could hear the shower going in the bathroom as she busied herself fueling the stove and the fireplace. She thought about him, hoping he was all right in there.
There was something else she thought about, as well. Ethan Brand seemed to be a man with secrets. He had been vague about several things, reluctant to—what? Trust her?
And had she imagined it, or had he been relieved to learn she’d been unable to report his accident? If that were true, it didn’t make sense. Unless—
Will you just listen to yourself?
She was getting all worked up without cause. All right, so she was trapped here with a stranger. But that didn’t mean he was in any way dangerous just because he chose to keep his affairs private.
Except there was one little thing that genuinely bothered her. Ethan Brand was far too potent for comfort with those breath-robbing eyes and that provocative grin. And with this intimacy that had been forced on them….
SHE HAD COFFEE finished on the stove and eggs ready to go into the frying pan when he emerged from the bathroom. The stubble was gone from his jaw, which meant he had managed to shave. He had also changed into a fresh shirt, its cuffs rolled back on his forearms.
“What’s the weather doing?” he asked, placing his travel bag on the floor again. “The bathroom window was too frosted for me to tell.”
“Still coming down hard, I’m afraid. How do you like your eggs?”
He didn’t answer her. In the act of reaching for his wallet on the table, he had discovered the clipping and the map where she had left them next to the lamp. He picked them up and gazed at her questioningly.
“They fell out of your coat pocket,” she said, explaining why they were there.
Except for the snapping of a log in the fireplace, there was a long silence in the room. He moved toward her where she stood by the stove, the map and the clipping still in his hand.
“Did you read it?” he asked, referring to the clipping.
There was no accusation in his tone, nothing menacing in his eyes. No reason for her to feel uneasy, but she did, as if he had caught her prying.
“I glanced at it,” she admitted.
“And?”
“Nothing. It’s none of my business.” He was so close now that she could detect the clean scent of him after his shower. It was unsettling.
“But it must have left you wondering just who you’ve taken into your home. Whether you could be at risk having me here.”
“Am I?”
She thought he might explain then about Hilary Johnson, about what exactly the woman had witnessed and why he needed to reach Elkton. Maybe even tell her he was a kind of investigator on a sensitive mission. Something like that. But he had no explanation for her.
“No, you’re not,” he said. “But if you want to throw me out in the snow, I’ll understand. Would you like me to leave?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Where do you think you could possibly go in this storm?”
“All right, but I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I promise you, Lauren, that I’m not dangerous.”
She looked into those pure, blue-green eyes, and she believed him. Maybe she was a fool, but whatever trouble shadowed him, she sensed an innate decency in this man. He wouldn’t hurt her.
“So, how do you like your eggs?”
“Surprise me. I’m not fussy. What can I do to help?”
“You can sit down at the table. If you won’t stay in bed, then at least get off your feet.”
Her concern apparently amused him. He wore that treacherous grin again. But he obeyed her, swinging around one of the captain’s chairs and placing himself on it.
“How is the head wound doing?” she wanted to know as she went to work scrambling eggs.
“A little sore, that’s all.”
She poured coffee into a mug and brought it to him. “I’m not sure I shouldn’t have covered it with a bandage. For all I know, it ought to have had stitches. Do you have a headache? Any dizziness?”
“Lauren?”
“What? Do you need milk? Sugar?”
“No, I need you to stop worrying about me. And you don’t have to wait on me. I can help myself.”
Cradling the coffee mug in his big hands, with long, jeans-clad legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle, he gazed down the length of the room, as if noticing it for the first time.
“Nice place,” he said. “But, uh…”
“What?” she asked, taking several slices of bread from the loaf to toast on the rack inside the cookstove’s oven.
“I guess I’m just wondering what a woman is doing here all on her own in the middle of nowhere.”
“Oh. Well, my grandfather left the cabin to me. When I was growing up, I would spend my summer vacations here with him.”
He raised the mug to his mouth, sipped from it. “And the rest of the year?”
“My father’s company moved us all over the map. He and my mother loved it. He’s retired now, a condo in Florida, but the two of them still prefer traveling around the globe.”
“And you didn’t love it,” Ethan guessed.
She glanced at him. He was perceptive. Maybe he was an investigator.
“I hated it,” she admitted. “It was so impermanent, I never had time to put down any roots. I suppose that makes me disgustingly traditional, no taste for adventure.”
“So that’s what the cabin means for you? Roots?”
“It’s home now. The only real home I felt I ever knew.”
She had come home to Montana, yes, but that wasn’t the whole story. Lauren knew she didn’t have to tell him the rest. There was no reason for him to hear it. No sense in sharing something private and painful with a man she had known less than a day.
On the other hand, she thought, dishing up the eggs, removing the toast from the oven and joining him at the table with their plates, telling him might encourage him to be open with her. Face it, she was still curious to know what he was withholding from her. She decided to risk it.
“Being here, though, is a little more complicated than that,” she confessed. “Before the cabin, I was working in Helena. Not a very satisfying job, but there was this guy…well, let’s just say I thought it was the real thing. He didn’t. The real thing for him turned out to be his ex-wife he ended up going back to.”
“Are we talking about a broken heart?”
Lauren
