Chapter 3
3
MALLORIE
H e was over there somewhere.
A full fourteen hours after we drank coffee together, I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the man who’d been in my kitchen that morning. I hadn’t been able to forget him since he walked out after downing his coffee, saying he had to get to work.
The good news was no deer were shot today. The bad news was I had no idea how to work things around so I could see my neighbor again.
I shouldn’t want to see him again. I’d sworn off dating until I got my law degree. That and my part-time job took enough of my time, and I didn’t need some guy throwing me off track. In fact, if my boss’s buddy called and told me I had to be out tomorrow, it would probably be a good thing. I would hate it, but it would be best for me.
Thunk.
I’d turned on my side, forcing my eyes closed, when the noise jerked them open again. What now?
Thunk.
He was a logger. He chopped down trees for a living. At least, that’s what I assumed. Was he out there with an ax, chopping down trees in the middle of the night?
I crept over to the window and parted the blinds to peek through, but all I could see was the side of his house. His driveway wasn’t even visible from here.
I had to go look.
I grabbed my robe, threw it on, and shoved on my flip-flops. I usually just wore those around the house, but I didn’t really want to wear them out in the yard. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to step too far off the front porch.
Actually, I didn’t have to step past the front door to see exactly what was going on. The lumberjack was standing shirtless in his driveway, the hood of his truck propped open. Steam was pouring from it.
I realized then I wasn’t irritated with him. I had no plans to come out and yell at him. I simply wanted to see him again. Seeing him shirtless was a bonus.
But I had questions. If he was out here like this, I assumed he’d just gotten home and his truck had started smoking. Didn’t cars start smoking while they were being driven? Or maybe he’d started it up to go somewhere. But it was after eleven, and he had to work tomorrow, so he’d probably been out and was just getting home.
What would someone be doing until eleven o’clock at night? Dinner? Maybe a date with a woman?
Jealousy surged through me. And that was absolute lunacy. I had literally just met the guy. Yesterday at this time, I barely knew who he was. I certainly hadn’t noticed he was this handsome.
But that was no doubt due to the bushy beard and longish hair he’d had when I first saw him. I guess he’d cleaned up at some point. But I’d still have found him handsome, scruffiness and all, if I’d gotten a close-up look at him like I had today.
“You okay over there?” I called out.
He jerked upright and hit his head on his propped-up hood. I winced and jumped a little. Sympathy pains.
“Sorry,” I called out. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Just having a little car trouble,” he said. “Started smoking as I was coming up the mountain.”
So he had been out late. Maybe he was just hanging out with the guys. He wouldn’t have been working this late, would he? Loggers didn’t work in the dark. But he’d gone in pretty late this morning compared to what I would expect from guys in that line of work. Maybe he had to make up for that.
“That sucks,” I said.
He looked down at it and shook his head. “I’m going to have it towed to the shop downtown in the morning.”
“You need a ride to work?”
The words flew out of my mouth before I even thought them through. It was the nice thing to do. I’d do it for any neighbor. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was shirtless and ripped as hell.
“I could just…” He stopped mid-sentence, then looked around, stepping away from his truck with a tool in each hand. “That would be great.”
He looked back at me then, and I wondered what war had been going on in his mind in those few seconds he’d looked away. Was he going to say he’d hitch a ride with someone he worked with? That was my guess. It probably would be easy for one of his coworkers to pick him up on the way to the job site. They were working toward the top of the mountain this week, according to my friend Cassady, so someone could easily drop by to get him.
But my neighbor wanted me to take him. Maybe he shared my itch to spend time together. Or maybe he’d thought about it and decided it would just be easier to have me take him.
“I don’t want to get in the way of your day,” he said. “If you have schoolwork or a test or something…”
I shook my head. “I pretty much go at my own pace. So I can drop you off and get a full day of studying before?—”
“Before what?” he asked.
“I was going to offer to come get you at the end of the workday, but you might have that already worked out.”
Now I felt awkward. I was standing on the front porch of a cabin that wasn’t even mine, wearing a bathrobe that I now realized was covered in ducks. So much for hiding my “bearly awake” pajamas.
“I don’t want to put you out,” he said. “But I could make it worth your while.”
Shoot, was he serious? I shifted and realized his words had made things start tingling between my legs.
Sex was definitely not part of my immediate plans. I wasn’t going to lose my virginity on a whim. That was out of the question.
But my body was saying otherwise.
“What exactly are you offering?” I asked, tilting my head.
It was a flirtatious move. I was not a flirt. So that was a huge surprise. He was definitely bringing out a different side of me.
“I’d offer to take you straight to dinner, but I need to come back here and get cleaned up,” he said. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll grab a ride with one of the guys. Hopefully, my truck will be ready by then, and I can just grab my truck, come back, take a shower, and take you to dinner.”
I gestured toward his vehicle. “What if it isn’t ready?”
“Then you may have to drive.”
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t you come over here, and I’ll make you dinner?”
I’d been dying to put my cooking skills to use. They were getting rusty. In college, my roommates would invite all their friends over, and I’d make Italian food just the way I’d had it growing up—straight out of my grandma’s cookbook.
“You have a deal,” he said. “But I’ll still owe you dinner.”
“I plan to take you up on that.”
With a smile, he took a few steps back until he was in front of his hood again. He shifted the tools to one hand, removed the bar holding up the hood, and slammed it down.
“See you in the morning,” he said. “Six forty-five. And I promise I won’t shoot any deer before work.”
I pointed at him. “That is how you can pay me back for the ride. Let the deer live.”
But from the look on his face, I knew he wasn’t going to give up his wildlife hunting easily. And maybe I was wrong for trying to stop him. It might end up being the one thing we couldn’t agree on. But for now, I’d enjoy being able to spend time with him.