Page 9
The image of her sitting at my kitchen counter in the morning, hair mussed from sleep, holding our baby on her lap, pops up—and refuses to leave.
I want her with me.
Lainey, oblivious to my mental detour, lowers herself to her knees and crawls inside the tent. My gaze drops to her lush ass, and my cock, which has been half hard for most of the morning, wakes up fully. The fact that my knot is swelling as well tells me there’s something to the theory I thought of earlier.
Lainey might really be my mate.
That means I can’t do anything to fuck it up, because there won’t ever be a more perfect woman for me than her.
“Oh, cool,” she says, her voice barely muffled by the canvas. “It’s larger than I thought. Come on, check it out.”
She reaches out and tugs on my pant leg, her arm the only part of her that’s visible.
I scrub my hand over my face and count backward from twenty to get myself under control, then crouch and peek through the tent flaps. “You can set up however you like,” I tell Lainey. “But the rule is, no shoes inside, take care with sharp objects so you don’t rip the canvas or the bottom, and absolutely no open fire.”
She shuffles closer to me. “That makes sense. Do you want to take the left side or the right?”
Her question is practical, but I can’t help thinking of my bed back home, a custom-built frame with the extra-large mattress that was one of the first things I made for my cabin.
“Your choice,” I rumble.
If I have it my way, we’ll spend the night tangled together, so it doesn’t matter one way or another.
She pushes past me and out of the tent. “I’ll grab our things.”
Before I can stop her, she’s hefting my backpack off the picnic table.
“Oof!”
It thumps against her legs, and she sidesteps awkwardly, then lets it thud onto the bench.
I hurry over to take it from her. “Are you okay?”
She glowers up at me, her hands at her hips. “Why does your backpack weigh three times as much as mine?”
I shrug. “Because I can carry more. It’s no big deal.”
Lainey’s chest rises with a breath. “You were supposed to divide things equally!”
I let go of the backpack and step closer to her. “I’m always going to try and make things easier for you.” I take her shoulders and rub my hands over them. I need to touch her. “I could carry you up this hill without breaking a sweat, Lainey. Why would I make this trip harder for you than it already is?”
Her hazel eyes are wide with emotion, and she presses her lips together as if trying to keep the words in.
“Hey.” I take her chin and tip it up so she’s forced to meet my gaze. “Talk to me.”
“You’re already…better.” She flings her arm out, pointing at the tent. “You know more, you’re older, you have a better car and a house, and I don’t even know if my part-time paycheck will cover my rent next month. I know I don’t bring a lot to the table, is all. I just wanted to be equal in one small thing.”
She deflates, her shoulders drooping.
I stare at her, dumbfounded. This gorgeous woman’s worried about being my equal?
“It’s fine,” she says softly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll, um, get my things unpacked.”
“Stop.” I capture her wrist before she can scurry away. “Is that really what you think? I’m not better than you. I’m just a guy who works too much and spends half his time talking bullshit with tourists who forget my name the moment they put Pearl Peaks in the rearview mirror. My job’s not…glamorous. It’s rough work, Lainey. I’ve been saving up so I could stop someday, so I could find someone to spend the rest of my life with and not have to be away from them all the time.”
Lainey stares at me, her pink lips parted. I want to kiss her so badly, but I won’t, not until she understands how important this is to me.
“I started doing this because I love nature, but it’s been nothing but routine these past few years. Something to pass the time, a way to pad my investment account so I could quit someday. But I didn’t have a good enough reason to cut my hours. Until now.”
