She leaned to the side to look around him at the guts of his truck. “You’re fixing it now?”
“What other option do I have?” he asked with a shrug.
She shook her head. “Oh my gosh, come inside, will you? At least wait until it stops raining. You look like something they just pulled out of the river.”
“Thanks,” he said, with a roll of his eyes. “Now I feel way better.”
She led him to the main cabin, the one that was already on the property before she added the other three, and invited him inside. This cabin was bare wood, far more rustic than the others. It was set apart from the guest suites, and Cole suspected that was part of the point. This was where Kat lived, and she would not be renting it out in the near future.
Inside, it was cozy. Knowing it had been her uncle’s cabin, he had expected something far more rustic inside, but she had clearly already been remodeling and redecorating. Now, it definitely had a woman’s touch about it—more sleek than frilly, classy, he thought, almost like a fancy Houston apartment.
Kat disappeared into a bedroom and came back out with a large towel, which she threw across the living room to Cole. “Bathroom’s over there,” she said, pointing to a door off the main room. “Go ahead and dry off.”
He went into her bathroom and started vigorously towel-drying his hair. It didn’t seem to change the fact that he looked like he’d just fallen into a swimming pool and crawled out like a swamp thing. He was dripping all over her new tile floor, so he carefully removed his shirt and draped it over a towel rack. Then, he dried his torso. His pants were dripping just as much, but he didn’t think she would appreciate him removing them and prancing around her house in his underwear.
When he finally emerged, she took one look at him, and her cheeks turned bright red while her jaw dropped. He recognized the look. She liked what she was seeing. It was good to be appreciated so obviously, but he had to interrupt the moment. “I’m guessing you don’t want me to sit anywhere in these.” He gestured to his still-dripping pants. “Do you have anything I can wear instead?”
All of a sudden, she snapped out of her daze. “Oh, right. I’m sure I can come up with something.” She disappeared into her bedroom and Cole waited patiently for her to return. When she came back, she was carrying a pair of pajama pants in one hand. “This is all I could find,” she said, handing them to him. “They’re probably way too short for you, but they have a drawstring, so they’ll probably fit around your waist. Sorry I don’t have anything better.”
He chuckled as he took the pants from her. “I wouldn’t expect you to keep clothing for hypothetical men in your house. Don’t worry about it.” What he didn’t say was that he was relieved she didn’t have men’s clothes in her closet. It was evidence that she didn’t have a man in her life, at least not one she was intimate with.
As soon as he had the thought, he shut it down fast. He was not the sort of person a woman could safely get attached to. He knew this, and as cute as he may have thought she was, it wouldn’t be fair to her.
From outside the bathroom, he heard her ask, “You want something to drink?”
“Whatever you have is fine with me.”
He exited the bathroom wearing her pajama pants and feeling a bit ridiculous in them. They were, in fact, far too short for him. But Kat looked at him like he was some kind of irresistible snack. She handed him a sweating bottle with cheeks even redder than they had been before. “Uhm… it’s just soda,” she said in a timid voice.
It threw him off a little because timid was not at all typical for her. She was usually overconfident, in his opinion. He decided to tease her. “My eyes are up here,” he said with a grin.
That got to her properly. She turned her back and sat down at her dining table to sip her own soda. Without much else to do, Cole sat across from her. And they stayed that way, in silence, for far too long. When they were working or bickering, they seemed to never miss a beat when it came to conversation. They were always at each other’s throats in a manner of speaking, not hatefully but in a way that challenged Cole like he’d never been challenged before. Sitting here in silence like this felt wrong somehow.
“You ever play poker?” Cole asked on a whim.
She shook her head.
“Do you have a deck of cards?”
“Sure.” She got up from the table and returned with a deck, which she slid from the box like a pro. “I do play cards, you know, just not poker.”
“Do you want to learn?” he asked.
“Could be fun.”
“You swear you aren’t hustling me right now?”
She smiled sweetly. “If I was, would it be smart to tell you so?”
“Oh-ho! Touché, darlin’.” This was going to be a delight, he could tell. He dealt the cards several times for trial games, taught her the different hands and their values, and gave her a few other pointers, too.
“Sounds easy enough,” she said, utilizing her confidence in a new kind of way.
Cole fanned his cards out in front of him after his most recent deal. “The trick is to never let your face show what your hand is,” he said. “Whether it’s bad or good. Don’t let disappointment or excitement show in your expression. That way you can bluff and win.”
They played for a while, and Cole quickly learned that, in this case at least, Kat’s confidence was baseless. She made it so obvious every time she got what she wanted or didn’t. And she could never quite read Cole’s expression. He was so practiced at hiding his feelings that poker had become a particular skill of his. A couple times, he let her win, but the rest of the time, he played the best he could and beat the pants off her.
After a while, just playing the game got dull, so Cole started probing for information. “So,” he began, “this place looks a little bit Houston to me.”
