Page 11 of Rescued By the Ranger

I push back. I’m not ready for anything physical or emotional yet. I need to get my head in order first.

“Thanks, Rhodes. It’s been a helluva year.” I whisper the “bad word” knowing that my daughter has super hearing.

“Decades,” he mumbles and I wonder what he’s been through.

I grimace. “Sorry to hear that.”

“You want help cleaning up?” he asks, sliding past me to the sink.

A man who does dishes?I almost swoon.

“Sure.”

He starts some warm water in the sink. “Thankfully, the gas water heater works while the electricity is out, so warm baths and showers are still possible.”

“Oh, I might do that. I haven’t taken a bath in years.” I swear I see him shiver. “You cold?”

“No, just… thinking.”

“About?”

“Honestly?” he asks, handing over a clean bowl for me to dry.

“Of course. I appreciate honesty.”

He turns soapy rag in hand. “You in a bubble bath. It’s a thought I might never get out of my head.”

I freeze with the bowl in my hand. “Oh. I guess, thanks?”

“Yeah, honesty can be eye opening, right?” He goes back to the sink of soapy water.

“You ever take baths?”

He looks back over his shoulder. “Is that an invite?”

I’ll probably never see this man again. And maybe… just maybe Shane meant for this to be a new beginning for me as a woman.

Shake the dust off of my lady parts.

“We’ll see, Rhodes. We’ll see…”

The bowl in his hand drops in the water and a cloud of bubbles covers his face.

I laugh as I walk away, sauntering my hips just a little bit more than before.

Sometimes you can’t be ready for what just feels right.

6

RHODES

This woman is goingto kill me. She’s got sass, class, and damn, that ass. It’s a dangerous trifecta of hot.

After a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, where I made the spaghetti and she made the meatballs and sauce, then eaten in front of the fire with a bottle of wine that she kept pouring, I’m feeling a little…wooed?

Unfortunately, I’ve been here before.

I start to feel for a woman, start to fall and believe we can have a future, and then they up and leave when they realize that in many ways I’m struggling. It’s a repeated part of my past that only reiterates that I’m better off alone.

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