Baby, It's Cold Outside

by Kait Nolan

  But she was in the kitchen, dressed in jeans and some kind of belted sweater. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid that draped over one shoulder as she gathered ingredients for breakfast. She glanced over, but said nothing as he crossed to the fireplace and began to methodically arrange logs over the ashes of last night’s fire.

  He needed to get this out fast. Like ripping off a Band-aid. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” Her easy words pained him. Nothing about this was fine, and he didn’t deserve the benefit of her brushing it under the rug.

  “It’s not fine, Ivy. I should never have put my hands on you. I had no right to touch you, no right to force myself on you.” He bowed his head, wishing he could shrink himself.

  “It can hardly be called force when I’m the one who kissed you first.”

  Shock had his head whipping up and around to face her. “What?”

  She crossed her arms. “You were sleeping hard. You’re a cover hog, by the way. I was trying to get some of the blankets back, and I guess I surprised you. You reacted to whatever you thought was happening and pinned me. You weren’t responding to your name, so I kissed you to try to snap you out of it.”

  Harrison rewound events in his head. Maybe she hadn’t been fighting him. Her legs had been wrapped around his hips, not as if she’d been trying to throw him off, but as if she’d wanted to pull him closer. He tried to summon up her face in that moment he’d awakened, tried to remember if there’d been fear. But all he could remember was lust. She’d seemed to be into things, into him.

  Realizing that what he’d taken as a shift in dream had been reality, he closed his eyes, scrubbing a hand over his face. “And instead of sticking around and dealing with the situation directly, I freaked out and bolted.” How must that have made her feel? “Jesus, Ivy, I’m so sorry. I’ve got no excuse.” How could he admit he was this fucked-up half-man? “I—”

  “Do I need to kiss you again to shut you up?”

  Her irritated question stemmed the flow of words from his mouth. “What?”

  She arched a brow. “Well, it worked the first time. Stop with the apologies and self-flagellation. You think you attacked me in your sleep, held me down, and molested me against my will. You didn’t, and I’m not afraid of you. If anything, I’m the pervert for wrapping myself around you like kudzu when you weren’t even awake.”

  “Honeysuckle.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re honeysuckle, not kudzu, and definitely not a pervert.” Relief that he wasn’t a pervert either mingled with a regret for what might have been if he hadn’t just reacted. “Whatever it was, I’m sorry I made it weird…er. Sorry I made it weirder.”

  “For the record, I liked kissing you. A lot. I liked having your hands on me. More than a lot. I wouldn’t mind repeating both those things again.”

  His mouth had gone dry because it felt a helluva lot like she was giving him permission and his hands itched to pick back up where they’d left off. He shook his head, needing to put some distance between them so he didn’t just leap over the couch to take her up on it. “Gotta be Stockholm Syndrome.”

  Ivy rolled her eyes. “It’s not Stockholm Syndrome. It’s forced cohabitation.”

  “It’s what now?”

  “Forced cohabitation is a well-loved fictional trope, in which two people are obligated to share living space, leading to all sorts of sexy shenanigans. I thought you were a reader.”

  “Maybe I need to get out of my comfort zone.”

  Her silver-green gaze was steady on his. “Maybe that’s exactly what you need.”

  On that provocative pronouncement, she turned her back on him and retreated to the kitchen.

  Chapter 8

  Good job, Ivy. If you needed further proof from the Universe that you made the right call not writing romance, this was it. And now you’ve made the remainder of our confinement together the most awkward thing ever.

  What was she supposed to do now? Ignore the six-thousand pound gorilla in the room? The one with the “Crash and Burn” t-shirt, who was pointing and laughing?

  Pretend nothing for the win. She’d been captaining the U.S.S. Denial for months now, so she ought to do just fine at that.

  By the time he got the fire going again—it seemed to take Harrison about fifty times longer this morning. Because he was avoiding her? Nooo, why should she think that? In that time, she’d made a mountain of French toast and improvised a pour over system for some coffee because hell if she was going to face him again without it. For just a moment, she considered being really cowardly and petty and taking her breakfast up to the loft to eat alone. But other than the bathroom, there were no real walls in the whole cabin, so what point would that serve other than highlighting the division between them? Straightening her shoulders, she carried the platter of French toast to the table and set it for two. He’d either eat or he wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to let this breakfast go to waste.

  Sitting down with her coffee, Ivy forked a couple of slices onto her plate. She could feel Harrison’s eyes on her from the other side of the room. Irritation rose up to choke out the embarrassment, but she didn’t give it voice. This was on her. She was the one who’d made it weird. “For the record…” Ugh! If she was anything other than relaxed and normal, it would exacerbate this awkwardness between them, and it was already as big as the Statue of Liberty.

  “Come eat while it’s hot.”

  He crossed the room with far less noise than a man of his size ought to make. With no more fanfare, he dropped into the chair across from her, his gaze flickering to her face and back to the food.

  “Looks good.”

  “I made too much. But the leftovers should reheat okay in the oven later.”

  He loaded his own plate and they ate, silence descending again. Ivy kept her focus on the food and on the life-giving beverage she’d managed to brew. Coffee—even weird, MacGuyver-brewed coffee—made everything better. As the caffeine hit her system, she tried to set aside her discomfort to get a better read on him. But she couldn’t quite manage anything longer than quick glances in his direction, all of which showed him eating with a single-minded focus that probably spoke more of his inclination to avoid the awkward than the superiority of her cooking. She hated that their camaraderie had been ruined and wondered if she should just bring up the possibility of heading into town today as soon as conditions would allow.

  “I had an idea about how to maybe fix your plot problem.”

  Jerked from her thoughts, Ivy lifted her gaze to Harrision’s. “What?”

  “You said they wanted a spinoff series with Michael, right?”

  So they were going to talk about her books now? Okay, she’d take that olive branch. “Yeah.”

  “But he’s not that interesting on his own. He’s too closed off. We know he’s been through some shit—all of them have—but he gives off this air of having dealt with all of his. That doesn’t make him compelling as a character we want to follow for several more books.”

  “He’s boring.” Maybe she should’ve been offended by his assessment, but she couldn’t disagree with it.

  “Not boring. Just not the obvious choice because we don’t see where his character arc would take him. We don’t see how he might change or what he needs to learn.”

  Ivy put down her fork and wrapped both hands around the lingering warmth of her mug as her brain latched onto the problem. “Yes. I’ve gone rounds with Michael, trying to figure out what the hell his goal is, what he’s motivated by, and getting nowhere. Because he really doesn’t have one. Not like Sloan. He’s not a team player. It was why he left.”

  The awkwardness faded as Harrison’s eyes snapped with interest. “Was it? Or was it because there was someone else on the team that reminded him of old wounds? Someone who’s been where he’s been, who went through the same kind of dark shit but hasn’t made it out. Someone he doesn’t want to give enough of a damn about to peel back some of that armor and revisit his o
wn pain in the name of helping her find her way.”

  “Her? You’re talking about Annika?”

  He nodded. “I think Michael really left because he couldn’t handle being around her. Because her shit—whatever it is—hit too close to home. And he got through his by not letting himself care. By hardening himself. She challenged that, just by being in the same space with him. So what better way to introduce conflict than to put the two of them together on some long-term mission or case where they can’t escape each other because that’s the job?”

  Were they still just talking about her book? Ivy wasn’t sure. But she considered. “He needs a proper foil. The protagonists always do, but in the past I’ve always used the antagonist for that. It hadn’t occurred to me to use somebody considered one of the good guys.”

  “Part of why your characters are so interesting is that they aren’t all good or all evil. They’re complex. Annika is volatile. She’s entirely in control—until she’s not. You’ve never gotten into the why of that, and as a reader I always wondered what her secret was. She’s never said—or I guess you haven’t—but there was always that intimation that she’d done something that made her question whether she was one of the good guys. That her real motivation for being on the team was to earn redemption for…whatever that thing is she won’t tell anybody.”

  Ivy didn’t admit to him that Annika had kept her secret because she as the author didn’t know what it was. It hadn’t been relevant to the book she’d appeared in, so Ivy hadn’t delved any deeper. She wasn’t sure she should now.

  But Harrison saw something in her character. He’d spoken of redemption, of Annika wondering whether she was one of the good guys. Was he projecting?

  Ivy considered what she knew of him, both what he’d told her and what she’d surmised. He’d been Special Forces, out of the military for a few years. He’d said himself he’d come here to escape something and she was a welcome distraction. She’d seen first-hand that he could still get lost in the past. He’d all but fallen all over himself to apologize when he thought he might have hurt or taken advantage of her in that state. His streak of honor was wide and obvious, yet he wasn’t willing to acknowledge it. He hadn’t wanted thanks or praise for her rescue, and clearly he didn’t see himself as a hero.

  She suspected he’d lost someone on his team or under his command. Maybe both. Didn’t matter whether it was bad intel or an accident or just the realities of battle. He was the kind who’d blame himself, either way. That would be a helluva thing to carry and a logical reason for why he’d cut himself off. He didn’t trust himself to be responsible for anyone else. And maybe, just maybe, his failure to respond to her had more to do with not believing he deserved anything good in his life than with general horror over her forward behavior.

  So how could she help him see he was wrong?

  “The secret Annika’s been guarding so fiercely, that would have to come out over the course of the series, is about how her last squad died. She’s carrying all this survivor’s guilt, and it’s slowly killing her. What she’d have to learn as the series progressed, is that shit happens. Especially in war. There was nothing she could have done, and it wasn’t her fault.”

  “How will she figure that out?” Harrison’s voice cracked a little and he seemed surprised he’d even asked the question.

  That alone let her know she was on the right track in her assessment, so she chose her next words with care, trying to figure out what it was he needed to hear. “I don’t know yet. But maybe the new team would help. Maybe Michael would help. Because, you’re right, he’s dealt with his issues. He’d be a good, prospective wayfinder for her, if she’d open herself up to listen to whatever he’ll share. But being off on her own, closing herself off from life, hasn’t helped. The alternative is that she looks at the opportunities she’s presented with and actively chooses life, chooses to engage, chooses to feel.”

  His throat worked and those dark eyes were fixed on hers with an expression she couldn’t quite read. “Even if feeling is what makes her reckless?”

  Ivy wondered again if he was still talking about the book. “Feeling isn’t what makes her reckless. It’s not letting herself feel. Because closing herself off gives all of it a chance to fester rather than bleed free. It’s that build-up that drives her outbursts.” Even as she said it, she knew it was true. Of Annika, and probably of Harrison, too.

  “Some hurts can be packed away and forgotten about, and they’ll fade with time. And some become caged animals that do more damage, become more feral, the longer they’re ignored. She’ll have to eventually bring it out into the light and work with it to work through it to have any chance at being whole again.”

  Her brain sputtered with the first sparks of creativity she’d felt in ages, and she began to see how it could be. Annika would challenge Michael, and he, in turn, would settle her. They’d be more together than alone…

  “Maybe she’ll never be whole again.” His voice was gravel as he spoke and the haunted expression in his eyes touched her deeper than the physical ever could.

  They definitely weren’t talking about Annika now, so she shoved aside the stirrings of plot to focus on him. “She won’t know until she tries.” Ivy wanted to reach out and touch him, as a show of support, of human connection. But she didn’t know how he’d respond if she broke out of the metaphor of the book. This was his truth, his burden, and it was intensely personal.

  His long, dark lashes swept down, shutting away his thoughts. When he opened his eyes again, he’d locked down whatever emotion their discussion had stirred up. “Well, then, seems like you’ve got to give her a mission that will get her over her initial resistance.”

  Sensing Harrison had reached some kind of limit, Ivy turned her mind back to the book and to the scrap of notes she’d dictated, where Annika had been the one to go after Michael for recruitment. Maybe there’d been something buried in her subconscious about this in the first place. Her brain turned over the new pieces, using Annika as the lens instead of Michael himself—and her brain finally began to fire. She felt like writing for the first time in forever.

  “I think you just might be onto something.”

  The corners of Harrison’s mouth tipped up in the barest of smiles as he pushed back from the table. “Go write while it’s cooking. I’m gonna go try to sort out the generator.”

  This time, when he retreated, it didn’t feel like he wanted to shut her out. It seemed like a natural pause to breathe for them both. Maybe they would be okay. And maybe, before their time together was through, she’d help him find his way to the answers he needed.

  With that in mind, she opened her laptop and began to type.

  Harrison made his way through the snow to the lean-to, still reeling. He’d intended that conversation to just be brainstorming. A way for them to get back to some kind of even keel before they talked about what came next—which he’d still expected to be When can you get me out of here? But the whole thing had turned intensely personal. He had no one to blame for that but himself. He was the one pushing Annika as a character. He’d done it because he knew what that volatile state was like. He’d lived it for his first two years out of the Army. Was, apparently, still living it. As a reader, he wanted to see Annika get to the other side because he needed the same answers she did.

  “The secret Annika’s been guarding so fiercely is about how her last squad died. She’s carrying all this survivor’s guilt, and it’s slowly killing her. What she’ll have to learn is that shit happens. Especially in war. There was nothing she could have done, and it wasn’t her fault.”

  As he worked his way through troubleshooting the generator, he wondered if that really was Annika’s secret. Or was Ivy the profiler reading him like one of her books? Survivor’s guilt was a reality in the military. People died in war. Those who were left behind were doomed to struggle with it. People like Ty. Like himself. The weight of those memories, that one decision, had been what drove him up here. Settin
g him on Ivy’s path. He didn’t believe in fate. He’d seen too damned much that defied any kind of preordination. And yet here she was, reaching out to offer that connection, that advice that cutting himself off wasn’t helping.

  Well, it had been advice for Annika, but he didn’t think either of them had been talking about her at the end.

  Harrison wasn’t sure what to do with that.

  Realizing the generator wasn’t getting fuel, he trudged back to his Jeep to retrieve some tools. The morning sky was overcast, and he was willing to bet there was more snow in those clouds. Which meant they probably weren’t going anywhere. Not easily. Either way, it would probably be a while before normal power was restored, so he needed to get the generator working for himself, if nothing else. He’d take the fuel pump apart and see if it was just trash in the lines or if the thing had actually gone bad. If it was busted, maybe he could pick up another one in town when he took Ivy in.

  He should have mentioned getting her back to town, made some kind of offer to try, or at least apologized that he couldn’t. He just didn’t want to bring it up. And how selfish was that? One way or another, he was the one who’d screwed up this morning. Not only did he let her share the blame, but when she all but said, “Let’s try that again,” he’d just left her hanging there. He had good reason to keep his hands off her. He was a bad bet. But he could have said that, instead of…nothing.

  I can’t do any damned thing right.

  Small wonder. He was broken. He’d known that for a long time now.

  “Some hurts can be packed away and forgotten about, and they’ll fade with time. And some become caged animals that do more damage, become more feral, the longer they’re ignored. She’ll have to eventually bring it out into the light and work with it to work through it to have any chance at being whole again.”