Page 12 of Beauty and the Bounty Hunter

“I’ll leave,” Harbor said. To his credit, he sounded determined. “I can figure it out. I might only make it to town, but then you can have your peace.”

“No.” The word surprised both of us, but I held my ground. “No, don’t go. It’s dangerous out there. You probably couldn’t even make it to the neighbors.”

He clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“You don’t.” And it was the truth. Despite the situation, I felt safer and more protected with him than I had in a long, long time. “You can leave tomorrow morning.”

He hesitated again, standing at the threshold and staring out at the wintry snowfall, illuminated against the dark of night. It was beautiful, really, albeit highly inconvenient.

“Besides,” I said, sitting back down at the table and cradling the makeshift mocha in my hands. “If you leave, someone else will come and find me.”

That seemed to snap him out of indecision. With a grunt, he dropped his bag by the front door and turned back around. He ran a hand along the stubble of his jaw. “My last name is Stryke. Harbor Stryke.”

I liked it, both that he trusted me enough to tell me, and also the cadence of it. “That’s a big name.”

“My mom wanted me to have a name that stood for something, that would protect me and everyone I cared about.”

His mom sounded amazing, similar to mine. “That’s a lot to ask for, from a name.”

“That’s my mom.” This exchange seemed to exhaust him. “Are you hungry? I can heat up some noodles.”

“No.” My appetite had fled, leaving behind only a slow-burning ember of desire. “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll just go to sleep.”

Quickly, Harbor surveyed the sleeping situation. “I’ll sleep on the couch, or in the chair. You should take the bed. I bought fresh sheets.”

He moved to a large paper bag and pulled a bed-in-a-bag kit out of it, one with large purple and white flowers. It was so feminine and floral, he must have picked it out, thinking I would like it. And I did.

“I didn’t think this would be your style,” I said. I moved to the bed and pulled off the old, dusty sheets. As surreptitiously as possible, I checked for any of the little black dots that could signify bed bugs, but there weren’t any, thank God.

He opened the bag and pulled out the fitted sheet. “I thought it suited you. And it looked warm.”

A sliver of pleasure shivered through me. “I can do this.” I took the sheets from his hand, the cotton slipping cool through my fingertips. “You can take a moment and get ready for bed.”

Gruffly, he nodded. He picked up his bag from beside the door and disappeared into the bathroom.

What was I doing? I didn’t know this man from Adam, he had admitted he was only there to bring me to the police, and yet I had invited him to stay through the snowstorm. I shook out sheets and covered the mattress with the comforter.

The couch looked saggy and uninviting. I took the standard sheet from the bed in a bag and tucked it in around the couch cushions. At least it looked sturdy enough so he wasn’t going to break it if he breathed funny. With a fresh lavender-colored sheet in place, it looked almost cheerful in the firelight.

Which brought up another concern. I frowned at the fireplace. There was a small stack of logs and kindling beside it that Harbor had brought in earlier, leaving the majority of the cord outside, but it was still the only source of heat in the cabin. If it went out in the middle of the night, there was no way the comforter was going to keep us warm.

Me warm. Harbor was not going to be under the comforter, absolutely not.

The bathroom door creaked open, and Harbor stepped out, dressed in light jogging pants and a black long-sleeve henley. Despite his clear effort to cover himself, I could still see the definition of his body beneath his clothes, and it made my mouth water. “Is the fire going out?” he asked.

Stop ogling the hot bounty hunter. “I think it’s okay. I was just worried what we would do if it burned out overnight.”

Harbor knelt beside me, inspecting the fire, but his proximity only reignited all the parts of me that remembered his kiss. How he held back but I could tell there was still so much passion there. Like an iceberg but made of brimstone and liquid pleasure. “I’ll set an alarm and wake up every few hours. I’ll make sure you don’t freeze, Katrina.”

I loved how he said my name. Pete had devolved into calling me Kat, which he knew I always hated, especially because he meant it in a pejorative Pussy Kat kind of way. But Harbor? When he said my name, he rolled it in his mouth, like he savored it. Like the simple act was the same as sliding into the driver seat of a Maserati convertible along the California coast. He treated me like I was an experience to be treasured.

Lust spooled inside of me, pushing away all thoughts of why this was a bad idea. I had never made bad choices, apart from marrying Pete. I’d always been the good girl, kept my head down, paid my bills, done the work. Look where that had gotten me.

A good girl always broke eventually.

“Do you have any tattoos?” I asked him. I longed to run my hands underneath the sleeves and hem of his shirt and find out for myself, but that would be crossing a major boundary.

“Tattoos?” He arched his thick-browed eyes at me. “No. I have scars.”

---