Page 15 of When Hairy Met Stella

No, what he needed to do was buck up. He was a man—sort of. He could handle sharing a room with Stella.

Now if only he believed that.

Chapter

Five

“Alrighty, looks like there are two beds.”

Nate peered around Stella, needing to confirm the news with his own two eyes, and he swore he heard the “Hallelujah” chorus.

“That’s good.” He kept his voice even, totally void of any emotion. No inclination to the fact that they wouldn’t be sharing a bed was anything of interest to him. Seeing as he’d just endured the longest elevator ride of his life, this was newsworthy of a happy dance.

The two of them had entered the elevator first, and he’d apparently missed the announcement that the lodge was shooting for a world record to see how many people they could fit in the steel tube. The more people that entered, the more points if his body touched hers. “Scooch closer,” she’d said, her delectable scent equal parts intoxicating and alluring. She smelled like a marshmallow freshly pulled from the fire, its sweet aroma impossible to resist even though you knew it was too hot to eat and that it would be incredibly messy as well. Which was exactly what this situation had become…messy.Especially since he’d vowed to himself to not touch her—a task he was failing miserably at.

But thank goodness they didn’t have to share a bed.

He stepped into the room, blowing out a puff of air as his eyes confirmed once again the number of beds. A large television sat at the far end of the room with wide windows behind it, offering a stunning view of the bold fall foliage showing off on the hillside. A door led to a balcony where he figured he’d spend a lot of his time for two reasons: the view out there was breathtaking…and so was the one inside.

“Are you going to unpack?” Stella asked, throwing open the top of her luggage as she pulled cozy-looking sweaters and socks from the case.

“Yeah. Good idea.” He tossed his duffel bag on the opposite bed and pulled three shirts and a pair of jeans from it. Was this all he’d brought? He glanced over to her, humming a jaunty tune as she unfolded a pair of pants and hung them in the closet. She did a little skippy thing with her feet as she sashayed back to her suitcase, humming a jaunty little tune as she did so. She reached for another article of clothing that had—was that straw hanging off it?

How was she this relaxed? This was so much like the night he’d watched her dance in her office before she punched him. And since he apparently hadn’t learned his lesson that night, he couldn’t help but watch. He wished he was that carefree, but no. He was on a couple’s trip, not in a couple, but sharing a room with a woman who made his stomach do gravity-defying things. Why couldn’t he have been as unbothered as she was?

Wait…why was she unbothered? After all, she was being forced to share a room with him.

His hand stopped halfway to his bag. “Did you know about this?”

She looked up at him, frozen, her brows nearly meeting in the center of her forehead. “Uh…about the trip? I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?”

He chuckled as he shook his head, though he didn’t know where the chuckle had come from because his muscles felt as pliable as granite for all the tension that rolled through his body. He was still recovering from that elevator ride. “That’s not what I meant. Did you know that we’d be sharing a room?”

She lowered her hands, and he watched what looked like the softest sweater in the world pool onto the bed. “I had a hunch, but no. I didn’t know they’d take it this far.”

“Take what this far?”

Her lips twisted, like she was chewing on her words to see how they tasted before she spoke. All that did was draw attention to an area of her body he wanted to get closer to. So, naturally, he took a step back…right into the wall.

“I still think my cousin and your brother are trying to play matchmaker. In fact, I know they are.”

He splayed his hands wide, flexing them to relieve some of the excess energy that pulsed through him, because he’d figured that too. But after his chat with Eric at the driving range, he thought he’d made himself clear. “Well, that’s ridiculous.”

“Agreed,” she responded with a tiny snort. If Nate was honest, her blunt dismissal of the notion caused his stomach to clench as tightly as his fists, which was all the more reason they needed separate beds—and probably separate rooms. “But you realize they’re never gonna stop, right?”

“Stop what?”

“Trying to set us up. I know Lucy. When she gets an idea in her head, she sees it through to the end.”

He knew that about her too. Usually, she used this determination for good. Like the canned food drive she organized every fall at the fire station. But this? No good couldcome from this. Eric was a blockhead, so he obviously couldn’t get through to him. But Lucy had to know what a bad idea this was. She knew what kind of person—er, creature—he was.

“Well, I’ll see to it that this stops.” He pushed off the wall, striding to the door like a man on a mission.

“Unless…”

He paused in the middle of the room, the sing-song way she said the word piquing his curiosity. Her eyes sparkled with something that should have made him move faster out that door if for no other reason than that he found her eyes irresistible. Hypnotic, even. A surefire way to scramble his brain and get him to agree to whatever she was about to propose.

“We could give the people what they want.”

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