Grant
Somewhere around dawn, Valeriebroke rule number one. I woke to her leg tangled with mine, her arm draped across my stomach, and the faint tickle of her hair against my throat.
I didn’t move. The steady rise and fall of her breath feathered over my skin.Fantastic.The woman who’d drafted the terms about“staying on our own sides”was officially in breach of contract.
I lay there, every muscle taut, debating my options. If I moved, she’d wake up. If I didn’t, I’d probably get used to this.
“Spells,” I whispered.
Nothing.
Her fingers flexed against my chest, sliding lower along the ridges of my stomach.
Yeah. I was in trouble.
“Spells,” I tried again, quieter this time, because my voice had dropped to a place I didn’t recognize.
“So warm. Five more hours.” A low hum sounded in her throat that had me stifling a groan.
“What happened to five moreminutes?” I muttered under my breath like a grumpy snooze button. But I tugged the cover over her shoulder, my arm an anchor over the curve of her hip.
The movement woke her. Her brow wrinkled, confusion shifting to dawning horror as she realized exactly where her hand was.
“Good morning,” I said dryly.
She rolled away so fast she took the blanket with her, leaving me exposed to the cold air.
“Warn a guy before you flash-freeze him, will you?” I swung my legs out of bed and reached for the sweater tossed over the arm of the chair. Tugging it on, I caught sight of Valerie wrapped head to toe in the quilt, shuffling around the mattress like a caterpillar in a cocoon.
“Sorry,” she said, shoving a mass of hair out of her eyes. “Has anyone ever told you you’re like a furnace?”
“No. Why would someone tell me that, especially someone who claims to value a continent between two people?”
Her lip snarled. “Your feet touched mine first... I think.”
“What can I say? I’m a knight in shining armor when it comes to cold toes.”
“You’re impossible,” she muttered, curling said toes under her blanket cloak.
I stretched, trying to work the stiffness out of my neck, and not tug the edge of her blanket just to drag her back to bed. She might have broken a rule, but there were plenty of other unspoken ones between us.
Like,don’t get too close.
Don’t think about how the woman with morning hair and a quilt wrapped around her shoulders looked like the coziest sinever committed in flannel. And, most importantly,don’t trick myself into hoping she might be thawing too.
“Do you think it’s safe to make coffee?” she asked, peeking out the door as if the ghost might leap from the hall and demand breakfast first.
“It’s never too dangerous for coffee.” I scrubbed my palms over my face. “Go grab your bag from your room. You can change in here while I get it going.”
She hesitated, teeth catching her bottom lip.
I knew that look.
“You want me to check your room, don’t you?”
“You have to walk past it to get to the stairs. It's called efficiency.”
“It's called sending the canary into the coal mine.” I pulled on my socks. “Seriously, Spells, what possessed you to think you could last inside a haunted inn?”
