“What happens on this mountain stays between us, Nancy,” I declared, never planning on leaving.
“Well, in that case…anything else you want to do while sharing a sleeping bag?”
I pinched his side until he yelped and caged my hands against his stomach.
I felt the laughter in his chest, and when his arm tightened his hold on me, it took some time for the smile to leave my face.
The Hot Housewives of Eugene and their husbands
Cade: Did you grab the tent?
Logan: Our boy was taking no tent. Too paranoid.
Cade: Sleeping bags?
Kelsey: You can’t take their sleeping bags!
Logan: Tessa wouldn’t let me.
Kelsey: They slept out in the open?
Cade: This probably worked out better than anything we could have planned.
Logan: All I know is that it was cold last night.
Cade: I’m sure they made do.
22
JAKE
Well,that was one hell of a way to not get any sleep.
By the time the streaks of sunlight appeared in the sky, I had been awake for hours. All ideas of sleeping had vanished the second Shelby had crawled into my bag. Even now, she lay in my arms with her red hair fanned out across my pillow and the top of our sleeping bag.
Shelby had been legitimately freezing last night. She wouldn’t have orchestrated any of this, and there was no way she would have sufficiently warmed up without my body heat.
At least…that’s what I had told myself when I invited her in with me.
I kicked myself for not packing more blankets for her, or even a dang tent, but Logan had been licking his lips in excitement when I told him about this excursion. The tent would never have made it. But the part that worried me the most was the fact that once she was in my arms, I could only feel grateful she’d been cold. Holding someone who wanted to be held was a feeling I hadn’t had for a long time.
I even got out of the sleeping bag throughout the night to add more logs to the fire, half expecting Shelby to move to herown sleeping bag. But she hadn’t skipped a beat when I slid back inside, her head finding my chest like she’d been doing it for years.
Even now, she was curled into my side, and I couldn’t help but stare at the curve of her long eyelashes. Or the freckles that fanned across her cheeks and her nose. Even her lips were slightly parted.
I looked back up at the sky lit with oranges and pinks. And I concentrated all my efforts on saying the alphabet backward in my head. I had been a married man for three years. Though most of those years weren’t happy ones, I knew what I was missing, and being in such close proximity to Shelby last night had brought up a riot of thoughts in my mind.
And my body was responding to her in ways it never had before.
I could say the word ‘safe’ all I wanted, but when I looked at Shelby May Tucker, safe was the furthest thing from my mind.
And that thought terrified me.
I needed to break this little spell, especially before Tom and Carter woke up. And I would. But the second I did, all of this would go away. And that seemed like a shame.
One more minute and then I’d move.
She yawned and stretched, her body tensing up while she did so. I lay perfectly still, eyes closed, willing her to give us more time. She settled back down, snuggling into me once more, though I could tell she was waking up.