Hard Checked (Ice Kings #4) - Stacey Lynn Page 0,40
sauna with all this dry heat. When you’re done you can receive a massage, and then you rinse off and relax in a communal, cool bath.”
“Right.” He clears his throat. “Ready for that walk?”
If only I could understand what brought on this sudden rigidness in his posture.
“Sure,” I drawl out, handing over Bruiser. He leaps into my face and kisses my cheek, paws flail in the air when Sebastian takes him.
The vision of him curling the little ball of fluff in his strong arms makes me snort.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say, covering my laughter.
“That’s not a nothing sound,” Sebastian says. He slides on Bruiser’s harness and clips the leash, which seems like an impossible task given Bruiser’s constant flailing and bouncing around. If I didn’t know the dog was real, I’d think it was fake, stuffed with springs and long-lasting batteries.
“It’s just… you… you’re all… that…” I flip my hand in a circle at his face and point to Bruiser. What am I doing?! I must look ridiculous with all my stammering and hand flailing. “And Bruiser is all tiny and sweet.”
“Are you suggesting I’m not sweet?”
“Um. Kind of… prickly?”
He huffs a laugh and shakes his head as he reaches for the door, he looks at me over his shoulder and that look, I swear, it has a direct connection to the tops of my thighs. “You say the oddest things.”
I shrug and open my door, grabbing my small backpack where I stowed my camera and snacks. Hiking makes me hungry. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
I meet him at the driver’s door and even with the thin layer of hazy clouds and my sunglasses, it’s still bright so I place my hand over my eyes to shield the sun and tilt my head back. “So, where are we headed?”
“Greenway Creek. Thought you might be able to get pics on it.”
“Lead the way, then.” I’ve been here frequently, but like with hiking, I have a feeling Sebastian and I approach our walks differently. It’d taken him a while to slow to my pace, and it’s not because I’m out of shape, but because I’m constantly scanning the trees and areas for anything interesting and photo op worthy. He approached our first hike together as a man on a mission, to reach the peak in the shortest time possible. That was, until he kept losing me every time I stopped to snap a photo.
As if he remembers, he slows to my pace as we hit the trail, Bruiser on his right side, me on his left and for as spastic as the dog was in my lap in the car, he’s completely calm on the walk, sniffing happily and little pink tongue lolling out of his mouth.
“So, after Turkey,” Sebastian says, “where’d you go next?”
“I went to Greece first, down to Athens. I was there about five days, maybe? Although I could have stayed for a month and not gotten bored. The people. The history… and dear Lord, the food was incredible. Then I traveled up through Macedonia, stayed for a few days to travel to the Millennium Cross, which was one of the most breathtaking sights I saw.”
“What is it?”
“The Cross?” I elbow him in the side. “It’s a cross.”
He laughs softly and I tally up another win for me. In truth, I’m not paying attention to our walk or anything photo-worthy. I’m next to Sebastian who unlike the last time I was talking about my photographs, of which one of them is the Cross I’m currently talking about, this time he’s hanging on every word. Interested.
In what I have to say.
Just remember that he’s not interested in you.
Right. I’m a diversion. I’m not an idiot. He might enjoy my company, but I suspect that the only reason he’s here with me is because then he’s not alone.
I’ll take what I can get, even if I understand it more than he does, but I need to be careful.
“Where’d you go?” he asks, and he takes a couple steps in front of me, turns and looks down at me. The shade cover is so thick he has his sunglasses shoved to the top of his head and that hair…. Man, I want to run my fingers through it.
“What?”
“You just stopped talking.”
“Sorry.” Right, because my mind went down a rabbit trail of warning. “Anyway, Macedonia has this Cross that’s over two hundred feet high. It’s at the top of the mountain near the capital city and I had to take a gondola ride