Daniel at the wheel. “She had liquid courage on board. Tomorrow morning, she would have regretted it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, Decker. Somehow I do.”
Decker drummed his fingers on the window frame, whistling as they followed the taillights of Daniel’s truck. “So what are you gonna do now?”
“I don’t know. That woman has my head completely spinning.”
Decker smiled. “Scary, eh?”
“Shut up.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I say you should go for it. I might be an old married guy now, but it’s dead obvious that Jess wants you just as much as you want her.”
Cole shook his head. “Did you get a chance to talk to Kyla yet?”
“No.” Decker turned his head. “You are really in deep here, aren’t you?”
Decker laughed. “Wow. My little brother. In love.”
“Not in love.”
“In serious, unrequited lust?”
Cole reached across and socked him. “You’re going to be in serious, unrequited shit if you don’t stop.”
Decker turned back to face the windshield. “I think you might be right.”
“Right about what?”
“About Jess. You’re right. She’s been off. Can’t put my finger on it, but something’s different.”
“Exactly.”
“So the question is—are you going to try to find out what’s going on?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I have a feeling once she sobers up, she’ll be a closed book again.”
“Then maybe you need to get to her before she sobers up.” Decker raised his eyebrows. “We’ll be home in five minutes. Maybe you oughta check and make sure she gets to her cabin all right?”
Cole grimaced. “Right. Because that wouldn’t be transparent.”
“You’ll hate yourself if you don’t, Cole. Maybe she’ll talk. You never know. But if you don’t give it a try, she might be on a plane again next week, and maybe you won’t get another chance, right?”
“You and Danny have the same playbook tonight.”
Cole sighed as he put his blinker on to exit the highway. As hard as he was trying to ignore it, he couldn’t stop thinking about how her body had felt nestled against his, how her smile had lit a fire deep down inside him, how the feel of her soft skin just made him want to caress every inch of her.
And that was getting him nowhere but frustrated.
An hour later, he’d finished up the nighttime rounds and was still debating whether to go knock on Jess’s cabin door when he spotted a twinkle of light coming from one of the windows in the empty spa building. Was Jess in there again?
He battled with himself for a few long moments, then headed toward the spa. He knew he shouldn’t go near her, but what if it wasn’t candles burning in the windowsills? What if the new electrical system had sparked and he was seeing the starting flickers of a fire?
His throat closed as he thought back to the barn fire they’d had two years ago. It had started with a careless ash dropped from a careless guest ignoring the No Smoking rule, and had almost ended with another damn funeral.
Yeah, he had to check.
He headed across the stable yard and up the hill toward the spa, watching the flickers as he went. They weren’t growing. But still he kept walking. And when he got close enough to see through the windows, he sighed.
It was Jess. Of course it was Jess.
Sitting in a pool of moonlight, legs crossed under her and head tipped toward the ceiling, she looked like—a goddess. Her creamy neck looked iridescent in the moonlight, her features outlined in soft relief, her skin soft and inviting.
She was praying—or meditating—whatever she called that New Age hoodoo stuff. He could see her chest rising with every slow breath she took, but the rest of her body was perfectly still. He watched, unable to move, even though he realized he was probably in plain sight, out here in the moonlight. She’d changed into a black leotard thing with a light skirt over it, making her look like a movie-version yoga or ballet teacher, all toned and trim.
Slowly, gracefully, she unfolded her legs and stretched herself into an arc with both feet and both hands on the floor, then flipped one leg up and over, followed by the other. She ended in a standing position, then leaned all the way over and hugged her head to her knees, like she was folded right in half.
Thinking about her level of flexibility was something he should probably not be doing as he watched her, but good God. He was a red-blooded male,