As he stepped inside, he was greeted by the familiar scents of his bar soap and shampoo. Emory was standing in front of the fireplace, draping wet clothes over the back of one of the dining chairs that she’d situated near the hearth. Her hair was damp. In place of her running clothes, she was wearing another of his flannel shirts and a pair of his socks.
And that appeared to be all.
Between the hem of the shirt, which struck her midthigh, and the socks bunched around her ankles, was nothing except smooth legs. They were a runner’s legs, lean and long, calves and quads well delineated under taut skin.
She finished placing her running tights over the top rung of the chair back, straightening the garment to her satisfaction, and scooting the chair a mite closer to the fire screen before turning to him.
“I took you up on the offer of your shower.” She motioned down toward the socks, then ran her hand over the placket of the shirt where only a few of the buttons had been done up. “I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed these.”
With difficulty, he pulled his gaze up from the hem of the shirt. In reply, he shook his head no.
“It feels wonderful to be clean.”
He gave a nod.
“I washed out my clothes, too.”
He looked at the articles of wet clothing, but didn’t comment on them.
“My scalp stopped bleeding.”
He mumbled a gravelly sounding, “Good.”
He took off his coat, cap, and scarf, turned around to hang them on the peg, then kept his hands there, his fingers sunk deep in the yarn of his scarf, holding on to it as though for dear life, because all the blood in his system seemed to have collected in one critical place, and the concentration of it was so thick, it was painful.
He went into the kitchen area, took the bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, and poured another shot. Halfway to his mouth, he halted and glanced at her from over his shoulder. “Change your mind about this, too?”
“No. Thank you.”
He tossed the drink back. It burned on the way down and fizzed like a cherry bomb in his belly, but it gave him something else to think about instead of clean, smooth skin and how soft and warm it would feel under old flannel. Under him. Moving under him.
“You said you’d been watching me through binoculars.”
“What?”
“That morning when you…when I fell. You said you’d been watching me.”
“When you were—” Stretching. Arching. Bending. “There by your car. Before you set out.”
“What were you doing out there?”
“Hiking.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.” He gripped the edge of the counter and continued to stare out the window above the sink. He didn’t trust himself to face her.
“What caused you to notice me?”
Your legs in those black tights. Your ass. God, your ass. “I was just, you know, sweeping the area with the binocs, taking in the view. Saw motion, I guess.”
“Why didn’t you call out a hello?”
“Too far away. But I was curious.”
“Why curious? Didn’t I look like somebody just out for a run?”
“Yeah, but I wondered why you were alone. Most people, whatever they’re doing in rugged country, are doing it with somebody else.”
“You weren’t. You were alone.”
“But I’m used to it.”
The faucet had a drip. For a while, those ka-plunks, coming at fifteen-second intervals, were the only sound in the room. In the world.
Then she said, “That’s the one thing we didn’t talk about.”
He twisted the taps to see if he could stop the drip. “Sorry?”
“This morning I asked you how you could bear the silence, the boredom, and the loneliness. We talked about the other two, but not the loneliness.”
The faucet stopped dripping, but he kept a tight grip on both taps as though he would pull them out of their moorings.
“Don’t you get lonely?”
Was it his imagination or had her voice dropped in volume and pitch? “Sometimes.”
“What do you do about it?”
No, it wasn’t his imagination. Her voice vibrated with an intimate undertone. It was gruff, as though she had drunk the whiskey after all, and it had seared her throat. He pried his hands from the water taps and slowly turned around. She’d come only as close as the dining table, where she stood as though poised for a signal from him of what she should do next.
“I don’t think you’re referring to loneliness in general, are you, Doc?”
She made a rolling motion with her shoulders that could have meant anything.
“Are you asking if I get lonely for a woman?”
“Do you?”
“Often.”
“What do you do?”
“I go get one.”
His blunt answer had the effect he’d meant it to. It shocked the hell out of her.
“Like you got me?”
“No. You were different. You were a lucky find.”
She hovered there indecisively for easily half a minute, her eyes darting to this and that but staying off him. He could tell the instant she decided to soldier on, because her eyes stopped that restless search for…what? Courage, maybe. Anyway, they returned to him.
She asked, “Did you mean it?”
“What?”
“When you said you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Yes.”
She waited, as though expecting him to recant, then said, “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”
“You’ve already thanked me.”
“Yes, but those other times don’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was only trying to placate you.”
“Placate me?”
“Because I’ve been very afraid.”
“Past tense? You’re not afraid of me anymore?”
“I don’t want to be.”
She took a step toward him, then another, and kept coming until she was within touching distance. She stuck out her right hand. “Friends?”
He looked down at her hand but didn’t take it. Instead he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to him. She bowed her head, so as not to look him in the eye, but she didn’t throw off his hands, or back away, or flinch as she’d been doing any time he got too close.
She took baby steps to shrink the distance between them, then pressed her forehead against the center of his chest. He slid his hands over her shoulder blades onto her back, drawing her incrementally but inexorably closer, and when their bodies were flush, she turned her head and rested her cheek directly over his heart.
He lined his fingertips along the groove of her spine and moved them up and down until one hand came to rest in the small of her back. And stayed. And rubbed circles there and applied enough pressure to tilt her up and form a fit with him in the notch of her thighs that caused her breath to catch.
Then they both stopped breathing.
She tilted her head back and looked up into his face with those limpid eyes, and, when she did, all bets were off. He had to have her. He would go through hell to be inside her. He was sinking, sinking, sinking…
His mouth was almost on hers—so close to kissing her, he could feel the moisture of her breath on his lips, taste it—when he caught himself. He whispered, “You almost got me, Doc.”
She jerked her head back and blinked up at him. “What?”
“I almost fell for it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Hell you don’t. Smelling good. Nothing but sexy you under that shirt.” He dragged his fingers across the top curve of her breast that swelled in the open collar. “Looking soft and sweet enough to make my mouth water.”
He rubbed against her suggestively. “You know what I want, and you thought that if you gave it to me, then I’d be placated and would take you home. You had just as well have climbed up onto an altar and laid yourself out.”
He made a derisive sound. “I appreciate the gesture. Truly. To say nothing of the view.” He angled his head back so he could see down her entire length. “But I’m not into sex with a martyr.”
Angrily, she pushed against his chest and tried to worm out of his grasp.
But he held on and, in fact, yanked her closer, grinding against her open thighs with unmistakable implication. “But here’s a warning, Doc. You give me another opportunity to put my hands on you, and I’m going to put them all over you. Got it? I’m not gonna imagine you naked, I’m gonna see you naked. Offer up yourself again, and I’ll ignore every reason why I shouldn’t fuck you.”
Later, he wondered what would have happened in the next few seconds, if the truck hadn’t slid off the road and crashed into the tree.