by Liz Isaacson
“And you’ve been doing it, what? Two years?”
“Just about,” she said. “How did you know that?” Maybe he’d been more aware of her than she had been of him.
“You were the training officer for my brother-in-law,” he said. “I mean, he wasn’t my brother-in-law at the time, but he is now. Tate Benson?”
“Oh, of course. Tate and Wren.” Dahlia grinned, more grateful for this easy conversation and lull in her busy life than she knew how to deal with.
The English muffins popped up and Kyler buttered them before sliding the egg and cheese onto them and crisscrossing two pieces of bacon. “Here you go, Detective.”
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “If we go out, you can’t call me that.”
“If we go out?” He lifted his eyebrows, his own sandwich stalling halfway to his mouth.
She ducked her head, a warm glow starting in her stomach and moving upward. “When,” she clarified.
“I think I should get your number now, just to be sure.”
She took a bite of her sandwich, a moan starting as the salty bacon and the melty cheese met her taste buds. Kyler finally took a bite of his breakfast too, and Dahlia watched him. He seemed put out that she hadn’t given him her number yet. She honestly didn’t know why she was stalling. Maybe because his interest in her would melt when the snow did.
Don’t be stupid, she told herself. She’d already taken a baby step by telling him a few sentences about her job. And Kyler had asked about going out with her several times.
She put her sandwich down and got up to get the pencil from where he’d left it next to the crossword puzzle book on the table. Scrawling her number in the corner, she said, “There you go. There’s my number.”
Their eyes met as she turned and retook her place at the bar. The heat and connection between them could’ve been imagined. But Dahlia knew it wasn’t.
“So.” Kyler cleared his throat, a ruddiness entering his neck. “I was going to go hiking and fishing today, but with the snow, I think that’s going to turn into snowshoeing. You want to come with?”
“You have snowshoes here?”
He nodded and bit into his sandwich again. After swallowing, he said, “We have everything.”
“Except a way back down to civilization,” she pointed out.
“Well, if I’d come in my truck, that wouldn’t be a problem.” He shrugged and finished his sandwich. “Besides, I don’t want to get back to civilization quite yet.”
And dang, Dahlia didn’t either, not if it meant she had to separate herself from Kyler’s presence. She had no idea what to do with these new thoughts and feelings for this man, someone she’d known about for years.
“Your clothes from yesterday are dry,” he said. “But I didn’t see a coat or anything.”
“I just had my jacket.” She indicated where it hung by the front door.
“I’ll see what I can rustle up.”
She scanned him from head to toe. “Yeah, because you can’t wear a T-shirt and gym shorts to go snowshoeing.”
He blinked, the surprise in his gaze easy to find. “I didn’t check the weather before coming up here.”
“Obviously.” She cocked her head, enjoying this game where she got to tease him. “Why is that? You go out in the wilderness and don’t prepare?”
“I’m more of an open the front door and see if it’s raining type of guy.” He flashed her a smile. “But I’m never late. So.” He shrugged those powerful shoulders. “Can’t be perfect, you know?” He stepped out of the kitchen and went through the door to her left.
She finished eating while he banged around in there, finally emerging with more winter gear than Dahlia thought possible.
“Have you ever snowshoed before?” he asked, dumping the armful of clothes on the couch and turning to her.
“Yeah, lots of times.”
“Great.” He started digging through the coats. “I think this one might fit.” He held up a black coat with a big hood trimmed in charcoal-colored faux fur. “It was Dawn’s.”
Dahlia left her plate on the counter and went to take the coat from him. He held it open for her, and she couldn’t look away from him as she slipped her arm into the sleeve. He pulled it around for her to put her other hand in, and somehow it was a sensual thing to do. Intimate. Like something a man would do for his wife or girlfriend.
She tugged the front closed, zipping it up easily. “Fits great.” She turned and gave him her flirtiest smile. She wasn’t sure quite how flirty it was, as it was a bit rusty and out of practice. “How does it look?”
“You’re beautiful.” His voice caught along the hard vowels, and he quickly backed up a step. But he met the couch behind him and stumbled. His arm flew out as if to find something to catch himself, and his face turned into a mask of simultaneous alarm and surprise.
Dahlia flung her hand out, and his fingers latched onto hers. But he weighed a lot more than her, and before she knew it, he’d fallen backward over the arm of the couch—and pulled her right with him.
He grunted and groaned with her body weight on top of his. She came to rest, her face stopping only a few inches from his. She could see every fleck of blue in his dark eyes, and some of them glinted with merriment. Desire. Heat. Laughter.
A laugh choked in her throat too, and she let it loose. “Sorry,” she said between the giggles. “I don’t know why I thought that would work.”
He started laughing too, and his arms came around her, twisting her so she was on the couch and not on top of him. Dahlia felt safe, warm, in the circle of his arms, and she sobered quickly, her gaze catching on his as he quieted too.
“This isn’t too weird, is it?” he whispered.
“What?” She kept her voice as soft as his.
In response, his eyes drifted closed lazily, and his lips brushed against hers. Sparks flamed in her mouth, and she pulled in a breath when he put a speck of distance between them. Dahlia felt like a teenager instead of a middle-aged woman. A sigh passed through her whole body, and her lips curled into a smile.
“Okay?” Kyler asked. “I mean—”
She pressed her mouth against his again, this time in a proper kiss that he returned as his hands came up to cradle her face.
Chapter Five
Kyler had lost his ever-loving mind. First from whatever had possessed him to kiss Dahlia while their legs hung over the arm of the couch. And second from how fantastic it felt to hold her in his arms and kiss her.
Just like she’d started the kiss, she ended it by tucking her face into the hollow of his throat. His pulse felt erratic in his neck, spurred on by her exhalations against his skin. He wanted to make sure he hadn’t screwed anything up by kissing her less than twenty-four hours after meeting her.
Honestly, he’d met her before, but this was different.
“Okay,” he finally said, a whole army of frogs in his voice. “So do we still want to go snowshoeing?”
“Yes,” she said, lifting her face from his chest. “I do. Do you?”
“Absolutely.” He couldn’t stay cooped up in the cabin all day. “I think we’ll be able to get out the back door. The wind blows from east to west, so the front always gets the drifts.”
“Have you tried going outside?”
“Not yet.” He hefted himself to a sitting position on the end of the couch and stood up. “You’ve got a coat. Let me find one.” He sifted through the pile of winter gear again, pulling out a black parka that his father had worn. It was a little too big, but Kyler zipped it up anyway. He found a pair of mittens and handed them to Dahlia.
“Boots are in the mudroom,” he said. “So are the snowshoes.” He grabbed a beanie and pulled it over his shorn hair before snatching a pair of gloves for himself. “It looks like the sun’s out, at least.” The light streaming in from the kitchen windows was promising.
Once they were properly outfitted with boots, snowshoes, and sunglasses, Kyler twisted the doorknob and said, “Moment of tr
uth.” He flashed the best smile he could, glad when Dahlia returned it with a beautiful one of her own.
He tugged on the doorknob, a blip of adrenaline shooting through him when it stuck. Then a cracking sound, like ice breaking, filled the mudroom and the door came free. He stumbled with the force he’d put behind the pull and nearly went down for a second time. Flustered, and with the heat of embarrassment in his face, he cleared his throat and straightened.
“All right. I’ll go first?”
“Lead on,” Dahlia said, and Kyler stepped awkwardly toward the door and looked outside. It usually took four steps to get to the ground, but with all the drifted snow, he’d only have to go down one to reach the surface.
“Poles?” He reached up and unhooked the straps from the wall beside the door.
“Sure.” She accepted the pair from him, and he took another set down.
“Here we go.”
The wind cut into his face the moment he stepped outside, and Kyler flipped up the hood on the coat and pulled the ties tight. He probably should’ve scrounged around for a scarf while he was gearing up. Too late now. Parts of him were too hot, with other parts too cold, but the snowshoes made walking easy.
Snow obliterated the landscape, but he could still easily tell where he was. “Maybe out to the creek and back?”
“Sure.” Dahlia followed him for the first few yards, then she came up alongside him. “So I’m thinking I’d like to try that new restaurant in town.”
“The Bread Table?” Kyler had been with Tate and Wren and a third grade teacher on a double date. The place was busy, with everyone in town trying it out—and coming back. “You haven’t been?”
“It’s only been open for a couple of weeks.”
And Kyler hadn’t been on a date since that teacher. Frustrated that there hadn’t been a spark with her—with any of the last eight women he’d gone out with—he’d planned a trip to the cabin to get his bearings and figure out what to do.
“It’s good,” he said. “We can go tonight if we can get down the canyon.”
She cut him a look, but he couldn’t see her eyes through the shiny sunglasses. “I thought you were spending the weekend up here.”
“I am.”
“It’s only Saturday.”
He wanted to hold her hand, say something sweet and romantic. But nothing came to mind and his fingers were clothed in gloves.
“I can come back up after,” he said.
“It’s an hour-long drive. One way.”
He wasn’t sure if she was simply incredulous or she didn’t want to put him out. “Monday night then.” The restaurant would be less busy then, and Kyler wouldn’t have to endure so many questions from his brothers.
“Monday should work,” she said.
“It’s a date.” Kyler started up the hill, the climb much harder in the snow than he’d been anticipating this weekend. Dahlia kept pace with him easily, her breath hovering in the air before she moved past it.
They made it to the stream, and he handed her a bottle of water from the hip pack he wore. “Whew. Now I’m sweating.” He gave her a smile and then drank.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why haven’t you gotten married?” She watched him with interest in her eyes, and he felt very much like she was Dahlia the detective and he better answer truthfully.
“Who says I have to be married by now?”
“You’ve got to be, what? Thirty-four? Something like that.”
“Thirty-five, actually.”
“And you’re handsome, hardworking, employed—that’s a big one, you know.” She ticked her finger in the air like she was checking a box. “How is it that you haven’t been claimed?”
Kyler looked over the expanse of snow, his old feelings churning toward the surface. He’d thought they were gone, buried, reclaimed. But the simple thought of speaking his ex’s name had his throat knotting.
“I dated someone for a long time,” he said. “We were serious.” The story stalled for a moment as Kyler tried to figure out how much to tell her.
All of it, he thought. He wanted her to know all of it. After all, he’d already kissed her and they had a date on the horizon, and Kyler hadn’t felt a spark this hot for anyone since Katie.
“Diamond-status serious,” he said. “I hadn’t proposed quite yet, but we’d gone to Vernal and even Salt Lake City to look at rings.” The memories flowed through him, out of him, cleansing him.
“I went to pick her up one day and found a note taped to the front door. ‘I can’t do this.’” Kyler looked at Dahlia and found her intense eyes staring straight at him. “That’s what the note said. Nothing more. I never heard from her or saw her again.”
“You’re kidding.”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “I wish I was.” Drawing in a deep breath, he realized that now that he’d spoken the story, it didn’t seethe inside him quite so violently. “And that was it for me for a few years. She took a long time for me to get over.”
“And you think you’re over her now?”
Kyler took a few moments to search through his feelings. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I know I am.”
She tucked her hand through his arm and leaned her head against his bicep. “Okay, then.” They stood together in the snow as the sun warmed the earth, and Kyler wondered if he’d ever been this happy with Katie.
It’s new, he told himself. Don’t get all carried away. If there was another flaw to be found in Kyler, it was how easily he tended to get caught up in things. In sixth grade he’d adopted every stray cat that crossed his path after watching a video from the humane society on the fate of animals in their shelters.
He’d kept them in the barn for several weeks before his mother had found out, and then the claws came out. She’d told him his heart was so big, and she loved that about him, but they couldn’t keep and feed two dozen cats.
Kyler wasn’t sure why not. He’d already been doing it for a while, but he’d learned by then not to argue with his mother.
His phone rang, and he extracted it from his pocket to find an unknown number on the screen. He typically balked at answering such calls, but something told him to pick this one up.
“Hello?”
“Hello?” a man asked. “Is Dahlia there?”
Kyler tilted his chin toward her. “Yeah, she’s here.”
“It’s her partner, Gray Salisbury. I’m at the cabin. Where are you two?”
Dahlia stepped away from Kyler like Gray might see them all cuddled up. But they’d come up a hill and back down the swell, and the cabin couldn’t be seen from here. “Gray’s here?”
Kyler handed her the phone, and she put it up to her ear. “Yes, I’m here. You got up the road?” She nodded, turning away from him slightly. “Yeah, sure…maybe thirty minutes…great.”
She hung up and handed the phone back, her eyes bright. “My partner made it up the canyon, and he says the plows have been out and everything’s melting already.”
“That’s great news,” Kyler said, though he didn’t really think so. It meant she’d be leaving soon, and he wanted to hold her hand beside the fireplace again that evening.
“I need to get back,” she said. “Gray and I have work to catch up on.”
“Of course.” He turned with her and they began their trek back to the cabin. He felt her slipping away from him, though she chatted about her parents and how she’d once come home to find her cat on the roof.
Once they reached the cabin, Dahlia flew into Tasmanian devil mode as she gathered her clothes, disappeared down the hall to change, and came out looking authoritative and in command in her uniform, her dark hair swept back into a no-nonsense ponytail.
“He’s waiting in the car,” she said, edging toward the front door. “So…”
Kyler got up from where he’d been sitting on the couch, staring into the charred remains of last night’s fire. “So I’ll see you Monday.” Hoping he wasn’t being to
o forward or that his advances wouldn’t be too awkward, he swept one arm around her waist and dipped his head to kiss her.
She seemed to melt into him, both hands going to his chest and fisting the fabric of his shirt to hold him in place close to her. She smiled to break the kiss and repeated, “Monday,” before turning and opening the front door. Pausing in the doorway, she twisted back to him and said, “Thanks for everything, Kyler. Call me later, okay?”
Kyler nodded and caught the door as it swung closed and watched her slog her way through the slushy snow to the police cruiser at the end of the driveway. His bike still seemed plenty snowed in as he lifted his hand in a friendly wave and Dahlia ducked into the car with her partner.
A flash of jealousy stole through Kyler. “Don’t be like that,” he muttered to himself as he retreated inside the cabin and closed the door. Though the sun was shining and hopefully the snow would be melted by afternoon, he brought in more wood and built another fire just so he could entertain himself with the joyful flames.
He knew there was nothing going on with Dahlia and Gray. They worked together, and if he didn’t like her partnering up with men, he better find someone else to kiss. Because in her line of work, she’d always be paired with a male.
Staring into the flames, he prayed for clarity. Often, when he had to come to the cabin to get a reboot, it started with prayer. He hadn’t really done that yet this weekend, because Dahlia had shown up within a half an hour of his arrival.
But he did now, and the pleadings to the Lord were even more complicated than they would’ve been the previous evening. He didn’t need concrete answers, not right away. He just needed to know that he was still on the path God wanted him on.
He finished his prayers, and nothing came to his mind. Nothing he needed to correct or change. So he got up, wiped his hands down his jeans, and said, “Time for lunch,” as if Dahlia was still there to talk to.
Chapter Six
Dahlia exhaled as if she’d just been through the worst ordeal of her life. Gray cast her a long look before putting the car in gear and easing it into a three-point turnabout to get them pointed in the right direction.
