Page 53 of Turn Up The Heat

“Sure. Take your time.”

He watched her walk the entire way to the office before turning to go outside.

* * *

Jackson wentall cat-that-ate-the-canary the second Shane stepped out the door, unrolling the truck’s driver’s side window down to the doorframe in spite of the frigid temperature to fix him with raised eyebrows and a huge grin. The sunlight was bright enough to be borderline obnoxious, and Shane had to squint his eyes down to slits just to see through the glare.

“Hey, hop in.” Jackson tipped his head toward the passenger door. “I can have you cleared in a couple of minutes.”

Shane yanked the passenger door open and knocked the snow off his boots before getting into Jackson’s pickup truck. There had to be at least a foot of snow on the ground, but it was hard to tell with all the drifting.

“How much snow fell?” he asked, but Jackson shook his head and laughed.

“Snowfall totals. That’s cute. How the hell did you end up on the floor with Miss She’s-Not-My-Type in the middle of a goddamn blizzard? And sorry I barged in on you,” he added, putting the truck in gear.

Shane dismissed the apology with a wave. “Don’t worry about it. We were just sleeping.” He avoided the other question like it was every strain of the plague.

“Uh-huh. Right. I’m sure that’s exactly how her bra made it to the floor. Are you gonna tell me that you made water balloons with the condoms missing from my wallet, too? ’Cause really, I could call bullshit on you all day.”

Shit. Time to concede. “Okay, okay. She came out yesterday morning to talk to me about her car and got stuck here in the snow. You think I was going to let her drive that BMW with the roads like they were?” Shane shrugged. “So, you know. You called to say the roads were closed, and then we were stranded together...” He trailed off, letting Jackson fill in the blanks.

Jackson shook his head. “Leave it to you to get stranded with a pretty girl. If it had been me, I’d have been stuck with Mrs. Teasdale or something.” He arched a brow at Shane, maneuvering the truck to keep clearing the snow. “You know, when I told you I thought you should get laid, I didn’t think you’d actually do anything about it.”

Something he couldn’t quite name needled its way into Shane’s system, snapping his head up. “What happened with Bellamy isn’t like that.” The words came out on a warning, low and with more of an edge than Shane intended.

Which Jackson clearly noticed, because his brows shot halfway up his forehead. “No disrespect. It’s just that she’s the first woman you’ve been interested in since you moved here last year. I’m a little surprised, is all.”

The scrape and rumble of the snow plow was the only sound between them for a long pause.

“Sorry. I’m a little surprised, myself.” Shane looked out the window at the snow drifts. “Thanks for making sure she gets back okay. I know it’s out of your way.” Jackson really had been stretching the hell out of the truth when he’d said going by the resort was on his way home.

He chuckled. “Look, if you’re going to get juiced about a woman, she must be something special. I figure it’s not a bad plan to make sure she gets back intact. Plus, I’m just that kind of guy.”

Unable to help it, Shane cracked a grin. “Yeah, you’re a regular saint.” He paused to snort before continuing. “And this thing with Bellamy isn’t serious. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like her and all, but she’s definitely an uptown girl.”

He thought of Bellamy’s fancy background. When she’d finally admitted last night that she’d earned her MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, he wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or a little sick. It wasn’t just one of the best MBA programs in the US. It was ranked in the top five in the world.

And Shane lived in a five hundred-square-foot cabin in the mountains and wanted nothing more than to be a grease monkey for the rest of his natural born life. Talk about incompatibility.

Except she’d been so down to earth when she’d told him how she’d made half a dozen eggs explode like a bad science experiment in her parents’ microwave, then risked life and limb to scale a nine foot ladder to clean the ceiling so they wouldn’t find out. And her laugh was the perfect combination of provocative and sweet, just enough to make him feel torn between wanting to laugh along with her and kiss her until he ran out of air.

He didn’t even want to get started on how good it felt to do more than kiss her. He’d just gotten rid of that hard-on, thank you very much.

“Hellllloooo, earth to Shane?” Jackson waved a hand across Shane’s field of vision, making him jump.

“Sorry, what?” He really needed to snap out of it. Spacing out like that definitely wasn’t his bag, no matter how enticing the vision might be.

“I said, just because she’s a city girl doesn’t mean it won’t work out. Who knows? Maybe she’ll surprise you.”

Shane shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to blot the thought of Bellamy’s laugh from his mind. The sound was there to stay, even if the rest of her was headed back down the mountain in less than a week.

“Maybe.” He shrugged, focusing out the window again.

But the word tasted as cold as the snow they were shoveling.

18

“Oh my God,are you okay and if you try to tell me nothing happened between you and Mr. Goodwrench, I will so call you out! You were snowbound together for twenty-fourhours. And, really, are you okay? Because, you know. Snowbound.”

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