Page 7 of A Heart of Winter
The clearing went quiet for a moment, and when I tore my eyes off the sky and looked down at him, he was watching me with shrewd eyes. Still, he didn’t voice the doubt in his expression. “I’m Kai. Kai Mori.”
“Johannes Lind,” I answered with a smile. Maybe the middle of nowhere, covered in snow, wasn’t going to be so bad.
I’d always liked the snow, as long as I had someone to keep me warm. I’d just thought that someone was going to be Michael. Was it disloyal for me to get over him in a month and start looking for someone else to snuggle with?
Oh well if it was. Michael was the one who’d left, not me.
And Kai? His smile alone warmed the snowy ground, like the kiss of the sun on my face.
There was no harm in getting to know him better.
Crush(ed)
Kai insisted on driving me back to the cabin, and it was . . . nice.
Not that I put up an argument when he offered, but it was nice to have someone think about my comfort. Morwenna still did, of course, but Michael had stopped—hell, I couldn’t even remember when he’d stopped caring about my feelings.
“So,” Kai said as he came around and opened the truck door to let me out, leaning on it and holding out a hand to help me down. “We spent more than an hour talking about me. And then Minnesota. You haven’t said why you’re here.”
I scrunched up my whole face at the reminder. I’d just been thinking about Michael, sure, but that was somehow different from having totalkabout him.
His expression went sympathetic, and like he’d read my mind, he asked, “Bad breakup?”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Mmm”—he waggled a hand back and forth—“You’re sad. You left the whole state you live in. You don’t love it here, but you came to be alone. It’s a little obvious. I get paid to figure out what makes people tick. I know, the eternal joke is about lawyers not being human, but I’d argue the problem is that we knowhumanity too damned well. It tends to make us jaded after long enough of seeing the worst people have to offer.”
I quirked a brow at him, but took his hand where he was holding it out to help me down. “I’m the worst humanity has to offer?”
His smile at that was soft. “No, but I think you’ve been through it, and recently. Only a really ugly breakup has a person leaving the state and going to a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere.” He winked at me. “Or the middle of a frozen hellscape, as you prefer.”
“Sorry about that. I know it’s your home?—”
“Oh no. Minnesota hasn’t been my home in more than a decade.” As my feet hit the ground, he tucked my hand into the crook of his arm like I was a debutante and we were headed for the ball, and turned to walk me up to the door before continuing. “I left for college and never came back other than to visit my family. When I’m done selling the house, I’ve already accepted a new job offer with a firm in San Diego. No more snow for me. I’m going somewhere tropical and gorgeous and never chopping wood again.”
“You won’t miss the roaring fires? Snuggling under a blanket when it’s snowing out?”
He turned to meet my eye again, gaze sweeping over me like a physical presence. “I promise, you can snuggle under a blanket in a Southern California winter just as easily as a Minnesota one.” Turning as we reached the door, he stepped into my space. “Maybe you’ll let me show you sometime.”
My lips parted and I sucked in a deep breath. Clearly, I hadn’t been imagining the connection between us. He was flirting. “I . . . I haven’t ever been to San Diego.”
He ducked forward, into my space, until I could feel his warm breath on my cheeks. “I’d love to share it with you.”
It wasn’t a wedding proposal, obviously. We’d only just met. But . . . this was a man, interested in me. A gorgeous one. Unless I was so out of practice with socializing that I didn’t know anything about modern human interaction and people were always right in each other’s spaces now.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d missed a major change in society. The first time I’d seen Morwenna in pants had shocked me to my core, as silly as that seemed now.
So I tilted my head up toward him, like a flower to the sun.
Like permission.
And he took it for what it was, leaning forward just another inch to brush his lips across mine, soft and perfect and fleeting.
Then he pulled back, licking his bottom lip as though to catch the taste of my skin there. He pressed something into my hand, paper and rectangular—a business card. “Call me anytime.” Then he took a step back, biting his lip and looking me over again. Somehow, even bundled up, I felt naked before him. “I’d better go unload this firewood around the back, and I’ve got a meeting with the realtor this evening so I need to go. But I hope I hear from you soon, Johannes. Anytime.”
“You will,” I agreed without even considering the wisdom of the idea. “I’ll call.”
To my surprise, I found that I meant it.
