Page 49 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

CHAPTER TEN

Alex

My ankle hurt. My ankle hurt, and I was hot and a heavy weight on my chest made it impossible for me to move. My first instinct was to figure out where I was and what had happened to me.

I opened one eye and saw the small cabin, dimly lit from the morning sun, my foot in a cast and a fuzz of blond hair filling the left side of my vision. Jill’s slow, even breathing hit me and I realized we must have fallen asleep watching the movie and, somehow, she’d ended up on top of me, her body pressed up close and tight against mine in a way I’d been dreaming of. Except, in my dreams she’d had on considerably less clothing.

My left arm, the one she was on top of, was numb. I wanted to move, but I didn’t want to wake her. I’d rather enjoy this moment.

She’d promised me a week. I should have been happy. I should have been thrilled. A week, free of inhibitions and worries about complications, a week to enjoy her and get her out of my system.

I should have been happy, but when she’d made the offer it had hurt. It still hurt, a burning ache at the very idea that she could spend a week with me and then act like nothing had happened, act like we were little more than strangers. I already knew I’d never be the same after a week with her.

I’d been on one disastrous hike with her and I’d gone from thinking we might have fun together in the short term, to wondering how I’d gone so long without her as a central part of my daily life.

I was picturing us spending a weekend together, hanging on the couch watching football and ordering in take-out. I imagined coming home from work to her and waking up with her.

A week wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, but I’d take it. I’d take it and be grateful for it, because I had to believe she’d realize what I’d already realized. She’d see we had something real, had something that was worth risking everything.

She sighed in her sleep and snuggled up closer to me, one hand sliding beneath my shirt and against my skin.

I grinned.

Damn she felt good in my arms. I breathed in the scent of her, all clean soap and flowery shampoo. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d just held a woman, couldn’t remember the last time it’d felt this good.

“Are you smelling me?” She asked, sounding wide awake. She was wide awake, and she wasn’t pulling away from me, she didn’t even sound confused about how we’d ended up tangled together.

“Sure am,” I said. “You smell good. You’d smell even better naked and wet for me.”

“Is that the way you talked to girls when you were a teenager?” Her words were teasing, but there was a husky edge to them that let me know I’d gotten to her, at least a little bit.

“Baby, I’ve been this suave since birth.”

She laughed, her body shaking against mine. “Suave? Yeah, that’s not the first word that comes to mind when I think of you.”

I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her tighter against me. She didn’t fight it. “Got you in my bed, didn’t I?”

She rubbed her cheek against my chest. “You do make a good pillow?”

Was I dreaming? What had happened to the guarded woman I’d known? “Did you hit the liquor while I was out?”

She tilted her head and looked up at me. “I’m not a morning person. I have no energy to move off such an inviting pillow.”

Her eyes widened as though she’d suddenly realized who she was and what she was doing and then she slapped a hand to her flat belly. “I’m starving.” She sat up and pushed the hair out of her eyes. “I never wake up hungry.” She looked down at me, her eyes lingering on my bare chest, want flaring for a moment before she shut it down. Her stomach growled, and she snapped out of it. “And I fell asleep…On you…I never…” Her gaze shot to the plate of chocolate cookies propped on the night stand next to me and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “I am going to kill her.”

I was thoroughly confused, but, when she hopped out of bed and grabbed her coat like she was going to leave, I stopped caring what was going on. I couldn’t let her leave. If she left, she’d never be back. She’d never relax her guard around me again. Maybe I woke up overly dramatic, but in that moment, I truly believed letting her walk out that door would be losing her forever.

Her hand was on the doorknob when I spoke her name. I didn’t shout or demand her attention, I just said her name, softly.

She stopped and turned to look at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “Mom put pot in those cookies, Alex. I wasn’t myself last night. I never would have…I would have been sensible, and I would have…”

Her answer stunned me. I couldn’t picture kind, business-like Nora baking with pot. “How would she even get pot?”

Jill waved a hand, her cheeks going red. “Turns out the guy who used to own this land grew pot here, for medicinal purposes. When Mom and Cody learned there were people hurting because they couldn’t get the drugs anymore, Cody decided to keep growing it on some remote corner lot and my mother is baking with it and taking the treats to people who need it.”

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