Chapter 13
“Talk to me,” Hetty said, not liking this strange feeling that was overtaking her. Every little sound made her pulse kick up, which in turn made her oddly lightheaded, which then scared her even more.
She wasn’t used to being scared. And telling herself she wasn’t used to being shot, either, wasn’t helping much.
“About what?” Spence asked, sounding wary.
“Anything. Everything. I just don’t want to fixate on what happened when I can’t seem to think straight.”
“You were shot, Hetty. Of course you can’t.”
She was pretty sure Spence would be handling it better. She’d bet his brain wouldn’t have disintegrated into turmoil, bouncing from here to there to over there, unable to settle on any one thought or idea.
“Talk about something else. Tell me about… I don’t know, tell me about Gwen.”
He blinked. At least, she thought he did; it was pretty dark back here, and he’d said he didn’t want to light one of the candles unless they had to. But she hated that she couldn’t see well enough to really read him, as she usually could.
Or thought she could.
“Uh…who?”
Despite everything, she almost laughed. “Gwendolyn Merchant? The woman so entranced with you she demanded you take her phone number?”
“Oh. Her.”
Hetty couldn’t deny the fact that his apparent inability to remember the woman’s name had made her feel oddly better.
“She’d be crushed,” she said, trying to make her tone light and teasing. “She thought you were entranced with her.”
She was able to see him shrug then. “It’s an act. It’s always an act.”
He’d never actually admitted that before and she felt further mollified by his admission. And before she thought—she seemed to be having trouble with that at the moment—she asked, “Why?”
“Protection.”
She heard him suck in a sharp breath, and thought she heard a muttered oath, low and harsh. As if he hadn’t meant to let that out and regretted that he had.
“From what?” she asked.
“Never mind.”
“Sorry, you don’t get to call that back.”
The idea that Spence Colton thought he needed protection from anything was rather unsettling, and went entirely against the mask he usually presented.
The flirting, the lightheartedness, the certainty verging on the edge of cockiness but with none of the obnoxious aspects. Which left her with one big question.
What could the brilliant, handsome Spence Colton need protection from?
His response to the question turned out to be total silence. He went back to the cave entrance periodically, she supposed to look and listen. Each time he returned and she asked, he shook his head to indicate there had been nothing to see or hear. But he still didn’t speak.
She was starting to feel a little fuzzy-headed. She supposed a combination of it being well after midnight now and the chill starting to take effect. Plus that little fact that she’d been shot.
“You cold?”
Later, Hetty thought, she’d appreciate that it was concern for her that had made him break his self-imposed silence. But right now she was too busy realizing he was right.
“Yes,” she said, barely suppressing a shiver.
He reached for the emergency blanket. The next thing she knew, he was lying next to her, arranging the blanket over them both.
Loaning her his body heat. Her slightly dizzy mind wanted to romp off in ridiculous directions at that idea, so she bit her lip to remind herself to keep her thoughts to herself and her mouth shut.
She savored his warmth, only then realizing how cold she’d actually become.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“Mmm.”
Nice, noncommittal response. They lapsed back into silence.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when Spence finally spoke.
Quietly, softly, soft enough that she could probably have slept through it, had she been asleep.
But the sleep she’d assumed would be easy to come by seemed to have vanished the moment he had laid down and wrapped the blanket—and himself—around her.
“Do you remember,” he whispered, “what I was like when you first started to tutor me?”
As if she could forget, even if it had been over a decade ago. “You haven’t changed all that much,” she said.
“I know. Always a smart-ass.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean you still work hard, and when you find something that works for you, you run with it. You’re brilliant. You just had to find a way to express that in terms the rest of the world could understand, and find a way to understand how they express things.”
He’d gone very still. She didn’t even think he was breathing for a moment. Finally, he said, in an almost awed tone, “You thought that? Back then?”
“I knew it,” she said with a shrug she knew he’d feel even though he couldn’t see it.
“You never made me feel stupid, like others did.”
“Because I knew you weren’t. I knew you weren’t just a pretty face.”
“I…played on that. The looks and the flirting, I mean. It was part of it.” Another pause before he said, “That’s what I meant about protection.
It was the…facade, I guess. Shelter. The looks were just part of the act, part of the cocky wise-ass routine that kept people from seeing the real me.
The stupid me I always thought I was until you showed me another way. ”
Hetty felt a fierce, aching tightness in her chest. She’d known he was grateful to her for pointing him in the direction that had enabled him to break free, but she hadn’t known how much of his attitude was based in this. Beyond curious, she had to ask.
“And the flirting now?”
“Habit, I guess. And still a bit of that protection. Because it’s obvious I’m not serious.”
“You might want to rethink that,” Hetty said dryly. “Because I’m pretty sure some of our clients thought you were serious.”
“You saying I’m too good at it?” There was a touch of teasing in his tone.
“Too good for my comfort,” she admitted.
He went utterly still again. “Why?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth. She just couldn’t. So she dodged. “It’s uncomfortable to be around.”
“It’s not easy to do,” he said. “Especially when one of the things it’s covering up is…my real feelings. About somebody else. But I don’t know how to act around a woman when the feelings are…real. I never have. So she has no idea.”
It was her turn to go still. There was somebody else? Someone he had real, genuine feelings for? She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Who?”
“Somebody I’ve had a crush on for a long time.” She heard his deep intake of breath. Felt his body tense, as if he were steeling himself for a blow. “Like since the eleventh grade.”
Eleventh grade. When she had begun to tutor him. Surely, he wasn’t saying…what she wished he was saying. It had to have been someone else.
“Where is she now?” she asked, trying for a merely curious tone.
Again there was a pause and a renewed tensing. And then he said it. “Right here.”
Her breath slammed to a halt in her throat. She couldn’t speak.
He went on. “In my arms. At last.” And then the old, smart-aleck Spence reappeared. “Of course, she didn’t have much choice.”
She swallowed. Gathered her nerve. Spared a second to think how it figured that they would reach this point here, in this remote place in this backcountry they both loved, trapped in a freaking cave, waiting for rescue. And then, knowing she had to at least match his courage, she said it.
“If she’d had a choice, she would have chosen this.”
It was another silent moment, one in which she could still feel his tension. He raised up on one elbow before he said, tentatively, “Hetty? You…mean that?”
“I think…it’s why I get snarky with you so often.”
He reached out with his free hand, brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. “I never knew. Never dared to even hope. And I was afraid I’d…ruin our friendship, so I really locked it down.”
She looked up at him, able only to see a profile in the dim light.
She thought she would have recognized him anyway, even if she hadn’t known it was him next to her.
Hadn’t she memorized his face all those years ago?
And he truly hadn’t changed that much on the outside, either.
His jaw stronger, more masculine, the line of him lean, having lost any lingering softness of youth.
“And I’m just me, and you were a Colton, the big name in town.”
He let out a wry chuckle. “I love my family, and I’m proud of what they’ve built, who they’ve all become, but sometimes it’s a pain in the backside.”
She couldn’t help smiling, widely. “It’s only me. You can say ass.”
The chuckle became a laugh this time. Then he dropped back down off his elbow and wrapped his arms around her again. “And that’s another reason,” he said, sounding both amused and delighted.
And genuine. More important to her than anything, there was no doubting the utter sincerity in his voice.
Spence Colton may have been a flirt in front of her countless times, but never had he ever given any of those women the authenticity and certainty he’d just given her.
Where they went from here, she didn’t know. And right now she was too weary to think about it. It was simply enough to lie there, wrapped in his arms and the blanket that so nicely reflected their body heat back to them.
And imagine a night when they might generate an entirely different kind of body heat.