16. Blitzen Manor/Manners #3
“I meant there’s a joke in there somewhere, but the reality of it while I’m literally watching you peel your wet clothes off in front of me is—”
“Stop watching, Kourt!” I tighten the blanket I hold with one hand around my neck and shoulders as I peel my wet underwear off, and maneuver to unhook my bra with one hand.
“Right.” He doesn’t even pretend to look away.
“I’ll keep my pants on, but you’re sharing one side of the blanket until the truck warms. I do have to coach tomorrow as opposed to die of pneumonia.”
“You don’t catch pneumonia from being cold.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you through your teeth chattering.”
“Hypothermia is the best you could count on, and the heater in your truck should solve that one.” My teeth keep chattering uncontrollably and I’m shaking.
Kourt crooks an eyebrow up. “How’s that heater in my truck working out for you right now?”
“Noted. At least the most we’ll lose with hypothermia from here back into town is an appendage.”
“I happen to be very fond of all my appendages.”
“I’m sure the entire town is.”
“Get in.”
“Turn around.”
“No.”
“Fine.” I peel my door open with frozen hands and crawl into the truck, keeping the blanket intact as much as possible. In fairness it is a large blanket. However, there’s no blanket large enough for me to share with him this naked.
Kourt waits outside his window until I’m settled.
His door flies open, and he leaps in rubbing his hands together and blowing on them as he adjusts the vents of his heater towards us.
“Wouldn’t that Judge lady have let us in to change and warm by her fireplace?”
“Angelina? Absolutely not. She would’ve called us in for trespassing or upsetting one of her precious hounds.”
“Liar. You’re enjoying this.”
“There are many things I enjoy with a naked woman right beside me, but being this cold is definitely not one of them. Now give me some of my blanket.” Kourt pulls the middle console up and pats the seat next to him.
Wrapped tightly, and snug as a bug in a rug in his large flannel blanket, I shoot daggers back at him.
He raises an eyebrow and motions toward turning the ignition off.
“Fine. Don’t move.” I turn completely away from him to face my passenger side window, where I inch down to one side of the blanket, keeping just enough to cover the front of my body. Then I take the rest and slide over to Kourt, fully covered in my one side like a cocoon.
Kourt shifts to raise his arm and allow me to nestle closer.
“I said don’t move.” He puts his arm back down to his side, and I scoot as close to him as possible, throwing the other half of the blanket across the front of him.
There’s blanket covering the front of me and a barrier to the side of me.
“Wow. You just found a whole new way to share a blanket with someone. That’s impressive. If I knew you could keep us from sitting skin to skin, I could’ve taken my pants off.”
“Don’t you dare.”
We coast a few feet down the driveway. “I do have to move my arms to steer.” Kourt raises his arms to the stirring wheel, and his part of the blanket drops down to a small strip just covering his torso. I feel him shiver next to me as we head out of the manor’s long drive.
“Fine.” Keeping the wrapped layer of my blanket tight across my back and front, I relinquish the side barrier between us and slide my blanket-free hip to meet Kourt’s.
I feel his soaking wet jeans on my bare skin, but he can’t feel me.
I reach his side of the blanket behind his back and over his shoulders while he drives, wrapping him tightly and pulling my body next to his.
My front is fully covered, save my one arm around him that leans to wrap us both inside the blanket. My bare hip continues to rub against his wet jeans with the motion of the truck as we drive—and my ribs, plus the entire side of my upper body I did not account for in my master plan—press into him.
Literally my side boob is touching his skin.
My eyes widen on contact.
And there it is. That feeling again. We just fell into a freezing lake, yet heat swells in my belly and carves it way through the rest of my body, setting my skin on fire.
Kourt’s body stiffens and he doesn’t say a word.
We were soaked to the bone, so the only skin felt should be wet, cold and clammy like two fish flopping around on a boat deck, only—my side presses against his shirtless skin. And from my ribs down to that side of my waist, all I feel is his warmth. An exhilarating charge of it.
A beat goes by as we ride in silence.
My arm is awkwardly reaching across the back of his shoulder, holding the blanket around him as he drives. My heart pounds loudly in my chest as some brave part of me I haven’t met scoots in a little more to pull the blanket tighter around his shoulder.
“Better?” I ask from some sardonic low tone of my voice that sounds way too confident and sexy to be my own.
Kourt’s jaw ticks and his eyes stay glued to the winding roads before us.
We continue back toward town, without moving.
His skin on mine makes the flannel blanket almost obsolete.
I’m not shivering anymore and neither is he.
But then he speeds down a turn I don’t recognize.
We wind up several more hills on a two-lane road when he stops the truck at the edge of a driveway and clears his throat.
“Wait here.” Kourt leaves the ignition running and sprints inside a charming log house I’ve never been to before. Seconds later he comes out wearing a grey sweatshirt and a pair of navy-blue sweatpants.
“Here. Put these on.” He tosses a sweatshirt and sweatpants my way and backs out of the drive without looking at me. There are no jokes, pretense or attempts to look my way as I slide all the way over to my side of the truck and jimmy the Blitzen Volunteer Fire Department sweatshirt over my head.
With the blanket all to myself I’m able to slide the top down without exposing any of my chest and I do the same thing to slide into the sweats.
We’re silent through town, heading back to my side of the mountain until I let out a sheepish, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” Kourt’s clammed up before, but not over something as uneventful as sweatpants.
That, and I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t invite me in to change.
Was it less awkward for me to get dressed in his truck than it would have been to allow me to change in the bathroom at what I assume was his house?
Odd.
But, there again, I suppose I did practically get naked in front of him. Maybe he thought slipping into sweats to remedy the situation was child’s play after that.
“Oh wait, I think that’s the turn to Ellis’ place, right? He said he lived off Old Mill Road. I forgot about the statue.” I look over at Kourt from my side of the truck that feels strangely far away now and stands as a reminder of an embarrassment I’m not sure we’re coming back from.
Kourt slows by the turn to Ellis’ Street and looks at me. His soft brown eyes, now darker somehow with an emerald hue I can’t escape. They trace up and down his sweats swallowing me, and back up to my wild wet hair.
Then he looks in the rearview mirror clocking the baby blue lace demi bra I hung to dry on his truck coat hanger hook thingy. I squirm a little in the passenger seat as he fixates on it like a mad man, then shifts uncomfortably and looks back to the dash.
Without acknowledging me, Kourt accelerates past the turn to Ellis’ house. “You’re not dropping anything off to Ellis looking like that. I’ll take it to him at work tomorrow myself.”
What?
Okay, yeah, I would prefer to pop by Ellis’s dry, with a brush run through my hair, maybe a little make up as opposed to mascara streaked down my cheeks from swimming in a lake in below-freezing weather, and maybe even clothes that fit me—but to not drop it off just because I’m in a pair of sweats? I’m so confused. Oh .
Oh. I get it. He doesn’t want Ellis to assume we… I mean they are his sweats, and Blitzen Volunteer Fire Department written across the front kind of gives that away. My wild wet hair could give the impression of bed head, sex hair, and I’m not wearing any underwear.
For many that’s a non-issue in a sweatshirt, but I’m endowed enough to let not walking in a convenience store in a tank top without a bra be my gauge of appropriate in public. I do have more than enough to require a strapless in a sundress.
I see. He doesn’t want to ruin his reputation by Ellis thinking we got together or something equally ridiculous. Because, in that regard, I guess I would look insane knocking on Ellis’ door like this and pulling that crazy statue out of Kourt’s truck. Wow.
Okay. Well, that’s just fine and dandy, Kourt, because I don’t want Ellis getting the wrong idea and thinking you and I got together, either!
I sigh out the window at my new revelation, and pulling up to my driveway couldn’t come sooner.
“I promise. I’ll give it to him,” Kourt encourages as he pulls up and slows to let me out. I hop out of the truck prepared to take off without a word but damn the good Samaritan in me that sees the bag of food I packed for the Phillips.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, but please don’t forget the food for Carol and G.W. Or I can totally drop it by tomorrow, no problem.” I move to grab the bag handle, and Kourt’s hand catches mine.
“I said I’ve got it. I’ll take it to them.
It’s fine. Your car won’t make it to their place, and I don’t want you going over there without me.
It’s too far up Grinder’s Bend. Those hills are too steep for your Bug.
” He looks down at my hand he’s still holding, and a physical current, similar to the one I felt when I pressed against his side, pulses through me.
“When you want to visit them. I’ll take you.”
Heat fills my stomach again, and I pull my hand away abruptly to leave. “Great. Thanks. Get home safe,” I say over my shoulder with a flippant wave.
Great. Thanks???? Awesome. I have no idea what’s happening.
When he’s not behaving like a neanderthal or some curious version of a twenty-first century, overly protective, almost possessive male lead from a romance novel you’d like to fuck or drown, I’m behaving like a sixteen-year-old waiting for her first kiss.
That, or I fling my naked body at him under a blanket and make the most confident, arrogant man on the planet, other than Archer, as uncomfortable as he can possibly be.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I’m supposed to pull off a Blitzen Christmas that saves the town.
The town I don’t belong to, as Kourt so graciously pointed out.
Aunt Josie, you better be dead, or you’ll have hell to pay for leaving me to this.