Page 14 of Rocky Mountain Desire
Matt checked his watch.Shit.“I have to get up in four hours. If you don’t mind me staying…”
Hope rose, still clutching the bundle around her.
“There’s—” Her eyes went wide and she stared in consternation. “Oh, fuck it. It seems I’m going to keep kicking you in the balls, Matt Coleman, even though that’s not my intention. You can sleep out here on the couch that’s way too small for you, or you can have my bed. Or you can have the spare bedroom, but that was…”
Fuck itwas right. “Helen’s room.”
Hope nodded slowly.
It wasn’t the end of the world. “It’s just a bed. I’d head home now, but it makes no sense to start the truck, scrape the windows clear, fight my way through the fresh snow to my trailer and then have to do it all over in three hours’ time.”
Hope nodded, more briskly this time. “This way. There’s a wind-up old alarm that used to belong to my grandpa if you want it.”
She grabbed for the quilts on the couch. All the way down the hall, Matt wondered what evil karma he’d earned to deserve getting the hell beat out of him this way. When she hustled him into the room and piled the bed high with quilts, there was nothing left but to deal with his torment.
Hope stood in the doorway, hands clutched together. “You got what you need?”
Matt nodded. “I’ll leave as quietly as I can in the morning. Okay if I just pull the door locked after me?”
“Perfect, because honestly, I’m not getting up with you. Help yourself to whatever you want out of the fridge.” Those blue eyes of hers caught him again, her expression serious. “Again, thank you. This evening could have ended way differently if you hadn’t come along.”
Then she was gone, the wink of her flashlight disappearing behind her door.
He turned to face his fate.
It was just a bloody bed. He crawled in with his clothes still on, tugging the quilts right up to his chin. Lying in the dark, slowing his breathing, trying to calm the wild activity in his brain.
It was no use. It might be self-torture, but he had to do it. He sat up and shined the light around the place, looking for signs of Helen, looking for anything that would poke him and make him bleed.
Nothing. It was just a bedroom.
The ghosts wavered and faded to mist. There was enough heat generated from his body and the food in his belly to allow him to relax. He turned off the light and covered his ears. Yeah, the only thing haunting him right now had nothing to do with the knowledge that his ex-lover had slept in this room.
It was the bright-eyed woman on the other side of the wall, her enthusiastic laugh and her kindhearted actions that dogged his thoughts as he fell asleep.
Chapter Four
The welcoming tinkle from the bells attached to the shop’s front door brought Hope from her inventory to greet a massive armload of familiar-looking supplies moving toward her.
“How…?”
The boxes lowered to reveal another familiar sight. Clay Thompson, old classmate and sometime dance partner, flashed her a smile. “Got a few things for you. Must have fallen out of Santa’s sled or something.”
“That’s the stuff from my car.” She came forward to pull the topmost of the pile off and lay it on a table. “Oh man, thank you for grabbing it for me. When I called this morning your dad said the tow truck was already gone.”
“Yeah, Matt Coleman phoned first thing. We had to rescue a couple others before your car, but she’s at the shop now.”
Hope wished she could stop the heat that rushed to her cheeks. She wondered if Clay would ask what Matt was doing phoning for her. He’d been gone when she got up, but obviously had taken time from his chores to put in the rescue call.
Clay lowered the rest to the floor. “We’ll look the car over and let you know what needs to be done to make her roadworthy.”
“You do miracles?”
“Ha. Yeah, she’s in rough shape, but until they’re completely dead, there’s always hope.”
His joke fizzled as she thought about how much harder having no vehicle was going to make life.
He motioned to the pile. “I think we found everything before we messed up the snow hauling your car from the ditch. Len’s got another load coming in a minute.”
