Natasha snorted. “No—well. That wouldn’t hurt. But if you want to be treated a certain way, you must demand it.”
I frowned. Demanding to be wanted kind of negated it. Wanting had to be voluntary if it was worth anything. “Hm.”
“You don’t believe me,” Natasha said airily, “But you will see. I’m right about this.”
“I’ll take it under consideration.” I picked up my bag and got to my feet. The day had been long and emotionally exhausting. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, but I was ready for bed.
I reached the top of the stairs just as Caleb was leaving his room. After a split-second of hesitation, I continued towards him. He looked right past me as he strode down the hall, taking up too much space, as usual. I remembered my resolution to stop shrinking myself for him. Natasha’s advice bolstered me. If Mr. Broad-As-A-Barn couldn’t be bothered to make room, then neither could I. I shoved my shoulder against his as we passed.
“Oh, excuse me,” I drawled carelessly as I reached my door. “I didn’t see you there.”
As I dug in my bag for my key, Caleb remained rooted to the spot where I’d bumped against him. I glanced over. He had his back to me, big shoulders hunched as he clenched and unclenched white-knuckled fists. Suddenly, he turned. His eyes gleamed in the dim light. Awareness prickled over my skin like static.
He took one step towards me.
Another.
“What are you—”
He grabbed me suddenly, pulling me against him. Burying his face in the crook of my neck, he inhaled deeply.
Instead of screaming and struggling like a sane woman would, I clung to him, tilting my head back to give him better access to my neck. His nose and his lips pressed against my throat and the touch seared me. His heat sank beneath my skin and boiled my blood. Warmth like I hadn’t felt in years radiated through me. The perpetual ice beneath my skin suddenly cracked and thawed.
His exhalation was hot and humid. His beard tickled me, sending gooseflesh racing over my skin. He clutched a fistful of my hair and brought it to his face, inhaling deeply again. A satisfied sigh rumbled in his chest like thunder. With my arms wrapped around his neck, my body pressed to his, I shivered.
God, how long had it been since I’d been touched like this? Since I’d wanted to be touched like this? Too long.
But why him? Why this man who seemingly hated me when there were any number of strapping Alaskan mountain men ready and willing to show me a good time? Instead, I was getting all revved up for the one who’d made it clear that I was, at best, an unwelcome annoyance.
My sense returned, and I let go of him, pushing at his shoulders. He released me immediately, staggering back like a drunk. My breath was just as ragged as his as we stared at each other across the narrow hall.
“What the hell?” I demanded, my voice embarrassingly unsteady.
Caleb said nothing. His eyes, which had always looked nearly-black before, had lightened to warm brandy. Silence stretched tautly between us.
Caleb was the first to move. He turned his back on me. “Go inside,” he said hoarsely.
Another dismissive command. Anger burned again, an incendiary to my already-heated blood. “Fuck you.”
Caleb spun around. The golden gleam in his eyes looked too bright, wild. “Are you offering?” he snarled.
“Maybe!” I blurted angrily.
He moved like lightning. Suddenly, I found myself pinned to the wall with his big body looming over me. His hands slid from my hips up my ribs. Heat blossomed in the wake of his touch and I arched helplessly against him, needing more. Caleb’s gaze met mine. His eyes paled to glittering gold.
I gasped. “Your eyes—”
He released me, shoving abruptly away. Without a word, he left, thundering down the stairs and out of sight. In the wake of his absence, the ice crept back into my veins, chilling me once again. I touched my hand to my cheek. Ice cold, as usual. But for a brief moment, when Caleb had been touching me, I’d been filled with heat. I wanted it back.
I didn’t see Caleb for several days after that. Not at breakfast or dinner. Not in passing in the garage or the hallway. I tried to ask where he was without asking about him directly.
“So,” I hedged while Natasha poured me coffee. “Smaller crowd for breakfast today, huh?”
She glanced around the dining room. “Ah, yes.” A knowing smile curled her lips. “Caleb is not here.”
My ears burned. Luckily, my hair was covering them.
Natasha’s smile deepened. “He flew out to Anchorage for a supply run. The weather down there has kept him grounded. I’ve heard he should be able to return today.”
“Oh.” I shrugged. “Well, whatever.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about the heat of Caleb’s touch. The memory kept sliding into my mind at inconvenient times—in the middle of staff meetings, or while I was grading assignments, or during dinner, leaving me staring off into space with my fork halfway to my mouth.
I managed not to get distracted when I was teaching, but in the spare moments between classes and after school, my mind went straight back to him. At the end of the day, as my last class filed out after the final bell, my brain jumped immediately to him.
It took me a moment to realize that not all of my students had left. Daniel Gray hovered near my desk.
“Oh—Daniel. Sorry, I was just… thinking about something. What’s up?”
He handed a book over to me—The Lightning Thief. “It was good,” he said. “Thanks.” A boy of few words, he immediately turned to leave.
“There’s a sequel,” I called after him.
He turned back. His expression, as usual, was flat and guarded.
I swiveled in my chair to pull the next book off the shelf. “It’s part of a whole series. Interested?”
He walked back to my desk. “Sure.”
I carefully smoothed away my smile before turning back to face him. “Keep it as long as you want.”
“Thanks, Ms. Rossi.”
He left. I gathered my things and floated out of the building on a happy glow. When I got back to The Spruce, the glow abruptly extinguished. Caleb was back. His truck was back in his space in the garage. A strange nervousness overtook me as I walked inside the building. The dining room was empty, and I let out a breath. I was halfway up the third flight of stairs when I heard the tread of heavy footsteps approaching me. My heart began to pound in my chest.
Could be Harlan, I told myself. Or Eric.
But it wasn’t. I reached the landing at the same time Caleb did. He stopped so abruptly at the sight of me, you’d have thought I was covered in anthrax. Perversely, his reaction calmed me. With Caleb in retreat, I had control of the field.
“Hello,” I said, a little breathless.
His expression didn’t change, but something about him seemed to sharpen as he observed me. “Hi,” he said impatiently. He gestured at the stairs behind me. “You going to get out of my way?”
“No.” I took a step towards him and reached for his hand. I only wanted the briefest of skin-to-skin contact, to see if his heat would warm me again.
Caleb caught my wrist before I could catch his hand. But it was enough. His big, calloused fingers closed around the delicate bones of my wrist. Heat bloomed beneath my skin, making me gasp. I looked up at him, dazed.
“Caleb,” I breathed. “You’re so warm.”
His eyes gleamed, and suddenly, he was no longer retreating, no longer holding me at arm’s length. He closed in on me, backing me across the landing until I was pushed against the wall, caged by his body. His expression was murderous as he looked down on me. But when he reached out, instead of strangling me, he gently cupped my jaw. I sighed as the incendiary heat of his touch sank into me. His thumb stroked across my cheekbone, my bottom lip.
When he spoke, his voice was a gravely rasp. “Why do you keep playing with me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I murmured. I laid my hand over his, pressing his
palm against my cheek, savoring the fresh bloom of heat beneath my skin. Nothing melted the ice inside of me the way Caleb’s touch did. Not Natasha’s maternal fussing. Not Margaret’s collegial friendship. Not Jess and Elena’s lighthearted affection. Just Caleb and my unwanted, inexplicable attraction to him.
He slid his hand down the column of my throat. My eyes slid shut as I tilted my head back for him. He stroked his thumb over my pulse. “If I hadn’t been the one coming down the stairs, then who’d be touching you right now? Adam? Connor? Harlan?”
My eyes flashed open and I pushed away from him. Shame and humiliation flooded me, a different heat from Caleb’s touch—sickening and clammy. How could I have fooled myself again? After Anchorage, hadn’t he made his opinion of me perfectly clear? He may want me physically, but for whatever reason, he’d long ago decided I was untrustworthy and dishonest.
I turned my back on him and walked away without speaking. Mortified tears burned at the corners of my eyes.
“Grace, wait—” he called, sounding contrite. I heard the pound of his booted footsteps coming after me.
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “Wait for what? More insults?”
Caleb kept pace with my angry march. “I’m sorry, Grace. Stop for a second and let me—”
“Just stop talking to me.” I was a sucker for a sincere apology, and I refused to be suckered again. I needed to stay mad forever because I clearly couldn’t trust my own good sense to keep me away from him. “And stop following me. Go away.”
He halted immediately, allowing me to storm past him. Dammit if his immediate acquiescence didn’t make me a little less mad at him. Boundary-respecting asshole! I fumed ineffectively. I needed something better than that. He keeps making you think he’s going to kiss you, and every time it ends in insults.
Yeah. That’s the stuff. I ripped my door open and slammed it shut behind me.
Chapter Twelve
Saturday night, after dinner, Jess and Elena met me out the back door of The Spruce with three snowmobiles.
“You know how to operate one of these?” Jess asked.
I scoffed. “Please. My entire childhood, there was always a bare minimum of two snowmobiles in our garage.”
“Good.” Jess tossed me a helmet. “We’re going up into the mountains.”
Despite my bravado, it was one of the toughest rides I’d ever been on. Jess and Elena knew the terrain like the backs of their hands, and they raced over it at top speed. It was all I could do to keep them in sight. As soon as we reached the mountains, the trail turned into a nearly constant incline. My forearms and shoulders ached from the effort of steering, my thighs burned from clenching the seat. Under my winter gear, my entire body was sticky with sweat. When I saw Jess and Elena slow to a halt, I nearly wept in gratitude.
They’d stopped on a broad ridge high above the valley. We were hundreds of feet above the tree line. There was nothing to obstruct our view, except for the surrounding mountain peaks. In the distance, Longtooth was a faint twinkle of light. Overhead, the sky was a tapestry unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
I sat astride my snowmobile, arms folded over the handlebars, and stared in absolute wonder at the impossible beauty of the Arctic night. The sky wasn’t black at all—it was studded with an infinite array of diamond-bright stars, twinkling white, yellow, blue, purple, pink. They clustered in whorls and blooms, with the Milky Way forming a beautiful wake through it all. That bright ribbon of starlight ran down to the horizon, like a celestial road, and in that moment, I truly believed if I just kept going, I could reach the end and walk upon it. My hands curled inside my mittens, wishing I could swipe my fingers through it. What would magic feel like? The wind and the earth were perfectly still, perfectly silent, as if the whole world was holding its breath in awe. I felt my face mask sticking to my cheeks, hot and damp, and realized I was crying.
Jess turned towards me, flipping up the visor on her helmet. “Well?”
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “Beautiful,” I said inadequately, my voice hoarse.
I didn’t belong anywhere in particular—not in my decaying hometown, not in Minneapolis’s clean modernity, not in Milwaukee’s industrial hustle, and not in Chicago’s overwhelming everything. But maybe I could choose to belong here, in this other-world, where the sky was made of diamond dust and magic. Where the killing cold was somehow melting the ice inside of me. Where people like Margaret, Natasha, Jess, and Elena thought I was wonderful just for the simple act of being myself.
“I wish I could live here,” I said faintly, not intending to be heard. But Jess and Elena both cocked their heads towards me.
“You do live here,” Elena said.
I shook my head, not sure how to articulate the uncertain yearning I felt. “I mean… I don’t really have anything tying me here. All the locals have such deep bonds, and I’m an outsider. You’re all family, and I’m not.”
Jess regarded me for a quiet moment, thinking. “Family isn’t just born,” she said. “Family can be chosen.” A sneaky smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “But if you want to make it official, I can think of several local boys who’d be more than happy to bring you into the fold.”
I grinned beneath the cover of my helmet. “Yeah, well, for every interested guy, there’s another who can’t get rid of me soon enough.”
Elena scoffed. “Don’t let Harry get to you. He’s not happy unless he’s got something to complain about.”
“It’s not just Harry.”
“What? Who else?”
“Caleb wants me gone.”
Jess and Elena both laughed.
“Are you serious?” Elena asked.
“He’s made it pretty clear.”
Jess shook her head. “Caleb’s been sniffing around you since the day you landed.”
I flipped my visor up just so I could give her the incredulous look that statement deserved. “Are you drunk most of the time, Jess?”
She laughed.
“I know he’s your cousin so you guys get along just fine, but he really doesn’t—” As I spoke, I saw faint movement along the top of the ridge. I turned just in time to see a silhouetted figure slide into the shadow of a large pine. “Did you see that?” I pointed at the spot where the shadow had been.
Jess and Elena lifted their heads. “I don’t see anything,” Jess said.
A slight breeze brushed past us. They both closed their eyes and inhaled through their noses.
“What’s with the sniffing thing you weirdos do?” I demanded. “Caleb did that in—”
“Start your sled,” Jess said urgently, turning her ignition. The alarm in her voice had me obeying immediately. “Go! Back the way we came. Now!” She flipped her visor down and pinned the throttle, arcing around me in a spray of snow.
Adrenaline spiked through me, and I pinned the throttle down. Jess and Elena flanked me all the way back to Longtooth. When we reached The Spruce, Jess hustled me inside.
“Don’t worry about the sleds,” she said. “We’ll take care of them in the morning.”
“Why did we have to race back?” I asked.
Elena and Jess exchanged a dark glance.
“There was a bear,” Jess said at the same time as Elena said, “I saw a moose.”
They looked at each other again.
“Uh, it could’ve been a bear,” Elena said. “I didn’t get a close look.”
“Moose or grizzly—” Jess shrugged “—you don’t want to mess with either one.” She herded me towards the stairs. “Go ahead and get some sleep. I have to go talk to Margaret.”
“At midnight?” I asked.
“She’s my aunt, she won’t mind. See you tomorrow.”
Jess and Elena hustled out of The Spruce, leaving me alone at the bottom of the stairs.
“Well. Goodnight,” I said to the empty room. Some of the brightness I’d been feeling dimmed away. There was something they weren’t telling me. Something they didn’t
trust me to know. After the fun I’d had with them, it was a sharp reminder of where I really stood.
I was an outsider.
That night, I dreamt of Alex again.
His handsome face was creased with sorrow. His usually perfect blonde hair was messy and rumpled. His eyes were dark with grief. “Grace,” he pleaded. “My Grace. Come back to me.”
Cold splintered through me like a million needles. I folded over, breathless from the pain.
“You have to come to me, Grace. There’s only one way this can end happily for everybody.”
I hauled in a frozen breath. It shredded my lungs, and I choked on it.
“Stop fighting this, Grace. Stop fighting us. Come back to me. Now. Come back—”
“No.” The word emerged as the faintest rasp. But it stunned Alex into silence. “Leave me alone.” My voice became a little stronger, a little clearer. “Go away!”
He stared at me in shock. “You can’t mean that,” he said faintly. And then he was gone.
When I made it down to the dining room, breakfast was nearly over. My arms, shoulders, and back ached so badly from last night’s snowmobiling, it’d been almost impossible to pull my sweater over my head.
“Well, look who decided to wake up,” Jess said as I slid onto the stool next to her.
“I slept like shit last night.” I winced and stretched my arms. “It’s been a few years since I went on such a long snowmobile ride. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
Jess frowned. “Aw, Grace, I didn’t think of that. We should’ve started you with a shorter ride.”
“No way. I’d crawl back on my hands and knees just to see that view again. The last few years, all I’ve done is work, eat, and sleep. I forgot how good it feels just to do something for fun. It made me realize how much I miss my old hobbies.”
“Why’d you stop?”
I hesitated. I was still unpleasantly aware of the distance between me, an outsider, and the locals. Even Jess, who’d been one of the most friendly to me, was not really comfortable with me. It had been made abundantly clear last night when she and Elena wouldn’t tell me what was going on. But even in ordinary conversations, it was there. They were all friendly and kind and earnest, but even so, there was a guardedness that they tried to cover behind easy smiles and nimble changes in conversation. A lot of people might not even see it. But I was an expert at fooling people with those same tactics.
Cold Hearted: An Alaskan Werewolf Romance Page 11
