CHAPTER SIX
Jonah
Outside, a barely perceptible lifting of gray suggests dawn has broken.
Snow has stopped, and the pines at the edge of the clearing are visible, a dark smudge against a pewter sky.
It’s June but might as well be the dead of winter.
I search for any sign of movement. Nothing.
Abel and Denny likely spent a miserable night freezing their asses off.
My guess? They’ll want to find Angel quickly, deal with her, and get off the mountain.
They’ll have to go through me to get to her.
I’d taken the first watch, then shook Angel’s shoulder to wake her around midnight.
A sweet and sleepy Evangeline Beaumont is a dangerous temptation.
When she moved to the chair for her turn on watch, I’d crawled into the sleeping bag warm from her body and rested my head on a pillow smelling of peaches. After what seemed like only minutes, we’d switched again around four.
I light the lantern. She stirs, and I watch her in the shadowy light. She’s curled on her right side, and her hair that’s a dozen shades of color from dark brown to golden spreads across the pillow. Her eyes flutter open and our gazes lock with a connection so strong it pulls me across the room.
I stop at the bedside, feeling like I could consume her in one hungry bite. Her eyes, dark and mysterious, invite me closer.
Propping myself up with my arms on either side of her head, I lean over her.
The yearning in her eyes nearly cuts me off at the knees.
There’s not a force in the universe that could stop me from dipping my head and meeting her lips with mine.
Her hand presses over my heart and I’m sure she can feel it thudding heavily.
I should keep it short, just get a taste to sustain me, but she parts her lips, her tongue sliding against mine, and the kiss rockets straight to hot and seductive.
I need this. I need her. More than my next breath.
When she unzips the sleeping bag and holds it open in invitation, it takes every ounce of self-control I possess to pull back.
Once again, her brothers have asked me to watch out for her and I’m fighting the temptation to do so much more. To slip into that bed and do things with her that I’ve only dreamt about.
Beyond her brothers, danger waits outside our door. I won’t jeopardize Angel’s safety by letting down my guard.
“Angel, we can’t do this. Not right now.” I brush the hair back from her eyes.
A myriad of emotions I can’t define cross her face.
“Abel and Denny are out there and we need to stay alert.”
“Of course. You’re right.” Her voice sounds unnaturally bright in the early morning.
Sitting up abruptly, she nearly clips my chin with her head. I straighten. There’s a weight in my gut and the realization that I’m fucking this up. Bad.
“I want to be with you, but I want to do it right, not when we’ve got this other shit to deal with.”
“I get it. Really.”
“I don’t know that you do.”
With her gaze focused somewhere around my throat, she lifts a brow. “Can you give me some space so I can get out of bed?”
I step back and she drops her legs over the side and pulls on her jacket over wrinkled clothes. She finger-combs the hair that’s come loose overnight, then braids it, quick and sure. It’s like she’s putting on pieces of armor.
I jam my fingers into my own hair and pull. Hard.
Talking about my emotions is my least favorite thing to do.
I’m getting that Angel feels the same. But we’ve got to talk this out.
The way things have been between us no longer works for me.
I want something more with this woman and maybe, if I haven’t totally screwed things up, she wants something more with me too.
We’d kissed all those years ago. She’d hinted she’d been crushing on me and had shyly let me know her roommate was out of town, and we could go back to her apartment. I’d shut that down fast. There’d been reasons. Valid ones. But all I succeeded in doing was hurting her.
Her crush had cleared up pretty damn quick. Joke’s on me, though, because that kiss awoke feelings for her that are now etched so deep in my soul they’ll never let go.
Resisting the attraction has left me fucking exhausted, not helped by lack of sleep. She invited me into her bed and now I’ve hurt her again and she’s erecting solid steel walls of resistance.
She’s put on her poncho and is at the door before I know what she’s up to. I hook an arm around her waist and slap a palm on the door. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She shoves my chest and I let her go. “What the hell, Cooper? I need to check on the horses.”
I’m Cooper now? “I’ll check on them. And we need to talk.”
“I grew up on a ranch, remember? I can deal with the horses.”
“Angel.”
Her gaze skewers mine. “I made it clear I prefer Evangeline.”
I need to pick my battles.
“Fine, Evangeline then.” There’s a flicker of hurt in her eyes. Because I did what she asked and used her given name? Who fucking knows. “But I’m taking care of the horses.”
“Will you go pee for me too?” She gives me a saccharine-sweet smile.
“Look, Angel—”
“Evangeline.”
I close my eyes, breathe, and when I open them again, she’s got her arms crossed over her chest. Never a good sign.
“Right,” I grumble. “I need to look around. I’ll come back after I verify it’s safe. Stay here.”
I don’t wait for a reply.
Outside, icy air fills my lungs and helps clear my head.
Yesterday’s kiss gave me hope that maybe we could have a reset.
Now I’ll be lucky if she ever says my name again.
I don’t have a damn clue how to make things better with Angel.
For now, I need to focus on keeping us both safe and getting out of here. Then I’ll figure it out.
Carrying the rifle, I keep to the shadows under the porch. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but the clouds look like they’ve lifted a bit and daylight is lightening the darkness to morning gray.
I examine the fresh powder for prints but find only rabbit tracks. In the clearing, a trio of deer dig through snow to get to the grass. That they’re unbothered gives me confidence that no one’s lurking within the tree line.
In the corral, the horses toss their heads. They’d prefer to be in their stalls at the ranch but are doing well enough. I give them hay and grain and return to the cabin.
Escorting Angel to the outhouse, I ignore her rolling her eyes. I search the shadows of the trees for anything that looks out of place. There’s nothing and it makes me antsy. Abel and Denny have too much on the line to simply walk away.
Back at the cabin, I bring in an armful of logs and Angel stacks a couple in the wood burner.
I grab the water jug. “I’ll get water for us and the horses. Then we need to work out a plan.”
She’s rummaging through a bin and doesn’t look at me. “Yes, we do. I’ll give it some thought.”
I bring back the water, add the purification tablets, then head out again to fill the pails for the horses. When I return, Spam sizzles in a pan, adding to the aroma of something baking. “How can I help?”
“We need plates and utensils, and you can open this.” She sets a can and an opener on the table with a thunk. Sliced peaches in syrup. Will peaches always make me think of her?
Using a folded dish towel, she takes a cast-iron pan from the oven and sets it on the table. Pulling off the foil reveals golden brown biscuits. My mouth waters.
“How’d you make biscuits? They look great.”
She gives me a small smile. It feels like a beam of sunshine.
“There was a container of Bisquick. I had to use water instead of milk, so we’ll see how they taste.”
Feeling lighter, I pour us both coffee. My parents are all about whole foods so as a kid I ate a lot of nuts and berries. My heart probably benefited, but right now highly processed meat, biscuits from a mix, and canned peaches look damned good. Suddenly, I’m ravenous.
I take my plate and coffee to eat standing to the side of the window, keeping watch. Angel joins me to lean against the wall opposite of me, her gaze fixed outside the window.
Swallowing coffee, I glance at her. “I wasn’t rejecting you,” I say quietly.
“Right.”
She finishes her breakfast and moves to the table, where she sets about making the leftovers into biscuit and Spam sandwiches that she wraps in foil. She puts water to heat on the stove.
I move to stand in front of her. “Look at me.”
I wait her out. When she finally meets my gaze, the hurt behind her carefully blank features is plain.
“I want more with you, but not with Abel and Denny out there. And I need to talk with your brothers.”
Shit. Her face turns to thunder.
Wrong. Thing. To say.