Page 12 of Coveted By The Bear

“I got it. You sit with your coffee,” Miles said gently.

“Are you sure?”

“Yep. You are always doing for other people, Hope. Let me do this for you,” he replied, and his smile made my knees weak.

Good thing I was already sitting. How many times in my life had someone noticed something like that about me?

I sipped my coffee and watched as miles made quick work of taking care of our leftovers and dirty plates and utensils.

He’d cooked a perfect London broil that looked big enough to feed ten people. But it was so good, there was hardly a slice left, truth be told.

With it, he made broccoli and pasta with garlic, grated cheese, and crushed red pepper and a salad with just arugula and fennel sliced thing. He dressed it with a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice, and the result was fantastic.

Then he finished the meal with a couple of fresh apple turnovers from the Bear Claw Bakery and fresh brewed coffee,which he actually let me make after practically barring me from the kitchen.

Thoughtful, sexy man.

“Hey, you wanna see the rest of the property?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t given him a proper tour.

“I’d love that,” he replied, those crystal clear blue eyes of his zeroed in on me.

I nodded and moved to unlock the back door, and Miles followed. He was so close, I could smell the soap still clinging to his skin.

God, he was gorgeous. And he smelled good. Real good.

Usually, I wasn’t so hyperaware of men. Especially men who looked like him. I mean, I was always the girl most likely to be friend zoned. Always the one who reminded a guy of their little sister or cousin. A shoulder to cry on.

And I accepted that for a while. Accepted that I was never going to be the love interest.

I watched my friends from high school and college all fall in love and find their person. And I wanted that, too. Maybe that’s why I settled.

But this was my life. My story. And maybe it was okay for me to want something for myself.

For me to want him.

“This is the yard,” I murmured, Miles hot on my heels.

I frowned as I took it in through his eyes. I mean, this was my childhood home, but I had plans for it. I was just busy and broke.

“What’s this here?” he asked, eyeing a stack of lumber half hidden beneath a dark green tarp.

“Oh, that. Well, you might have noticed, I work crazy hours, so I don’t really have the time I’d like to work on this place,” I began.

“Hey, you work hard, Hope. It’s okay to give yourself a break. Now, what’s all this wood for?”

“Thank you,” I said, surprised. “Um, I was going to build a deck back here so I could have a place to put a table and chair set. You know, one of the ones with an umbrella right in the middle? I love to grill, and my father built that one against the back fence when I was little. It still works, but I think it probably needs a good cleaning and some bricks have to be replaced,” I told him.

“Then over here, I want to have a couple of those low Adirondack chairs in a semicircle with a firepit in the middle so I could just sit outside at night and just enjoy the air.”

“That sounds real nice. Who would you sit with?” he asked, and when I turned, I realized he was all up in my space.

“I-I don’t know,” I replied, my voice hardly more than a hushed whisper.

My heart was galloping inside my chest. Miles was so close. So big. I could almost feel the warmth from his body against mine, but there was still too much space between us for that to be possible.

“I could almost see you right there. A mug of coffee in your hand, a big fuzzy blanket on your lap. It’s a lucky man who’d get to sit beside you,” he murmured.

“Oh yeah? You think so?” I replied with a snort.

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