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As quickly as I could, I made my way over to Jack’s cabin. He must have seen me coming, because the moment I made it to the door, he opened it.
My teeth were chattering by the time I got there, and he didn’t hesitate to pull me inside.
“What’s going on? Are you sick again?” he questioned me.
I looked up at his handsome face, my eyes lingering on his lips a bit longer than they should have, and I felt pain slice through me. That woman had been here for at least two hours. She probably had his lips all over her body.
Jealousy coursed through me, and it was all I could do not to react to it.
Somehow, I managed it and replied, “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind loaning me some firewood. I put my last piece in last night just before dinner, and at some point in the middle of the night, the fire went out.”
“Jesus, you need my phone number,” he clipped. “You could have called me, and I would have brought it right over to you.”
I shrugged and murmured, “I didn’t want to bother you.”
Jack shook his head. “You would not be bothering me, Dakota. You can’t honestly think I’d be okay with you freezing to death.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” I told him.
And that was the truth.
Jack might have had a bevy of women at his disposal, but he wasn’t an evil guy. It would have upset him to know that I needed the firewood and hadn’t come to him for some.
The frustration on his face disappeared, and his voice grew gentle. “Go over and warm up by my fire,” he instructed. “I’ll take care of getting yours going again.”
Before I had the chance to process how I really felt about all of it, I was guided over to the fire and Jack was out the door. For a few minutes, I stood there and warmed up, eventually taking off my boots so I didn’t get his floor all wet. My extremities were grateful for the heat of the fire, and it wasn’t long before I was peeling off some of my layers while I waited for Jack to return.
I wanted to sit tight and just wait. I didn’t want to snoop. That wasn’t the kind of woman I was. But I did allow my eyes to roam over every surface I could see in the open space. I was looking for signs of the women Jack had allowed to come over.
There was nothing.
Not a stitch of evidence.
That’s when I was able to draw the conclusion that Jack was a smart man. All of the women he was with probably didn’t know that the others existed. He likely made certain that there wouldn’t be any evidence for one of them to find.
Sooner than I expected it to happen, Jack returned. He walked inside, looked over at me, and said, “It was much colder in there than I thought it would be. That fire has been out for a while.”
“Did you get one started again?” I asked, standing up from the couch.
Jack had removed all of his layers, pulled off his boots, and walked over toward me. “Yes, I did.”
“Thank you for doing that. I’ll replace the wood as soon as I can get out to get some,” I promised.
“Sweetheart, I don’t need you to replace the wood,” he assured me. “There’s a whole forest full of trees surrounding us.”
Sweetheart.
He’d called me that two times the night he came over when we had dinner together. My heart pounded in my chest then, and it was doing the same thing now.
Why did I love the way it sounded so much?
Was it because I adored the sound of his voice from the very first time I heard it? Was it because his voice was the first I’d heard when I’d been in a life or death situation with a wild bison? Or was it because of the actual word he was saying and what it implied?
I swallowed hard, unable to cope with the way standing this close to him made me feel. “Thank you,” I rasped. “I appreciate you taking care of this for me so quickly, but I should probably get going now. I’m sorry if you were in the middle of something when I showed up.”
Jack shook his head and reached out to curl his fingers around my wrist when I turned toward the couch, so I could grab my jacket and sweater I’d taken off. “Not at all. And I think you should actually wait.”
His thumb was stroking absentmindedly over the skin on the inner part of my wrist. “Wait?” I repeated, my voice husky.
