Authors: Stacy Gail
“Life’s too short to play it safe, Red. When you see an opportunity rolling your way, you have two choices—reach out and grab it for all its worth, or live the rest of your life regretting that you didn’t have the balls to try.”
She couldn’t help but smile. That was so like him. “Like what you did when Whiteout Mountain came up for sale.”
“Yeah, and like what I did when I first saw you in that gym. Separating you from the herd and taking you home with me was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, so I took it.”
That wiped her smile out. “What?”
“Mayor McBride wanted to hang around and wait for you, but I convinced him to leave without you,” came the careless response. “He’d already mentioned Highway Patrol was going to close the road, so I used that piece of information to hurry his ass out of there. Then I dawdled in warming up my truck and drove about two miles an hour to make sure I gave them plenty of time to close the highway. Once they did that, I had you all to myself.” His grin was as sudden as the sun bursting from storm clouds. “Go on. Tell me that what I did was kidnapping and how much time I’ll spend in the slammer. I’ll cop to it.”
“You…I…” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and she shook her head as if that would somehow make the information he’d just dropped on her fall into place. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“You tried to take care of everyone you met, from an exhausted little pregnant girl to an old woman who couldn’t stand any longer. You tore that Gulag flight attendant to pieces with nothing but the power of that sexy brain of yours. You have all this great fucking hair I can’t keep my hands off of and these unbelievably hot legs that go all the way up to your neck. Knowing all that, you really have to ask why I did it?” He leaned into her, practically lying on her as she leaned back against his truck, and suddenly she forgot how to breathe. “You were the first woman in two years that completely snagged my attention, Red. All of it, not just the horny side of me. Yeah, I wanted to fuck you the moment I saw you—most guys do, because you’re hot and men are dogs. But when you facepalmed so loud I heard it, you made me laugh.”
“So?”
“I
laughed
, baby. Really laughed, for the first time in two years and it felt great. So great that I was going to do anything to keep that feeling with me for as long as I could.”
She stared up at him, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. “Okay, I’m confused. When we first met, you didn’t exactly make it a secret that you didn’t want me all the way out here at Whiteout.”
“If I’d jumped all over you like I’d wanted to, think how freaked out you would have been. You were trapped in a place you’d never expected to be, completely at my mercy, so I had to show you that you were safe with me by keeping my distance. But as soon as you started to relax, I did everything I could think of to seduce every part of you and make sure you got as hot for me as I was for you.”
“You…” She stared up at him, locking her muscles in place. It was the only way to keep from strangling him on the spot. “You’re saying… you made me feel this way deliberately?”
“What way?”
“
What way
?” Oh God, she
would
strangle him.
His brows came down. “What are you getting so pissed about?”
“Are you
serious
? You have to know that you’ve been making me fall in love with you, you ass, not just making me
hot for you
,” she yelled, flabbergasted that he could be so thick when it came dealing with the emotions of another human being. “Do you have any idea how I’ve been freaking out about this? No one can fall in love in eight days, for God’s sake, but come to find out I haven’t been
falling
. Oh, no. It’s more like you fucking tripped me because you were horny.”
“Mia—”
“I can’t
believe
this. You played me so that I’d be an easy lay for you. But now there’s this consequence of my falling in love with you that you never even gave a thought to, did you? You selfish sonofabitch, what gives you the right to play with a person’s emotions like that just because you’ve got an itch that you want scr—”
His mouth cut off her tirade, and while that intimate connection melted both her spine and her higher brain function like it always did, it didn’t fully deflate the need to throw him off a cliff. This was because men sucked. Peace of mind was hard enough to come by even without them blundering through a woman’s life, thinking with their damn penises and not giving a thought to the emotional chaos they created simply because they were trying to get laid. God, was it any wonder she wanted to murder him? It was a good thing he knew what to do with his tongue and his fingers. Otherwise she’d have nothing to do with him.
A sudden honking of a horn brought Quinn’s head up and her attention around to Jase, who was busy climbing back into his truck after leaving her carry-on stranded in the snow.
“So, you’re good?” Quinn’s father rolled down the truck’s window before slamming the door shut behind him, all the while grinning at them as if he was enjoying some kind of joke. “She’s cussing you out and you’re kissing her quiet, so we’re back to normal, yeah?”
“Better than normal.” Quinn returned his father’s grin while refusing to let her go. “She’s pissed off because—wait for it—she’s
in love
with me. How fucking cute is that?”
Dear God, she really would murder him, chop him up and feed him to a roving pack of Great Danes.
Jase didn’t help matters by busting out laughing. “Without a doubt, son, she’s the cutest damn thing to hit Western Montana since your mama moved up from Billings. Just make sure you keep telling her she’s cute so she doesn’t get the itch to run off again, you hear? You gotta do right by her in every way. It’s up to us men to keep our women so happy that they’re here, they never think about going anywhere else.”
“You’re not thinking about going anywhere else, are you?” Quinn looked back to her when Jase’s truck disappeared from view. “You’re done with that whole Seattle bullshit once and for all, right? You said you love me, so that means you’re done with it. Right?”
She couldn’t seem to get her jaw to unlock or hands to uncurl. “I don’t know. If it upsets you that much—”
“It upsets the shit out of me.”
“Okay, then. I’m done with it.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove it? What, you want me to prove that I’ve got a
spine
?” When the unyielding hardness of his expression didn’t waver, she shook her head over how a man could be so stubborn and sexy all at the same time, and began trudging toward the chalet, grabbing the carry-on’s handle as she passed it to haul it through the snow. “Fine, whatever. I’ll prove it to you.”
Once inside, jackets were tossed onto a nearby chair. While Quinn took her carry-on into his room, Mia got the fire going in the living room and sat on the raised hearth. As he returned, she pulled out the papers she’d crammed into her back pocket and held them up.
“Contract. Notice of contract default.” She started to turn to the fire but he stopped her, his hand coming to cover hers.
“I didn’t say he deserves to be let off the hook. That asshole doesn’t get away with using you and draining you dry. I just don’t want you going after him to get back everything he took from you.”
She shook her head. “My old law professor’s already been in touch with the offer to get these papers to Jackson. I’ll go ahead and send word to him that he has my permission to do so. My aunt will be thrilled to tell him. I just hope she isn’t wearing a nightie when she does it.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She moved her hand from under his to hold a corner of the papers to the flame. The moment they caught, he took them from her and threw them in, then pulled her to her feet to guide her to the sofa in front of it. He sat down first, then tugged her down so that she straddled his lap, her knees sinking into the cushions on either side of his hips, her hands on his shoulders and her eyes looking right into his.
“So it’s done now,” he said while his hands came to rest on her thighs, his touch possessive. Claiming. The heat of his hands branded her through the layers of her clothing. “You’ll never give your ex another thought.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I’m telling you. There’s only room for me now.”
She still wasn’t done with her snit. “Are you sure you want to be with a woman who has
no spine
?”
“That’s another thing I never should have said, because I know it’s not true.” His eyes were that soft, sweet indigo she loved so much as he looked up at her. “You put up with me, so that makes you the strongest woman I know. I just blurted that out because I thought you wanted to see your ex again, and I was mad.”
She made a sound of disgust. “I was trying to handle my problems in my own way. But your dad’s right—when my way makes other people hurt, I’ve got to find another way to fix things.”
“
I
will deal with the problem of your ex from now on. That, and every other problem that comes along.”
Something warm and sweet began to overtake the rough edges of her anger, but she still felt obligated to make a stand. “I can take care of my own problems.”
“Baby, nobody knows better than me how you like to verbally blast things apart when they piss you off, but in this case you can forget about it. I’m going to enjoy putting my foot on your ex’s neck until he does right by you. I’m the man you love, so it’s my right and my privilege to take care of you.”
Geez, she was never going to hear the end of that. “Look, about you tripping me into loving you… I’m not even sure that’s what it is. I used to think love at first sight was real, because that’s what happened the instant I saw Jackson. But he wound up being a shallow, horrible blight in my life, so I know not to trust what I’m feeling. No one can fall in love in eight days. It’s impossible.”
That hard look returned with a vengeance. “You trying to take it back?”
“Well, no…”
“Good, because I’ve worked damn hard on making you fall for me during a time when I should have been focused solely on Whiteout’s opening. So just in case I’m not making it clear enough, you’re not going to wiggle your way out of loving me now. You said it. It’s official. You licked the cupcake. You love me, so find a way to cope with your new normal.”
“But…” Frustrated, she shook her head. She did that in lieu of shaking him, because that wouldn’t get her anywhere, either. “I’m just saying that eight days is
nothing
. People don’t fall in love that fast. In lust, yeah, but not
in love
.”
“Are you kidding me? Eight days is a fucking eternity. It took you forever to fall for me.”
“You tripped me,” she corrected, because really, that was her one last saving grace, so she was going to cling to it with everything she had. “I didn’t
fall
.”
“Then you must’ve tripped me too, and you did it a helluva a lot quicker than I did.” He lifted a careless shoulder while everything inside her went still. “Looking back, I think you did it with that facepalm. Then again, I really got hot when you told that Gulag flight attendant that you’d grant her the honor and privilege of paying all your travel expenses. That was so sexy, baby. I almost jumped you right there.”
She put a hand to her heart in the feeble hope that the gesture would get it started again. “Wait.”
“And I really went nuts when you moaned over your waffle. I was way more interested in devouring you than my breakfast when you did that. But by then I was already tripped, so… yeah. It happened at the gym, I’m sure of it.”
“Wait,” she said again, weakly. But she couldn’t help it. Her lungs were refusing to take in air, so it was all she could manage. “You’re not saying… you’re in love with me, are you?”
“Yeah, I’m saying it.” Again he shrugged, like it was no big deal while his hands smoothed up and down her thighs before they wandered to the fastenings. “I don’t know what you’re so freaked out about, babe. When you see something you need in your life—something that you know in your bones is the best thing in the world for you—you don’t hold back and worry about fucking
time
. You just take a chance and you go for it.”
“Crazy like a fox,” she said, distracted by what he was doing with her jeans. “I just don’t get how you can
know
something that important so fast. I mean, I’m not talking about how the sight of you turns me on, or how I think your smile is the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen, or how I could listen to the sound of your voice all day and be happy. I’m talking about loving who you are beneath all that, and that takes
time
.”
“I think you and I are in a unique position to know what we’re looking for in a mate.” As he spoke, he eased her off his lap just long enough to skin her jeans and panties off, before bringing her back. “And we were put in that position thanks to our exes.”
“Um…” Sitting half-naked on her man’s lap wasn’t the most conducive thing in the world when it came to having a serious discussion, but she tried her best to follow along. “What do you mean?”
“I mean they showed us what we
don’t
want in a significant other—selfishness, a lack of compassion, greed, ignorance and stupidity. I can spot all that shit a mile away thanks to my ex, and you can too. They taught us what we
don’t
need, and that’s why we both know deep down that we belong together. You’re everything Lorette isn’t—smart, kind, thoughtful, giving, as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside. I’d like to think that when you compare me to that fucking leech that attached himself to you, you get the same results.”