Chapter 11
Gwen
The drive in the country ended up being different from what I expected. We made our way out to Hidden Lake, parked the truck and watched the frozen surface while we talked.
I ended up telling him things I’d never told anyone before.
And despite his guarded reserve, Knox shared some things with me too.
He told me about the trouble he’d gotten into when he was younger. And how he was a different person now. A man. All grown up. But he felt unmoored.
The rangers had become his life. And now he was trying to build a new one without knowing what it should look like.
He also told me why he hadn’t moved back home after his enlistment ended.
He didn’t want to run into the same guys he used to hang out with before he joined the military.
Knox figured if they weren’t in prison, they were still up to no good, and he didn’t want to draw that energy back into his life.
There was a lot of depth in Knox. He might not always be quick to open up, but once he did, I liked everything I saw.
The whole time we talked, he held my hand, his thumb tracing patterns on my palm. Each movement sent a cascade of sensations through my entire body.
It was just a shame that the more time I spent at his side, the harder I fell for him. The man hadn’t misled me once about what we were. I just wished it were something more.
But despite the fact that we sat there talking for hours, the one topic that never came up was about us. And I knew that was because there was no us.
Knox had said it himself. He wasn’t the marrying kind. I thought back to his words, trying to remember exactly what he’d said. Something about only being my husband for one night. It had been a sexy, off-the-cuff comment that had made my panties go wet.
Yeah, I’d known exactly what I signed up for when I invited him to my bedroom. I just hadn’t realized it would hurt so bad.
And now he was acting like we were out on a date. A prim and proper one.
The man was definitely confusing me.
I stared into his eyes, questions forming on the tip of my tongue.
But he took that moment to pull his hand away. “You’re shivering.”
He shrugged out of his coat and draped it over my legs.
“No, then you’ll be cold,” I told him.
“I’ll be perfectly fine, Gwen. I’m used to spending days at a time outside doing fieldwork. In the military, they didn’t book us into fancy hotels at night. You slept where you were.”
My hands tightened around his coat, enjoying the weight of it on my lap. For being a no-commitment kind of man, he was awfully good at handing out the commitment vibes.
He had a casual ease on his face as he rumbled, “There’s another reason I’m thinking about staying here on Red Oak Mountain.”
“Really?” My heart tap-danced in my chest.
His eyes were earnest, his mouth seductive as he said, “The people here are pretty damn cool. Especially… well, I’m enjoying getting to know you, Gwen.”
“Me?” my voice squeaked out.
He chuckled lightly. “Yeah. You.”
With a tiny smile on his lips, he turned the truck back on and flipped the heat to the highest setting. “I kept you out too late. Let’s head home and get you warmed up. Plus, I want to see if Emerald and Eric are back from their appointment yet.”