Page 24 of Smoky Lake

He nodded. She was so close to him that his throat had closed up from sheer…awareness? Overwhelm? Lust?

“I’m going to rub your legs to get the blood circulating,” she told him. “It might be a little painful if your toes have gone numb.”

“They have,” he admitted.

“I’m not surprised. Just tell me if it hurts.”

Briskly but somehow also gently, she got to work with his t-shirt. She started with one foot, where prickles of sensation made him grit his teeth.

“One more minute in that water and I’m pretty sure you would have gotten hypothermia,” she murmured. “How’d you even manage to walk up here?”

“Determination. Gotta keep you safe.” His tongue felt clumsy. She moved up to his calf. Next would come his knee, then his thigh, which was so very close to his… Shit. A new worry surfaced. What if he got an erection from her hands on him?

He closed his eyes so he couldn’t see her glossy dark head so close to his legs. At least there was no skin-to-skin contact. Only his t-shirt was touching him, not her hands.

The t-shirt slipped and her warm hand wrapped around his calf. A surge of heat rushed into his groin. Damn it.

He yanked himself away from her. “I can take it from here, thanks. Just find me a pair of sweatpants.”

Quickly, he rubbed his own legs, afraid to look her direction. Either she would be hurt by his sudden rejection, or she’d have seen his erection and understood. Rejection or erection. Would she reject his erection?

His nonsensical thoughts made him laugh to himself. Then he sobered. Maybe the cold had affected his cognition too. He was rambling like Victor.

“What’s this?” Ani handed him a pair of fleece pants, then held up the soft-sided leather binder in her other hand.

His head cleared instantly. “I found that at the Institute. Victor had buried it in the garden.”

“That explains the dirt stains. He must have been hiding it from someone. Maybe the people who launched the missile?”

“I think we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions yet.” He pulled on his pants, and instantly felt more like himself. “Let me get a fire going first, then we’ll look through it.”

He squatted next to the old Jotul stove and got to work with kindling and an old lighter sitting on the cast iron top. It took some coaxing because so much cold air filled the stovepipe, but eventually the fire caught.

As he worked, Ani watched the process with fascination. “Did you grow up in Alaska?” she asked him. “Or did you learn all that in Boy Scouts?”

“Neither. I grew up on a farm in Minnesota. We didn’t have much money and some winters we ran out of heating fuel and had to rely on wood fires.”

He closed and latched the stove door and stood up to stretch. The cabin was so small his fingertips brushed the ceiling. His body felt close to normal by now, but his thoughts were still a little fuzzy.

Why had he told her about their days of having no heating fuel? That was part of a mortifying past neither he nor Lachlan liked to talk about. They’d both come so far since then. They’d joined forces to buy their parents a nice condo in St. Paul a few years ago. No more hauling wood for the McGowans.

Ani set the pouch on the card table by the window and pulled up two folding chairs for them. He felt warmth in his cheeks; embarrassment that he’d let something so personal slip out. “Come on, let’s take a look at what Victor was so worried about that he buried it under a kale plant.”

He sat down, wincing at the feel of the cold metal through his fleece pants.

She stayed standing, her head cocked, gazing at him with a quizzical expression that made him even more embarrassed. “I know what it feels like to be on the outside, you know.”

“You do?” Astonished, he shook his head. “How could that be, a beautiful woman like you?”

“Thanks, but you’ve seen me walk. I have a bad limp, and anything that sets you apart like that in school can make you a misfit. I was teased quite a bit, especially when I still had my leg brace. If it wasn’t for Molly and Lila and Charlie, I would have spent my high school years reading under the covers of my bed. Of course my mother wouldn’t have allowed that. She’s a ‘no time for self-pity’ kind of mom.”

He was still stuck on her being teased in school. The very idea filled him with hot rage. “Who?” His voice dropped an entire register, to a range between furious and lethal. “Where? How dare they?”

She glanced at him in astonishment. “It was years ago. I’m a grown woman now. You don’t have to avenge me. Even if you did, it wouldn’t be them…are you okay?”

With an effort, he shook himself back to real life, away from the Avengers fantasy that had flashed through his mind. His reaction to Ani…Jesus. He really needed to get a grip on it. He wasn’t her personal protection detail. He’d only met her yesterday.

But he couldn’t let it go, not just yet.

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