I shake my head no, and he disappears around the corner to get me pills.
Then, just as quickly as he was gone, he returns, hands me the pills and a glass of water. At this point, there’s only a slight hesitation before I take them. If he was a murderer, surely I’d be dead by now.
I toss them back and drink the entire glass of water, and when I come up for air, I catch Rowan watching me with a curious expression.
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat and glancing in the direction of the kitchen. “I fed my starter this morning, so I should probably check on it. Make a loaf.”
The smile that spreads over my face is like the Grinch’s — wide, unfurling slowly. Rowan must notice the glee on my face, because he’s already shaking his head and stepping backward, raising his hands with an expression that saysno, no, no.
“Yourstarter?” I ask, eyebrows raising impossibly high. Because there’s no way this man — this burly mountain man, who went to med school, knows all about technology, and managed to retrieve my suitcase in a thunderstorm — is talking about making sourdough bread.
“Yes, my starter,” he says, crossing his arms, a dash of pink dusting over his cheeks. My breath catches in my throat, and I want to stand up, to brush my thumb over that spot, see if his skin is as warm as it looks.
Of course, he’s attractive. And I’ve noticed that fact far before this point. Digging around in my drone, treating my ankle, all of that was the stuff straight out of a romance novel.
But there’s something about the contrast — thejuxtaposition,my professors would have said — of a strong man like that baking bread that has my mouth going dry.
“You should probably stay in here and rest,” he says, backing away from me slowly, cursing at Cheese when she runs in a figure eight around his calves. She’s obviously on my team.
“Oh, no, Idefinitelyneed to see this,” I say, pushing up from the back of the couch with all my might to get to my feet, wincing when I put weight on my other leg, bracing against the couch as I hobble toward him.
Rowan sighs, looks to the ceiling for a moment, then holds out a hand for me to take, so he can lead me to the kitchen.
CHAPTER 10
ROWAN
“You really shouldn’t be putting too much weight on that ankle.”
Lola seems to ignore me completely, making herself comfortable on a bar stool and dropping her head into her hands like a toddler who’s ready to be entertained. I’m not a fan of how adorable it is, how cute it makes her look. It doesn’t help that she’s still in that matching sweat set; it makes her look so soft.
And sheissoft. I know because she let her side press firmly against mine as I helped her in here, and the heat of that did stupid things to my brain.
I remind myself, yet again, that it would be a horrible, awful idea to do anything with this woman. Not that shewantsto do anything.
But if she did, I wouldn’t. For so many reasons.
Because the last time I let someone in, I was burned. Badly. Because as much as I’m starting to trust her now, it doesn’t mean that she still couldn’t go back to the press. Especially if shefigures out the whole truth of who I am, and what I’m doing up here in the mountains, alone.
Even if neither of those things happens, it’s not like I’m in a good place to date. The only person I see on a semi-regular basis is Pete. What would me pursuing her even look like? Her wearing a wig and driving up here to see me?
And what if the press caught on to more frequent visits?
What if they didn’t, and the strain of this kind of life eventually got to her? What if she realized she didn’t want to jump through so many hoops just to follow the thread of the connection between us?
It’s not like she could do her influencing stuff up here, anyway. I don’t get reception. I don’t even get mail.
You,Elliot might have said, if he heard my going on like this,are putting the cart before the horse, my friend.
Elliot was a fan of stuff like that; the words you might hear from a football coach, or spot in cursive on a throw pillow. When he talked me into attending business conferences with him, the hosts would hurl them at our heads like ammunition, accusing us ofnot reaching our true potential.
I wonder if Hannah ever gets tired of hearing them. Or maybe she loves them. Maybe what she really felt our relationship lacked was tackiness. Maybe if I’d memorized a couple of generic catch phrases, things wouldn’t have gone down the way they did.
“Earth to Rowan,” Lola says, drawing me out of my thoughts and into the present, where this gorgeous woman is sitting in my kitchen, staring at me with big expectant eyes, smelling faintly oflilacs. Is it some sort of perfume? Did she have it in her suitcase? “Can we start the demonstration now?”
Lola is the last thing I need. All she does is ask questions and make me want to answer them. The gruff exterior I’ve worked so hard to develop, the isolation out here, my insistence on avoiding her probing — I can tell it’s only making her more curious.
“This won’t take long,” I say, opening cupboards and taking things out. My kitchen scale, mat, and all the little tools Pete brought for me a few months ago, insisting I needed more hobbies. Some of it is superfluous, for decorating the loaves, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the feeling of making them look nice. “So don’t expect much.”
