Page 97 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“You keep saying future husband.”

“Because that is what I am.”

“We have not discussed a wedding.”

“We do not need to discuss it. It is happening. The timing is flexible. The outcome is not.”

I smiled. Even sick, even with my head pounding and my throat raw and my body aching, the man could make me smile. The certainty of him. The absolute, immovable certainty that he carried like other men carried wallets, always present, always accessible, always there when you needed it.

He leaned down to kiss my forehead.

“No,” I said, pressing my hand against his chest. “You will get sick too.”

“I do not get sick.”

“Everyone gets sick.”

“I have an immune system built by the United States military and ten years of eating questionable food alone. I do not get sick.”

“Sawyer.”

“Fine.” He pressed his lips to my hair instead. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of it, far enough that my germs could not reach him. A compromise. The kind of compromise that only Sawyer Cole could make and somehow turn into something that felt more intimate than a kiss.

The day passed in a haze. I drifted in and out of sleep. Every time I woke up, something had changed. A new cup of tea. A fresh blanket. The television playing something quiet for Emma. Sawyer moving through the cabin like a shadow, anticipating needs before we voiced them, fixing things before we knew they were broken.

By evening, Emma was feeling better. Not well, but better. The color had returned to her cheeks and her appetite had come back enough to eat half a bowl of soup and demand a cookie for dessert, which Sawyer gave her because that man could not say no to his daughter even when sugar before bed was a terrible idea and he knew it.

He put her to bed. I listened to the routine from the couch, the teeth brushing and the story and the whispered goodnights, and by the time he came back to the living room I was half asleep again, curled on my side with my blanket pulled to my chin and my body aching in the way that sick bodies ache, all over, all at once, a generalized misery that made every position uncomfortable.

“Bed,” he said.

“Too tired to move.”

He picked me up. Just scooped me off the couch, blanket and all, and carried me to the bedroom. His shoulder was healed enough for this, had been healed for weeks, and the ease with which he lifted me, like I weighed nothing, like carrying me was the most natural thing in the world, made my heart do something complicated even through the fog of the cold.

He set me on the bed. Pulled the covers over me. Brought me water and more tea and a cold cloth for my forehead. Then he went to take a shower.

I lay in bed and listened to the water running. The steady sound of it, rhythmic and warm, and I thought about this man. This stubborn, grumpy, impossibly good man who had spent the entire day taking care of two sick people without complaint, without rest, without a single moment of impatience. Who had tucked a washcloth around a stuffed dinosaur because his daughter asked him to. Who had called himself my future husband like it was a fact of nature that required no negotiation.

The water stopped. I heard the shower door open. The rustle of a towel.

He came out of the bathroom with the towel around his waist and water still running down his chest. His hair was damp, dark, pushed back from his face, and the sight of him, the planes of his body in the dim light, the scars and the muscle and the broad shoulders, hit me with a force that cut through the fog of the cold like a blade through gauze.

He opened the dresser to find a shirt and I moved.

I got up from the bed. Crossed the room. He turned when he heard me and I did not give him time to ask if I was okay or tell me to go back to bed. I pulled him by the towel. He stumbled forward, surprised, which was a rare thing for Sawyer Cole, and I caught him by the waist and kissed him.

“Chloe, you are sick…”

“I am feeling better.”

“You have a fever.”

“I have something else too.” I kissed his jaw. His neck. The hollow of his throat where his pulse was beating fast, faster than it should have been for a man who had just stepped out of a shower. “You took care of us all day. Let me give you a payment.”

“You do not owe me anything.”

“This is not about owing.” I looked up at him. His green eyes were dark, the pupils blown wide, and his hands were at his sides, clenched, the tension of a man who was trying to be responsible and losing the battle. “This is about wanting. And I want to.”