Page 13 of Snowed In with Benefits

This path deserves my attention. This house deserves my attention. The boys deserve my attention. I feel a shift in the energy behind me and look up to find Josie watching me from Beau’s window.

I haven’t decided yet whether she deserves my attention, so I turn back to the snow. My thoughts have been wandering to places I don’t particularly like, so I focus on my house. It’s the one place I ever felt safe. The only place I remember feeling loved as a child.

The thing about love is, it stays. The love that Granddad put into this house, it stays. As long as I take care of it, it will continue to stay. Because that’s the other thing about love. If you put it out there and then never touch it again, it dies. It withers away and disappears like a couple of bad parents on a never-ending night out.

Scowling at myself, I bury my shovel in the snow again. Why do they keep creeping into my head today? I’ve got plenty of other things to think about. Like the woman in Beau’s room, and why he put her there. Like the next five to seven days and the potential for drama. Like Hunter’s grin, and what that means.

It means he’s lonely. He’s been lonely, I know that. I know he’s only here because me and Beau are. He doesn’t know that I know. He thinks he’s done a damn good job of covering up the fact that he misses being around people, but it’s obvious.

If it isn’t obvious to Beau, it’s only because he doesn’t want to see it. The guilt would eat him alive if he thought he was holding Hunter back. Maybe it is. Maybe I’m the one who’s oblivious. Maybe they both came out here because they needed to, and stayed because I needed them to.

If I think I’ve done a good job of covering that up, I’m as delusional as Hunter. We all know each other too well to keep ourselves fully hidden.

I still can’t figure out what Beau’s game is, though.

I clear the path down to the driveway, then turn around to widen it back up to the house. As I do, I take in the two-story cabin with its hand-carved details. The shutters, the handrails, the windowsills. I take in the solid stone face and look up at the peaked roof, still holding firm after the last time I fixed the eaves and shingles.

Granddad would be proud.

8

JOSIE

I follow Beau up the stairs and around the corner. His bedroom is the first door on the right, a big room with a window overlooking the front path and the road far below. Trees stand between the cabin and the road, thick enough to obscure it from view, especially under all this snow. Still, the view is beautiful.

“Bed,” Beau points out a bit redundantly. “Closet. Sheets.”

So he’s not going to change his bed for me before I’m meant to sleep in it. Understood. I look around his room a little bit, trying not to look like a snoop in front of him. It’s not hard, he seems to keep his things mostly out in the open. There are a few humane traps, a few wooden boxes with holes in them, and loads and loads of books.

I give him a longer glance out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t expect him to be much of a reader. Guess you can’t always judge a book by its cover, so to speak.

“Thank you again.” There’s more that I want to express, but I can’t seem to find the words. I want him to know how much I appreciate having a door that I can close, now that I know I’m going to be stuck here with three men for god knows how long.

“Don’t mention it.” He shrugs, then opens the closet and starts pulling clothes out. “Feel free to use it,” he says, nodding at the closet. “I’ll get my stuff out of your way.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, I won’t be here for⁠—”

He gives me a stunned look and I shut up. Right. I have no idea how long I’ll be here. I’m already here longer than I thought I would be. I shut my mouth and let him finish grabbing his things.

“Get comfortable,” he says as he leaves. It almost sounds like a threat, but I don’t think that’s how he meant it. Or maybe he did, I don’t know. He seems like he’s just naturally threatening, but I don’t know how much of that is just social awkwardness.

He takes his armload of stuff downstairs and I start to move around the room a little bit. I glance out the window to find Emmett shoveling snow. He moves well for someone so big, and he seems to have a vendetta against the snow. His movements are fluid and powerful for someone so broad and tall.

Hm.

I shake off the feeling that watching him work gives me. I need something to do. I might as well unpack, there’s no telling how long I’m going to be here. I snort at myself. If someone had told me a week ago that this was how I’d be spending the day after my wedding, I would never have believed them.

I take my laptop out of my tech bag, then gingerly unpack my camera. It’s been through a lot over the last twenty-four hours. I’m hoping the custom carrier did its job. I examine it closely, looking for scratches, cracks, dirt, water, any damage that could have been sustained during my adventure so far.

After a long moment, I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s perfectly intact. I turn it on and flip through the pictures. One glorious sunset. One black and white photo of Preston, the deep contrast highlighting the cut of his cheek and jaw. One of an intricate ice sculpture down by the river.

That’s all there is. My stomach tightens. I’d left this SD card mostly blank on purpose, didn’t I? I was saving it for honeymoon pictures. Honeymoon pictures that are never going to happen now.

I shove the camera back in its case and tug off the engagement ring that suddenly feels too heavy on my finger. The massive diamond jutting from the ring sparkles in the light almost accusingly as I set it on the dresser and flex my fingers, and when I turn around, I’m greeted by another reminder of my wedding that wasn’t. My dress, big and sparkly and now gray around the bottom, is flung out unceremoniously across the bed. I pick it up like it’s something smelly and shove it in the closet.

The closet is full of a scent I recognize as Beau’s. It’s a little rough and a little sweet, like warm leather and smoky vanilla. I inhale deeply before catching myself. I don’t want to like his scent. He clearly doesn’t like me, it’s not going to do me any good to focus on the things about him I may or may not like.

With the closet open and waiting, I go back to my bag and unzip it. Sighing, I start pulling things out. Crop tops. Leggings. Little bitty short skirts. Bikinis. I grimace as I glance away from my brightly-colored spread to the mountains of snow outside.