Page 36 of No Contest
"Come back with me to my place. I'll make real hot chocolate. The kind where you melt actual chocolate."
"You're asking me to come home with you."
"Yes."
"After you just told me you want all of me."
"Yes. Is that okay?"
He kissed me.
Right there in the frozen overlook with snow starting to fall, Hog's hands reached out to cup my face, cold fingers against my cheeks. He tasted of mint and the winter air.
When we broke apart, we were both breathing hard.
"Hot chocolate sounds good," he said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He kissed me again.
I patted his broad chest with my right hand. "Let's go before we freeze."
We walked back to the truck with Thunder Bay spread below us—the Giant still keeping watch.
I opened the passenger door for him. He climbed in, and I walked around to the driver's side, pulse still racing.
When I slid behind the wheel, he was staring at me with a heat in his eyes I hadn't seen before.
"Just so we're clear—" His voice dropped lower. "I'm not just coming over for hot chocolate."
My pounding heart could have driven nails. "No?"
"No." He reached out for my thigh and squeezed once.
Chapter seven
Hog
Rhett's apartment was what I expected, and somehow more so—the tidy second floor of a converted house. It made my place resemble a yarn explosion mated with a laundry avalanche.
I pulled off my boots, lining them up next to his. Too big. Taking up too much space already.
"Sorry. I wasn't expecting company."
"This is your place?" Stupid question. Obviously, it was his place.
"This is it."
I looked around. A worn couch that had probably belonged to his dad. He had a coffee table with trade magazines stacked precisely like an oversized deck of playing cards, and a bookshelf made from reclaimed wood—gorgeous joinery, perfect corners.
"It's so you," I said.
He raked his fingers through his hair. "Good me or bad me?"
"Good you. Definitely good you."
I walked to the bookshelf because standing still meant thinking about what I was doing here and what might happennext. Ran my fingers along the spines—carpentry manuals, true crime paperbacks, and a couple of hockey bios.
