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“I said room and board, not you, and only because I was being a jerk. The boots and stuff…necessities. Go on. Take the check.”
She reached for the check. Their fingers brushed and a swift electric tingle ran along her skin.
Their eyes met. A muscle knotted in Nick’s jaw and suddenly the room seemed airless.
“Static electricity,” Lissa said with a tight little laugh. She took a step back and stared blindly at the check. It took a while for the numbers to swim into focus. When they did, she looked up, shocked. “That’s much too much!”
He smiled. “For an executive chef? It isn’t enough.”
“Forget the executive chef thing. All I did was cook a couple of meals.”
“All you did was keep my guys from out-and-out mutiny.”
“I can’t possibly—”
“Yes. You can. I’m paying you what you’d have earned as an executive chef at the kind of place you thought this would be.”
“You don’t know that.”
Nick smiled. “Google knows everything.” His voice softened. “Please. Take the check.”
Lissa chewed on her bottom lip. He wondered if she knew how often she did that, or if she knew how it made him ache to soothe the tiny wound with a kiss. He wondered, too, if she knew how beautiful she looked, especially at this moment, her face flushed from the heat of the kitchen, her golden hair pulled up in the kind of knot that made a man want to take it down.
“Well…” She smiled. “Thank you. And now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“No more work tonight.”
“Oh, I have to! I promised the guys I’d leave some meals in the freezer and so far, all I’ve done is some lasagna and make a marinade for the mystery meat I told you about.”
“I’m the boss, Wilde, remember?”
“Well, I know. I mean, they know that. But—”
“The boss makes the rules. And rule number one is that the night is clear, the sky is full of stars, and you can’t leave Montana until you’ve seen a sky like this one.”
He was smiling.
And, oh God, he looked so handsome.
Big. Tall. Strong. And sexy, so sexy that she wanted to throw herself into his arms and ask him if they couldn’t please finish what they’d started last night, what she’d thought about all day, what she wanted, because if she couldn’t leave Montana without seeing the sky on a night like this, how could she leave it without a night spent in this man’s arms?
“Lissa?”
Lissa took a breath. Let it out. Then she whipped off the towel tied around her waist and gave him a dazzling smile.
“Let me get my jacket.”
“And your boots.”
“And my boots.”
“And your gloves.”
She laughed. “I promise, I won’t get hypothermia.”
“If you did, I’d have to save you. And the only sure way, with no hospital nearby, would be for us to get naked, wrap up in heavy blankets and hold each other until you stopped trembling.”
He’d meant to say it lightly, but it didn’t come out that way.
