Page 32 of Warming His Bed

“Fine.” She raised an eyebrow at my question but didn’t say anything else.

“You hungry?”

“Already ate.”

Jesus, I was terrible at this. So much for Ben’s theory. “Did you make a lot of progress today on…whatever it is you’re doing here?”

She stared at me for a beat. “I spent six hours inside an old bank vault in a museum. I’m pretty sure Kobie Scott has some kind of mystical power that compels people to volunteer for things. Not only am I helping out with committee work for the festival, but I spent most of my day helping her reorganize boxes after she got through about fifty DVDs worth of video.”

I chuckled. “She’s a hard one to say no to, that’s for sure.”

“What I could use is some more fresh air. Are there any good hiking trails around here?”

“Hiking?” I tried to hide my surprise.

“What?” she asked. “Since I’m from the city, I can’t enjoy hiking?”

“It’s not that. You just didn’t strike me as the type.”

“The type of person who enjoys fresh air?” She crossed her arms.

“Point taken.” I was digging myself a hole. “We’ve got a couple of hours before sunset. I know a place, if you’re up for it.”

“It was my suggestion, wasn’t it?”

“Do you want to change clothes?” I did my best not to think about her naked after I made the suggestion.

She grinned like she’d bested me in an argument. “Give me five minutes.”

Four and a half minutes later—not that I was counting—she came downstairs in the same black skinny jeans that hugged her curves as before, but now she wore some heavy-duty hiking boots, a neon green hoodie and a backpack. It perturbed me that I found all of her different looks appealing.

“Let’s go. We’re wasting daylight,” she said.

I led her to the driveway where my truck was parked. She eyed me when I held the door open for her but climbed in without giving me any shit about it. As I slid into the cab, it dawned on me I hadn’t thought about her car, or lack thereof, today. “Is your car still back at the motel?”

“Yeah, I figured someone would either call you or voluntarily bring it by at some point. This town seems to be full of people with good intentions that are all up in each other’s business, so I didn’t think I had much to worry about.” She gave me a knowing look.

“You’re not wrong there. We can swing by the motel on our way back and pick it up if you want.”

“Sure.”

I put the truck in gear and backed out of my drive. Usually, I was the one doling out the one-word responses and wishing the person talking to me would just shut up already. Being on the other side of things made me twitchy.

“About this morning…” I started.

“Won’t happen again.” She stared out the passenger side window, avoiding my gaze.

“What I mean to say is—”

“Look,” she turned to face me, “I get it. I invaded your personal space and made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

I sighed, hating that I had to explain myself further. “I misunderstood what you were doing there. I thought you were…” I shoved down my discomfort, not wanting to admit to myself how goddamn insecure it made me. “I thought you were shocked about the prosthetic and that was why you were staring.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”

“It’s not hard to believe.” I frowned, wishing I hadn’t opened this can of worms to begin with.

“Everything you had out on display”—she waved her hand at my chest—“climbing that salmon ladder like an Arrow stunt double, and you thought your leg was what had me tongue-tied?” Disbelief colored her face. “Somebody did a real number on you.”

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