Chapter 6 #2
She grimaced. “It’s what I can afford. Look, I appreciate you helping me get answers, but I really need to eat, and get some sleep, and hope I wake up with some idea of what to do next.”
With no car. And very little money. And a list of potential cursers a mile long.
He maneuvered around her and came to a halt.
His broad frame nearly filled the sidewalk, and she was forced to either stop or collide with him—which she considered doing just to stress that he was not the boss of her.
But at the last possible second, she realized that would bring them chest to chest and so stopped herself with a lurch.
They were left standing close. Close enough that if she extended her hand a few inches, it would brush the broad plain of his muscular chest. His hair captured the glow of twinkling lights overhead, surrounding him in a dull halo, and his eyes were light with amusement as he looked down.
“Well,” he said, “I can’t let you walk all the way to the Icicle Point. So it’s a good thing I’m hungry. What’re you craving?”
She crossed her arms. “Why are you helping me?”
As his smile widened, dimples she hadn’t noticed before peeked their way through his beard. “Because you need it.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” she blurted.
For a moment, they both just stood there, letting what she’d said settle between them. Finally, his eyes met hers. “Not even if I was the last man on earth?”
“I, well…” she began, tongue tripping over how to respond.
He held up a hand with a chuckle. “I don’t expect you to answer that.
I know what you’re trying to say. I’m sorry someone made you feel like you need to say it.
” And then his voice softened. He looked at her in a way she didn’t like.
Like he pitied her. “You don’t owe me anything.
Least of all that. I just see a fellow human in a rough way, and I’ve got nothing better to do tonight than make it a little better. ”
“Just like that, huh?” Her voice dripped skepticism. People didn’t do things for nothing—not in her experience.
“Just like that.”
She didn’t know how to react, so she only looked down at where moonlight played across a fresh pile of snow, unwilling to meet him in the eye as she said, “I’ll eat anything at this point.”
“Pub grub it is, then.”
It was late when he finally dropped her off.
The Icicle Point Inn was a simple two-story roadside motel, the sort with the doors on the outside—which was as much as she knew about them, because she had never stayed in one before.
The roofline had been built to look as though it dripped wooden icicles, but they had split and broken with neglect.
“So I know you were hoping for a bathrobe, and I don’t have one of those,” said Stephan, following as she climbed out of the truck. “But here…”
And then he pulled off his coat and slipped his shirt up and over his head, leaving his torso totally bare.
She tried not to gawk, failing miserably.
His chest wasn’t cut into the defined ridges of a gym body, but he was dense and powerful-looking, muscle layered like an oak, built for strength, not show.
The hair on his chest was the same honey as the darker parts of his beard, shading and texturing his sternum and abdomen.
Her stomach bucked, and her throat went dry as he handed her a shirt with the logo of the tavern they’d eaten dinner at—the Muddy Boots Roadhouse. It had a softness that only came with repeated washing and wearing, and his smell drifted off it pleasantly.
“Hayleigh.” The word registered dull and low, like an echo, or the final traces of a dream.
“Yeah?”
His grin was positively rakish as he said sotto voce, “You’re staring.”
Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Well, you just took your shirt off outside in the middle of December! It was a weird thing to do!”
He leaned closer. “You’re still staring.”
“I need to go.” She scrambled toward the entrance to the office, putting some distance between them. When she turned back, she was relieved to find him pulling on his coat. She twisted his shirt in her hands and said, “Thank you for…the literal shirt off your back. And the ride. And everything.”
“Really not a problem.” For a moment, it seemed as if he might leave the coat unzipped, but then he finally closed it up tight, and she felt once again in control of her full faculties.
“Well, good night, then,” she said.
“Hold up.”
He pulled something from the car, shaking it.
Her purse. She’d left it in his truck in her hurry to get away from him and end this night.
He walked it over, and for a moment, they stood beside the motel, diffused in a slip of moonlight.
The sky overhead was clear and filled with fistfuls of scattered stars.
Somewhere in the distance, there was a round, full-bodied hoot of an owl, soon joined by another, their voices entwining in a duet.
She snatched the purse from his hand, forbidding any kind of lingering touch. Lingering touch tended to lead to lingering in general, and it was well past time for her to let this man get on with his life, and she with hers.
Hopefully, this would be the last she would ever need from the witch Stephan Midwinter.