EXCERPT INCLUDED
She’s the one who got away. He’s the one who broke her heart. When fate traps them together during a ferocious blizzard, Tom and Finn do their best to ignore each other at first. Which will thaw first: the storm raging outside, or the ice protecting their hearts?
Finn heard the shower start up as she was raiding the linen closet and felt a spurt of annoyance. Her unwelcome guest hadn’t followed her instructions to wait until she’d handed him a towel and retreated to a safe distance.
Tom Castle. In her home. In her shower. Their last real conversation all those years ago had been a screaming match—well, she’d screamed; he’d remained pale and silent—and now he was naked in the next room. And he’d had the audacity to get even better-looking in the intervening years.
While she was mentally reconciling the skinny teenager she’d known with the broad-shouldered specimen of today, she collected what he’d need post-shower and approached the bathroom door. Taking a deep breath, she knocked hard once.
“I’ve got towels.” She tried to sound calm and assertive, as if she brought terry cloth to naked men every day.
His disembodied voice floated from the shower. “Come on in. Drop them wherever.”
She could push the whole bundle through the cracked door without ever entering. In fact, that’s obviously what she should do. And yet that was her hand reaching out and nudging the door open, and those were her feet carrying her into the steamy room, the bundle of fabric clutched to her chest. After all, she’d be in and out fast, and Tom would stay safely behind the shower curtain.
The mostly clear shower curtain.
Oh God.
That dark curly hair, the long torso, those glorious cheekbones. All of it wet and only a few feet away. She swallowed hard and deposited the folded stack onto the closed laundry hamper next to the sink, intending to leave immediately until her eyes snagged on the tall shape standing under the spray. His palms were flat against the shower wall, and his head was tipped forward. She’d bet he was reveling in the warmth after his time outside, closing his amber-colored eyes against the spray as it slid down the muscles of his back to travel downward—
Aaaaand she’d turned into a creeper.
“I left stuff next to the sink,” she yelled, then slipped out of the bathroom, hoping like hell he hadn’t noticed her loitering.
The rest of the apartment felt even chillier after the humid bathroom. She pulled an afghan off the back of the couch and wrapped herself in it before sinking onto the cushions. She should’ve let his worthless ass fall into a snowdrift and be carried away by a snowplow. He deserved it.
Except she’d felt an actual bolt of fear race through her as she’d watched his slow progress in front of her building and thought about him fighting like that for blocks and blocks. For once in her orderly life, she’d acted impulsively, and now she had to figure out what to do with him. Well, not DO with him, obviously, but would it be possible for them to ignore each other for the next twenty-four hours—or, God forbid, longer?
“I need you to stop throwing this hissy fit, Mama Nature,” she muttered to the slice of gray sky visible through the windows while her oh-so-helpful brain conjured images of what might be happening behind that closed bathroom door.
When the shower shut off, she lunged for one of the magazines sitting on the coffee table so it wouldn’t look like she’d been staring into space, thinking about him. Which, of course, was exactly what she’d been doing. But she couldn’t stop herself from looking up when the door opened and her houseguest emerged, his cheeks flushed pink from the heat of the shower.
“What kind of witchcraft did it take for you to find things that fit me?” he asked.
Her eyes ran down his body. He was talking about the clothes adorning his person, after all; she was only participating in the conversation. The long-sleeved DePaul T-shirt stretched across his well-muscled chest, and the black track pants were a touch too short, which made the fuzzy socks he was wearing stand out even more.
When I win a poker game on Christmas Eve, I never imagined the pot would be so damn good…
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