“Ten minutes.” He took the lead again, moving more cautiously now until the trail widened. He took a cut off the main trail, and we slid down a muddy slope and came to a small cabin. I reached the door first and tried the handle.
“Locked. We can’t go in.” I knew Doc Murphy—he’d been our family doctor when I was growing up. There was no way I wanted to bust down his door.
“We can’t stay out here,” he shouted back over the roar of the wind.
I shook my head, not one to bend the rules to that extent, regardless of the weather. Anyway, we already got some benefit just from being next to the building, blocking off the pounding rain from one side. We could shelter on the tiny porch until the worst of it passed.
“Going in,” Jake said and lifted a frog statue on the porch to reveal a key. He shoved it in the lock, and we stumbled into the cabin, drenched and dripping, but safe from the storm.
“You knew the key was there all along,” I accused him.
“Yeah,” he grinned. Soaked from head to toe and covered with mud from his fall, he should have looked ridiculous. But that grin was as electric as the lightning bolts outside. And just as dangerous to women, I decided. “But I liked watching you face a moral dilemma.”
“Jake Thorne, you’re a dog.”
“You like dogs,” he said. “I even heard a rumor that you stole a dog once. That true?”
“I won’t confirm or deny that statement.” I preferred to think that I’d rescued Fay from an abusive owner, but the truth was I’d taken her and hidden her away until they stopped searching. Maybe I wasn’t such a rule follower after all.
FOUR
JAKE
“Cold,” she said, rubbing her arms with her hands. Her normally curly hair had been flattened by the rain and hung around her shoulders like a damp curtain. Her shirt clung to her curves, concealing nothing.
I pulled my gaze away from her. This was no time to think about that. She was freezing, and I needed to do something about it. “Colorado weather,” I mused. “Especially this time of year. I’ll get a fire going.” The cabin was damp with disuse, but there was firewood in the box. I grabbed several pieces and knelt in front of the stone fireplace, making a pyramid of the logs.
“Not like that,” she said, coming to kneel next to me, her shoulder brushing against mine. “It’ll never light. You’ve got to stack them like this.” She rearranged the logs, changing the pattern.
“I’ve built plenty of fires,” I gritted out. Thousands.
“Yeah, but did you get them to take off? I don’t think so. Get the matches.” She could be downright bossy. Two could play at that game. I reached for the box of matches on the mantel but heldthem out of her reach. “What are you doing?” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Holding out until you come to your senses about the fire. Keep in mind that I’m not the one who’s shivering,” I said. She was, and my mother would thump me over the head for allowing a lady to be cold when I had the means to fix it. But something in her brought out the contrarian in me.
She rose and backed off. “Have it your way.”
I quickly rearranged the logs to suit me, added kindling, and struck a match. In a few minutes, the fire was burning strongly, so I carefully fed it more wood. When I was satisfied that it was set, I took a step back and looked at Julia. She’d moved on from shivering to shaking with cold. “Get out of your wet clothes before you catch a chill,” I said. I was starting to feel the cold myself. The fire was great, but it wouldn’t be enough to get us warm when we were still soaked through. I peeled off my shirt.
“What are you doing?” She shot me a look.
“It’s the only way to warm up. You know as well as I do that your wet clothes are making you colder.” I unlaced my boots and kicked them off before peeling off my socks. I unbuttoned my shorts, pushed them down my legs, and stepped out of them. If I’d been alone, I’d have stripped off my boxers as well, but I thought better of that with Julia present. I hung my clothes on a line Doc Murphy had near the fire so they could dry.
When I turned, I caught her eyes focused on my body and had to suppress a smile. She was checking me out. Or was she? She’d stomped on the idea of me taking her out at the bar last night. So was the attraction all in my head? I couldn’t tell. Either she was sending me mixed messages or maybe my radar was wrong.
“Come on, join me,” I coaxed. “I promise, you’ll feel better the minute you do.”
For a second I thought she wouldn’t give in, but her practicality seemed to win out—as did her shivering. She kicked off her shoes and shed her T-shirt and shorts quickly enough. I tried not to look, but hell,shehad, so I took a good gander at her in sports bra and panties. Her body was trim with long lean muscles developed from actual physical labor, not working out. Julia Lett was a gorgeous woman.
“Give me your clothes,” I said. When she handed them over, I hung them next to mine. By the time I was finished with that, she’d found a couple of blankets in a chest. She handed me one and wrapped herself in the other, and we sat inches apart on a small sofa pulled up in front of the fire.
“That’s better,” she said, but her teeth were still chattering and she was visibly shaking. “Don’t mind me. I get cold easily, and then it takes forever to warm back up.” She hugged the blanket closer around her.
The good news was, I decided, that hypothermia was highly unlikely. But then I’d never been one to test the power of mother nature, and who knew how much worse the storm would get? Without bothering to analyze it more than that, I lifted her up, blanket and all, and placed her on my lap.
“What are you doing?” She immediately tried to squirm away.
“Warming you up.” I began rubbing my hands over her arms and back through the blanket. She stiffened but didn’t move away.
