His question was asked rough, husky.
Yes. Yes, she was ready to go look at the cabins. She wasn’t even going to question what it might mean.
She knew. In her soul, she knew.
“I would like that.”
“Okay. See you both around,” Cody said, waving at both Zane and Cara in what she felt was a little bit of an obvious gesture. But maybe not. Maybe she was reading this wrong.
They walked out of the bakery together, with a healthy amount of space between them, got into the truck, and he started the engine, and didn’t reach toward her, didn’t even look at her.
So nothing about that was different. Except everything felt different. Like he was unmasked, or something. Not that it changed his facial expression, but it allowed her to feel the emotion emanating from his body.
The need.
If she was reading this wrong, she was going to be shocked. But then, she didn’t really have any experience with this kind of thing, so maybe she shouldn’t be.
Her nerves were like a live wire, and she could scarcely figure out where to put her hands. Could hardly catch her breath.
The road to the cabins took her on a part of the property that she hadn’t been to before. The trees got thicker, and it was more shaded than the open range, and even if she didn’t know that the cabins were by the river, she might’ve guessed.
It was almost like a different ecosystem. Shaded and cool.
“We planted some ferns and things, I thought they lookedgood with the mossy rocks. Wanted to give it kind of a forest feel.”
Yet again, she wanted to dig into that. Wanted to go deeper with him. To figure out what all this actually meant to him. Really. Revenge against his dad, proving that he was worthy, but what did this land mean to him?
That was a whole puzzle for another day.
It wasn’t what she wanted to uncover, not now.
She wanted something else.
Just thinking about it made her mouth dry.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said.
She knew that her mouth sounded dry.
“Thanks. I think it turned out pretty good.”
There was a line of gravel with railroad ties marking individual parking spaces, probably lined up with the cabins, though they weren’t visible from where he parked the truck. They got out, and that was when she noticed the first little wooden sign.
“Otter. Raccoon.” She moved to the next space. “Egret.”
“All the cabins have names. We thought it was nicer than numbers.”
“Who thought it was?”
“We,” he said. “The collective of us.”
“Which one of you was responsible for the cute animal names?”
“Okay. It was me, and it’s not cute,” he said, sounding angry that he’d had to admit to having even a shred of whimsy in his soul.
She laughed. “I very much disagree.”
There was a path next to each sign, lined with the same bark as the paths she had walked on in other parts of the property. Rich and red. It led them from the little parking lot into the trees, where it might’ve been fifteen degrees cooler than itwas away from the canopy. It was like stepping into another world.
