CHAPTER 13 DELILAH
DELILAH
We stand together in the small entryway of the room, unmoving, staring at the bed smack-dab in the center of it.
It’s massive, with a plush velvet headboard and hand-carved posts, layered with pillows and blankets and a thick plaid comforter.
It’s indulgent. Cozy. It’s so far from the bed across the street, it’s laughable.
There is, however, an issue.
There’s only one.
“It could be worse,” Jackson says, wandering to the foot of the bed and dropping the duffel slung over his shoulder. He stretches his neck, one side and then the other. “It could be bunk beds.”
“Joke’s on you. I always wanted bunk beds.” I place my bag next to his. “You’re being surprisingly calm about this.”
He shrugs. “I figured there’d only be one bed in the junior one-bedroom suite.” He drags his hand through his hair, then leans up against the foot of the bed, his long legs extended. Crossed at the ankles. “I asked Lottie to bring up a cot.”
I scan his six-foot-three frame and imagine him trying to wedge himself on a cot that probably folds up and is kept in a closet somewhere.
“Or—” I raise both eyebrows, staring at him.
He blinks once, slow and heavy. His glasses are the slightest bit crooked, and it makes him look younger. Boyish.
“Or?” he asks.
I glance at the bed. We could fit roughly seventeen Delilahs on this bed, stacked in a row.
“Or we could share.”
“Share,” he repeats.
“Mm-hmm.” I hop up so I’m sitting on the edge and toe off my boots. I let out a happy sigh and flop backward, the blankets rising around me like a cloud. I have to bite my tongue against a moan.
“Jackson, I cannot in good conscience allow you to sleep on a cot when this bed feels like this.” I reach out, one arm extended, and pat the space next to me. “Try it.”
“I don’t need—”
I sit up, grip his arm, and pull. “Try it,” I say again.
He allows me to tug him down onto the bed, falling gracelessly next to me with a huff.
He’s a tangle of limbs, his head tipped against my shoulder and his hip pressed to mine.
He moves around with a grumble, adjusting his long legs, but then he settles, sinking into the bed with an utterly indecent sound. Something deep and rough and delicious.
I grin at the top of his head. “Right?”
“Oh my god,” he moans, and my belly flips. A sharp twist, right in the middle of me. “Okay, yeah. No cot.”
“You’re not going to argue with me?”
“Delilah, I can’t.” He rocks his head back and forth against the blankets, letting his body go heavy and limp.
I hear two thumps as he toes off his boots and then he tilts his head back, peering up at me, his hair rustling against the fabric.
He smiles and it’s so soft, so sweet, that I have to curl my hand into the blankets to keep myself from reaching for him.
From tracing that little groove between his eyebrows.
Finally, I think. This is who you are beneath everything else. This is who you are when you let go of all that weight.
Heavy blue eyes. A gentle curve of his mouth that feels like something just for me.
“Maybe we can find something to argue about tomorrow,” he murmurs. “To make up for it.”
I smile. “Maybe.”
It should be more awkward than it is, sitting with our backs against the headboard, our shoulders pressed together, staring at the weather projection open on his laptop.
But either we reached a new level of understanding, or Lottie spikes her hot chocolate, because it’s been distractingly easy since we decided we can be two adults who share a bed.
“You see this?” Jackson trails one finger along the edge of the giant red blob slowly moving across his screen. That’s distracting, too, and I thrust my hand into my bag of Swedish Fish. I am demolishing my stash of emotional support candy, and it’s only day one. “It’s slowing down,” he explains.
I blink and lean closer, my chin hovering over his shoulder. “I thought you hit a slower speed on the playback.”
He shakes his head. “No. The storm is slowing to a crawl as it creeps over the mountains. And see this?” He points to another part of the map, a graceful sweep of his pointer finger down and then up again. “The winds are—”
“Changing,” I finish for him with a little laugh.
He minimizes the map he was on (the European model, thank you very much) and pulls up another.
The projections are almost in perfect sync.
“Holy crap. We’re about to get dumped on.
What do you think? Did we just upgrade from a winter storm to a blizzard? ”
Jackson nods, dragging the palm of his hand along his jaw. “We’ll have to confirm with the National Weather Service, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll text Maggie and let her know. We can mention it when we do our call-in tomorrow.”
I stare hard at his jaw. He has a brand-new layer of scruff, a darker blond than the hair on his head. His hand makes a delicious scraping sound as he drags it down his face.
I grab another handful of Swedish Fish.
It’s not that I wasn’t attracted to Jackson before. It was just outweighed by everything else. But now I know what he’s really like. He’s kind. Funny in a dry, droll sort of way. Sweet. Caring.
And we’re sharing a room together for the next week with only one large, obscenely comfortable bed for the both of us.
It’s like my brain has found the section where I’ve been harboring a stealthy appreciation for his bone structure and decided to throw a firework right in the middle of it. I can’t stop looking at him.
Be professional, Delilah, I remind myself. This is your chance to have everyone take you seriously. You don’t have to be a joke anymore.
It’s the reminder I need. I’m not going to fumble this assignment because I’m distracted by a mussed-looking Jackson, showing me weather diagrams.
I firm my resolve.
“Is it weird I’m sort of excited about all of this?” I gesture at the map on the computer. “This is the biggest weather event I’ve ever gotten to cover.” I laugh a little bit. “We’re going to be right in the middle of it.”
“My guess is it’ll be on top of us in a day or two.
” His blue eyes are bright, framed with a thick fringe of honey blond lashes.
“Being here, where we can actually see the cloud formations starting over the mountains, it’s—” He shakes his head, in awe.
“I never thought I’d get to do something like this. ”
“I’m buzzing. I feel like I could run down to the lake and back.”
“That’s probably the sugar talking.” He snaps his laptop shut and sets it to the side. “You’ve consumed a metric ton today.”
I reach into my gas station gallon-sized bag for another cherry red fish, popping it into my mouth. “Nuh-uh. The candy keeps me sweet.”
“Oh yeah?” He’s so close I can see the red indents on his nose from his glasses. The slight smudge on the left lens from his thumb. I extend the bag toward him and my hand bumps against his chest. He steadies it, his fingers looped around my wrist.
“Want one?” I rasp.
His gaze drags down my face and lingers on my mouth. My hand clenches the bag with a loud crinkle.
“No, thank you.”
“Okay,” I whisper back. “You’re missing out, but fine.”
He doesn’t move. “I’m sure I am.”
“More for me,” I say airily, feeling like I’ve just dropped down an elevator shaft. Or maybe had one of those dreams where I’m falling only to wake up abruptly with my heart in my throat.
We sit there against the headboard, staring at each other.
It would be so easy to close the space between us.
See how our mouths fit together. Suck at his full bottom lip until he made another rough sound, deep in his throat.
Feel the scrape of his scruff against my cheek.
My jaw. The soft, delicate place between my breasts.
But those are not colleague-friendly thoughts. They’re not even friend-friendly thoughts. I’ve launched myself right over the neat little lines Jackson painted for us, into dangerous territory.
And we’re sharing a bed.
At my insistence.
I crawl off the bed, putting space between us.
These feelings are probably just due to the proximity and having been saved from the alternative, atrocious sleeping arrangement.
I’m feeling grateful and tired and wildly overwhelmed.
And Jackson is nice to look at and knows about cloud formations. Delilah catnip, basically.
“Okay, well, I’m feeling a little tired, so—” I hitch a thumb over my shoulder at my suitcase, lying in the exact place I dropped it.
I am absolutely not tired. I’m riding an intense sugar high and I can’t be trusted.
These . . . horny feelings cannot be trusted.
I back up a step. “I think I’m going to get ready for bed. To—to sleep.”
Jackson nods, a bemused look on his stupid, handsome face. “Okay.”
I suck in a deep breath through my nose and let it out slowly. I need to get it together.
“All right,” I say. I take another step back, clutching my candy to my chest. “I’m just going to—”
My foot catches against the broken wheel of my suitcase. I lose my balance, slip slightly, and lurch forward, the hand with the candy flying out. Swedish Fish pelt the wall like gummy raindrops while my knee buckles and I hit the carpet. I’m all twisted up, kneeling on the floor and my face—
My face smack-dab in the middle of Jackson’s thigh.
He sighs somewhere above me. “You really do have a gift for this sort of thing.”
I groan, my eyes clenched shut. At least I didn’t land with my face in his lap. This could have been so much worse.
“I lost my fish,” I whine.
He hesitates, then eases his palm over the back of my head. “I’ll buy you some more.”
“I got them from a gas station, like, one thousand miles away.”
He exhales a short laugh. “I’m sure we’ll find something.” His hand sifts under my hair and squeezes at the back of my neck. I shiver. “Do you need help getting up?”
“No, I’m fine.”
I don’t move. Another laugh shakes his chest. “You sure?”