“Beau?” I call, following him. He’s pulling on his boots and a coat in the mudroom.
“Wait inside. I need to check the generator. It powers the fridge and freezer when the electricity goes out.” He doesn’t wait for me to answer before hurrying outside.
Picking up a couple of pieces of firewood, I return to the living room to wait. Reacher paces the house waiting for him to reappear too. I’m not sure which of us is more worried.
“Let’s see if we can take the chill out of the air.” Reacher watches me as I place the logs on the fire. “Getting toastier already.” The back door slams. I jump up and hurry with Reacher by my side into the hallway.
“Here,” Beau says, thrusting a space heater into my hands. “Put that one in front of the sink in the kitchen with the cabinet door open. I’ll put the other one in the bathroom. Although, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t freeze anyway.”
I walk quickly into the kitchen. Opening the cabinet door under the sink, I set the space heater on the floor and turn it on. Doors close down the hall.
“Everything okay?” I call.
“The bedrooms have no heat. We’ll have to sleep out here tonight,” he says, walking into the kitchen. “The generator is about maxed out. I think we have enough wood for tonight. I’ll bring some more into the living room. The mudroom is going to be freezing. The couch pulls out.” He stops speaking, seeming to notice for the first time that we’re now reduced to one room. “I can sleep on the floor.”
“You’ll freeze.”
“The chair then.”
“You said it pulls out?” I ask, ignoring him. We’re adults, surely, we can share a pull-out couch. No one needs to freeze on a cold hard floor tonight. I pull out the cushions and grab the handle.
“Here, let me do it. It weighs a ton.” He pulls the bed out and unfolds it. “I’ll go grab some sheets. Get anything out of yourroom you need.” I follow him down the hallway to my room. There are not many clothes left in my bag. I keep meaning to do a load of laundry. Pulling off my comforter, I haul it back into the living room.
“Do you have some sweats I can borrow? I’m about out of clothes,” I ask.
“Yeah.” He stops pulling the fitted sheet onto the mattress and walks back down the hallway. By the time he returns with an armload of clothes, I have the bed made. “You might want to take a quick shower one last time while there’s hot water,” he adds. “It’s a gas tank, but the ignition is electric.”
“I’ll hurry, so you have hot water too.” I take a quick shower, foregoing the shampoo so Beau has some hot water. I braid my hair, pull on a pair of his sweats, and head back into the living room. “I left you a little.” He looks up from the fire and freezes. “What?”
“Nothing.” His gaze shifts back to the fire.
“I know. I look like a mess.”
“Don’t say that,” he snarls, looking back up. “I was just thinking about how beautiful you look.” My heart begins to pound. “I don’t think it’s possible for me to see you as anything else.”
Now my heart is going at it so hard I don’t know how he can’t see it. I don’t know how to respond to a statement like that. Simply saying thanks sounds so lacking.
Beau doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer, though. He turns back to the fire and adds another log. I’ve also never had a man say something so sweet and not wait for an answering compliment. I can feel the smile warming my entire body. He’s made me feel like his words were nothing more than a statement of fact. He’s made me feel like I can be okay with who I am.
“I’m going to go run through the shower,” he says, pushing up to his full height.
“Don’t get hurt.”
“What?”
“You know…running…through the shower. Never mind,” I mumble. I slump down into the chair and pull one of the blankets around me. Any minute now he should wander off down the cold hallway. Instead, he stares at me for a moment before walking over. Leaning down, he places a hand on each side of the chair.
“I love how your mind works,” he says quietly into my ear. Then his lips brush against mine before he stands back up. With a wink, he turns for the bathroom.
“Your flirting game is getting really good you know,” I yell.
He responds with a chuckle from down the hall. Holy smokes! The shower turns on, and I try to force the vision of water sliding over his hard body from my mind.
“This is proving harder than I thought,” I tell Reacher as I massage his ears with my toes. He’s lying on the floor at my feet. He puffs a breath in response.
“Maybe we need something to keep us distracted until bedtime. Whenever that is.” I push up from the chair and cross to the bookshelves. There has to be something to do in this house that doesn’t require electricity. Except for the obvious of course.
There’s not enough light to read. I don’t want to spend hours in silence doing that anyway. I’ve finally got him talking. I don’t want to lose any ground.
