Page 57 of Merry Mended Hearts

“You’re freezing,” he said, not answering my question. “Let’s get a fire going. You can lay your wet things near it, so they dry out. I’ve got some clothes you can change into, if you’d like. I also have space heaters, but with the electricity out?—”

“A fire will be great,” I said.

Every part of me was cold, from my fingertips to the spaces where my ribs met my spine. I was cold in places I didn’t even know I could be!

Boone moved one of the candles to the side table in the corner between the couch and the fireplace. He gathered some logs from a basket and assembled them, stuffed some newspaper in the crevices, and after retrieving a match from the box on the shelf, struck it.

Kneeling in front of the hearth, he blew on the flames, urging them to take to the wood. Then, he added a few more logs on top. Within minutes, a fire was going, blazing its heat into the room.

There went another sexy notch in my mental calculations. He was really racking up those points.

Little by little, he was transitioning from Demon Boone back to book boyfriend material. From his confident carriage, the way he knew exactly what to do, and the way his muscles strained against his shirt, attractiveness and manly know-how were written into his genetics.

The fire wasn’t the only source of heat with that thought. It seeped into me, melting the ice from my fingertips.

Wordlessly, he stepped through a door I hadn’t noticed across from the couch. Minutes later, he returned. He’d changed into a pair of comfortable, plaid pants, and a fresh T-shirt that said, “West Hills, Montana.” He held what looked like flannel pants and an old sweatshirt with a bear on it.

“Here you go. The bathroom is through there and at the end of the hall.” His voice was the smoothest grit of sandpaper, gently rubbing off all of my rough edges.

“Thanks,” I said, caught between wanting to step away from the fire—and him—long enough to change and the desire to get out of my wet clothes.

The latter won out. I followed his directions, using the candle to light my way like I was a heroine from a ghost story wandering through old passages in castles. Which, of course, prompted another scene idea to pop into my mind.

I hurriedly tapped out the few ideas into my phone before shutting the bathroom door. Once it was closed, I held Boone’s sweatshirt. It was soft—so soft. Then I lifted it to my nose and inhaled.

It smelled like cedar, like the inside of my hope chest back home. Was this his cologne? Or the way the inside of his dresser smelled? The scent coiled into my stomach, giving me a shiver as I stripped out of my wet shirt, toweled dry and indulged in his shirt.

Hugging the fabric, I drew in another long inhale before peeling off my wet jeans and slipping into his flannel pants. They were soft, too, and far too huge. Even though there were holes for a drawstring, the string itself was nonexistent.

Bugger. But I didn’t have many other options. I’d just have to manually hold the waistband to keep them from falling off whenever Boone was in the room.

Juggling my wet clothes, phone, and the candle in one hand, while holding my pants up with the other, I made it back through the door and into the living room where the fire added happy orange light.

I stepped in—and as I was closing out the cold from the other part of the house, my pants slipped.

“Ah!” I shrieked.

I grabbed for my pants, dropping my wet clothes on the rug. The candle toppled soon after?—

—and it didn’t extinguish. Instead, the flames made friends with the rug’s fibers. The smell of burning fabric wafted to my nostrils.

That was all I needed—to start Boone’s cottage on fire.

I dove for it, losing my grip on the pants entirely. This time, they slipped down to my thighs. I spread my legs to stop them right as Boone rounded the corner of the kitchen.

“Whoa!” he said.

“Fire!” I called, mortified and panicked, torn between catching my pants and stomping on the small flames.

“I got it,” he said.

With another towel in hand, he dove for the flames eating the fibers of his rug. It was an Olympic effort, really. He landed on his elbows, flattening the beige towel with tattered edges, pounding his palm against the flames.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, making a mad grab for my waistline.

I yanked the red flannel up my legs while full-on embarrassment swept through me like a storm all of its own. “The pants were too big, and I couldn’t carry everything. I was trying to put my clothes by the fire, and I lost my grip?—”

Bent over the fire as though he worried it might start back up again, Boone’s gaze crept its way up my body to my face, which, for the record, was in the seventh level of the inferno.

---