Hell, I didn’t even know if it was truly his. He could be an illegal squatter there for all I knew.
The fact of the matter was that I knew most of the people in Turnbull. This was on the outskirts, true, and the occasional person came or went without stirring my notice, but we lived in a small, self-contained area. We might be surrounded by trees and hills and blocked in by mountains of snow for almost half the year, due to our proximity to Lake Ontario, but we kept track of our own.
Also, it was hard to make quick getaways when a snowpocalypse wasn’t a disaster so much as a way of life.
Biting my lip, I cast a quick glance back toward the road. In the time it had taken us to walk up to the house—though calling it that seemed to be an overstatement—my poor car had become even more buried. The snow wasn’t coming down in flakes now. More like pellets.
“Red,” he growled. “Forget the damn bread.”
Something about his irritation made me laugh. I clapped a hand over my mouth, then bent at the waist when more laughter rolled out. I couldn’t catch my breath and what breaths I could take were laced with ice. Crappy time to be on the verge of hysteria.
Guess my accident had shook me up more than I’d thought. Or else it was due to the man himself.
So I stood up straight, threw back my shoulders, and strutted inside in my giant boots to my beheading.
At least he’d turned on the lights. As I shut the door behind me and shifted to survey my surroundings, from down the hall came a string of curse words shot off in succession like gunfi
re.
My eyes widened. If he was trying to ease me into feeling comfortable before he struck, he wasn’t too good at it.
“Are you okay?” I asked carefully, darting glances right and left as I crept up the hallway to where his voice was coming from.
And stopped dead at the mouth of the sparse, rustic kitchen.
He was standing at the stove in nothing but a pair of silky black boxers with a spatula in his hand, poking at whatever congealed mess was in his dented pan. It was one like you’d see in a camping kit, meant to be used on nights under the stars and no other time, ever. But that was his home cookware.
Fit him somehow, as did the intricate swirls and lines of dark ink that wrapped around his muscular shoulders and biceps. More ink covered his back and sides. He was a human canvas, tattooed and rippling with muscle.
I didn’t find that arousing. That he was the exact opposite of my lanky, inkless ex was merely something I noted.
“Fucking burner is fucking out.” He stabbed at the red mass in his pan. Without sparing me a glance, he continued. “Why are you still dressed like a damn polar bear? Get out of those wet clothes. You were standing in a snowbank for a good fifteen minutes or more.”
“Polar bears don’t need clothing, as they have fur.”
That he only growled made me laugh. And cautiously unwind my scarf.
While he continued to fiddle with the non-working stove, I cleared my throat. “You have a microwave. Just heat up the soup.” Cautiously, I stepped closer and peered at the gross stuff he kept trying to stir. “That is soup, right?”
“Yes. Tomato. I was going to make grilled cheese to go with it. Can’t now, because fucking burner is—”
“Fucking out,” I finished, surprised by how liberating it felt to curse. There weren’t any tip jars here.
No furnace either apparently, as it was nearly as cold inside as it had been out. Or else I’d caught a serious freaking chill.
“Look at you. Your teeth are chattering.” He turned to me and yanked off my fuzzy hat, causing the long hair I’d tucked underneath to come tumbling out. He gazed at it as if he was surprised I had hair at all, then managed to shake off his shock and tugged off my earmuffs too.
Sound rushed into my ears, including the uneven hiss of his breaths through his tightly clenched teeth.
I raised my gaze to his. He was staring at me in a way I wasn’t used to from men. When a girl grew up in a small town with three strapping, overprotective brothers, you got used to guys being too afraid to take their shot. As such, I’d grown accustomed to dating the safe, parental-friendly boys. I liked them. They were predictable. No serial killers in the bunch.
None of them made my blood heat the way this one was with merely a heavy-lidded look.
He gripped my hat and earmuffs in his hands, crumpling them. This close to him, without even the buffer of his clothes, he seemed even more huge. Tall, muscled, dangerous.
I didn’t know that kind of male. Had never wanted to.
Until now.