Whatever. “I’m not worried about some man with a name like Rex.”
Why in the world were he and Calder worried about something so ridiculous?
“You should be.”
I turned Princess Penelope around as much as she’d let me. “What I’m really worried about is if she’s a princess or a prince. Do you see balls?”
Knox’s mouth hung open. “I am not looking for cat balls,” he said in utter disgust.
His sheer expression of absolute discontent set me off, and I repositioned Princess Penelope back on my shoulder as the laugh broke free.
The next morningI rolled over, my arm flopped on the bed, and I jarred awake when it hit a body.
A human body.
“Morning, sunshine,” Knox said in bed next to me. “I told you we’d get through.”
I wanted to say something snotty back, but at the sight of his naked chest, my brain went blank. “Whatever.”
“We didn’t even need a pillow wall like you wanted.”
My mouth fell open, but then I snapped it closed in case I had morning breath. “You suggested the line of pillows.”
We’d battened down the hatches—as my grandpa liked to say—and then Knox cooked us a dinner from the cabin’s cupboard. We spent the rest of the evening sitting around the cabin, weathering the storm, and discussing life.
Knox told me all about his life in Alaska. Every story he told made the place seem more reasonable. Happy and perfect, even.
At some point we’d ended up in bed—just talking—and I fell asleep listening to stories of his cabin and how he couldn’t wait for the first big snowfall. It also seemed like he missed his dog Whiteout.
We didn’t talk about the kiss.
Or his suggestion that I make Alaska my next great adventure.
And if he wasn’t going to bring it up, I wasn’t going to bring it up either.
The silence stretched out for another minute as we stared at one another until Princess Penelope jumped on the bed and head-butted Knox.
“She likes you,” I said, grabbing her from his pillow.
He smiled. “She’s not the worst.”
That was an improvement. Give him any more time and he’d fall in love with her.
The quiet settled in, and I got nervous. “Well, I guess it’s time to brush my teeth.”
Knox watched as I practically sprinted out of bed and raced to the bathroom. I swear I even heard him chuckle as I closed the bathroom door. But screw him. Someone had to do something. If one of us hadn’t gotten out of that bed, we’d end up kissing again.
And I was not kissing the SEAL for a second time.
A little while later, I stepped out onto the porch right behind Knox. He threw a fit about getting to go first. It’s like he expected there to be ninjas waiting for us.
“See, it’s fine,” I said as I walked out and then paused and sucked in a breath. It was not fine. Everything smelled… clean, fresh, as if Mother Nature wiped the slate clean. The sky wasa washed-out blue with happy, fluffy clouds floating past us, leaving shadows behind.
“For a storm that sounded like God himself was calling, it really isn’t that bad,” Knox said.
I pointed to the far side of the cabin. A massive oak with Spanish moss pooled around it lay sprawled out in the yard. Its roots were exposed, as if someone had yanked it from the ground. “Just that one tree.”
Probably the one we heard fall.
