CHAPTER EIGHT
Harrison
For about four full seconds, I almost let her leave.
She’d said her piece, stolen my coat, and walked away. Some stubborn part of me insisted this was exactly how it was supposed to go. She’d leave. I’d let her. The house would go quiet again, just like I liked it.
Except, I didn’t like it anymore. “Elle!”
She didn’t turn around. Just kept walking, headed for her car, her beautiful hair whipping around her face. And those damn shoes sliding with every step. I went after her, barefoot with no shirt on.
“Elle, stop!”
“I called a tow truck! I’m going to sit in my own car and wait for it like a grown woman, because I am not doing this with you right now!”
“Your car won’t start. You’ll freeze.”
She didn’t stop. She half-ran, half-stumbled down the driveway, until her shoe caught on something and she went down hard, disappearing into snow up to her elbows. “Damn it.”
I reached her in three strides and hauled her to her feet. She was already fighting to get her feet back under her, snow covering the front of her, making her nipples stand out.
“Get off me. I can walk.”
“Not in those damn shoes, you can’t.”
“Watch me.” She wrenched an arm free and took two more steps before her shoes betrayed her again.
This time I didn’t let her hit the ground.
I caught her against my chest, both arms locking around her.
I didn’t feel the bite of the cold on my body or my feet.
All I felt was her in my arms. “Elle. Listen to me.”
“I am done listening to you.”
I turned her around, forcing her to face me.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, little hellcat.
You’re going to stop walking toward a dead car.
You’re going to let me carry you back inside.
And if you fight me on this one more time, I am going to put you over my knee the second we’re through that door, and it will have nothing to do with rescuing you and everything to do with exactly how much you’re scaring me right now. ”
That got her to actually look at me instead of past me. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me. I’ve had a very educational time learning exactly how far you’ll push a bad idea to prove a point.”
The look on her face was not quite surrender, but close. “This is insane. You can’t just threaten to spank a grown woman while standing barefoot in the snow, Harrison.”
“Apparently I can, because I just did, and it got you to stop walking. I’m calling it a win.
” I didn’t give her time to argue further.
I got an arm under her knees and picked her straight up off the ground, and she made an undignified noise of protest that turned into a death grip around my neck the second the wind hit us both harder.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“Harrison.”
“You’ll thank me in about ten minutes, when you’re not losing feeling in your toes.
” I started back toward the house, her weight nothing against the adrenaline still hammering through me.
“For what it’s worth, I meant what I said.
Not the spanking. Well. Also, the spanking.
But mostly the part where you just scared the hell out of me. ”
“I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“I know. That’s almost worse.”
She didn’t say anything else until we were back on the porch, and I shouldered the door open and got us both inside. Reluctantly, I set her on her feet.
“You carried me,” she said, a little dazed. “Like an actual caveman.”
“I’ll accept that description.”
“I could have walked.”
“You were falling down every four feet.”
“I was pacing myself.”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I just looked at her, soaked through, furious, alive, and felt every bit of careful distance I’d been keeping between us disappear.
She tried to get the coat unzipped but her hands were shaking too hard to manage. I watched her fight it for a second before she gave up entirely and just stood there, furious at the zipper, furious at me, furious at the whole situation.
And still too damn stubborn to ask for help.
“Let me.”
“I don’t need you to—”
“Elle.” I took over before she could finish the sentence, working the zipper free with more patience than I felt, and she let me, which told me more than anything she’d actually said in the last five minutes.
“You almost let me leave,” she said quietly. “Back there. Before I went out the door. I saw it on your face.”
“For about four seconds. Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve spent ten years being the man who lets people go and doesn’t chase.
It’s worked out fine for me. It’s easier.
Nobody gets to leave a mark if you never let them stay long enough to leave one.
” I stopped, my hands still at her collar, not moving away.
“Then you actually walked out and I found out real fast that theory doesn’t survive with you meaning something to me. So I chased you.”
Her breath caught, and I watched her decide, in real time, whether to keep fighting or let this actually land. “You chased after me without a shirt. Or shoes.”
“That I did.”
“You were mad—”
“At the situation. Not at you.”
“That’s not an apology.”
“I know. I’m not good at those either. Give me time.”
“Do we have time?”
“Yes, Elle. We do. Because you’re not going anywhere. Not even when the snow melts.”
She wound her arms around my neck. “I’m not?”
“No. You’re not.”
I reached up, brushed melting snow out of her hair.
“Here’s what I actually know. I don’t need anyone, Elle.
Haven’t in ten years, and I was fine with that.
But not needing someone and not wanting them aren’t the same thing.
I want you the way I haven’t wanted anything since before that wedding that didn’t happen.
Stay. Not because your car’s dead. Because I’m asking. ”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“Okay,” she said. “But we’re still talking about your grandfather.”
“We’re still talking about my grandfather.”
“Now how about we go back to bed where you can warm me up for my heroic rescue of you.”
She stood on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “How about you make good on the promise to spank me. I think I’m about to be a very, very bad girl.”