“What are youdoing?” She scrambled down the ladder, nearly killing herself when her foot hooked on the bottom rung, and leaped to the door to physically haul him inside. “The coyotes will get you.”
“I thought I’d check in.” Nico looked unperturbed by his potentialbrush with the slavering jaws of death. “The same thing happened my first night here and I had to go back to the house. I nearly died.”
“Fromcoyotes?”
“No, I tripped over a tree root in the dark.”
“Really?” That made her feel better. Jake hated what he called her overreactions, and toward the end of their relationship, she’d found herself watching for the little inhale he’d take whenever she started talking. The worst was that Jake didn’t know he was doing it. It was his subconscious way of preparing himself to deal with her. As she’d become quieter for him, Jake had become happier with her, and then she’d felt like she was disappearing.
Enough of Jake. Nico ran his hand through his hair and she focused on what he was wearing. Unlike his tidy day look, Nico was dressed for comfort in long shorts and an old pale-blue shirt with the collar frayed and stretched. Valerie had never done a pull-up in her life, but she liked those sloping muscles on the side of a man’s neck that looked so bitable. The shirt also dipped down over his chest and Valerie was not complaining at all. Not one bit.
However, Nico had not braved the coyotes to be her midnight snack. He glanced out the window. “The night magnified the forest sounds. All I could think about was how dark the lake got and how small and vulnerable people are against nature.”
That brought her attention back to the issue at hand, namely the myriad ways the untamed world could deliver the coup de grâce. “I hadn’t started worrying about lake monsters because I was too focused on being eaten by coyotes, but thank you for the reminder.”
“It’s rare for coyotes to attack, and they have plenty of food. Lake monsters tend to be more unpredictable.”
His matter-of-fact answer made her laugh and then relax. He was right. She was in no immediate danger.
“Good to know.” She took another look at him. “What do you havethere?”
Nico dropped a pile of bedding. “I brought it to sleep on the floor in case you wanted company.”
“What? You don’t have to do that.” Her weak protest was pro forma because her stomach unclenched at the idea of companionship. It was tragic that she needed a safety buddy, but the howls tapped into a primal part of her brain that remembered what it was like to be alone and exposed as the coyo-wolves prowled.
“I want to, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you sure? I feel bad about you sleeping on the floor.” Should she offer the bed? With her? She eyed his arms and those lips andGod, those eyes, and reluctantly decided it would be a bad idea. It might make him uncomfortable, since they were technically here for work reasons and she was a cuddler in her sleep.
“It’s not a problem.” He looked down and she realized that she’d have to tidy up her clothes to make him some space.
“Just a sec.” She threw everything in a pile and felt Nico’s dismay at the mess. “I’ll sort it all in the morning,” she assured him.
“Do you have more clothes than when you arrived?” he asked as she moved Penny’s box of sartorial treasures.
“Penny offered me some outfits from her closet, remember?” She pointed to them. “Why do you think I was looking good today?”
Nico had been frowning at the box as if Pandora had just slammed the lid down. But now he looked up as if her last sentence confused him. “You always look good,” he said.
“Oh.” The simple way he said it, like it was an unassailable truth, made Valerie feel a little off-balance. She swallowed down the joke she was about to make about clothes and…something. Instead, she said, “Thank you.”
He held her gaze a moment longer and she was the one to break the connection, her cheeks heating. She hadn’t realized how small thebunkie was until Nico was standing here with her.
Or until he tried to lay out his duvet. With all the bags, there wasn’t enough space for him to stretch out. “Nico, you barely fit. I can sleep on the floor.”
“No.”
Another volley of howls pierced the darkness, and her next offer, that they go to his bunkie so he could be comfortable, died in her throat. No way was she going outside. “Then sleep in the bed with me. There’s plenty of room.”
He glanced up. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”
She laughed. “Looks like neither of us minds. Come on then.”
Feeling a nervous thrill that Nico would be, however chastely, in bed with her, Valerie climbed up and over the rumpled sheets to the far side.
