Page 16 of Naughty With The Mountain Man
She grins, tilting her head. “You act like I’m a grenade with the pin pulled.”
“You’re not a grenade.”
“Then why do you keep looking at me like …” she gestures, flustered, “… like you’re waiting for me to blow up and take the cabin with you?”
I want to say something funny, to knock her off this subject, but I can’t. I just look at her, and it’s like she’s already seen every splintered part of me and decided not to flinch.
“Because you’re … alive,” I say, choosing the word carefully. “You walk in and the place stops being a bunker andturns into a …” I break off, because I don’t have a word for it. “You fill the room. That’s not what I’m used to.”
She absorbs it, smile twitching at the corners, the firelight illuminating her eyes.
“A … what?” she says, gently mocking, but there’s an edge of hope in it that I can’t ignore.
“A home,” I say. It comes out small, embarrassing. I want to take it back, but she doesn’t let me. Her face changes, softening into a thousand-watt version of herself.
The silence grows warm again, not in the way a stove heats a room, but in the way a body radiates from someone’s skin, how it changes the air.
I want to touch her. More than that, I want her to let me. Ruby stares at me, too much in those eyes — hope and mischief and the kind of vulnerability I try to keep out of rooms like this. She doesn’t look away, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t rescue either of us from the weight of it.
I break first. “What about you?” I ask. “You afraid of me?”
She shakes her head slowly, curls bouncing. “Nah. You’re safe.”
“Am I?” I ask and realize that’s the first time anyone’s ever called me that.
She grins. “I’ve seen how you fold laundry. Not like you’re going to start a fight with anyone, ever. Mostly I just think you’re …” She stops and shrugs, but the look in her eyes says everything else.
I know this is the moment you’re supposed to escalate, bridge the gap, do whatever move the internet would vote on in a ’will-they-or-won’t-they’ poll. I don’t. I sit there, steady, waiting to see if she’ll let the silence spook her. She doesn’t. Instead, she closes the distance by prodding my knee with her toes, then tucking her legs up again, all the while grinning like she looks at a secret she’s keeping just for fun. I want to know what it is.
We sit like that, not quite touching, the air between us getting crowded with what we’re not saying. Then Ruby says, “Do you ever sleep?” So matter-of-fact that it takes me a second to realize it’s not a setup.
“Some,” I say, but my voice sounds like a dare.
She stretches, cat-like, and stands, letting the thick flannel fall a little off her shoulder. “You look like you could use it,” she says, not looking away. “You want the couch or the bed?”
The question short-circuits my three a.m. brain, and for a moment I just stare at her. She rolls her eyes, soft but challenging, shoving a hand through her hair.
“To sleep,” she says. “Nothing weird. Unless you want it to be weird, but I’m too tired to be interesting.”
I almost laugh, but the words stick. “You take the bed. I’ll crash out here.”
Ruby stops at the edge of the hallway, wagging the toy at Ranger, who looks one second from relapsing into theft and then, to my surprise, she just sets the pink thing on a shelf, like a trophy or a dare, and gives me a look that says she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Night, Beckett,” she calls over her shoulder, and the way she says my name makes every good intention I had regret its existence.
I stoke the fire down, pour a mug of water, and try to cool off. Ranger circles twice, then collapses on my feet, warm, heavy, loyal to the bitter end. I scratch him behind the ear. “You’re a menace, you know that?” He sighs, satisfied with his day for reasons only dogs understand. I sit back, breathing in the last of the cinnamon air and the melted wax, letting my mind wander where it wants. It doesn’t surprise me at all that it stops on Ruby.
She’s not what I expected. I thought she’d be loud, or exhausting, or too much. Sometimes she is. But she’s also the kind of person who makes you want to tell stories, even whenyou’ve spent your whole life not wanting to be heard. She fills every inch of the room with her colors, voice, and wild energy that comes from living at full volume. She’s exhausting and intoxicating. Right now, she’s in my bed down the hall snoring softly into my pillow like she’s always belonged there. Why didn’t she take the pull-out couch again? It’s the middle of the night. Maybe she didn’t want to go through the hassle.
I try to sleep. I really do. But my mind keeps going back. First, I recall the blush that climbed her face when she realized what Ranger had in his mouth, then to her laugh, the way she covers it with the back of her wrist when it’s too much. Then to the way she looked at me.
Ruby said I was safe, but I’m not sure that’s true. I feel wildly off-balance, and I kind of like it.
Chapter 9
Ruby
The first thing I notice is the smell of cinnamon from the candle and something unmistakablyhim.The second thing I notice is that this is not the pull-out couch. I blink at the ceiling beams until my brain boots up enough to confirm: yep, definitely Beckett’s bed. Big, solid, warm, and currently holding one lingerie entrepreneur who’s pretending this is fine.
