Chapter Ninety-Six
Georgia
L etting my heavy purse slip off my shoulder, forgetting I still had the three framed pictures in there, I dropped my bag to the floor, and the thud echoed.
Whatever.
He was already cleaning up the broken glass and spilled coffee, and I was already ignoring my traitorous sex drive, yanking back the covers, toeing out of my boots, and climbing into the bed I had dreams about.
Okay, I had dreams about him and this bed. And the hotel.
My legs slid between cool sheets, my head sank into obscenely fluffy pillows, and I pulled the thick down comforter with the ridiculously soft duvet up to my chin.
Then every aching, stiff muscle in my non-muscled body released a thousand pounds of tension, and I sighed in bliss. Or temporary insanity. I didn’t care which.
This bed should be illegal.
The man who owned it should be illegal.
Or I should.
I was, after all, trespassing.
And I’d had five days to change my mind, turn around, and make better choices. But every passing mile had become a dare. Or a newly crossed threshold of determination. Like my foot on the gas and the Jeep’s tires eating up the road was a competitive test. What would fail first? My false bravado or the SUV that was a decade and a half past reliability?
I didn’t know until I’d exited the main highway. I still didn’t know when I drove past Big Sky and started looking for a road I’d only been on twice.
But when I pulled down a long, snowy drive, and the two-story cabin appeared on its majestic perch above the rushing river, I felt like I’d not only passed the test, but won the championship test of wills.
I hadn’t even cared that I didn’t know what would come next.
Okay, I cared.
A whole, whole lot.
And I’d thought up about a thousand different scenarios, most of them bad, of what would happen after I got here. What I would do if I saw him—or worse, saw him with another woman. Or even more horrible, didn’t see him at all.
Every single mile I drove, I thought about all of it, and deep down, I knew his reaction to me coming here wasn’t going to be good. But I knew I had to take the risk.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about this bed.
It was my soft landing.
It was the only soft landing I’d ever had.
And maybe he hadn’t meant those words in this way, but I’d never had a bed I’d felt safe in, let alone one I fell asleep in where I’d slept so hard, I didn’t even remember sleeping.
That’s why I came here.
Even if I had to squat on his land and live in my car and use ice-cold water from that river to bathe, I wanted to be close to this place.
I wanted to feel close to him.
I wanted my soft landing.
Inhaling a deep breath of clean linens, fresh air, and the faint smell of pine from log beams, I closed my eyes.
Then water turned on downstairs.
Rushing water like the rushing river, but this was inside the cabin, and I knew that sound.
Blade was taking a shower.
My core pulsed, and my double-crossing sex drive came roaring back with a vengeance.
Shit.