But the mornings are so still. Coffee on the porch wrapped in a blanket, watching mist burn off the creek. No pager. No overhead pages. No family members screaming in the hallway.
By day four, something loosened in my chest. By day six, I slept past sunrise for the first time in months.
Now I'm elbow-deep in the plumbing under cabin four's bathroom sink, and the wrench keeps slipping because whoever installed this faucet used the wrong size fitting.
"You're gonna strip the threads."
Owen's boots appear in my peripheral vision. Work boots, worn at the toe, laces double-knotted. Standing in the bathroom doorway because the man cannot seem to walk past a cabin I'm working in without stopping to check.
"I'm not gonna strip the threads." Cranking the wrench harder, I brace my knee against the cabinet. "The fitting's wrong."
"That's what I said when my dad installed it in 1997."
"Then why hasn't anyone fixed it?"
"Because it works if you don't tighten it past a quarter turn."
Sliding out from under the sink, I look up at him. He's backlit by the late morning sun pouring through the window, turning his hair gold at the edges. Flannel today, open over a gray thermal that stretches across his chest. Arms folded. That steady, patient expression he wears when he's trying not to be amused by something.
"You could've mentioned that before I spent twenty minutes under here."
"Could've." One shoulder lifts. "But you were already under there when I walked up, and you looked like you were having a moment."
"A moment."
"With the pipe. Seemed personal."
A laugh breaks out of me. Genuine. Ugly-sounding because my laugh has always been too loud for my face, but real. His eyes warm when he hears it.
"Here." He steps into the bathroom, extends a hand. The space is small. Cabin four's bathroom barely fits one person, let alone a man built on Owen's scale. When his fingers close around mine, callused and warm, the contact travels all the way up my arm.
He pulls me to my feet. Easy. No effort. One smooth motion that brings me chest to chest with him in a bathroom that has approximately three square feet of floor space.
Pine. He smells like pine, always, like he's been cutting wood or walking through trees or both. This close, I can see the stubble along his jaw, the small scar near his left eyebrow, the way his pupils dilate when he looks down at me.
And he is looking down at me. My hand still in his. His other hand finding my hip to steady me, or at least that's what he'd say if anyone asked. His palm is huge against my waist. Warm through my shirt.
"Carmen."
"Owen."
His thumb moves. Just barely. A half-inch sweep against my hip bone that sends heat pooling low in my belly. My breath catches. His eyes drop to my mouth.
We're close enough that breathing is a shared activity. Close enough that if either of us leaned forward even slightly, itwould be over. Whatever pretense we've been maintaining about this being a professional arrangement, a clean deal, no strings, would dissolve the second his lips touched mine.
The wrench clatters out of my other hand. Hits the tile floor.
We both flinch. Owen steps back so fast his shoulder hits the doorframe.
"I should go check the..." He gestures vaguely behind him. "Firewood. For cabin two."
"Right. The firewood."
"Yep."
He's gone before my heart rate settles. Through the cabin door, down the porch steps, boot heels on gravel fading toward the wood pile.
My knees are shaking again. Not from exhaustion this time.
