“Hello?” I call as I move away from the fire, toward the sound. There’s another room directly off the living room—the kitchen, to judge by the scent emanating from it. Bacon and another open fire. “I’m sorry—I don’t mean to intrude. It’s just, the front door was open. I got caught in the storm, couldn’t drive any farther…”
I step into the kitchen fully. That’s when I stop dead.
No way.
No fucking way.
This is impossible. This is just your luck, Corina, my subconscious points out. It has a point, I must admit.
Because standing there, in the middle of the kitchen, like the most impossible specter you could imagine, is none other than Professor Tony Lakewood himself.
I rub my eyes for a second, just to make sure they aren’t playing tricks on me. Unfortunately, Professor Lakewood remains standing right where he was a second ago, with a fistful of kindling in one hand, and the other poised on the oven door, which he’d clearly just opened in order to restock the fire. To judge by the way his eyebrows shoot upward and his gaze drops over my body, as though double-checking to ensure I’m real, I can guess I’m every bit as unexpected and unwelcome a sight to him as he is to me.
He finds his tongue first. “Caught out in the cold, Corina?” He tosses the rest of the kindling in into the oven and slams the door shut. The kitchen seems to warm instantly—though maybe that’s just all the blood rushing to my face as I blush.
Damn him. Somehow it’s more irritating to me how attractive he is. His sharp-cut cheekbones and the dark stubble dusting his strong jaw, below his thin-frame glasses and his dark hair, tousled like he’s just rolled out of bed but in the perfect I-woke-up-this-way manner, make him even more infuriating. He would be exactly my type if he weren’t a) my professor, and b) the worst, most aggravating man I’ve ever known.
“Guess that makes two of us,” I say, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorframe. “What brings you all the way out here in the middle of a blizzard?”
“I could ask the same of you,” he points out. “Though I won’t. I can already guess what brings you here. Escaping to some glamorous ski holiday rather than actually committing to your studies again, I assume.”
“To assume makes an ass out of you and me,” I retort with a scowl. Even though he’s right. Only partly, I remind myself. It’s not like I normally escape on ski weekends. And he’s the reason I need to right now.
“If you spent the time you took to run away like this on your work, you might actually have a passable grade in my class at the moment,” he laments while turning to reach up and check that the flue is open. Doing so exposes his lower abs for a second—a flash of tanned, perfectly muscled stomach that makes my belly clench in response. I can’t help ogling his washboard abs, or the way his jeans hang low on his hips, so different from the formal outfits he normally wears to class. His jeans sag low enough that I catch a glimpse of his boxers, and the V-line pointing below them, directly at…
My cheeks flush even brighter, and I tear my gaze away. Only to find him watching me with a self-satisfied smirk.
“So easily distracted, Corina.”
I clear my throat hard. “If by easily distracted, you mean concerned about how much wood we have for that fireplace, then yeah, sure. Call me impractical, but I don’t fancy the idea of freezing to death out here. And you’ve built that fire pretty high for the time being.” I nod my chin in the direction of the chimney.
That, at least, quiets him for a moment. He steps back to study the fireplace, arms crossed. “There’s a wood pile out back. Plenty of supplies.”
“Let me see,” I reply, not trusting the unsure note in his voice.
With one last scowl, he leads me through a narrow kitchen—gas stovetop, that’s good, in case we lose power—and out back. Sure enough, there is a wood stack, complete with a tarp over it to keep the wood dry in the snow. Still, I cross my arms and lean back to study the sky, assessing. “We should bring more of this inside,” I say. “Just in case it really starts to come down. We’ll want to have enough dry wood so we can use it to dry off any wet wood if we need to delve into the deeper reserves later.”
He casts a sideways glance at me, assessing as well. But if he wants to argue, he bites his tongue over it for now. Tony pulls the tarp back a little, and working together, we carry armful after armful of wood into the little mudroom off the kitchen. Every now and then as I pass him squeezing through the narrow back door of the cabin, our arms brush, and a fresh riot of tingles shoot along my skin.