“Can’t sleep?” Ulysses’s deep voice resonated through the room.
Involuntarily, I put a hand over my heart. As if I could somehow calm the racing. I turned to face him. While I was naked, he wore ablack silk robe. In some ways, the garment was incongruous with the man I knew—soap and water, motorcycle-leather wearing dude. Yet he looked fucking sexy in it.
Again, I shivered.
“You want a blanket?” He moved toward the closet, opened it, and pulled a blanket from the top shelf. “I have more blankets than one man might possibly need. But I always worry about being cold. I suppose because of—” He handed me the scratchy gray wool blanket.
“Because of…?”
He turned to close the closet door. “Doesn’t matter.”
“What if it matters to me?” I could guess—but I wanted to hear it from him.
Our gazes clashed.
He took a deep breath. “Our heat got cut off a few times when I was a kid. That’s all.”
“That’s a lot. My mom and I might’ve had a few lean times, but we always had electricity and wood for the fireplace.”
“You don’t have many fireplaces in four-story walk-ups.”
“In the Downtown Eastside.”
“Yeah.”
I wrapped the blanket around myself. Warmth would be slow in coming because I’d let myself get chilled. Another shiver ran through me.
“Why don’t you come back to bed? I can warm you up. Or we could have a shower. Plenty of things I could do—”
“Why do you have an H.R. Webb novel? A manuscript, right? Do you, I don’t know, write reviews for them or something? Beta reader? ARC reader?” Advance reader copy. Because there had to be some kind of an explanation why he had an unpublished manuscript by one of the biggest thriller writers in Canada. Right?
He sighed. “It’s sort of a long story.” Something flickered in his eyes.
The penny dropped. Or was it the shoe? Both dumb expressions. “You’re H.R. Webb.”
For the first time in our acquaintance, he bit his lower lip. “It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s really not. You’re either a prolific thriller writer who sets their gritty crime dramas in Vancouver or you somehow have gotten a hold of their manuscript—possibly through unethical means.”
“You would believe that of me?”
“I don’t know what to think—you haven’t told me anything. You haven’t given me any kind of an explanation as to why you have this. My feet are getting cold. Hell, they are cold.”
“Come back to bed.” He extended his arm.
I shook my head. “Not until you explain.”
“Ah. Stubborn.”
“Yep. Goes with the red hair—or so my mother tells me.”
“Right. Okay. I am H.R. I’ve been writing these books for almost fifteen years.”
“But, why? I mean, I get why you write—but why do you writeandhave a day job?”
He shrugged. “Being an author has always felt ephemeral. Like it might all end at any moment and I’ll be left with nothing. So it’s easier to just keep fiction writing as a side gig. I put all the royalties aside. I guess, a nest egg, should the worse ever come to pass and I lose myday job.” He emphasized the words.
“Man, I don’t understand. If I could write all day, instead of fighting fires, I totally would.”
