Chapter 5
Five
Ivy couldn’t shake the feeling that Harrison was escaping her.
Was it her thanks or that moment of connection?
Maybe both. She’d hit on something, and he’d said more than he meant to.
But she recognized him. Recognized the kind of man he was.
She’d written men like him. Studied them.
And knew that they didn’t get that look in their eyes without ghosts riding their shoulders.
“Sometimes whatever you’re trying to escape by coming to a place like this is better held at bay by distraction. And you’re definitely that.”
She didn’t know what to think about that. Did he mean the rescue and just having her in his space? Or did he mean something else? Did she want him to mean something else? Her still puckered nipples certainly came down on the side of oh hell yes.
The front door opened and Harrison hustled back through, laden with bags.
A gust of cold air and a swirl of snow blew in behind him and had Ivy hunching back into the blankets still warm from his body.
She already missed the feel of him wrapped around her and regretted the loss of that temporary intimacy.
It had felt so good to be held, to be touched.
Not from a sex standpoint—though certainly it was hard not to think about that when he was so…
swoon-worthy—but just as closeness to someone else.
Which just went to show how isolated she’d gotten in the last year.
She needed to get a handle on this because it was wholly inappropriate for her to be macking on her host when the attraction clearly wasn’t reciprocated.
Suddenly acutely aware she was still without pants, Ivy wished for a little escape herself. She needed some space to get her head back on straight. “Would you mind if I took a shower?”
“No. Go ahead. I’ll bring in the rest of the stuff and get dinner going.” He set her bag just inside the bathroom doorway.
“Thanks.” Feeling a little foolish, she wrapped a blanket around her waist. He’d already seen everything. But he hadn’t been actively looking, and he’d been distracted by her prospective hypothermia.
As soon as he headed back outside for the rest of the stuff, she made a shuffling dash for the bathroom, dragging the blanket with her.
It was rustic but clean, with shiplapped walls and a tub-shower combo on the other side of the toilet.
There were navy towels beneath the sink to match the plain navy shower curtain.
She was surprised not to see camouflage everywhere, but this apparently wasn’t like the hunting cabins she’d been to growing up.
There was craftsmanship here. His? Or someone else’s?
Shrugging off the question, she dropped the blanket and turned on the water to warm before stripping out of the rest of her clothes.
She froze as she caught her reflection in the mirror.
Angry bruising ran from her left shoulder, across her body, all the way down to her right hip.
That was gonna be ugly for a while. But it could have been so much worse.
Now that the adrenaline had faded, she was beginning to feel every ache and pain.
No doubt that would become more pronounced over the next few hours.
Painkillers were definitely in order. But shower first.
She stepped beneath the spray. Her skin woke up with a scream as sensation returned. Ivy stayed where she was and let the water sluice over her body. Once the initial pain was past, she closed her eyes and leaned against the front wall, glorying in the luxury of warmth. With warmth came clarity.
She was trapped for the foreseeable future, in a cabin with no means of contacting the outside world, with a guy who was still a veritable stranger.
It sounded like the setup for one of the victims in her books or maybe a horror novel.
And yet she wasn’t afraid of Harrison. Maybe that was somewhat her neglected hormones talking because she’d been next to naked with him, but she didn’t think so.
Even with that moment in the kitchen, where he was clearly not entirely present, maybe seeing some of those ghosts he was running from, she hadn’t been afraid of him.
Yeah, he’d started out gruff and taciturn, but he’d been focused on getting them to safety, then on taking care of her—something he hadn’t asked for but hadn’t begrudged or complained about.
He’d been respectful and gentle, doing everything that needed to be done, including using his own body to warm her.
That had been…frankly…amazing and had left her wanting a helluva lot more than a snuggle.
And, at least for a bit there, so had he.
But he was a guy and they’d been almost naked together.
His arousal was probably more about proximity and biology than actual attraction.
Yet he’d softened toward her. He’d had such gentleness in his touch when he’d brushed the hair back from her face.
She’d wanted to close that little distance between them.
Wanted to kiss him and feel the scrape of his beard along her skin.
And then there was that protective streak.
He’d been all kinds of ready to take on someone who’d hurt her.
It spoke volumes about the kind of man he was.
The kind she found appealing on multiple levels.
Feeling almost human again, Ivy stepped out of the shower and toweled off.
That contrast of gentle caretaker and fierce protector intrigued her.
She’d written plenty of fierce men, and her share of women, too.
But she’d never really explored a softer side to any of them.
There was little room for softness in their line of work.
Death and darkness didn’t exactly inspire it.
And yet she had the sense that Harrison had seen his share of death and darkness, and he still had that capacity for gentleness.
It made her think of Michael and wonder what—or who—it would take to soften him.
Was that what was missing? A situation to show another side of him? A window into something besides the wound that had made him leave the team?
Mulling it over, she stepped out of the bathroom to the scent of food.
Following her nose into the little kitchen, she peeked into the pot simmering on the stove.
It seemed like some kind of soup—the kind where you browned a pound of ground beef and dumped in a can of every vegetable you had.
The scent of it had her stomach growling.
It had been far too long since those snack cakes on the road.
On the counter, she found a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers, but Harrison himself wasn’t inside.
The thunk of an axe hitting wood drew her attention to the window.
In the glow of a floodlight, Harrison tossed the split pieces onto a pile and placed another log on a tree stump.
He wound up the swing and brought the axe down with an economy of motion that suggested he had plenty of practice.
She watched him repeat the movement several more times, admiring the power of those broad shoulders and thick arms. She never would’ve imagined she had a thing for lumberjacks, but even with the overgrown beard, this whole mountain man picture was working for her.
A whole lot about Harrison was working for her.
And when did you start writing romance in your head?
Apparently about the time a big, burly stranger woke up my neglected libido.
Rolling her eyes at her own imaginings, Ivy retrieved her laptop case and braced herself for the worst. But the screen was intact. And when she pushed the power button, it sprang to life with no problems. It had survived the wreck. Thank God.
Wanting to capture some of her thoughts about Michael, she opened a fresh document and began to type.
She was still working when Harrison opened the door sometime later, a bundle of logs under one arm.
Ivy couldn’t help watching as he crossed the room to dump the wood into the wire basket by the fireplace, then wandered into the kitchen to check the soup.
She managed to jerk her attention back to the screen, away from his denim clad ass just before he turned.
“Doing okay?”
“Yeah. Getting hungry. The water’s stayed down.” Because thinking about that ass had made her mouth go dry, she picked up the water she’d refilled and drank more of it.
He nodded. “We should have plenty of firewood to get us through the night. I’ll go shower off and then we’ll eat.”
“Sounds good.”
He disappeared into the bathroom. Ivy tried to get back to work, but whatever groove she’d managed to find seemed to have deserted her.
Her head felt scrambled. She wished she could blame it on the accident or on Harrison himself, but she knew it had been going on so much longer.
She’d been mentally blank, going through the motions for so long, she was starting to worry that this wasn’t writer’s block.
Abandoning the laptop, she curled up in the chair by the fireplace, staring into the flames and brooding.
What if whatever the hell was going on with her head couldn’t be fixed?
What if she was permanently broken? What if her career was over?
The idea of it left a sick feeling in her gut.
She loved her job. Or she had before it started to feel like opening her manuscript was tantamount to making a gallows walk.
The bathroom door opened. Ivy lifted her head in reflex, then blinked in confusion at the stranger who emerged, clad in a darker pair of jeans and yet another flannel shirt.
Holy shit.