But it’s better than blurting out she's the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen and the thing that might actually finish me off is her eyes, so… I've got that going for me.
“Do you have a towel?” she asks. “I forgot mine.”
I dig through the saddlebag until I find the blanket buried at the bottom, past a coil of paracord, a folding knife, and a flask of whiskey.
I hand it over without looking directly at her. “This'll have to do.”
Once she wraps it around herself I figure I'm safe.
Nope. Her wide blue eyes and that smile hits me like a million volts of electricity.
“Big fan of dinosaurs?” she asks, looking down at the T-Rex print fleece blanket.
“My son is,” I answer gruffly.
Her gaze softens. “Well, thank you. I’ll launder it and give it back to Mr. Rhodes when he comes by the bookstore next week.”
She takes a step towards her car, a well-maintained but old Ford Explorer with tires that won’t make it through another Montana winter.
I frown. She needs to get those replaced before the snow starts.
Isn’t anyone looking out for this girl?
“You shouldn't swim alone in that lake,” I say.
She freezes. The smile freezes too. “Pardon?”
“Water that cold can put you into shock. Make you start gasping. You could drown.”
The more I think about it, the more it irritates me.
“And you didn’t even have a towel? How were you gonna get yourself warm, if I wasn’t here?”
Her eyes flash. The smile is all gone now. “I’ve got sweatpants and a sweatshirt in my trunk. I know how to warm up my body all by myself, thank you.”
Filthy thoughts flood my mind immediately. Every single one of them involving me and her body and the job of warming it up myself.
I shut that down hard.
“Next time, come prepared,” I tell her. “Bring a towel. Wearing an actual fucking swim suit.”
Ooh, now I’ve made her mad. Those blue eyes flash again. “It’s none of your business what I wear.”
“It is when you’ve got an apparent death wish.”
“Death wish?” Her eyes widen. “I was swimming, not BASE jumping off a cliff.”
“In freezing water. By yourself.” Each point makes me angrier. “You got any idea how fast hypothermia sets in? How many people we pull out of alpine lakes every summer?”
“We?” She tightens her grip on the dinosaur blanket. She’s spitting mad and trying to hide it, and somehow it only makes her cuter. “You a park ranger now? Or just an entitled rancher who thinks he owns the whole mountain?”
“I do own this mountain.”
“Far as I know, it’s your daddy who does. And he said I could swim here anytime I wanted.”
This is the girl my father called sweet?
She’s more venom than sugar. A damn copperhead snake.
