“I can hear them clacking.”
She clamped her mouth shut to control the noise and finished piling her dripping bags on the table so she could dig out the candles she’d purchased. Candles meant fire, meant light, and especially some kind of heat.
“I know you’re trying to be nice.”
“I am,” she chirped, felt her voice wobble with her involuntary jaw wobbling, still determined to give Dr. Grouchy a better evening than the universe had conjured for either of them. Finding the matches and grabbing one of the candles, she created fire. And light. “Saw a strip mall on the way here with one of those cheapo general-store places beside a liquor store.”
Clack. Clackity. Clack. She gritted her teeth until her jaw tensed and felt more under control. She kept the rest of it short. “Got supplies. You could play along, pretend you’re someone who doesn’t hate f-fun. M-might s-surprise y-you.”
The last several words stuttered out and she gave up trying to pretend. She was cold. During her brisk walk in the downpour she’d stayed more or less warm. Standing around made the chill seep into her, and life become decidedly less livable.
Outside the storm continued to rage, and when a gust blew against the side of the building, she looked over and noticed Gabriel was in his underwear.
Gabriel was in his underwear.
How had she missed that?
Putting the candle down, she smooshed her wet hair back from her face, where it was obviously obstructing her vision, and looked at him. Beneath his carefully zipped flight suit he’d been hiding all that?
Even as dark as the room was, she could see the definition of abs in his rich, brown skin. Wide, solid shoulders. Hip flexors. Good God, the man had chiseled hip flexors.
Which would be something she could spend time appreciating as soon as she got warm.
“Did you get something dry to wear in that?”
“Would be wet if I had. But I think you have the right idea.”
She fumbled for her zipper, fingers suddenly stiff and wooly, and failed to sufficiently grab the tab to draw it down three times in succession. Her fingers just slid right off the end when she pulled. A mild sound of alarm was all it took to set him into motion, and suddenly he was in front of her, taking over.
Under any other circumstances, she might hesitate to strip down to her undies with the partner she’d been actively trying to ignore her attraction to, but him peeling the sodden, freezing material down her arms at least provided an excuse for the wash of goose-bumps she knew were as much to do with him undressing her as her looming hypothermia. When he knelt to help her with the boots, she put her hands on his shoulders, and immediately wanted to mash her whole body against his. The man was hot, in every sense of the word.
At least that fear that had been pitting through her was gone now. She wasn’t feeling...all that hesitant anymore either. “How do you feel about underwear hugging? You, me, mashed together. You’re giving off heat like a space heater and I really like that about you right now.”
“I’m a normal temperature. You’re just cold. It doesn’t have to be freezing temperatures to get hypothermia. You know that.”
Yes, she did.
Despite the irritation lingering in his voice, his touch was gentle. Large, strong hands cupped the back of each leg as he helped ease her clothing off.
Beneath her suit, she generally dressed for comfort. That meant white cotton bikinis and a snug strappy tank top. Being endowed with modest curves had advantages, one being the ability to skip confining undergarments, especially under such unstructured clothing as a flight suit.
She puffed as he stood back up and she had to clamp her arms to her sides to keep from flinging herself at him. “Yell at me later.”
“I will. After you’ve had a shower and warmed up.” And he sounded like he meant it.
Gabriel pulled her back sometimes, providing a special kind of stoicism that balanced her out. She was used to some measure of grumpiness when she did something he found dumb, but after the day they’d had the idea of him yelling at her made her stomach churn.
“Do you hate me?” The words erupted from her mouth before she could give them a proper spin around in her head, and even though she’d just told him to yell at her later.
“Hate you?” He shook her sodden flight suit out and draped it over the other chair, then looked back down at her, his still handsome scowl flickering in the light of the candle. “Why on earth would I hate you?”
“Because I almost crashed us. I couldn’t... I couldn’t outrun it. I thought... But then the wind...” She faltered around, and suddenly the words caught up with her emotions, and she knew she was crying by the hot rivers on her frigid cheeks.
“You did outrun it,” he said, his voice gentle. One strong arm wrapped around her, propelling her toward the bathroom. “You got us here. It was supposed to go south of us. Everyone said so.”
Everyone said so. She nodded, squeezing her eyes tightly shut to stop that horrifying leaking. But it wasn’t enough. Several big, gulpy breaths later, she gave up and turned to fling her arms around his waist.
Everywhere their skin touched, she grew warmer. The firm wall of his chest under her cheek, the strong arms that immediately came around her wrapped her in heat.
She needed comfort, to know that her partner, a doctor who treated her—the only Davenport at Manhattan Mercy without the title—like an equal, still had faith in her.
“You won’t be afraid to fly with me after this?”
Her underthings were wet, she realized as she felt his skin start to cool, or at least stop feeling quite so warm through the soaked material. She was getting him wet.
“I won’t. We’ll talk about that later, but right now you need to get in the shower,” he said, his mouth against the crown of her head. “Who knows if the water will stay hot for long, and you’ve stopped shaking.”
“It wasn’t raining that hard when I left,” she muttered. The colder she got, the less intelligent her foray into the blistering rain seemed. No matter how good her reasoning at the time.
You’ve stopped shaking. His words swam up to her as he wrapped his arms around her hips and lifted, then walked into the darkened bathroom to deposit her right in the tub.
People stopped shaking when they warmed up, or when they got too cold and their bodies gave up shaking to get warm.
He adjusted the water quickly, then stepped in with her, positioning her under the spray so that the almost too hot water hit the back of her neck, then her head, and once it had had a few seconds to cascade over her, he turned her by the shoulders so that her back came against his chest, and the water warmed up her front side.
She shivered again for a couple seconds, and then relaxed back against him, her head on his shoulder, and her hands seeking his on her hips to drag his arms back around her waist. Standing under the spray, in their underwear...
“This went a lot different in my head.”
“Did you sing and dance your way through the rain in your head?”
“No, the rain didn’t factor in. I just thought, get the wine, get some food, get candles, cards, munchies... Talk to Gabriel and give him a good night to make up for whatever you had planned at home.”
“I had nothing planned.” His mouth was at her ear, and the words should’ve taken the edge off somehow, but she found herself spinning to face him instead.
Probably her third dumb idea of the day, but, unlike the first two dumb ideas, she just didn’t care.
It was dark, the candle left in the other room, but as she pulled