I nodded because what else did you do after pouring your heart out to a stranger? “It had better be tasty and expensive.”
Twenty minutes later,after Knox made a phone call and then drove somewhere—after making me promise not to leave our one-room hideout—he came back with an insulated bag of food.
“How is this macaroni and cheese so good?” I asked before shoving another bite of the creamy dish into my mouth. It was just noodles and cheese, but it exploded with flavor on my tongue with each bite.
He laughed. “Dolly knows how to cook. We ate here all the time when I used to work for Calder full time.”
“You were here in South Carolina?” That didn’t seem right. I swear I’d remember having seen someone as hot as him. Sure, Calder had hot guys here all the time, but Knox was a special kind of hot.
The kind that made my stomach end up in knots.
He shrugged. “On and off. I was normally somewhere else, and that’s when he had offices up the coast, too.”
“You have to eat up because once you get back to Alaska and the snow blocks you in, there won’t be Dolly’s mac and cheese.” I laughed at his serious expression.
Knox told me all about his life in Alaska and living in a cabin similar to the one we were in now. And his rescued dog Whiteout. As much as I loved the sun and sand of Tidehaven, Fairplay Mountain in Alaska sounded pretty amazing too.
He finally chuckled. “True, but there will be chili, stew, burgers, and anything else I can throw in a pot and cook all day. Plus, I’ve heard some of the guys have McDonald’s burgers in their freezers for mid-winter snacks.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “That doesn’t help sell the place.”
Knox opened his mouth to respond as he finished his thick grilled turkey sandwich, but his phone buzzed and gave two quick beeps on the table, almost skidding its way across the surface. He stared at it for a millisecond before snatching it up with concern. His response instantly set my stomach back into worry mode.
“Calder said they just adjusted the storm’s path. It’s swinging west and heading right for us, like we’d worried would happen.”
I glanced out the small window to our right. The moss hanging from the oak trees twisted in the breeze. We hadn’t noticed the wind picking up as we’d been talking. “It wasn’t even cloudy earlier.”
That lump in my stomach that I’d almost gotten over—well, told myself I had to wait to deal with until I could have a good cry about the loss of Maribel—came back in full force.
“It was supposed to skirt the coast,” Knox said, studying his phone. “Now it’s almost a direct hit.”
I finished the mac and cheese. No point in wasting good food, even if my stomach was questioning my choices. “How long do we have?”
“Based on this radar, it’s going to hit early tomorrow morning,” Knox said, shaking his head. “People won’t have enough warning.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a tropical storm, and everyone knows they can change course. We’re always a little prepared. Probably like you and snow.”
Honestly, with all the things that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, a tropical storm was the least of my worries. I’d been preparing for it to shift because the manatees had been acting weird for the last two days. They always knew before the meteorologists.
He lifted his left eyebrow. “Why aren’t you panicking yet?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m saving it for later.” I dropped my plastic fork in the takeaway container.
Knox nodded once as the first few drops of rain pelted against the cabin’s windows. It was moving in quickly. “Good.”
“Good?” What man said good when a woman told him she was saving up for a freak-out?
“Yeah,” he said, standing up and taking my stuff to throw it away. Someone had packed the mini-fridge with food, so even if the storm hit, we’d be well-stocked. Better than anything I had in my apartment. “If you weren’t, I’d worry you were a psychopath.”
“Don’t get too comfortable. There’s always a chance.”
His smile grew as he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it onto the back of his dinner chair. An enormous wall of chiseled muscle greeted me from his torso. I blinked, trying not to lose consciousness.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pretending his muscles didn’t wow me but that his undressing annoyed me. Maybe it was natural, but his skin almost twinkled in the cabin’s overhead light. Not like a sparkly vampire, but as if he’d spent a day in the sun and then was oiled down. I wanted to run my hands over the smooth skin of his chest followed by my tongue.
Stop it, Emerson. Get a grip.
I couldn’t let him catch me drooling.
