“Someone’s in a good mood this morning,” she grumbles as she exchanges her coffee for the two tubes of cream and tosses them onto the bed beside me.
She doesn’t even ask; she just steps up between my legs and reaches for the bottom hem of my shirt before pulling it up. No fanfare, no oohing and aahing like some women have done in the past. Just straight to business.
But I also don’t miss the way her eyes snag on my body as she lifts the shirt up and over my head. She seems generally indifferent toward me, but now and then, I swear something flickers between us.
“How can I not be? You just called me adorable.”
She clambers up behind me. “Save it for the buckle bunnies, Rhett.”
When her hands touch my skin, they’re ice cold. I jump. “Jesus, Summer! You’re freezing. Have you been outside already?”
“No,” she says before wordlessly getting to work on my shoulder.
“How do you know about buckle bunnies?” I ask, trying to talk about something that will keep my cock from fixating on Summer’s hands gliding across my skin.
“I didn’t show up at your ranch without doing some Google research.”
“Huh.” I roll my lips together, wondering what she might have seen on there about me, about the sport.
She massages me like last night, but it doesn’t feel quite the same in the morning light. Somehow less private, though no less kind. I try not to read into how she woke up, got coffees, and walked across the hallway to take care of me. Especially since she doesn’t need to do this.
“Why are you so cold?”
She sighs, running a thumb into a deep knot. “The heat in my room isn’t working.”
“What?”
“That radiant heater thing.” She points toward the metal grate beneath the window in my room. “It’s not working.”
“So, you slept in a freezing cold room?”
“Yeah. It was okay with my coat and blankets. I’ve survived worse.”
I’m suddenly sitting up rigid, less focused on her hands than I am on the fact that after sleeping in a freezing room all night, she’s here taking care of me. “They need to get you a different room. Did you call down and ask?”
“I did. The hotel is full, thanks to the WBRF event.”
I turn to face her, gaze tracing the soft freckles across her button nose. “Then they need to get it fixed. Or we’ll move hotels.”
She sighs again, suddenly sounding just as weary as she appears. “I looked. Pine River isn’t big. There are only so many hotels, and they’re all sold out. They’re going to send maintenance over today to take a look.”
“Fucking right, they are.” Suddenly I’m incensed that she spent an entire night freezing. That I’ve made her feel like she couldn’t knock on my door and ask for help. “I’m going to talk to them.”
“Okay, macho man.” She laughs breathily. “Shut up and let me rub your back. It’s warming my hands.”
And I let her, because when she puts it like that, it sounds an awful lot like she’s enjoying touching me.
* * *
I spent my day doing a few interviews and acting suitably humbled when people ask me about my comments and actions regarding the milk shitstorm.
Summer made me practice the right facial expression to make while feeding me little pills like some sort of Pez painkiller dispenser.
I told her I’m not really sorry, and she told me that sometimes we do or say things we don’t mean to make other people comfortable. It’s a sentiment I’ve been turning over in my head all day.
I’m not sure she’s right.
We walked through the trade show attached to the rodeo, and when fans approached, she’d step away. Always there...but not really. As the day wore on, I felt like a bigger and bigger dick. But not the good kind.