CHAPTER FIVE
Luke
There’s little more than blowing snow to be seen from the windows. Not knowing Briggs’s whereabouts gnaws at me. We return to the kitchen where it’s warmer. I’m exhausted, but I take a minute to check in with Beckett. He’s got nothing new to report.
The smell hits me and my mouth waters. “Is that bread? Are you baking bread?”
“Yeah. Hold this, please.” Kit hands me the flashlight. Like she did earlier, I cover most of the beam.
Using mitts, she pulls a round loaf from the oven and sets it on a wire rack. Steam rises into the air. Then she stirs a pot on the stove, her movements efficient, practiced.
She tips her head toward me. “How are you feeling? Do you think you can eat?”
My shoulder throbs, but my stomach is fine, and I need to eat so I don’t end up totally useless. The bread alone could convince me.
“I can eat. I’ve never known anyone who makes their own bread. Or soup.”
Her expression turns incredulous. “Then you’re in for a treat. Get back in bed and I’ll bring a tray.”
I hate being an invalid, but the circuit around the inn sapped my energy, so I follow orders. And with the windows covered, the bedroom is the safest place for us to be.
I collapse onto the bed and close my eyes. I must’ve drifted, because the next thing I feel is her gentle touch, unzipping my sweatshirt to check the bandage.
“Will I live, Doc?”
My attempt at humor falls flat. Worry clouds those hazel eyes.
Worry for me. I have to stop myself from leaning into it, from soaking up everything she gives.
The temptation is there to take what I can, to absorb the comfort she offers like a balm to my soul. Kit has a way of settling something inside me, soothing rough edges I’ve learned to live with.
It would be easy to take more than she means to give. She seems so intrinsically good I’m surprised there isn’t a husband and a half dozen kids for her to tend to. I’ve taken care of myself for so long it’s an odd feeling to know that, at least on some level, she cares about me.
She re-zips the sweatshirt, her hand resting on my chest. “The bleeding’s stopped, but we need to watch for infection. We’ll change the bandage after dinner.”
“I can manage.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, really. You didn’t sign up to play doctor.” Her touch makes me think things I have no business thinking.
“Has it occurred to you,” she says mildly, “that if you hadn’t been out there today, I’d be defending myself against Briggs alone?”
Hell yeah, I’d thought of that and it ices my blood. “Getting shot means I’m not much help.”
“Then cooperating will help you heal faster,” she continues. “Which makes you more useful.”
She has a point.
“I’m putting another pillow behind you so you can sit up to eat.”
She props pillows behind me and returns with a loaded tray. As she leans in, I catch her scent: spice with something warm underneath. My pulse kicks up.
I take a bowl. “Is this minestrone?”
“It is. And sourdough.”
I take a bite of the bread and groan. “Is that real butter?”
She gives a slight smile. “It’s from Peace & Love Farm a couple miles up the road. I get eggs from there too, and fruit and veggies when they’re in season.”
“Peace & Love?”
Now it’s a full smile that lights up her face. “My friend Wren runs the farm with her sister, Fallon. Their hippie parents started the farm.”
The soup is damn good. It’s awkward, but I manage to feed myself without needing help. She cocks her head. “It sounded like you know Beckett Donovan. Are you from around here?”
I chew my second slice of bread, then swallow. “Beck and I were college roommates and we’ve stayed in touch. In fact, I was a groomsman at his wedding. The one to the wrong woman.”
“Did you think she was the wrong woman at the time?”
I shrug. “Van was in love with him, but I never thought they were right for each other. I think Beck wanted to love her, but he was hung up on someone from here who never worked out.”
“That’s not a good foundation for a marriage,” Kit murmurs. “And now he’s divorced and a single dad. Fallon Cooper at Peace & Love Farm? I bet she’s the one Beckett was hung up over.”
“Still?”
“Pretty sure. Get those two within twenty feet of each other and you’ve got fireworks. Wren, Fallon’s sister, is my best friend. Wren and Beckett’s brother, Gideon, are engaged.”
“Gideon’s engaged? Good for him.”
“Those two are so in love they sparkle when they’re together.”
The soup is warm and savory and so damn good. “What about you?” I figure the only way to learn about her is to ask. I push back on the fatigue. “You ever think about getting married?”
She goes still, then says quietly, “I was married. It didn’t work out.”
“He an asshole?”
That earns a laugh. “You could say that.”
“Want to elaborate?”
She gives me a look, and I find myself holding my breath. It feels like she’s weighing whether she can trust me with something personal, and I want that trust.
“All right, here’s the abbreviated version. I thought I had it all. A degree in marketing, a good paying job, marriage to a cute financial advisor. But after two years of marriage, I divorced my husband and quit my job.”
She sets her bowl down. Her eyes look sad.
“It turns out financially advising a yoga teacher includes home visits, my home by the way, to go over her portfolio in all sorts of flexible positions. That’s where I witnessed her enthusiastically receiving her dividends in the form of loud and high-pitched orgasms.”
Her voice stays steady, but her eyes don’t.
Rage flares hot and immediate. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I wish I was. Or, at least at the time, I wished it wasn’t true. Now I’m glad I didn’t waste any more of my life on him.”
“You walked in on the cheating bastard?”
She nods. “I’d come home from work early with a migraine. I walked in on her screaming like a banshee, not good even without the migraine, while Ted did her from behind. On my bed with the pretty quilt, which I later burned.”
Kit is beautiful and possesses a kindness and generosity of spirit that seems to glow from inside. How could a man who’d taken a vow to love and cherish her have been so utterly careless with her heart?
She stands. “More soup?”
“No.” Exhaustion is pressing down hard. “But when this is over… I’d like to take you out.”
“That’s not necessary.” She reaches for the tray.
“I don’t mean because I owe you.” I force myself to stay awake. “I mean because I want to. Like on a date.”
She studies me long enough that I brace for disappointment.
“Okay,” she says finally. “I’d like that.”
I nod, closing my eyes and listening to her moving around the kitchen.
I don’t know how she cleans up in the dark.
I hear the distant sound of my clothes tumbling in a dryer.
There’s an odd feeling in my chest, an easing of the dissatisfaction with my life that’s been plaguing me.
I don’t want to call it loneliness, but whatever it is, Katarina O’Shea lessens it.
***
When I wake, low light flickers in the room.
An old kerosene lamp is lit on the dresser, its wick turned low.
Kit is lying beside me on top of the quilt, a small blanket pulled up over her.
She’s on her side, facing me, ethereally beautiful in the shadows.
I want to touch her, to trace my fingers across her brow, along her cheekbones, down the slope of her nose.
You’d think being shot and in pain my mind wouldn’t turn to sex, but it does.
Earlier, when she’d been kneeling to help me put on the sweatpants, I’d been slammed with the fantasy of Kit on her knees doing something entirely different.
That had resulted in me snapping at her not to turn on the flashlight.
She didn’t need to see the evidence of those thoughts tenting my underwear.
In what feels like forever, but it’s been only hours, I’m in deep with her on so many levels and I’m sinking fast. It scares the shit out of me, but strangely, I’m okay with that.
I ease out of bed, careful not to wake her.
My shoulder throbs in time with the ache in my head.
I pick up my phone from the nightstand. No notifications, not that I expect any.
It’s just after midnight and my battery is low.
I spot two tablets and a water bottle. I swallow the pills, then move to the bathroom and flip a switch. No light confirms the power is out.
My dry clothes are on a chair. The floor is freezing but pulling on socks one-handed sounds near impossible.
With my gun and the flashlight, and Penny following me, I make another tour of the downstairs windows, looking out, searching for any evidence of Briggs.
There’s nothing. The fucker could be frozen to death out there. I can’t find it in me to care.
When I come back, she stirs.
“Luke.”
That soft smile makes me want to kiss her. Bad. I dip my head and brush my lips over hers. I pull back before I act on the impulse to go further.
She pushes up to her elbow. “Why are you out of bed?”
“I checked outside again. No sign of Briggs.” I finger her blanket. “It’s cold. You should have gotten under the covers.”
She blinks. “I didn’t want you to think I was hitting on you.”
I bark out a laugh. “In my dreams, Katarina.” Her gaze flies to mine and I give in to temptation and touch a finger along her cheek. “There’s something about you. But besides not being in any shape to do anything about it, I’ll always keep you safe. Even from me.”
“I trust you.”
She proves it by slipping under the covers.
I lie on my back, taking stock. My shoulder throbs, the walk through the inn left me chilled to the bone, and I feel like I could sleep the clock around. I figure I’m doing pretty good for being shot. But the woman on the other side of the bed is shivering.
“Come closer, Kit,” I say. “We need to share body heat.”
She turns over, her eyes dark in the low light from the lantern. She studies me carefully before finally saying, “Okay.”
I feel like the luckiest bastard alive. I lift my arm and she moves against me, her back fitting to my side like it’s always belonged there. Warmth spreads. The human connection, and the deep conviction that we belong together.
Something clicks into place and I feel like I’ve come home.
I want this.
I want her.
For the first time in a long while, the future doesn’t feel like something to endure, but something I want, fiercely, with her at the center of it.