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The curse escaped before he could stop it.

Amy’s brows knitted. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” He rotated his arm, but the muscles protested with fire. Between two nights of lousy sleep and a day hauling beams, his body felt sawed down the middle.

Amy’s eyes narrowed. “Sit. Now.”

He made a sound of disgust. “On what?”

“The massage table.” She pointed. “Before you do worse damage.”

He almost laughed at the absurdity. But her tone left no room for argument, and somehow he found himself perched on the padded surface, eyeing the towel warmers in the corner as though they might sprout wings.

“What’s all this?” he muttered. Bottles gleamed on a side cart. Stones, round and black, sat in a warmer that hissed faintly. The smell of eucalyptus hung thick as sea wind.

“My equipment,” Amy said, already pressing at his shoulder with quick, assessing fingers. “Towel warmers, basalt stones. For hot stone massage therapy.”

Sully gave a low snort. “People pay for this nonsense? Waste of money.”

She glared at him squarely in the eye. “You can hold that opinion after you try it. Not before.” She moved behind him and pressed her hand against the knot at his shoulder. He winced. “You’re tied tighter than ship rigging. Let me help you. Ten minutes, and if you hate it, I’ll stop.”

Her persistence wore him down. He had no energy left to fight her today. “Fine. But if I leave feeling worse, I’ll tell you exactly what I think of it.”

Amy’s grin was quick and bright. “Deal.”

She stepped toward the door, pausing only long enough to toss him a sheet. “Undress and lie under that. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The latch clicked behind her.

Sully looked at the sheet then around the room, half amused, half baffled. Nobody had ever told him the protocol, and he’d never had a massage. It wasn’t exactly in the carpenter’s handbook. So he did what she said and stripped bare, stretched awkwardly on the table, and yanked the sheet up to his chin.

When the door eased open again, Amy slipped back inside, her arms full of warm blankets. She laid the heated fabric over his skin, and he immediately released a breath.

“Since I only have ten minutes to prove my point, why don’t you turn over? I can work on your neck and shoulders better.” As Sully obliged, she didn’t so much as blink at his nakedness beneath the sheet. Instead, she folded the sheet modestly around his hips, tucking it with professional precision.

“Good,” she said with satisfaction. “You listened.”

The first stone she set against his shoulder made him gasp. Heat seeped deep, chasing into muscle he hadn’t even known was clenched. Another stone pressed along his spine, molten weight undoing knots.

Sully grunted, then exhaled long and low.

“Tolerable?” Amy teased softly.

He didn’t dignify it with more than a muttered, “Keep going.”

Her hands moved steadily, surprisingly strong and gentle at once, gliding warmed oil then stone, coaxing tight sinew into yielding. The music hummed on, and the scent thickened, all bergamot and cedar. Little by little, irritation leaked out of him under the rhythm of her hands. His headache dulled, his jaw unclenched.

He felt himself slide out of his persistent vigilance and into something softer. The warmth was too much, or maybe too good. His body betrayed him, sinking into her rhythm until even the ache in his chest let go.

“Amy,” he murmured once, meaning to tell her something. Thanks, maybe. Or sorry. But the word melted into a sigh, and before he could catch it, sleep claimed him.

When Amy finally lifted the last stone away, Sully was breathing in a steady rhythm, his face slack against the cradle, the lines of his persistent frown smoothed out.

She set the stones back in their warmer and drew the sheet to keep him covered. For a moment she just looked at him, this man who could be so blunt, so gruff, so endlessly irritating. Now he lay quiet under her touch, as if the house itself had finally released him for an hour from its burdens.

Here was proof that what she dreamed for this place wasn’t indulgence. It was healing. Rest for the weary, ease for the strained, a chance to lay burdens down.

Amy smiled faintly, blown hair tickling her cheek, and whispered into the hush of the treatment room, “See? It even works on skeptics.”