Rami and Charlie were upstairs in the bathroom, where they’d been when I’d come back to the house after a long day on the farm doing the work of ten men with the five who lived onsite and didn’t have the excuse of being snowed in elsewhere.
I wastired, but kind of buzzing too. Apparently Rami Stone’s mere presence was better than coffee.
In an effort to give him and Charlie some space, I’d showered downstairs and dressed in the first clothes I’d found in the utility room, so now here I was, barefoot in my kitchen, staring at a million tins of beans while dressed in old sweatpants and a holey T-shirt with a pink rabbit on it.Sexy AF. In another lifetime, if hooking up with Rami had been a genuine possibility, I’d have been worried.
As it was, I wasn’t worried. Just hungry and half convinced the last twenty-four hours had been a dream I was about to wake up from. I eyed the whisky bottle on the counter. Maybe if I took a swig the world would go back to how it had been the previous night, when insomnia had driven me to be drinking and staring out of the window in the first place. If I’d been asleep, I wouldn’t have noticed Rami’s car until morning, and by then, he might’ve been—
“Fenny!”
Tiny hands pawed at my leg. I bent and swung Charlie from the floor and settled him on my hip, the way I so often did with his cousins. It was autopilot, I didn’t give it much thought until I sensed Rami’s eyes on me from behind.
I turned to face him. He was in the kitchen doorway, dark hair wet and sticking up as much as Charlie’s, wet hand prints on his clothes. “All right?”
He nodded. “Think so. You?”
“Yup.”
I went back to staring at the kitchen cupboards while Charlie played with the talisman necklace I wore around my neck.
“Rock,” he said.
“It’s a rune.” I turned it over so he could see the engraving on the other side. “My daddy thought he was a Viking.”
Rami laughed. “That makes sense.”
“What does?”
“The Viking thing. It suits you.”
“I said he thought he was one, not that it was true.”
“Okay.”
He was laughing at me, I could tell, but I didn’t mind. Rami Stone laughing was a sight to behold, and I abandoned the open cabinet in front of me to lose myself in the way his eyes crinkled at the sides and his rosy pink lips stretched wide. With his head tipped back, his neck had a perfect, elegant arch.
I wanted to bury my face in it, but that craving wasn’t new. I’d always found Rami’s neck appealing. Below the dark stubble, his skin was creamy and flawless, leading down to shoulders that were sinewy, but corded with muscle. I wondered if the dark hair on his head dusted his chest too, then gave myself a mental kick.Get a grip.He’s not here to be leered at.Though, I was still having trouble believing he was here at all.
My stomach growled, making Charlie giggle. He poked me. “Monster.”
“In my belly?”
He laughed, tipping his head like Rami had, but farther back, trusting me to keep him from hurtling out of my arms and onto the flagstone floor. And he was right to trust me. There was zero chance of me dropping this bairn. As long as he wanted to be in my arms, in my house, in my life, I had him. “Belly monster.”
I laughed too, but it cut off when I caught Rami’s gaze again. And there it was, the emotion swimming in his dark eyes that made my heart beat too fast. The loneliness, the pain, the distress that had led him to throw this kid into the back of his beat-up car and hurtle up a mountain in a snowstorm.
Charlie wriggled to get down. I let him and he toddled off to the living room as if he’d lived here his whole life. A moment later, the TV blared, and Rami winced. “Sorry. He figured it out on his own.”
“I don’t mind. It’s nice to have some noise around here.”
“You don’t like the quiet?”
“Sometimes, when I’ve been with my crew all day, yelling at them over chainsaws and the wind.”
“Is that where you’ve been today? Cutting down trees?”
“We didn’t fell any today. Too dangerous with this wind. Spent most of our time hoofing timber around. We have too much since this storm caught us off guard and shut down shipping. Along with the Christmas tree orders, it’s going to be crazy round here when we get moving again.”
“Busiest time of the year?”