Chapter Six
He could hear her teeth chattering from here.
Rome had slept through the sound of mating cows, late night calls from birds and elk and his parents screaming at each other in the middle of the night. But he couldn’t sleep through this.
Rolling his back toward Lettie’s position, he draped his arm over his ear for the dozenth time.
Nope. He could still hear her. Like a woodpecker determined to drive him crazy.
Temperatures had dropped near freezing. Thin layers of frost clung to the dead leaves skirting around his sleeping bag, but he’d come prepared.
The trick was not to over layer. That led to sweat, which led to a drop in body temperature, which led to hypothermia.
A balance had to be struck when one lived and slept under the stars.
Lettie had not found that balance.
Another shudder shifted through her, working its way past his defenses and branding into his brain.
Crystal clear skies supplied unprecedented views of the heavens with pinpricks of thousands of stars.
If he watched long enough, he could track satellites trailing over the park and a falling star or two.
This was where peace found him when his days were filled with tracking and death and nightmares that wouldn’t go away.
This was where he felt most at home in a world that didn’t know what to do with him and refused to provide a place for him to fit in. Outdoors. Wilderness. Isolation.
He lived for jobs like this. Just a chance to run from his problems and forget the crushing reality he’d slowly faced during his marriage. This one should’ve been no exception.
Except a certain know-it-all scientist had insisted on following after him for a bear she believed was innocent.
And now said scientist was on the brink of freezing to death.
A silent groan rumbled through his chest as Rome rolled onto his back.
Damn it. Hiking himself onto his elbows, he tapped his socked foot against the rifle parallel to the edge of his sleeping bag.
More to ensure he hadn’t misplaced it than anything else.
A tic he hadn’t been able to get rid of since he was a kid.
His vision had adjusted enough to reveal her outline across the clearing.
Lettie had curled onto her side in a fetal position to try to contain some kind of warmth around her middle.
It wouldn’t do any good, judging the thinness of her sleeping bag.
When he’d asked her if she’d come prepared, he’d hoped she hadn’t been lying.
That obviously wasn’t the case.
“Is that a vibrator you’re working over there, or some kind of animal you picked up along the way?
” He was poking the bear. He knew that, knew the consequences when all the emotions she shoved deep down over the course of months and years blew up in his face.
But he couldn’t help himself. There was something about getting a rise out of her when he’d gone so long without much of her attention at all. “Maybe a woodpecker you’ve stashed?”
The chattering paused for a split second before stuttering through the next words out of her mouth. Her outline shifted on the forest floor. “Excuse me?”
“Your teeth could bring down one of these trees in a matter of minutes.” Rome tucked his hands beneath his head, spreading his elbows wide.
He’d donned a short sleeve shirt and a thicker long sleeve over it he could take off in case he started sweating.
With the amount of time he spent outdoors, his sleeping bag was one of those tapered mummy types best for packing with headwall to keep the heat from escaping, certified down and a vent to keep him from overheating.
Hers looked as though she’d picked it up at the nearest thrift store.
At this rate, Lettie would be a Popsicle come morning.
“I’m surprised you haven’t broken crowns. ”
“In case you’re wondering, it’s cold.” She tugged the edge of the sleeping bag, several inches short of her chin, higher.
The mouth of the bag was too wide, letting in more cold air than keeping it out, and the filling had worn down well past its best-used-by date.
It was a miracle she hadn’t already succumbed to hypothermia out here in the woods.
“You’d think three layers of clothes and socks would do something, but here we are. ”
She’d never been able to go to sleep until her feet were warm. Every night during their marriage she’d gone to bed in the thickest socks money could buy, and in the morning, he’d trip over them. Sometimes multiple pairs.
“Well, neither of us are going to get any rest if you can’t stop shivering.
” Rome hauled his upper body off the ground and unzipped the length of his bag.
Careful not to knock his rifle, he shoved to stand before hauling the weapon over his shoulder and securing his bag over his arm.
He closed the distance between them in less than four strides.
“What are you doing?” Lettie grabbed for the edge of her sleeping bag, but the damn thing barely covered her from chest to toe. She rolled to the far edge of her bag as though she expected him to steal her gear.
“Like I said, I can’t sleep listening to your chattering.” Tossing his sleeping bag onto the ground beside her, he straightened it out, perfectly parallel and gripped the strap of his rifle. “Get in.”
She shook her head, glimmers of moonlight streaking through her hair.
On any other night he might’ve appreciated the view, but he’d just found out the bear he’d been tracking for three days most likely wasn’t responsible for the deaths of four hikers and been forced to be in the presence of the very woman he blamed for the pent-up anger that built just a little more each day. “You can’t be serious.”
“This will go a whole lot faster if you stop questioning every move I make.” He spread the unzipped half of his sleeping bag open.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, Lettie. Your body temperature is too low.
That’s why you’re shivering. In an hour, maybe two, your temperature will drop so low you’ll stop shivering, and your organs will begin to shut down.
You’ll get lightheaded, your words will start slurring and you’ll drift off to sleep without waking up in the morning.
Now, as much as I crave dead silence, your death would only make my life harder.
I’ll have to haul you out of here myself and explain to Randy how his top ecologist died on my watch, and you know how much he hates paperwork. So. Get. In.”
One second. Two. The pressure of her attention solidified in his chest as she excavated herself from her thin thrift store bag and settled into his.
She hadn’t been lying before. She must’ve donned every piece of clothing she’d packed for this impulse excursion in an attempt to stay warm, but it would only work against her.
“Lose the jacket and a pair of socks. If you start sweating, you’ll just dehydrate yourself faster.
” Rome took care of his weapon while she followed through on his instructions.
Then slipped in beside her. He caught her sharp inhale as he took up the opposite side of the bag and wormed his feet toward the bottom.
It was a tight squeeze, her pressed up against him.
He’d intentionally bought it to pack easy for one person, and the mere fact he’d was touching her from shoulder to toe sent a fury of heat that had no business burning through him.
Hints of that impossible scent that belonged solely to her coated the back of his throat, and Rome cleared his throat to keep it at bay.
In vain. She was practically laced into his every nerve in this position.
“Turn onto your side. Your back to my front.”
She didn’t argue this time, her backside brushing against his front in the most infuriating and gut-wrenching way.
He’d forgone his jeans in favor of sweats, and in that instant, he was convinced he could feel every inch of her through the thin material.
And that she could feel him. Settling his arm beneath his head, he tucked the headwall around both their heads, careful not to catch her hair and zipped up the bag.
Her breaths had shallowed as though a single mistake would give away the thoughts in her head, but she wasn’t shivering anymore. Goal achieved.
Instant heat built between their bodies, and Rome could practically witness the tension leaking out of her shoulders and back.
“Are you wearing my hockey jersey?” He’d been looking for his college jersey since the day he’d moved out, too chicken to message her to ask about it.
He should’ve known she’d held onto it. There hadn’t been a single night she’d gone to bed without it.
His jersey and those ridiculous socks of hers, and his primal male ego had loved the fact she couldn’t dare part with it.
Though he was surprised to still see her wearing it.
The jersey hadn’t aged well. The course fabric still scratched bare skin, it’d shrunk too small in the dryer, there was a hole in the bottom right where he’d torn it during his last game and Lettie had stained it during a midnight mint-chocolate ice-cream run.
The thing should’ve been shot and buried, and yet she was still wearing it.
All that tension she’d released zipped straight up her spine. “No. I’m wearing my hockey jersey.”
A flare of heat that had nothing to do with the sleeping bag surged through him.
Why the hell did her wearing his clothes hit some caveman desire to show off his claim to her?
She wasn’t his anymore. He’d burned that bridge so thoroughly, Rome couldn’t believe she hadn’t stabbed him yet.
His chuckle rumbled through his chest and into her back, shaking them both.
He rested his head against his arm, her full head of blond hair—and that tantalizing scent of hers—a mere inch from his face.
“Get some rest, Lettie. We’ve got another long day tomorrow.
I’ll check out your feet in the morning. ”
The seconds ticked by. Minutes without her reply.
Sleep refused to grip him. Every cell in his body honed on every cell in hers.
Every shift in her position, every change to her breathing patterns, every thud of her pulse in her back.
Six months without this. Without her. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed it.
How acclimated he’d become to having someone pressed against him.
The nights he spent under the stars were some of his most peaceful, but that peace had rarely stuck around.
Now? It was like a switch had been flipped, gravity taking a stronger hold and grounding him like never before.
Rome held his breath to save himself from dragging his nose through her hair, from making her part of him again.
There was a reason he’d left, why he’d served her divorce papers.
He had to remember that. He had to remember all the nights he’d gone to bed alone.
The nights where she hadn’t come home and chosen to crash in her office.
The days his messages had gone unanswered due to a meeting that ran too long.
Where he and their marriage hadn’t been a priority.
A drugging heaviness claimed his muscles and evened his breathing.
Convinced Lettie had already succumbed to sleep, he allowed himself to relax into her warmth and the ease with which she’d worked her way under his skin again.
Like he’d never really extracted her in the first place.
He was half in and half out of consciousness when he thought he heard the echo of her voice.
“You should’ve stayed.”
But had those three words come from her, or from his own wishful thinking?