Damn it, she was shivering. She had on a flannel shirt and boxer shorts. Very sexy.
What was she thinking? She was determined to send Brooker on his way. She pulled her sleeping bag back up to her chin. “It’s a small tent.”
“Luxury quarters compared to what I’m used to.” He shifted position, setting his boots neatly next to the tent’s entrance. “Better company, too.”
“Ethan—” She couldn’t believe how cold she was, even with him in her tent with her. “You can’t stay here. Really. If you don’t want to stay in a hotel, fine. You can find a spot on the lakeshore. Make a nice bed for yourself in some freshly fallen leaves. You’re Special Forces—you’ll manage.”
“Going to send me out into the cold night?”
He didn’t seem that troubled by the prospect, or at all convinced she was serious. Juliet sighed, no longer shivering. “Ethan, I’m not that good at flings.”
He rolled onto his knees and crawled next to her, touching her chin. “Neither am I.”
“But—” She didn’t know how to say it. “But that’s what this is. The year you’ve had…” She winced, aware of him next to her, so close. “You’ve been running from what happened.”
“You mean Char,” he said.
“She must have been some woman, Ethan.”
“She was. We were good together. We didn’t see a lot of each other the two years before her death. That got to her.” He spoke very steadily, as if he were describing the particulars of a mission and wanted to get every word exactly right. “But we’d have got through it.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to her.”
He nodded, sitting down next to Juliet, stretching out his long legs next to hers. “I’m not here because of Char,” he said quietly. “I’m here because of you. Now. If you want to go ahead and throw me out into the cold—”
“I don’t,” Juliet said quickly, catching her breath.
He wound his fingers into her hair and smiled broadly, and even in the near darkness, she could see the spark in his eyes. “I didn’t think so.” He kissed her softly, his mouth opening onto hers, nothing about him cold or shivering. “You’re freezing,” he said, trailing one hand down her back and picking up her hand. “Oh, Marshal. You touch me with those icy fingers—”
“I fell asleep outside my sleeping bag.”
“Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
He shrugged off his leather jacket and pulled it around her shoulders, then unzipped her sleeping bag all the way down to her feet, which were encased in Smart Wool socks. She rubbed her toes together. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“There’s something sexy about a woman in a flannel shirt and wool socks.”
“And what would that be?” she asked skeptically.
He laughed softly. “The mystery of what’s underneath.”
“You worked for that one, Brooker.” But she laughed, too, liking the relaxed feeling that was coming over her, that had eluded her all day. “Besides, there’s no mystery. Not after the other night—”
“Every night’s a new night.”
“You can’t even say that with a straight face.”
But a part of him was serious—she could hear it in his voice, the undercurrent of emotion and romantic yearning. He unbuckled his belt and pulled off his jeans, shoving them to the far corner of the tent, and worked on the buttons of his shirt, a dark, soft corduroy from what Juliet had felt of it.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Ethan.”
“You’re not shivering.”
“Ethan, I’m not going to ask for more than you can give. Just don’t pretend—”
“I’m not pretending.” His voice was low, and he brushed a curl off her forehead, let his fingers linger there. “When I was in Colombia, I kept thinking that I didn’t want to end up dead in some jungle never having made love to you.”
“I’m glad you got out of there alive.”
“Meeting you that day in Tennessee—” He paused, as if to lend weight to his words, to make her understand that he wasn’t just talking to talk, saying things to get her not to zip back up in her sleeping bag and send him on his way. “I could have gone past the point of no return. I was close. But Sarah Dunnemore, Nate Winter came along and helped. You. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be.”
Juliet touched her fingertips to his mouth. “You stopped yourself from crossing the line. You’d never have gone completely off the deep end.”
“You’re good at what you do. You could have kept me from taking off.”
“Hell, no. I had cracked ribs and that road rash from hell. I was in no shape. And you weren’t sharing your gun, as I recall.”
“Night’s Landing was crawling with you law-enforcement types. You know damn well you could have made me stay put, held me for questioning. You let me go. Then in August—you could have thought of a few reasons to cuff me—”
“I can think of a few right now.”