one side, assessing him, and pat the top step, offering a tiny corner of my blanket. “Share?”
“The cold doesn’t bother me anymore.” He perches on the step beside me, sliding his arm around the outside of the blanket to draw me into his side.
“Mm-hmm.” I don’t really object to the contact, despite the questions roiling inside me, each desperate to launch out of me first. I fidget with the ear of the wolf crocheted into the blanket, flicking the soft threads back and forth.
Cord is silent for a moment, his arm stiff at my back before he blows out a long breath. “I haven’t thought about much apart from you,” he admits, running his other hand over his short hair.
I smile into my hands. “You’ve been a distraction to me, too, ranch boy. My stats suck when I can’t focus.”
“Winnie said she spoke to you.” Cord’s back goes rigid. “Said she told you about myhabit.” He spits the last word with distaste. At himself, maybe.
I shrug, trying to be the woman we apparently both want me to be. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” His arm tightens around me.
“I’m going back to Alaska.”
“You’re nothing like them.”
We speak at the same time, and it takes me a second to decipher what I heard. Cord beats me to it.
“You’re heading to Alaska?” His fingers trace a pattern over my shoulder.
I resume fidgeting, wishing it were as therapeutic as I pretend it is. Dammit, I still can’t focus around him. “Maybe. I don’t know. A grant might have come through. It’s not confirmed yet, but it would let me complete the research I cut short last month.”
“I see.” Cord stares out at the street, every inch of him that’s pressed to me hard and unyielding.
And intimidating as all hell.
I hadn’t realized that’s how Cordell Rand must appear to the rest of Montana until right now. What Winnie talked about. Now? He’s scary as fuck.
My motormouth kicks in with its regular people-based defensive mechanism. An often unused one, as wolves don’t make me half as nervous as the man seated beside me. “Anyway. Nothing is confirmed, but the research trip might be a long-term thing and would mean being out there for long stretches. For now, I’m uploading my data for my article.” I blather on when he probably can’t care less. “The pups haven’t reached maturity yet and I’m keen to go back and…” I keep talking. Eventually, I’ll run out of crap to blab about and stop.
The whole time, Cord sits rock-still beside me, the usual warmth of him gone.
