Page 46 of Snow in Texas

“Getting worried about my girlfriend.”

Candy took a long drag and exhaled through his nose. His gaze drew inward, eyes glazed against the last flare of sunlight along the horizon. “Riley put someone where she works. That changes things.”

Colin nodded.

“That means I need to reevaluate everyone in her life.”

Colin lifted his brows.

“Not you, idiot,” he said without feeling. Then his eyes widened. “But you ain’t the only newcomer we’ve got around here.”

“Aw damn…”

Candy grinned. “Your brother knows how to scare the piss outta people. Does that run in the family?”

~*~

Jenny

Reason seventy-two she needed her own place: privacy. She’d toed off her boots and taken down her hair when she heard the hard rap at her bedroom door. It was Candy, doubtless, coming to pick up where he’d left off being anxious.

“Coming,” she muttered, opening the door. “I’m…”

Colin stood in the hallway.

“You can’t be back here,” she blurted before she could catch herself.

“And yet I am.” He flattened one of his sizable hands on the door and pushed it the rest of the way open, forcing her to step back. “Let me in.”

She held up a flat hand of her own, an unmistakable stop sign. “No. Hold on. I mean, you can’t be back here. This is family or invite only in the sanctuary.”

He gave her an amused, patient smile, no sign of his temper from moments before. “Aren’t you family?”

She rolled her eyes.

“So can’t you invite me?”

“You really want Candy knowing we’re back here together?”

He laughed. “Ooh, does that mean you’ll let me do dirty stuff? I was just gonna talk.”

She threw up her hands, tired and exasperated. “Whatever.”

Colin stepped into her bedroom and shut the door behind him. The room shrank once he was fully inside it, by a considerable margin.

“Damn, you’re big,” she muttered, a little warm and flustered to see him dwarfing all her furniture.

He flashed her a smile that blazed a trail straight from her stomach to parts south of that. “All over.”

“Ugh. That’s not what I meant. You’re too big for regular human furniture.” She glanced around the room, realizing not only was the room cramped, but messier than she would have liked. Folded clothes stacked up on the dresser, boots poking out of the cracked closet door, her journal open on the bed.

Her journal!

She brushed past him, flipped the leather bound notebook shut and crammed it down between the bed and the wall. She was breathing hard when she turned around, and Colin was watching her with his head cocked, expression quizzical and dog-like.

“Secret diary?” he guessed.

Since that was exactly what it was – no sense explaining the therapeutic benefits of hashing out her nightmares and daily thought bubbles – she pressed her lips shut and sat down slowly on the bed, not answering.

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