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I folded my skirt and set it on the table because I was afraid he’d scold me if I left it on the floor. I hoped he’d never have a reason to see my bedroom at my gramps’s house as I pulled the snow pants up my legs, fixing the straps crisscrossed over my shoulders like suspenders, but even then they were too big. The snow boots he’d given me looked kind of like muck boots, but they had the softest fur inside, and as soon as my feet settled into them, a wave of warm relaxation washed over me. They were that comfortable and definitely toasty warm. The extra socks helped to fill them out, but I could’ve fit both of my feet into one.
Without turning around, he said, “You ready?”
“Yes.”
Finally, he spun on a foot, and I smiled at him. It was kind of hard not to while he was looking at me like he was proud to see me dressed in his clothes, proud to be the reason I was warm. “Should we bring water and food in case we get stuck?”
“Darlin’, like I said, I got snow chains, and my cruiser has four-wheel drive.” He lifted his keys from the table. “We ain’t gettin’ stuck.”
It might’ve killed me to admit, but when he called me “darlin’” or “girl” with the gravel and grump in his voice, the pool of heat in my stomach plummeted between my legs. But I would never tell him that. Instead, I asked, “Why do you call your truck a cruiser? I thought police cruisers were sedans.”
“A cruiser can be any kinda vehicle, whatever an officer uses to patrol. In Teton County, a lot of us use trucks, so the truck’s my cruiser. Years ago, I drove a sedan.”
“Makes sense,” I said, silently wondering what “years ago” meant. Ten years? Two years? How old was I while Frank had been puttering around town in a sheriff’s department sedan?
The thought brought a memory to the front of my mind of my grandparents talking about the “nice deputy whose wife walked out on him.” Brady had confirmed it was Frank they had been talking about. I was a teenager at the time, here in Wisper for the summer, getting ready to start my first year of college. If that didn’t make me feel too young for Frank, I had no clue what would. But I remembered my Grandma saying what a shame it had been that Frank’s wife had left him, but that, clearly, the deputy had to have done something to make her go. Gramps had disagreed, saying he’d met the new deputy and thought he was a good man. Grandma Josie’d had a tendency to get caught up in town gossip, so I always believed what Gramps said.
Frank stepped closer to adjust my coat when I slipped it back on, and he tugged the zipper up to my chin. “Why’d you ask?”
I shook my head to clear the memory. “Just curious.” I bit the inside of my cheek and then blurted the thing I’d been thinking for more than a year. “I’m curious about a lot of things when it comes to you.”
That stopped him cold, and I liked that I had that effect on him.
I smiled, not offering anything more than that, just to irk him, but he didn’t respond to the huge thing I’d said, so I shrugged. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go—wait, but what about Grumbly?”
He watched my smile fade, then said, “He’s comin’ with us. Can’t leave him here in case we’re gone a long time. I swear, if he pees in his crate one more time, damn dog’s goin’ to the pound.” But it was clear from the way he was always petting and tending to Grum that it was the furthest thing from a promise.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SAMANTHA
The drive into town was quiet, save for the sound of Grumbly panting and whining occasionally, wanting to jump out the window.
When we’d left Frank’s house, Grumbly shot right out the door, digging holes in the ever-growing snow piles and tunneling his way through them. As soon as Frank hit the auto start button on his key fob, Grumbly ran for the truck, and I worried he’d crash headfirst into the back door, but Frank got there before he did and opened it just in time for Grumbly to torpedo himself into the back seat. Apparently, Grum liked to go for rides.
After I climbed into the front seat with Frank’s hand resting gently on the small of my back, he closed my door, and I instantly remembered the allure. Since he’d recently gotten home from work, the engine was still warm, so the cab heated up quickly as he cleared the snow from the windows with a brush on the back side of a long ice scraper.
His scent was strong inside, and it enveloped me in its masculine pull. I’d caught a hint of it when he’d taken me to dinner, but tonight, with the cold outside and the clean snow surrounding us, his scent was almost hypnotic. It had me breathing deeply until he climbed into the driver’s seat, and then I rubbed my mittens together vigorously, acting like I was trying to stave off the cold, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
It was like every time I saw him, there was one thing building on top of all the other delicious things I’d noticed about him previously. And tonight, it was his woodsy, leathery aftershave and the quiet way he had about him inside his house. He was vulnerable there. I wondered how many people he allowed into that part of his life.
There were so many questions about him running through my mind, I couldn’t keep track of them all.
We didn’t come across any accidents, thankfully, as we made our way through town slowly, down Main Street past the sheriff’s station and all the local shops. They were dark, the streets were mostly empty, and there was a quietness about town that was comforting. The soft crunching of his truck’s tires on the clean snow could’ve lulled me to sleep, if my body hadn’t been buzzing with its awareness of Frank right next to me.
He surveyed everything in his view, his eyes searching down every street we passed, looking for anyone who might need help, I assumed. I rolled my window down to hear the calm silence better as he drove, and he watched me as I stuck my head out the open window. My cheeks were freezing, but it felt good.
Rolling it back up with a press of my finger, I sat back, looking at Frank as Grum stuck his head under Frank’s arm resting on the back of my seat. He always drove like that, and Grum seemed used to it, with his tongue hanging out and a smile on his goofy face. I reached to pat Grum’s head, but really, it was an excuse to peek over at Frank. “You’re not going to ask me what I’ve been curious about?” He hadn’t said a word when I’d blurted the statement in his kitchen. Man, I really needed to pay more attention to the stuff coming out of my mouth around him.
He laughed a little at my directness. “Nope.”
“Why not? You don’t want to know?”
“’Course I do, but I figure you’ll let me know when you’re ready.”
“Do you do that on purpose, the whole quiet, stoic lawman thing?”
“The what?”
