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“Fate.” I winked at her.
“Fate’s a bitch,” she complained.
She was too damn cute with her lip poked out. I said, “I know what you need.” She glared at me. “A shower.” I raised my hands in surrender, but I couldn’t help myself and added, “We could conserve water by sharing one.”
25
Jolie
Damn him forbeing too irresistible. I quickly turned away before he could see the smile growing on my face.
I’d been in the room he’d designated for me before, but I hadn’t spent much time there. Looking around it now, I noticed how truly homey it was. Though it wasn’t big and only had the bare minimum in furniture from a queen bed, a small table next to it, a chair in the corner, and a small table opposite the bed that looked as though it could hold a TV, it seemed warm.
The home I purchased in Palm Beach might have been larger and I’d filled it with knickknacks and art here and there. Still, it didn’t have the comfy feeling Grant’s home did.
“Are you okay?”
I swiveled around and found Grant leaning on the doorframe.
“You weren’t moving,” he said.
I shook my head. “Just thinking. If I haven’t said it before, you have a lovely home.”
That damn brow of his lifted in question.
I shrugged. “I’ve lived in a brownstone in Long Island, visited my Gran’s mansion in Manhattan, lived in a boarding school in upstate New York, and now my condo in Palm Beach. I never thought I’d be a lover of a cabin in the woods on a mountain, but it’s peaceful here.”
“You haven’t seen it all yet.” He holds out a hand to me. “I want you to see something.”
Though his face held a smile, it wasn’t as bright as it had been, and I was nervous for what was to come next. Still I took his hand.
We stopped at the front door, where he helped me into the down coat I’d bought before our road trip and he slipped into his. Our boots crunched on snow that still covered the ground as we walked back around the house but didn’t stop there.
We walked a few hundred yards through trees until we came into a clearing. But it wasn’t exactly that. The view of a snow-covered valley below with fog rising as the sun dipped low off to the west created a cascade of colors from pink, burnt orange to dusty blue.
“This is amazing,” I said.
“It is. It’s part of the reason I bought the place.”
“I could see myself sitting here with a cup of coffee just watching the majesty of it all.”
“We could make that happen,” he said.
I stopped myself from saying anything else as my heart fluttered. I’d made that mistake before with a man and had read all the wrong signals. Grant was just a nice guy, doing something nice. It didn’t go further than that.
My breath clouded the air as my silence created awkwardness I didn’t welcome.
“I bet you come out here a lot,” I said.
“Sometimes. When I want to think.”
Then we watched the sun disappear in the horizon. The air cooled quickly and I shivered.
Once again, he took my hand and I let him. “Come on. Let’s get back inside.”
Our walk had felt like something akin to magical, the way we were walking in the woods hand in hand. So much so, I practically bolted away from him once we were nestled back in the cabin. I locked myself in the room, afraid I would turn and see that damn sexy smile of his waiting for me at my door.
As I made my way to the bathroom, not a really long walk, I almost wanted him to invite himself to shower with me. Especially as our eyes locked when I reached my destination. His room door next to where I stood was wide open, giving me a view of him pulling off his shirt.
