“What?” She whirled around in time to see him open the closet and pull out a pair of beat-up Nikes, which he slipped his bare feet into, and his new winter coat. Oh, hell no. The whole point of leaving was to escape him. “I’m perfectly capable—”
“It wasn’t an offer,” he interrupted with a scowl as he stuffed his arms in the sleeves. “It was a statement of fact. You’ve been awake too many hours to be driving anywhere and I’ll feel like shit if you fall asleep at the wheel and kill yourself.”
Well, that was a cheery thought. And, she realized, a very real possibility since her eyelids now weighed about fifty pounds each. “What about my car? I’ll need it tomorrow for—”
“I’ll drive yours and take a cab home.” He picked up his wallet from the foyer table then opened the door for her and stood aside, motioning her to go first.
No sense in trying to talk him out of it. She recognized the mulish expression on his face. His mind was made up and talking him out of anything right now would be like trying to stop the sunrise. Impossible.
Resigned, she walked to the door—and came up short, awed at the blanket of white greeting her. Snow dumped from the sky in huge, heavy flakes, completely covering the street. Already, power lines and tree branches sagged with the weight of it. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Cam peeked around the edge of the door and clicked his tongue against his teeth. “And the Snow-pocalypse has arrived. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”
He shut them in together again and a rising sense of panic sent her pacing across the foyer. This cannot be happening. She was only here for twenty, maybe thirty minutes, tops. How could there possibly be that much snow on the ground? “What Snow-pocalypse?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?” Sliding out of his coat, Cam strode back to the living room and found the television remote. She followed, dreading what she’d see when he turned on the screen mounted over the fireplace.
Sure enough, the local news featured 24-hour coverage of the winter storm, and from the looks of the radar, it was a big one. Someone needed to smack the Hollywood-handsome meteorologist, who took way too much delight in informing his viewership he expected ten to twelve inches in the next twenty-four hours. Across the bottom of the screen, names of closed buildings and canceled events scrolled by on a red banner. Hell, even a few schools had already decided the mess wouldn’t be cleaned up by Monday and had called a snow day.
The city had all but shut down.
This cannot be happening!
“But I have to go home. Shelby—she’s there by herself. What if the electricity goes out? Worse, what if she decides to throw a no-holds Snow-pocaypse party?”
“Doubt anyone would show if she did.” Cam’s tone was so reasonable she wanted to throw something at him. How could he be so calm? He slid out of his shoes and returned to his seat on the reclining end of the couch. His laptop sat on the side table next to his bottle of water and a bowl of baby carrots. He popped a carrot in his mouth and grabbed the laptop. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Remember last time I left her home alone for a weekend? Five fire departments responded. Five.”
“Because the neighbor’s house burned down.”
“Because Shelby’s a walking jinx with no common sense!”
“She’ll be fine,” Cam said again, still sounding oh-so-reasonable.
“But work—I have to write up the report and—”
“Eva.” He finally looked up from his laptop screen. “Give it a rest. You need to shower and sleep, which we both know you were going to do at the station and not at home. Shelby will be fine and the report can wait until the worst of the storm passes. Like you said, Soup’s death was a straight-forward drug overdose. Not exactly a high priority rush case. So go shower, borrow some of my sweats to change into. I’ll make up your bed.” He jerked a thumb toward the high ceiling, where a loft area overhung the living room. The condo had three bedrooms, but he and Vaughn used the third for a weight room, so the office loft had doubled as a guest bedroom whenever she needed to crash at their place.
She hesitated. This was all so…normal. Same as she’d done a hundred times before. Seemed like it shouldn’t be this easy to fall back into the patterns of their friendship—not after what happened between them in Key West. But Cam was just so…Cam. Easy-going. Rock-steady. It was hard not to relax around him, and the tightness eased out of her shoulders.
“Fine. Is your comfy Redskins jersey clean?”
“Top drawer.” He smiled and there was no heat in his eyes at all, as if that one night had never happened. So he did plan on ignoring the sexual tension between them. He did value their friendship more than the sex.
Thank God.
Okay, she could handle this Cam. This Cam wouldn’t slam her against the wall and kiss her until she lost all sense of reason. This Cam wouldn’t trap her under his big body and make her feel things that had to be illegal in most states. This Cam wouldn’t force her to forfeit her control.