Page 86 of Mountain Man’s Mystic Touch

Loralee’s hand closes on my side before I can move.

“I didn’t say I wanted you to leave.”

“If you need space?”

“I said this is different.” She inches closer, eliminating the small distance I tried to create. “I don’t feel crowded by you. I feel…” Her brow furrows as though the right word is hovering beyond her reach. “Contained, maybe. Not in a trapped way.”

“Maybe I’m the one who’s trapped, caught in your magical web.”

Her smile returns. “Maybe.”

She rests her cheek against me again. I should accept what she says. She understands her own needs better than I do, and I have no reason to question her merely because the answer isn’t what I expected.

Still, I need to be certain.

“You would tell me if you wanted me gone.”

“Yes.”

“Even now.”

“Especially now.” Her fingers move lightly across my ribs. “I invited you inside, Rocco. I pulled us toward this. I believe I was fairly clear about what I wanted.”

“You were.”

“And I’m being clear again. Stay.”

One word should not have the power to reach inside a man and close around something vital. This one does.

I tighten my arm around her and feel her soften against me. The reaction is immediate enough to quiet the argument still forming in my head.

For several minutes, neither of us speaks. Wind moves through the trees outside, brushing branches against the roof with a dry, restless scrape. The cabin gives an occasional creak as the heat runs, but every sound is ordinary.

I slide my hand into her hair and cup the back of her head. She turns her face into my palm, kissing the center of it, and the quiet intimacy of that single touch reaches deeper than anything that happened between us minutes ago.

My phone vibrates on the floor beside the bed. Loralee feels the change in me before I move.

“You have to answer it.”

It isn’t a question.

“No one calls me this late unless something is wrong.”

I ease out from beneath her and retrieve my briefs before crossing the room. The phone has stopped vibrating by the time I reach it, leaving a missed call from Grant and two messages beneath it.

FOUND SOMETHING ON THE EAST CAMERA.

CALL ME

I tap his number.

He answers before the first ring finishes. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. What did you find?”

“The motion alert came in eleven minutes ago. Someone entered the festival grounds from the east service road.”

Every part of me that softened in Loralee’s bed locks back into place.