That was true enough. The number of times she’d smoothed Ty’s hair off his forehead and rubbed his back while he suffered through the consequences of an ill-advised meal out in the woods… She’d said she was prepared to do anything as a PA, no matter how unglitzy, but she couldn’t have meant all this. One day she was going to reach her limit, and though it’d kill Ty to lose her, at least he’d finally be able to make good on those threats his body issued whenever he came within two breaths of kissing her. Such as now, for instance.
“Do you want my pickle?” she asked with sickly sweet innocence. “I could toss it out into the snow. That wouldn’t be cheating. You’d still technically be foraging.”
“I’m going to break into your room when you’re showering and flush the toilet on you.”
She grinned, eyes narrowing. “Maybe I should order dessert,” she whispered, and took another bite.
“Evil.” Evil for more than this food flaunting—for flirting back when Ty knew she’d never go there with him as long as they were professional partners. Kate put her job above everything, surely far above any attraction she might feel for him. If they ever got their moment, it’d have to come after the show was canceled. On especially long nights, when he and Kate were the only humans for miles around and he lay awake listening to her steady breathing in a dark tent or the back of the van, Ty prayed for bad ratings.
“What would you have right now, if you could, Ty?” Kate’s eyes darted to the chalkboard menu behind the bar. “Steak?” she guessed, perusing the fare. “Fried chicken and mashed potatoes?”
He offered his best Sean-Connery-as-Bond accent. “Don’t toy with me, Moneypenny.”
“Something not on the menu?” Kate asked with raised eyebrows, a distinct challenge. Get a drink or two in this girl and she turned into a flirting machine.
Ty rose to the dare she was posing, licking his lips. “Such as…?”
She leaned in closer, fixing her eyes on his. “I know exactly what you want,” she said. She was only teasing, but Ty’s body responded nonetheless.
“What do I want, Katie?”
“Ooh, I’m thinking…crab,” she concluded. “Legs. With lots of melted butter and new potatoes.” She did know what he liked. She knew him better than she probably even realized, and that’s what made Ty’s attraction tougher and tougher to write off the longer they worked together. She gave a last wiggle of her eyebrows before she sat up straight again.
“I could fire you, you know.”
“Yeah right, Ty. You’d be lost without me.” She turned to watch the television mounted in the corner. A newscaster was droning about a late-season storm warning, but Ty thought Kate ought to be more concerned with the imminent threat her flirtation was causing. He watched her expression change as she turned to him again.
“You know, you and I are like everything except lovers,” she said.
The statement threw Ty for a momentary loop. Hope and lust jockeyed for his attention, warming him like whiskey, from the inside. “Yeah. Why? You looking to change that?”
She smirked at his tone, shook her head and took another sip of beer. “Nope.”
Ty’s body cooled with disappointment. “Why not?”
“Well, mainly because it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
Ty rolled his eyes. “Brilliant. Thanks for even bringing it up, then.”
“But I was just thinking how it’s interesting, about you and me.” She wagged a French fry between them. “I mean, we’ve managed to make all this work for three whole seasons now, under the most stressful conditions possible. But we’re both still totally useless with relationships.”
“Oh, cheers. And wait—so, indulge my fragile male ego a moment, but why’s it such a rubbish idea, exactly?”
“Because if, no, when we screwed it all up, we’d both have nothing,” she said. “And I spent a lo-o-ong time having nothing, and it sucks. I don’t plan on going back to it. And definitely not over sex.”
“We’ve survived tropical storms and quicksand and network mergers together,” Ty said. “You don’t think we could survive maybe drinking a bit too much and waking up next to each other?”
“Not a chance I’m willing to take, Ty. Plus I wake up next to you all the time and trust me, it’s grossly overrated.”
He put a hand to his chest, faking a blow to his heart. “You are stone-cold, Katie.”
She shrugged, eyes drifting to the TV above the bar. “It’s Saskatchewan.”
Ty leaned into the bar, mirroring her body. He made sure he kept the flirtation over-the-top, joking, always their way. “What if it was really good sex?”
Kate smirked and shook her head again.
“You don’t know what we might be missing out on.”
“I’ll live. And anyhow, I’d get strung up by tall women everywhere for poaching in their rightful territory.”
Ty switched tracks. “What if we weren’t all those other things? What if the show got canceled tomorrow?”
He saw thoughts forming, gears ticking behind Kate’s unfocused eyes as she chose what bones to throw him, picked whether to tease him or pull him up short. In the end she did both. “I dunno, Ty. And I don’t intend to find out… But if that day does ever come, and we can still stand the sight of each other, you have permission to make a pass at me—a real one. But not a moment before.”
She sat up straight and aimed her attention back at her food. Ten minutes later she slid her half-full second glass of beer back across the counter. Ty watched the barman take it away as if it were his firstborn being wrenched from his arms. Damn, he’d kill for a beer right about now. He let that craving replace the one that had taken up residence between his thighs.
“Bedtime,” Kate said with a satisfied yawn—a postcoital yawn if ever he’d heard one.
They walked side by side back to the motor court, hugging their bodies against the bone-deep cold. They mounted the outside steps to the second level of rooms and bid one another good-night under the yellow glow of the parking lot’s lights. Ty watched Kate’s softly swishing hips carry her a few paces to her door, watched her find her key and disappear into her room with a final smile over her shoulder.
He’d be good tonight. He was tired. He could make it—what, six hours? Ty searched his pockets for his own key and heard Kate’s dead bolt click. He knew already he’d hear it again before long, sliding back open to let him in. Who was he trying to kid, anyhow?
WHEN THE INEVITABLE KNOCK came at her door, Kate rolled over to groggily scan the digital screen of her trusty travel alarm clock. Three twenty-eight…dear God in Heaven. Already knowing what this would be about, she resigned herself to leaving the warm cocoon of the sheets and shuffled to the door.
She squinted into the jaundiced light. “Morning, Ty.”
A frigid breeze seeped in behind him. “Invite me in?”
“Yup. Knock yourself out.”
Kate had long ago learned that having a handsome, strapping man with an exotic accent turn up on her doorstep in the dead of night didn’t necessary mean what one might hope. She’d also learned to sleep with a bra on if Ty was staying in the same motel as her. It just saved a lot of time and modesty not having to scramble for one night after night.
As her guest strolled past in track pants and a bawdy T-shirt he’d purchased with her in Tijuana, Kate flipped the television on. She checked their channel’s Canadian sister just in case their show was on in reruns, but it was mired in