into the hall herself.
Slipping a blue corduroy shirt over a cotton turtleneck and yoga pants, she could hear her little guy as she reached the first step.
“Can I help you work today?” he asked. “An’ can you help put my train around the tree?”
The low tones of Erik’s voice drifted up the stairway. “I think all I’m going to do out there this morning is check the gutters. It’s too dangerous for you to help.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a long way up there.”
“How come you need to check ’em?”
“Because I need to see if the weight of the ice pulled them from their brackets.”
“Why?”
She heard a deep, indulgent chuckle. “Because if they’re not lined up right, the rain will pour straight off the roof instead of draining to the downspouts and get you and your mom all wet.”
Her foot hit the bottom step just as she heard a pondered little “Oh.”
Tyler hesitated. “Can we do the train after, then?”
Across the entry, she could see Tyler sitting in front of the lit tree, the blanket she’d covered Erik with last night wrapped around his shoulders. Expectation beamed from his little profile.
Erik sat on the edge of the hearth, his gray undershirt stretched across his broad shoulders as he closed the glass doors on the growing fire.
“I’ll have to see how it goes, but I don’t know that I’ll have time for that, Ty.” He picked a stray bit of bark from the stone beside him, tossed it onto the logs in the curved wood basket. “Now that the rain’s melted the ice, I need to finish here, then get to my own place.”
“You’re going home?”
There was no mistaking her son’s disappointment at that bit of news. She heard it in his small voice, could practically feel it in him as she watched Erik look up at her an instant before Tyler turned and looked up himself.
Shoving her fingers through her hair, partially undoing what she’d managed to arrange with a few random strokes of a brush, she found it infinitely easier to meet Tyler’s sad little face.
“Good morning, sweetie,” she murmured, bending to give him a hug. “How did you sleep?”
“Good,” came his usual, though decidedly disheartened, reply.
She nudged back his hair, wanting to ease away his sudden seriousness. What Erik had done hadn’t been deliberate. There had been nothing but kindness in his voice as he’d explained why he wouldn’t be staying. But the painful proof of how her little boy could come to rely on him, could even come to love him, only added to the confusion of wants and uncertainties tearing at her as she kissed the soft, tousled hair at the crown of his head.
“I’ll help you with your train later, okay?”
“’Kay,” he reluctantly replied.
“So, what’s up down here?” she asked him and, as casually as she could, straightened to meet the caution in Erik’s smile.
He rose himself, all six feet plus of him, and came to a stop in front of her.
His gray gaze skimmed her face. Slowly assessing. Unapologetically intimate. “The plan so far was to turn on the tree, then build a fire.” His eyes held hers. “Then what, Ty?” he asked, since the child hadn’t answered his mom.
“Breakfast,” came the slightly more enthused reply. “And cartoons?” he added hopefully from below them.
“And coffee?” Erik asked with that disarming arch of his eyebrow.
“Definitely coffee,” she agreed.
Grabbing the remote, she punched in the channel she usually only let Tyler watch as a treat. With him on his way to the sofa with his blanket, she headed for the kitchen, Erik’s footfalls behind her matching every heavy thud of her heart.
She pulled the carafe from the coffeemaker, turned to see him watching her from beside the sink.
Holding the carafe under the faucet, she turned the water on.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked, her hushed voice muffled further by the sound of running water.
“Because I was already awake. When I heard him in the bathroom, I figured he’d come looking for you, so I intercepted him before he could. I thought you might not want him to find us in bed together.
“Besides,” he added quietly, “you were out. You barely moved when I pulled my arm from under you.”
The reminder of how she’d fallen asleep tucked against his side, their bare limbs tangled, had heat rising in her cheeks.
“I can’t believe I didn’t hear him.” It was so unlike her not to hear her son. “I never sleep that hard.” Except with this man beside her, she obviously had.
“Thank you for the rescue,” she all but whispered.
He turned off the water for her. With Tyler hidden by the sofa, he lifted his hand, curved his fingers at the side of her neck.
“I’m going to leave in a while,” he told her, brushing his thumb over the lobe of her ear. “Pax said everything was okay at the boatworks yesterday, but I have some things I need to do. There’s something here I want to check first, though. Is there anything you can think of that you need me to do before I go?”
In the past eight hours, his touch had become as exciting to her as it was calming, as disturbing as it was comforting. He had reawakened her heart and her senses and she’d never felt as confused as she did now, standing there desperately wanting him to pull her to him and hoping he wouldn’t.
He’d said he needed to leave, that he had things he needed to do. He’d already talked with Pax, asked about the condition of their properties, their business. She’d heard him tell Tyler that he needed to check on his own place. She knew his entire life was on the other side of the sound. In her need for the temporary escape he’d offered, she’d forgotten that for a few critical hours last night.
“You don’t need to check my gutters, Erik.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, thinking of her lovely, long limbs and how perfect they’d felt wrapped around him. He’d really prefer that none of them got broken. “It’ll save you having to do it yourself.”
“I’d have to do it if you weren’t here.”
The hint of defensiveness in her tone sounded all too familiar.
“But I’m here now,” he pointed out, looking a little more closely to see the unease he’d missed in her moments ago.
“You can just tell me what I’m supposed to look for. I’ll need to know, anyway.”
Caution curled through
