Chapter 19

Olive watched as Noah pulled something from his cargo pants pocket and lowered himself the best he could, his weight on his good leg. There was the sound of a click and he rose—with more than a slight grimace—and opened the door.

She didn’t ask if he was okay, because he was male, and therefore would either ignore her or say he was fine. “So we are breaking and entering,”

she said instead. “You just bumped that lock.”

“Nope.”

He met her gaze, his own revealing nothing. “When we got here, the door was unlocked.”

She rolled her eyes, and he almost smiled. “There’s clearly no one using this place,”

he said, and shrugged out of his jacket to wrap it around her. Drenched on the outside, on the inside it was warm and smelled deliciously like him, and was big enough to completely encompass her and her useless jacket that hadn’t lived up to its waterproof promise. “But—”

“You’re cold,” he said.

“As are you!”

He shrugged. “I’m better at going with the flow.”

She started to get snippy about that, but . . . well, truth was truth.

“Get inside,”

he said. “I’m going to get our bags. Don’t want to leave them in the Razor since you brought enough food to feed the entire bear population.”

She froze and stared at him.

He shook his head with a barely there smile. “You’ve been in the big city too long if you’ve forgotten what it’s like out here.”

Another truth. In the Tahoe National Forest, bears were very cute, very scary menaces. They broke into unlocked cars and ate everything they found, including center consoles and steering wheels. They broke into unlocked garages and tore into refrigerators and cabinets. Basically, if something smelled good, the bears found it and ate it. “Be careful.”

“My middle name.”

“Yeah, right,”

she muttered, watching him walk off, hearing his low laugh. “Wait! Your jacket!”

But he was already gone. Shaking her head, she went inside, turning in a circle, taking in the yurt in its entirety. It was small but seemed strongly constructed, which was good given the intensity of the rain hitting the roof overhead. She was surprised to find it at least sparsely furnished with a loveseat, a small table with two mismatched chairs, and a bed, all in bright oranges, reds, and greens.

Her parents would be right at home in the sixties setting, but there was no sign of them, no sign of anyone having been here for some time, if the layer of dust meant anything. So either they’d decided not to come, or . . . they’d never made it for whatever reason. Pulling out her phone to call the rental company to ask if they’d heard from her parents at all, Olive stared down at the screen.

No service.

Not a surprise. People who didn’t live in the Tahoe region never believed it, but there were still huge pockets where internet and phone service didn’t exist. Maybe Noah would have an idea of what to do. Realizing he hadn’t come in, she went to the door.

The rain made it nearly impossible to see a foot past her own nose. Rainwater poured off the small alcove, probably put in place to protect the opening of the yurt from the elements, but all it really did was completely hinder visibility.

“Noah?”

she yelled, her voice immediately swallowed up by the noise of the storm.

He didn’t call back to her.

A gust of frigid air sent a few strands of her hair fluttering across her face and she impatiently shoved them back. Suddenly unbearably anxious, she cupped her hands around her mouth. “This isn’t funny!”

Silence.

Dear God, if he’d gotten himself eaten by a bear, she’d never forgive him. Never. Ever. Dammit. Sucking in a breath, she ran out into the rain. At the UTV, the rain was coming down so hard that she nearly missed the tall, leanly muscled shadow at the back of the vehicle.

Noah stood there, palms on the Razor, head bowed, a stillness to his body that made her rush toward him. She was nearly there when her boots lost their traction in the mud. For a single heartbeat, she waved her arms, trying desperately to find her balance, and then she went down hard, landing on her butt.

Noah stepped toward her, his limp far more pronounced than it’d been that morning.

“Are you hurt?”

he asked, offering her a hand.

“Just my pride. Unlike you!”

When she didn’t take his hand, he simply reached down and pulled her upright on his own, jaw tight. “I’m fine,”

he said in a low voice.

“Noah—”

He turned his back on her. “Let it go.”

“I can’t!”

That had him stopped and slowly spinning back.

“Look,”

she said, trying to lower her voice. “This is what friends do. Worry. Watch each other’s backs. Stand by each other. So deal with it!”

“Deal with it?”

“Yes! And what happened? You didn’t answer me when I called out for you.”

“Nothing happened, I didn’t hear you.”

When she just stared at him, he sighed like she was some huge trial. “The leg locks up sometimes if I stay in one position too long, or when it’s cold. It’s no big deal.”

And with that, he limped toward the yurt, all three bags hanging off his shoulders.

God save her from idiot alphas. “I can carry my own stuff!”

He didn’t slow down, leaving her running after him. Inside, he dropped the bags and turned to take in the place, water sluicing off him. His shirt was so wet it clung to him like a second skin, emphasizing just how fit he was, and she felt her mouth go dry—which really ticked her off. “I thought you’d been eaten by a bear!”

He gave a snort of laughter. “Would you have missed me?”

“Yes,”

her mouth said, once again without permission from her brain. That did it. She was never going to speak again.

After a stunned pause at her admission, Noah smirked. “You were just afraid the bear would also eat all your snacks.”

He didn’t believe that she’d have missed him, and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. While she was thinking too hard, he moved stiffly to the woodstove.

“I can start the fire,” she said.

“I’ve got it.”

“Your leg—”

“Stop treating me like a feeble-minded invalid.”

She stared at him, then lowered her voice with effort. “Maybe it’s because you’re acting feeble-minded.”

“I’m acting feeble-minded,”

he repeated with more than a hint of disbelief.

“Hey, if the shoe fits.”

The sound that came from deep in his throat spoke of irritation and bad temper. Well, good then, mission accomplished, and she looked around for something to throw at him that wouldn’t maim or kill him. Nothing. But hold on . . . she had a little packet of M&M’s in her pocket. She wished they were peanut M&M’s, because they’d hurt more, but with her having a sensitivity to peanuts and all . . .

“Hey!”

he yelped when she beaned him in the back of the head with a blue M&M. Craning his neck, he glared at her.

“Be glad I can’t find a weapon,”

she said and kept throwing M&M’s because she couldn’t stop herself. Clearly, she’d lost her mind.

Thunk. Plink. Rattle—the noises the candy made as she threw them depended on what they hit. Well, except the one that beaned him square in the forehead now that he was facing her. That one didn’t make any noise at all.

Neither did the one he caught in his mouth.

“Show off.”

Chewing, he raised a brow. “You about done?”

With a huff, she shoved the empty wrapper in her jeans pocket and turned to rifle through the cabinets. Empty, except . . . She grabbed the lone item—a bottle of whiskey. “Found dinner.”

And with that, she chased away her to-the-bone chill with a sip that burned all the way down. “How long until you’re okay to head back?”

He stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “We’re not driving back in this crazy-ass storm.”

Panic swirled in her gut. “But—”

“We’re not leaving, Olive. It’s not safe.”

She looked around the yurt and swallowed hard. “How are we going to stay here without killing each other?”

He turned back to the woodstove. “I’ll stay on my side and you stay on yours.”

She eyed the single, bare, full-size mattress that suddenly looked very, very small.

“You can have it,”

he said without even looking at her.

“Not making you sleep on the floor,”

she muttered. “We’re adults. We can share.”

Another shrug, like he didn’t care one way or the other, which felt like an insult. She looked at him and realized his pants were covered in mud like hers. “You clearly fell too,”

she said. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Did you?”

“Wow.”

She put her hands on her hips. “So now we’re three?”

Instead of responding, he crouched before the woodstove, his movements so carefully precise, she knew he was in far more pain than he was letting on.

“Seriously?”

she asked his back, the one that looked strong and capable. What was it about a guy’s back that did it for her? Or maybe it was the broad shoulders suitable for taking on unbearable weight.

Actually, it was most likely his very fine ass . . .

Ignoring her, he began to methodically build a fire.

“You’re doing it wrong,” she said.

When he didn’t take the bait, she tossed up her hands and turned to their bags. Maybe he wanted to be a stubborn ass, but she did not. She wanted clean, dry clothes and she wanted them yesterday.

Except there was a problem.

Nowhere to go to change. What the hell, she decided. He had his back to her anyway. She kicked off her wet boots, pulled off his jacket and then hers, and then her sweatshirt and T-shirt. Finally, she unzipped her jeans. The problem with wet denim wasn’t that it was wet, but that it’d cemented itself to her skin. It took a lot of struggling and shimmying to get the jeans down, but finally she was free. Which was when she realized the silence in the yurt was deafening. She looked up and locked eyes with Noah, his own dark and filled with things that made her swallow hard. “What?”

she asked with all the bad temper she could muster.

“It’s Wednesday,” he said.

“Yeah? So?”

He nudged his chin toward her lower half, so she looked down, belatedly remembering that today’s undies said Fri-Yay across the front. “What, you’ve never seen a girl wear the wrong day undies before?”

That won her another almost smile, she could tell. But she was still mad at him, so she dug through her bag and pulled on her backup clothes. She then turned to the small—make that postage-stamp-tiny—kitchenette. She needed tea. She always carried a few emergency tea bags with her because in her opinion, caffeine was an entire food group. Only . . . no running water, no electricity, no gas.

And to think, people rented places like this for fun. Still, she’d eat the dry tea bag before complaining to Noah, who she wasn’t ready to forgive for his multiple transgressions, the biggest being that he didn’t want to be with her. Not that she intended to tell him why she was mad, not even upon threat of death or dismemberment. But she was for sure no longer speaking to him, although given that he hadn’t attempted to talk to her, she wasn’t certain he appreciated that fact.

A muffled oath had her turning around. Mr. Handy in Any Situation stood hands on hips staring down at a very small little line of smoke. No fire. Not even a spark.

“I don’t think glaring at it is going to help,” she said.

He ignored her.

Fine. So the not speaking to each other was mutual. Whatever. She nearly turned away, but she caught it.

He was shivering.

“Noah,”

she said, and when he didn’t answer, she moved closer and tried to turn him to face her, which wasn’t easy because he resisted. Damn stubborn brick wall. In the end, she simply walked around him to his front. Reaching up, she cupped his jaw. His cold jaw. He’d hidden it well, but he was just as frozen as she was, and, in fact, was still very wet. “You need to change. I’ll get the fire going.”

“It’s going. It’ll catch any second now.”

“Uh-huh.”

Mr. Perfect didn’t believe her so she dropped to her knees and knocked his stack of wood over.

“Hey.”

Doing the opposite of what he had, she started with the largest pieces of wood on the bottom and then placed the kindling on top to assist in oxygen flow so the fire could burn down to all the underneath layers. When she saw the first lick of flames, she nodded, stood, and turned to Noah.

He was seated on one of the two kitchen chairs, jaw tight. He’d removed his shirt but was still in his cargos and boots.

When she realized the way he sat with his bad leg stretched in front of him probably meant he couldn’t easily bend it to get his boots off, never mind his pants, her bad temper faded and she crouched low to unlace his boots.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

she asked, giving her voice a heavy dose of smart-ass rather than sympathy, knowing his stupid pride would hate even a hint of the kinder emotion.

Men were dumb.

“I can take off my own damn boots,”

he snapped.

“Sure.”

She sat back on her heels and gestured for him to have at it.

When he just glared at her, she shook her head and leaned forward again and finished removing his boots and wet socks. She eyed his pants next.

“No,”

he said wearily. “Just give me some room.”

She did him one better and left his stubborn ass to go tend to her fire. Which turned out to be totally unnecessary because the flames were flickering to life. She glanced over her shoulder and found Noah on the bed under a blanket. “Where did the blanket come from?”

“My duffel bag.”

Right. The emergency and survival gear. Not that she could think straight beyond one single thought: What was he wearing beneath the blanket?

The wood crackled and warmth began to spread through the entire yurt.

“It’s a good fire,”

Noah said with absolutely zero sarcasm—which, dammit, made him a better person than her.

“It’s always fascinating to see you work under pressure,”

he said quietly. Genuinely.

“Why would you want to see me work under pressure?”

His smile was wry. “Under pressure is where you see what people are really made of. No time to clean up who you are or what you do. Pressure shows you what a person fears most.”

“Yeah? What do you fear?”

His smile was tight. “More than I used to. You?”

“I fear we’ll run out of snacks.”

He snorted.

“Okay, hotshot,”

she said. “What do you think I fear?”

He didn’t laugh off her question, instead spoke seriously. “You fear being labeled by the way you grew up, so you hide the real you from the world you built around yourself. All without realizing the real you is amazing—as is.”

She realized her mouth had dropped open. How could he possibly know her fear, and worse, understand it better than she could herself?

He gave her a crook of his finger. “Come here.”

Said the big bad wolf . . .

At her hesitation, he smiled. “Nervous?”

“No.”

More like turned on, which really ticked her off. But apparently her feet didn’t get the message because they took her to the side of the bed. “Do you need something?”

“Yes, for you to get in. You look like you’re still cold.”

He patted the space beside him.

Back to his badass alpha-in-charge self, she could see. But he was right. She was still cold. Really cold, especially her fingers and toes. And her nose too. What was with that?

When he reached out and took her hand in his, she sighed. His had warmed and melted her resistance because she wanted to be warm too. “Fine.”

She climbed into the bed. “But only because I’m worried about you.”

“I know,”

he said with some amusement as he hauled her into him and wrapped his body around her.

He wasn’t naked, but nearly. All he wore were knit boxers and she almost moaned—until she realized he was shaking with silent laughter. Fine. She had moaned. “You’re a jerk.”

He pressed his face into her hair and held her tight. “And you’re one of the strongest, most amazing women I’ve ever met.”

The unexpected compliment made her squirm.

“Olive.”

His voice was low, husky. “Killing me.”

When she realized how she’d been moving against him, and that he’d had a very male reaction, she froze. Eep. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Most action I’ve seen in months.”

She snorted, but then their gazes locked and held as the rain battered the yurt around them, reminding her they were stuck out here in the middle of nowhere until the storm abated.

With one bed.

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