“You did. He loves to chat to everyone. He really liked Loki.” She looked over at the hearth where the huge dog was sleeping. “Of course, I had to talk him out of trying to find a wolf cub of his own.”
“I found Loki when I was in Alaska working on a fishing boat.” Conner tried to remember the last time he’d held an actual conversation with someone and came up blank. For some reason, talking to Beth came easily. “He’d been left in an alley behind the hotel. I brought him back with me and we’ve been together ever since.”
Sometimes he thought finding Loki had saved his sanity. Taking care of his dog had finally given him a purpose and a reason to keep getting up in the morning.
“You’re a fisherman?” Beth asked.
“I drift around and take seasonal jobs.” He shrugged. “I like to try new things.”
“How long since you were in the military?”
Even as he tensed, he was also aware of her instant response to a potential threat by the way she eased fractionally away from him. She reminded him of his SEAL team or a boxer bouncing on the balls of his feet, ready to defend himself. He deliberately sat back and tried to look relaxed.
“I retired five years ago.” He grimaced. “It’s been hard to find my place in the world. I don’t have a family; I don’t have a base, and most of my military friends are scattered all over the country.”
“That’s tough.”
The sympathy in her voice made him feel uncomfortable. “It’s fine. I’m not exactly what you’d call a people person anyway.”
“Really?” She shook her head, making her braid bounce. “I would never have guessed that.”
“Yeah, I’m real warm and cuddly.”
She hid a smile as she sipped her coffee, and he couldn’t look away from her mouth. He wanted to lean in and trace the curve of her lips to see if they were as soft as they looked, but he didn’t want to invade her space again. That hadn’t gone well.
“Don’t forget to take your pills,” Beth reminded him, drawing him out of his tangled thoughts, which was something of a relief.
He picked them up, put them in his mouth, and chased them down with the entire glass of water. A yawn shuddered through him and he instinctively covered his mouth.
“Not sure why I’m so tired all the time,” he murmured, aware that she was studying him closely.
“Your body is busy fighting off an infection. That takes a lot of energy.”
She rose from her seat, gathered up both plates and her mug, and took them through to the kitchen.
“Give me five minutes and I’ll get those clean sheets on the bed and you can get back in.”
He frowned as something occurred to him. “If you insist on staying, where are you going to sleep tonight?”
She pointed at the couch. “It’s a pullout bed. I’ve got my sleeping bag in the truck. I’ll sleep in that.”
“It doesn’t look very comfortable. Maybe you should take my bed.”
She swung around to look at him, her eyebrows raised. “Dude, you’re way too tall to sleep on there. I’ll be fine. It’s only for one night.”
He went to argue and was caught in another huge yawn.
She went over to the bed and quickly dealt with the sheets. She threw the two pillows at him to put on the fresh covers, but he suspected it was only to make him feel like he was being useful. He turned in his seat to watch her work and meekly handed over the pillows when he’d finished with them.
“Thank you.” She hesitated. “Do you need to go out and use the bathroom?”
He wanted to say no, but he wasn’t that stupid. She probably wouldn’t appreciate his alternate method of pissing in a bottle and dumping it down the sink.
She regarded him doubtfully, her teeth worrying her lush lower lip in a way that drove him crazy. He’d obviously been alone for way too long this time because all he could think about was replacing her teeth with his own. “Or I can get you some kind of receptacle if you don’t think you can make it that far.”
“I’ll make it.” To prove his point, he stood and braced one hand on the countertop. He’d dug himself and two team members out of the ruin of an exploded oil refinery, he could get to the damn bathroom.
* * *
Conner set his jaw, and Beth knew that however bad he was feeling he would