Exhaling slowly, I broke the gaze and felt the slim tips of butterfly wings as they fluttered through my whole body. Was I ready to leap?
Not just yet. But I also wasn’t sure what I was waiting for.
But what I did know? What my head and heart could agree on was that our time here wasn’t done yet.
“Do you wanna build a snowman?” I said with a small smile.
Bauer clenched his jaw and then dropped his forehead to mine with an exhaled laugh. “Yeah, princess. I do.”
BAUER
Three hours—and an entire snow family—later, I did something I’d never done before.
I took a cold-ass shower after being outside in the snow.
Eventually, I’d have to start calling this strange reaction to Claire Ward
The Princess Effect because holy hell, the woman was killing me slowly with one look, one touch at a time.
In that tiny bathroom, fixing those ridiculous snow pants that were about five sizes too big for her, I almost lost the shaky grasp on my control. Because while she might not have asked me to kiss her, she wanted me to. Everything I saw in her big blue eyes was almost certainly reflected in mine.
Maybe I knew what held me back because I wasn’t a guy who forced himself on a woman, no matter how she was looking at me, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what the hell was holding her back.
For hours, we played in the steadily falling snow, using ridiculous props to make a four-person snow family, and for hours, she avoided prolonged eye contact or accidental touching of any kind.
Not that I would’ve felt anything good, layered up like we were.
And as the frigid water beat down on me, I had to laugh at myself that I still needed a cold shower. Because no matter how little eye contact or how little touching, I wanted Claire so badly I felt like I could’ve melted every inch of snow coating the forest outside of that cabin.
Goosebumps popped on my skin, but still, I braced my hands against the shower wall and took a few deep breaths. My reaction to her defied any common sense unless it was just the fact that she seemed so unattainable. That she evaded me just enough that I wanted to reach out and snatch her to me, hold her close, and feel everything about her that I hadn’t felt yet.
Taste her lips to see if they were as sweet as I imagined them.
Grip her skin and see which parts of her body felt the best under my impatient hands.
Not the thoughts to be having when she was less than fifteen feet away from me, cuddled up under a blanket on the couch, which was where I’d left her when I ducked into the shower.
With a violent shove, I turned the water off and shivered. A threadbare towel was hanging along the back of the door, and I scrubbed myself dry as quickly as possible. By the time I’d tugged on my clothes, I felt a bit less crazed and a hell of a lot colder.
Thanks to the fire I’d started again after our time outdoors, I opened the bathroom door to a wave of warm air.
Fragrant, warm air.
“What is that smell?” I groaned happily.
No longer cuddled on the couch, Claire was in the kitchen, stirring something in a large cast-iron pan over the small stovetop. She smiled at me. “I raided the pantry, and he had some pasta and just enough to make a decent tomato sauce. So … Italian it is. I hope that’s okay.”
“More than okay.” I came up behind her, keeping a few inches between her back and my chest. Her hair was pulled up off her neck, wisps of dark brown hair trailing down the length of her neck. “Paige teach you how to cook?”
Over her shoulder, she gave me a chiding look. “Maybe Logan did.”
I held up my hands with a laugh. “Touch?, Princess, touch?.”
She shook her head. “It was Paige. Logan managed fine while we were younger, but when he married Paige, dinners got a lot better. She was living as a full-time model in Milan right before moving in with us, so we benefited greatly from her cooking skills.”
Tugging a chair out from the table with my foot, I took a seat and shamelessly watched her navigate around the small kitchen area.
“How old were you when Paige and your brother got married?”
Her smile was barely visible as she stirred the sauce. “Just turned twelve.”
I thought about the picture of her and Lia from their apartment, decked out in Washington gear. “It must have been every girl’s dream to have a supermodel for your new mother figure.”
She snorted. “Not exactly. We were … oh,” she sighed, “how do I put this? Lia and I were in our boundary testing phase when Paige showed up.”
Watching as Claire tasted the sauce, then added some salt, I laughed at that picture. “Like what?”
Carefully, she set the salt down and turned to face me, one hip hitched on the counter. “I’ll make you a deal, Bauer.”
“What’s that?”
“A question for a question.” One eyebrow raised slowly in challenge. “You deflect every single time I ask about your past, so if you want to know about mine, then I’ll make it an even trade.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and held her stare. “Some people feel more comfortable than others talking about their childhood. Mine wasn’t traumatic or anything, but that doesn’t mean I want to spill my guts over spaghetti and candlelight.”
At my answer, which was meant to be flippant and casual, Claire’s face flashed with disappointment, and a small seed was planted behind my ribs. Something uncomfortable and unwanted. But it found someplace to stick, dig itself beneath the surface of whatever armor I’d erected around the parts of myself that still felt like I needed to prove how unhurt I was by my dad and Adele’s treatment.
“Truth or dare,” I amended. My version of a peace offering. “I’ll play, but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer everything.”
Claire weighed that for a long moment, face thoughtful, body language relaxed. “Deal.”
While she finished dinner, I set the table with two dark blue plates I found in the pantry and added some wood to the fire. Outside, the wind picked up, whipping through the trees until they swayed side to side. Still, Claire hadn’t said I told you so for the fact that we were stuck here. Because into day two of this ridiculous storm, we were poised to get over thirteen inches. The accumulating snow wasn’t even what kept us stuck until it died down. Right now, it was the fact that they were so focused on clearing main roads that places like Scotty’s along Lion’s Bay were way down on the totem pole.
Claire drained the pasta, releasing a cloud of steam into the air. I got up to find us something to drink.
I crouched in front of the pantry, watching Agnes warily as she slinked across the wall in my direction. “Do you know if he has any alcohol hidden in this place?” I asked the cat.
She sat on her haunches and started licking a paw. But she didn’t hiss at me, so I shrugged. I gave it one last look but decided Scotty must hate himself since there wasn’t so much as a single bottle of anything in the entire place. Maybe that’s why he still managed to do what he did physically even though he was over sixty.
“I couldn’t find anything fun to drink,” I told Claire as she set the bowl of pasta in the middle of the small table. “So water it is.”
“I find proper hydration fun.”
“As do I.” I took a seat opposite her and gave her a smile. “Thank you for making dinner.”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “No problem.”
The food was delicious, and I groaned happily at my first bite of the sauce-covered noodles. “This is incredible.”
“Why don’t you ever go home to Seattle?” she asked without any preamble.
The noodles lodged in my throat when I coughed in surprise. After a hefty drink of water, I was able to swallow. When I was finally able to speak, my voice was rough. You know, from almost choking to death. “Jumped right in, eh?”
“It’s my turn.”
I sat back in my chair and studied her. “Seattle isn’t my home anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. I moved to Whistler when I was eighteen and never looked back.”
“Why don’t you and Adele get along?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.