Page 32 of Snowed In with Benefits

“No, no,” he says quickly. “They teased me because she basically ruled my life from the day I brought her in until the day I took her into town.”

I suppress a laugh at the thought of this giant of a man being ruled by a tiny kitty. “What, did she meow you awake?”

“Every morning,” he says warmly. “Five o’clock on the dot, she was next to my face waking me up. She told me when she wanted to play, when she wanted to eat, when it was bedtime… yes, my bedtime… and when to wake up, and I let her.” He shrugs, shifting his body against mine. It’s not an unpleasant sensation. “I figured she’d earned it for staying alive in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter.”

“She sounds like a great cat.” I’m relaxing more and more as we talk, and I’m finally starting to enjoy the warmth of the bath. My toes aren’t burning anymore, and the rest of me is rapidly starting to thaw. I don’t know if it’s more the water, or more the man telling me pretty stories.

“She was the queen of the kingdom,” he says, a grin in his voice.

“What happened to her?” I ask it gently, but I have to know. He seems so enamored with her still, I hate to think that she met some untimely end. But if she didn’t, why wouldn’t he keep her? They sound like a match made in heaven.

“I took her into town, adopted her out to a good family with plenty of time and money.”

The admission shocks me. All that love for animals, all that love for that kitty, and he gave her away? From the way he’s talking, I would have half-expected him to try to keep the raccoon, but I definitely thought he’d be keeping the cat.

“You didn’t want to keep her?”

He shrugs, shifting against me again. “It wasn’t about what I wanted. She needed a good home, and I couldn’t guarantee that I could give her one. Besides, I’m pretty sure she was a city cat to begin with. She survived out here, but she wasn’t thriving. I wanted her to thrive.”

“Ah.” I relax as I breathe out, letting myself lean against him. “That makes sense.”

And it does. Of course he’d be selfless about it. He was selfless today, getting that deer untangled from the fence. No thought for his own safety, just the safety of the deer that could have killed him. If the cat wasn’t thriving out here, he’d notice and do something about it. That’s one thing I’m slowly starting to learn about these men, not just Beau. They’re doers. Even Hunter, who likes to talk more than the other two do, is a doer.

I bet they missed the cat as much as Beau did, even if they wouldn’t admit it. I bet all three of them were bossed around by her, even if they didn’t admit it to each other. I have no proof, but my gut is saying they’re all soft in their own ways, deep, deep down. The surprise of Beau having a soft spot for animals is opening my mind to other soft spots these hard men might have.

I feel a little dumb, to be honest. Beau did give up his room for me, of course he has a soft spot for lost things. I relax against him a little more.

“What else have you saved?”

Listening to Beau talk about animals is making me feel safe here, with him… and I don’t want it to end.

“A couple weeks before you got here, there was a cardinal who sprained its wing flying into our window,” he tells me. “I brought him inside and let him heal. There isn’t much a person can do about a sprained wing, it just needs rest and food and safety. So I gave him that.”

I breathe a contented sigh that presses my back into his chest. I feel his heartbeat quicken slightly against my back and suddenly I’m viscerally aware of him all over again. This time, though, there’s no tension. Just comfortable awareness and maybe a little extra warmth.

He moves his hand and touches my fingers. “Are you feeling warmer?”

My own heartbeat quickens as his fingers almost interlace with mine. The intimacy in the tub just skyrocketed, and I’m not mad about it. If anything, it feels exactly right for this moment. I relax against him a little more, molding the back of my body to the front of his, my attention on our fingers.

“I am,” I tell him, my voice quivering just a little. His touch lingers and I let it, almost afraid to breathe for fear that he’ll move away again. I could berate myself for feeling this way so soon after my ill-fated wedding, or I could just relax and enjoy myself. I choose the latter.

Preston never just held me like this. He never just let the moment grow organically, there was always an undercurrent of pressure. Not so much that I ever felt violated, just enough to let me know that naked togetherness would only lead to one thing. Right here, right now, the possibilities are endless. We could keep talking, we could leave the bath, or we could… no. I’m not ready.

And I feel in my soul that it’s completely okay that I’m not ready for this to progress. Whatever this is, it’s whole and complete as it is, and although the wanting is very much there, it isn’t the defining characteristic of this moment. It’s a frame that could easily be changed out without messing up the picture inside.

We talk idly for a while longer, and as he holds me, I start looking at his tattoos. His forearm is absolutely covered. There’s one that intrigues me; it looks like a tree of life tattoo, but there’s something written in the center of it in a script so stylized that I can’t make out what it says.

There’s another that’s just two stick figures with a watering can, standing in front of a cartoonish blaze. That one makes me giggle, so I start there.

“What’s that about? The stick figures.”

He leans over my shoulder to look at his hand without moving it. The sudden increase in closeness makes my heart skip a beat.

He snorts a soft laugh. “That’s Ben and Mike. They were caught gardening when a fire broke out and when the alarm went off, Mike was still holding a watering can. He got all geared up without putting it down. He just forgot about it, I think. In those moments, you get hyper-focused. But we gave him shit for it for a while.”

“Long enough for you to get a tattoo about it.”

“Yeah.”