At Last

Too long.

“Turn over,” Matt said.

She hesitated, everything in her balking at his quiet command-just as at the same time, she was completely turned on by it.

“Amy.”

She turned over. There was another long beat of silence as Matt took in the rear view, and she risked a glance over her shoulder. His face was more angles than curves, his silky hair brushing the collar of his shirt. He was so broad in the shoulders he blocked out any light the moon might have given them. This left only the meager glow from the flashlight, but she wasn’t afraid of the dark.

Or him.

She was safe with him. She knew that. But at the same time, she was about as unsafe as she could get.

She knew that, too.

By the time he finished bandaging her up and she pulled her pants back up, they were both breathing a little unsteadily. He handed her the ice pack for her tailbone. She put it in place, and there was a long silence.

“You’re still shivering,” he said, and lay down beside her. “Come here, Tough Girl.” He pulled her in close. The sleeping bag, still unzipped, was between them. He didn’t try to get into it with her, simply wrapped her up in his warm arms and held her until she stopped shivering.

“Better?” he whispered against her hair.

He was rock solid against her, the muscles in his arms banded tight. Yeah, she was better. “Much, thank you.”

He started to pull away but she slid her arms out of the sleeping bag and around his neck, pressing her face into his throat. It was a move that startled them both. It was also a really dumb thing to do. Normally she had so much more sense than this, but he was turning her on with every little thing he did. She didn’t understand it but she understood this-holding onto him had nothing to do with being cold.

“Amy.” He stroked a hand down her back. “You’re safe, you know that, right?”

Safe from bears and coyotes and creepy crawlies, maybe. But she wasn’t safe. Not from the yearning flowing through her and not from feeling things she didn’t want to feel. Feeling things like this left her open to being hurt. “We’re not the only ones out here,” she said. “Right before you found me on the trail, someone was in the bushes, watching me. I saw just a face.”

“There are a few people out here on this mountain tonight,” he said, and rubbed his jaw to hers.

“But that’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

Again he stroked a hand down her back. “When I first took this job, it’d been a while since I’d gone camping. And then as it turned out, on my first night out here, I was stalked.”

She tipped her head back and tried to see his face. “By…?”

“Every horror flick I’d ever seen.”

She found herself smiling. “Was the big, bad forest ranger scared?”

“I started a fire,” he said instead of answering, and the typical guy avoidance of admitting fear made her smile in the dark. “But even after I had a roaring fire, I still felt watched.”

“What did you do?”

His hand was still gliding up and down her back, absently soothing, not-so-absently arousing her further. “I got up and searched the perimeter,” he said. “Often. I finally fell asleep holding my gun, and at first light was startled awake by a curious teenage bear.”

“Oh my God,” she said on a horrified laugh. “What happened?”

Amusement came into his voice. “I shot the shit out of a tree and scared the hell out of us both. I fell backward off the log I’d fallen asleep on, and the bear did the same. Then we both scrambled to our feet, and he went ru

She burst out laughing.

“What,” he said, smiling at her, “you don’t think I have a mama?”

“I think you wouldn’t go ru

He shrugged. “I’ve had my moments.”

“So your mom…?”

“Lives in Chicago with my dad, tending to the three grandkids my brother’s given them. We talk every week, and they ask me when I’m going to give them a few as well.”

“When are you?”

He shook his head. “Not anytime soon.”

“Why?” she asked, fascinated in a way she couldn’t explain even to herself. “Kids not for you?”

He shrugged. “My ex seemed to think I don’t do love, at least not the kind of love a family requires. Said I wasn’t good with people.”

“You were married?” She was surprised, though she shouldn’t have been. Matthew Bowers was a catch.

“For about twenty minutes,” he said. “Just after I got out of the military.”

“When you were a cop,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Is that why she thought you weren’t family material?” she asked. “Because of your job?”

“Partly. And partly because I failed her. But mostly because she was pissed off at me.”

Amy wanted to ask how he’d failed, but that felt too intimate, especially given that she was lying in his arms with his ice pack on her ass. But his ex’s words didn’t make sense. He wasn’t the sort of guy to fail a stranger, much less someone he cared about. What he’d done for her today proved that. His job might have brought him here to check on her, but it hadn’t been his job or responsibility to stay the night with her and keep her safe.

And yet he’d stuck.

She’d had people in her life who had been responsible for her and hadn’t stuck. “Matt?”

His wordless response vibrated through his chest to hers, and he turned his head so that his face was in her hair, inhaling as he rubbed her back.

“I think you’re pretty good with people,” she said softly.

She could feel him smile against her. “Thanks,” he murmured. “Now tell me about you.”

“Nothing as interesting as you.”

“Try me,” he said.

That was the last thing she intended to do. “Well, I don’t have an ex-husband…”

“How about a mom? Dad? Siblings?”

“A mom. We’re not close.” An understatement, of course. Her mom had gotten pregnant as a teen and hadn’t been mom material. “I was raised by my grandma, but she’s gone now. She died when I was twelve.”

“Any other family?”

No one she wanted to talk about. “No.”

He tightened his arms around her, a small, protective, even slightly possessive gesture. It should have made her claustrophobic.

It didn’t.

They fell quiet after that, and Amy wouldn’t have imagined it possible since she was snuggled up against a very solid, very sexy man, but she actually fell asleep.

She woke up what must have been hours later, as dawn crept in, poking at the backs of her eyelids. For a moment, she stayed utterly still, struck by several things. One, she was no longer cold. In fact, she was quite warm, and the reason for that was because she’d wrapped herself like a pretzel around her heat source.

Matt.

She cracked open an eye and found him watching her from his own heavy-lidded gaze. He was looking pretty amused at the both of them. “Hey,” he said, and to go along with that bedroom gaze he also had a raspy early morning voice. Both were extremely distracting. He wasn’t looking like a forest ranger right now. He was looking sleepy, rumpled, and sexy as hell.

“Are you taking this anywhere?” he asked.

Not exactly a morning person, it took her brain a moment to process what he meant. And then she realized that by “this,” he was referring to the fact that her hand had drifted disturbingly low on his abs. If she moved her fingers even a fraction of an inch south… “Sorry!” Face hot, she pulled back and closed her eyes. “This is all Mallory’s fault.”

“Actually,” he said, looking down at his obvious erection. “It’s not.”

“No, I mean-” She broke off at his low, teasing laugh and felt her face flame again. “She sent you out here because she thinks something’s going on with us.”

“Is there something going on with us?”