“You’re incredible,” he blurted.
She flushed and looked away.
“Sorry.” He scrubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m just... yeah. Gonna go get that corn.”
“Okay.” She sounded relieved. “I’ll help.”
They worked quickly, but the sky opened within minutes. Most of the volunteers ran for cover, and those who didn’t scrambled to get their own projects to safety.
Frigid rain slapped at Nick’s scalp, quickly turning to stinging sleet. He upped his pace while Aubrey climbed into the truck bed. She tossed bags down into his arms, piling them five or six at a time before he shuttled them into the barn. His lungs burned and his muscles quaked, but he relished the feeling. It was almost like a fight. A pain he could disappear into.
When they finished, slushy rain saturated their clothes. They took cover in the barn. Sleet lashed against the roof, so loud Nick could barely hear himself think.
“Should we open the bags that got wet?” Aubrey shouted over the din. “Spread the corn to dry, so it doesn’t mold?”
He nodded. By the time they’d scrounged blankets from the loft and arranged the damp corn, the roar of the storm had lessened. Nick tucked away the pocketknife he’d used to slice the mesh and turned toward Aubrey.
And went silent inside.
Shit. She hadn’t complained once, but her lips had turned a painful shade of blue. Her teeth chattered. Wet red tendrils stuck to her forehead.
“You’re freezing.” Quickly, he wrenched off his sodden jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me? And where’s your coat?”
She shivered in his grip. Jesus, those eyes. They burned a hole right through him.
“I forgot it in Gallant’s car,” she said. “I didn’t realize until after he left, and I don’t have any service out here, so I couldn’t ask him to come back.”
Nick’s heart burst into a million microscopic pieces. He struggled to swallow them all down. Fucking Gallant fucking Nobel. That asshole must have seen her jacket on the seat and made a conscious decision not to turn around.
The realization made him want to punch something. Preferably Gallant himself. Preferably hard enough to break the guy’s nose. “When’s he coming back for you?”
“Four o’clock.”
“That’s hours from now.” He clenched his jaw. “There’s no way I’m leaving you here until then. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
Aubrey wavered. Her hesitation knifed into him—clearly, she had no desire to be taken care of, at least not by him.
“Come on,” he said gruffly. “We’re friends now, remember?”
“Yeah.” But her tone told him she hadn’t forgotten the way he’d confessed his deepest regrets the other day.
He tried again. “Look, you’re soaked. You’ll freeze out here with nothing but my wet-ass jacket and a four-hour wait. Which makes no sense when you have a perfectly good fireplace at home.”
She lifted her chin as if to argue, then surprised him by nodding. “Well... okay.”
The fist around his lungs loosened. “Okay.”
They darted back out into the storm. He helped her into the truck’s passenger side, not caring that his wet eyelashes froze in moments or that gooseflesh pebbled his arms beneath his sodden Henley shirt.
As long as he got her warm.
21.
Aubrey had never been so cold.
She huddled against the passenger-side door, quaking within the wet shell of Nick’s jacket. He cranked the heater before they’d even cleared the barnyard, but the truck had more than a few miles on it, and air that should have gusted reached her as more of a wheeze.
Her teeth chattered. Nick glared past the thumping wipers and the sleet exploding against the windshield as he edged the speedometer toward eighty. “I’ve been meaning to fix this heater. Sorry. But hang on. I’ll have you home in no time.”
