She held up an index finger him to stop him. “If you make another old guy joke, I’m going to take every single one of these blankets.”
“Fine. You win.” He rolled off her and pulled the top quilt up to his chin.
“We can’t stay out here forever, you know. We’ll either freeze or starve to death.”
“Probably both in the next hour.”
She cuddled close to his shoulder anyway, and he moved his arm so she could settle against his side. With his chest rising and falling next to hers, she closed her eyes and settled in, more content than she’d felt in months. Maybe years.
Then a thought that skimmed through her mind opened her eyes and made her whole body flinch. It was more than that she’d made a bed for Mick and herself with her mother’s precious quilts. The ones that her dad couldn’t bear to keep in the house following her death. Rachel had also asked Mick to love her. Not have sex. Not have a fun diversion on a Sunday afternoon. Tolove her. And whether Mick, as a new divorcé, was prepared for that—whethershewas ready to admit she wanted something where emotions and not just bodies were involved—she knew in her heart he’d done just that.
Chapter 17
The cold won out eventually. With the quilt they’d rolled as a pillow open over his shoulders, Mick hopped around the room to give his feet minimal contact with the freezing cement while trying not to trip over the blanket. Rachel was on her own hazardous journey with a quilt wrapped around her like a tortilla. He couldn’t help grinning at her hair, poking out in all directions from her ponytail, but she was clearly avoiding looking at him.
Mick knew morning-after regret when he saw it. Only it wasn’t even dinnertime yet. He let his shoulders drop as he looked away and had to grasp the corners of the quilt to avoid streaking across the garage. She might no longer appreciate seeing him that way, even if he couldn’t close his eyes without picturing all of her perfection. Or inhale without breathing in the touch of her perfume that lingered on his skin.
He’d messed up, all right. And he was in over his head.
His chest squeezing, he moved to the truck, its door still hanging open. He grabbed his shirt and boxers that he’d left near the right front tire. A gray sock lay beneath them.
“This is yours.” He held it out to her.
“Do you see the other one?” Rachel asked but didn’t approach.
“Not yet, but here’s one of mine.” His heavy black sock dangled from the top of his boot, but the other one wasn’t anywhere near it. Under the tread of his other boot, he located a second gray sock. “Here’s your other one.”
She must have worked fast, he discovered, as he turned back to find her wearing her zipped coat over the quilt. Her jeans were draped over her arm, and though she’d tightly fisted her hand, satiny black panties that he knew intimately peeked out from the circle of her pinkie.
“I’ll turn away so you can get dressed.”
He did as he said he would until she cleared her throat. Slowly, he looked back to her. She hadn’t moved.
“Um, I still don’t have everything.”
“Right.” Leaning inside the truck door, he found her sweater rolled into a ball on the passenger-side floor mat. He shook it out and added it to the socks he was holding.
“Still not everything.”
She didn’t have to tell him which item she’d lost. He’d never be able to see a red bra again without picturing how amazing she’d looked in hers. But it wasn’t with her sweater.
Her expression pinched, she rounded the truck to the driver’s side and dressed behind that screen. The door they hadn’t opened earlier squeaked when she pulled it wide. She climbed inside, still wearing her coat for a shirt.
“I’ll look under the truck,” he said. “I’m still missing a sock.”
He bent to move outside her line of vision and put on his boxers and jeans. Then folding a blanket for extra padding for his sore knees, he lowered to the floor and peered under the truck. His second sock appeared behind the front tire. Without his phone to use as a flashlight, he smoothed his hand around on the cement, hoping to catch on something lacy.
“Not under here. Found my sock, though. Hey, think there’s any food in the house? Maybe before we start digging through boxes, we could grab a bite—”
He backed out and stood but cut off his words as he found Rachel on her knees on the bench seat, her head bent as she looked behind it. After a few seconds, she reached down and pulled her lacy garment out by a strap.
“Oh, good. You found it.”
Rachel didn’t turn back to him or respond. Instead, she continued examining something behind the seat.
“What else did you find? Tell me it’s not a mouse’s nest.”
He appreciated that she didn’t glance over to see him openly shiver at the thought of that. Without responding, she reached down again and pulled out a messenger bag with a thick shoulder strap. The bag didn’t look particularly special, its light brown leather scarred, but Rachel cradled it as though it were precious.
