Page 4 of Forbidden Passions

“Clearly.” Her tone was light, but her eyes were shrewd, assessing me in a way that made me want to retreat to the far side of the cabin. I wasn’t used to being looked at anymore.

“Well, I appreciate you taking Max in. He’s still adjusting to being with me. I only adopted him a few weeks ago.”

The radio crackled again. Landslides. Flood warnings. I turned to the window, already knowing what I’d see. Water pouring from the gutters. Trees whipping in the wind.

“That sounds serious,” she said.

“It is. These mountain storms are no joke. Flash floods can take out roads in minutes.”

I caught my reflection in the window glass—tense jawline, guarded eyes. Sometimes I barely recognized myself these days. Captain Gabriel Holt felt like someone I used to know, not who I was now.

“But I need to get back to my rental cabin.” She stood up, the wet towel and her raincoat in hand. “I have all my things there, and I’m sure the rain will let up soon.”

I let the curtain fall back into place. Even though I didn’t want the company, there was no way I was letting her walk back to her cabin in the dark. In the rain. “It won’t. Not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow either.”

Her eyes widened. “Tomorrow? But I can’t stay here that long.”

“Unless you’ve got a helicopter, you don’t have much choice.” I moved to the small kitchen area, filling a kettle with water. Making tea gave me something to do with my hands, somewhere to look besides at the woman invading my space. “Your cabin’s on the other side of Sawmill Creek, which means between you and it is about twenty feet of raging water right now.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d came here to rebuild myself in solitude, to find peace in the quiet, and now I was stuck playing reluctant host to the first person who’d truly caught my interest in years.

“You can’t know that for sure,” she argued.

I set the kettle on the stove with more force than necessary. “I live here, you don’t. I know exactly how these storms work.”

I knew what happened when someone thought they could outpace danger. That someone usually didn’t come back.

She bit her lip, glancing down at Max, who had flopped onto his side, apparently content now that he’d found his owner. “I don’t want to impose...”

“Too late for that,” I muttered.

Her head snapped up, eyes flashing. “I didn’t exactly plan this, you know. If you’re going to be a jerk about it, I really will try to make it down the mountain.”

“And I’ll be the one who has to explain to search and rescue why I let a stubborn woman walk into a flood zone.” I turned the burner on, the click-click-click of the igniter punctuating my irritation. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you do. But we’re both stuck with it until the storm passes.”

She crossed her arms, and her shirt clung to her in all the wrong ways—or maybe all the right ones, because I had to force my eyes to stay on the kettle.

“Fine,” she said after a moment. “But I’ll need dry clothes.”

That was a complication I hadn’t considered. I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling the almost week-old stubble scratch against my palm. I hadn’t gone full mountain hermit despite what she’d said earlier, but I was no longer military ready either. “I might have something that will work. Nothing that will fit properly, though.”

“Anything’s better than these.” She plucked at her soaked shirt, and I deliberately turned my back, opening a cabinet to pull out two mugs.

“Bathroom’s through there,” I said, pointing to the door off the main room. “I’ll find some clothes and leave them outside the door. Towels are in the cabinet.”

“Thank you.” Her voice had softened slightly. “I really do appreciate this, even if you’re not exactly thrilled about it.”

I grunted in acknowledgment, still not looking at her. “Tea?”

“Oh, please, yes. That would be amazing.”

I listened to her footsteps and the soft click of the bathroom door closing before I allowed myself to exhale. Three years of carefully constructed solitude, broken by one woman and her dog in a single stormy evening.

I went to my bedroom, rifling through my dresser for the smallest clothes I could find. A t-shirt, a pair of drawstring sweatpants, clean boxers, still in their package. I’d bulk ordered basics last time I’d gone to town.

Outside the bathroom door, I paused, listening to the sound of the shower running. The thought of her naked, just on the other side of this door...

She had the kind of body that made men start fights, burn bridges, sell their souls for a chance to touch. The kind I stopped letting myself think about years ago. Not because I couldn’t have it. Because I didn’t deserve it.

---