Chapter Seventeen
For the second time since moving back to Seattle, Nate woke up on Luna’s couch.
The smoldering embers inside the fireplace did very little to warm up the room at this point. But sometime during the night he’d kicked off the covers to cool down the heat that had built inside of him.
He blamed the woman on the floor in front of him.
Luna lay flat on her stomach, her arms splayed out, taking up the entirety of the queen mattress Nate had wrestled down the stairs the night before.
Her face was angled toward him, her lips slightly parted and her face completely lax as she slept.
They’d stayed up playing cards and talking for what felt like hours. Card games Nate had completely forgotten existed.
Games of speed were Luna’s strong point.
Poker . . . not so much.
Something Nate would have exploited in his college years.
When they bored of games, they talked about different cases they’d taken on in their careers.
Luna had a soft spot for women trying to get out of awful relationships and went in looking for ways for these women to financially survive once their divorces were final.
She insisted she was “giving back” by taking on cases without pay.
Nate still wasn’t sure what she felt she needed to “give back” for.
At some point they’d both found their heads on their respective pillows and the conversation drifted off.
Eventually Nate had asked a question and Luna didn’t reply.
He watched her then.
If they weren’t somewhat trapped in the same room in an effort to stay warm all night, he would have felt guilty for his voyeurism.
She looked younger when she slept. Not that she looked old, but the stress lines that seemed to live behind her eyes softened and all that worry melted away.
Nate had fallen asleep looking at her only to find her awake in his dreams.
Very awake.
And very interested in exploring what he had under the gray sweatpants he’d commandeered once again from Ash’s closet.
The choice had been intentional.
Even if it was torturous to watch Luna try and hide her gaze from time to time.
He should feel bad.
He didn’t.
But he really should.
The sound of a tree tapping against a window brought his attention to the bright day starting outside.
Nate pushed himself up, keeping as quiet as he could, and took in the stillness behind the panes of glass.
There had to be a good six to eight inches of snow blanketing everything.
He could tell by the sound of silence in the house that the power hadn’t been restored.
The time on his cell phone said seven twenty.
Nate couldn’t remember when he’d slept past six, with or without an alarm.
The bite in the air brought his gaze to the ashes in the hearth.
The odds of him waking Luna while attempting to re-energize the fire were too great.
The gas in the house was still on when they’d gone to sleep, which meant he’d be able to at least boil water for tea in an effort to get his morning dose of caffeine. He feared even that would wake up the sleeping woman in front of him.
Nate pushed himself up on the arm of the sofa and reached for his phone. He’d placed it on airplane mode to extend the battery life, which had worked. Fifty percent charge would get him through most of his day unless he started streaming videos.
According to the online news, Seattle was virtually shut down.
Residents were encouraged to stay home until the main roads had a chance of being cleared for safe travel.
Even then, getting to those main roads would prove difficult for the average driver without cars that were meant for these conditions.
The weather report said that the snowfall was past, and what they had would likely stick around throughout the day and even into the night. But rain was expected to return by Monday morning’s commute.
As for the twenty thousand residents without power . . . the power company was “working on it.”
The sound of Luna sighing was followed by her shifting positions.
There was something intimate about watching someone else wake up. The moments between awareness and dreams were vulnerable and not something you shared with many people in a lifetime. And certainly not colleagues.
Except maybe for him.
Luna rolled onto her back and her eyes fluttered open.
He knew he shouldn’t be staring, but his thoughts and actions weren’t in sync, making it hard to look away.
Luna propped herself up on an elbow and looked over her shoulder at him.
“Did I wake you?” he asked.
She shook her head and ran a hand over her face. “What time is it?”
“Almost seven thirty. How did you sleep?”
“Pretty good, considering. How was the couch?” she asked.
“Better than the last time.”
She laughed. “What is it saying that you have more than one night on my couch to compare against each other?”
“If you were a girlfriend, I think it would be normal.” The words came without filter.
Narrowed eyes looked back at him. “Any boyfriend that needs to be reduced to the sofa wouldn’t be a boyfriend for long.”
A slow smile reached his lips. “That’s a good rule.”
Luna pulled her eyes away from his and peered outside. “Holy cow.” She pushed herself up and walked to the window. “That’s a lot of snow.”
With her awake, Nate unfolded from the sofa and moved to the fireplace to rekindle the fire. “The neighborhood kids will be happy.”
“Ha. They’d be happier if this was a school day.”
“True.”
Nate noticed the second Luna saw him bent over the fireplace. He ignored the fact that her gaze lingered on the lower half of his body and pretended not to notice.
She cleared her throat and grasped her bathrobe with jerky movements. “I think I have instant coffee.”
Nate moaned. “What about black tea?”
“That’s a better idea.”
Luna left while Nate placed a few scraps of old newspaper under the new logs he wanted to catch flame.
One spark split into two, then three, until the edges of the bark on the wood started to emit heat.
In the kitchen he found Luna staring wide-eyed and the shotgun she’d left there the night before.
Even though he knew she saw him walk in, she didn’t tear her gaze away from the weapon.
“When I was a kid, I always thought I’d have a gun. I thought that was the answer to being safe.” Her voice was steady, almost monotone. “When my marriage failed, I realize if I’d had one, things might have ended differently.”
Nate didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand what she meant.
He stepped closer and covered her hand that was resting on the counter with his.
She blinked twice and slowly raised her eyes to his.
“Your marriage didn’t fail. Your husband failed you.”
She smiled and her face softened.
Luna stacked her other hand on top of his, squared her shoulders, and then pulled away.
Nate didn’t like to sit still.
That was the conclusion Luna came to over the course of the day.
After a workable breakfast of cereal and fruit, Nate raided Ash’s clothing and discarded shoes and put himself to work.
First order of business was tightening the cameras that were going off before the power cut out. Even in the snow he dragged a ladder around the house and cut away at the tree limbs that set the sensors off.
Then he brought in enough firewood to last for a week if the electricity didn’t return.
While he fussed with wood, Luna made use of a snow shovel on the path between the shed and the back door.
Nate stacked the firewood in the greenhouse, which wasn’t something Luna had thought of.
They let Miley’s car idle long enough to put a charge on both their phones.
Luna was starting to think Nate would be staying another night, when he walked in the back door and announced that the road in front of her house had seen enough traffic to melt the snow.
“You’re welcome to stay,” she told him. And he was, although she was starting to worry that they were becoming way too comfortable with this co-habitating thing.
“If you need me to, I’m happy to stay. It won’t be a choice if I stay after sundown and everything starts freezing over.”
Part of her wanted to say, “Stay,” another part said that would be crossing some kind of line. “You know I’m not usually in need of rescue. Stolen cars and snowstorms aside.”
“And I’m not usually a hero on call. But the next time I am, I’m bringing an overnight bag.”
“Tired of wearing Ash’s clothing?” she asked.
“Your brother has an abnormal amount of gray sweatpants.”
And just like that, her gaze lowered, even though she knew Nate had changed back into the jeans he’d arrived in the night before.
She cleared her throat and found a knowing smile on Nate’s lips.
The ambient noises that you didn’t hear until they were gone sang back into life, and the sweatpants were forgotten.
The hum of the refrigerator.
The buzz of the lights that had been on when the power went out, now blipped back on.
“That’s a relief,” she said.
Nate pointed toward the living room. “I’ll haul that mattress back upstairs and get out of your hair,” he concluded.
“You’re not in my hair.”
He looked at the top of her head as if seeing her hair for the first time.
For the briefest of moments, she thought he was going to reach out and touch the ends of it.
Nate’s gaze snapped away.
“The mattress,” he said before leaving the kitchen.
Luna released a breath she’d been holding before they both returned to the living room.
After they put her bed back together upstairs, Luna followed Nate as he prepared to leave.
He zipped up his coat and turned to her by the back door.
“This is starting to become a habit,” she told him.
“What’s that?”
“Me thanking you for doing things no one would ever expect of you.”
He regarded her with a tilt of his head. “I try my best to do the right things, whether it’s expected or not,” he said.
“That’s rare. In my experience, so few men do.”
His voice lowered. “Then you need to meet better men and set the bar higher.”
Nate opened the back door.
Luna stepped forward to follow.
He stopped abruptly and turned into her.
Luna kept herself from falling into him, but only by a couple of inches.
Nate reached out and grappled with her arm.
Her eyes caught in his as a snap of energy pulsated around them.
“Y-you really need to stop doing that,” she said softly, the hair on her arms prickled with nerves.
“Doing what?” He looked at her lips.
Luna cleared her throat and still managed to stutter. “M-Making me run into you, Mr. Venti.”
“I don’t know . . . I’m starting to like it.” His voice was low and hummed in the very center of her body.
Oh, damn.
She should say something witty. A retort.
Nothing came.
Words didn’t surface.
Nate moved his hand from her arm to her face.
His grin dropped; his eyes searched hers. God help her, she leaned into the warmth of his palm.
“I’m going to leave now before I do something I can’t take back,” he whispered. Yet he ran his thumb under her bottom lip in one languishing stroke.
Her hands trembled and every internal muscle in her body cried out for his touch. “That’s a . . . probably a good idea.”
One final look at her lips, and Nate eased back, letting his hand fall away.
She missed it immediately.
This time she kept her distance as gravity, or more accurately reality, fell back in.
A few steps away he turned around again. “Set the alarm tonight.”
“Is that a request or an order?” Finally, she found her words.
Nate smirked. “This kind of weather brings out opportunistic criminals.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
He was smiling now and slowly walking backward. All while he let his eyes travel up and down her frame. “We should probably have a safe word.”
“Oh?”
Nate was flirting.
Damn if she wasn’t flirting right back.
“What do you suggest?” she asked.
“Broccoli.”
She burst out a short laugh. “If you’re going to pick a vegetable, why not a cucumber?”
Nate slipped and righted himself before he fell onto his butt.
The warmth that came with her laughter lit something inside of her. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Nate shook a finger her way and she heard him moan.
“Text me when you get home, so I know you made it.”
“Is that an order, or a request?” he shot back.
She didn’t answer.
Luna crossed her arms over her chest and watched as Nate walked out of her orbit.
He sent her one last look and smile before he disappeared out of sight.