Page 58 of Snowed In with Benefits

Feeling more peaceful than I have in a very, very long time, I slip into Emmett’s shirt and go to sleep.

Over the next few days, I stop checking the weather and the road reports. It’s not that I’m not interested, it’s just that I’m not obsessing about when I can leave. I feel settled here in a way I’ve never felt settled anywhere, and I don’t want to think about what comes next. It’s not all blissful peace or anything. There’s still tension between me and Hunter and me and Beau, still the mystery that is Emmett, but the routine is soothing. Coffee. Breakfast. Take pictures while the guys work. Lunch. Edit. Dinner. Sometimes drinks by the fire, sometimes we all just split off and do our own thing. Shower. Bed.

It’s a peaceful existence and I’m starting to love it here. The only thing truly hanging over my head is that night with Hunter and Beau, that night that lives on in the subtly steamy looks I catch Beau giving me sometimes, that lives on in the way Hunter touches me when there isn’t specifically a reason to.

It’s affecting my sleep. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat, so turned on I can’t function until I do something about it. My own hands are losing their charm. The whole point of sleeping with them was to get it out of my system, but it’s like my system absorbed them instead. The ghosts of their touch press on my body from time to time, reminding me of what we did… reminding me how much I liked it.

Emmett is less intimidating than before. The longer I spend around him, the more I start to understand him. He grunts a lot, but the grunts are different. Sometimes he’s amused. Sometimes he’s annoyed. I’m starting to get a feel for which is which, and it changes the way I’ve seen him over the last several days. Looking back on it, I don’t think he was annoyed with me as often as I thought he was.

That’s why, one afternoon, when the workshop door is open and Emmett is busy inside, I decide to approach. I’ve never been in the workshop before, and if the bowls are anything like the rest of what’s in there, I’d like to see it. I go up to the doorframe and stop, staring.

It’s like Santa’s Workshop in here, except instead of toys, it’s practical things for around the house. Bowls, plates, serving trays, chairs, tables, all kinds of things. But the quantity isn’t what makes me stop. It’s the quality. Each piece is intricately carved. Each piece has a pattern or a scene, and each scene is lovingly captured from the woods around us.

They’re magnificent. Intricate. Careful. Put together with the kind of loving attention I wouldn’t have expected from somebody so gruff on the surface. I catch my breath and he hears me, turning away from his workbench to level his intense gaze at me.

“Hi,” I breathe. “These things… they’re beautiful. Can I ask… what are you working on?” More comfortable doesn’t mean completely comfortable. My heart is rattling against my ribs as I ask my tentative question and some part of me is bracing for him to kick me out and close the door behind me.

“Rack. For Beau’s woodpile.” He gestures at the triangular piece he’s working on.

I take a step forward and look at the piece more closely. Even something as practical as that gets the attention of a craftsman. The curves, the angles, the etchings on the surface… something that could have been thrown together in minutes by someone who didn’t care about the craft is being shaped lovingly into life by someone willing to take the time.

I look around and see more and more pieces of similar quality. Some are finished, complete with their deep color and shine. Others are still raw, the scent of cut pine sharp in the air around them. The weight of my camera pulls against my hand.

“Could I photograph some of these?” I ask him, gesturing at a flowerpot ringed in a scene of bears and deer.

He raises his eyebrows, clearly taken aback. He almost looks uncomfortable, which is strange. I haven’t seen him look uncomfortable in his own space in the entire time I’ve been here.

“No.”

I blink, a little stung by the rejection. I thought we were at a more comfortable place between us. Maybe I was wrong.

“Okay.” I step back out of the workshop, not wanting to crowd him. I’m not going to push it. Maybe Emmett and I are as comfortable with each other as we’re ever going to be, and maybe that comfort doesn’t include me taking pictures of his workshop.

24

EMMETT

She leaves. I go back to work on the rack. Sanding it down. Making it work. Moving my hands to keep my mind quiet. My mind that keeps showing me her face. That flash of disappointment that she tried to hide. The way she gracefully left, not throwing a fit, not asking me why.

But why is the right question. This is my workshop. It’s private. It’s personal. It’s where my mind goes to recalibrate, where my hands go to work. I don’t show my work to people. It lives in my house, serving its purpose. It lives in my workshop, taking up space if it doesn’t yet have a purpose to serve. Most of all, it’s mine.

My grandpa built this bench. He built the shelves, the tool rack, the whole damn room. When I was a kid, I’d sit on an overturned bucket and watch him work for hours. He never told me to leave. He never told me to be quiet. He just let me be there, and eventually he put a piece of wood in one hand and a knife in the other and said, “Make something.” I was seven. I made a lopsided duck. He put it on the shelf like it was a masterpiece. It’s still there, somewhere behind the newer pieces, buried but not thrown away.

This room is the closest thing I have to a church. It’s where I go when the world gets too loud, when my hands need to move so my head can stop. Nobody comes in here unless they need something from the storeroom. The twins know that. They don’t ask. They don’t need to.

I don’t let people browse through here. I certainly don’t let them document it. I’ve never had anyone ask to document my work before, and the thought of it makes my hackles rise. There’s something else, though. As I’m hand-carving a motif on the wood, it occurs to me. It wasn’t that she was nosy and getting into my space and looking. It was the way she was looking. That soft awe and appreciation.

The same way I used to look at my grandpa’s work before I understood what I was looking at.

It got under my skin. I don’t like things that get under my skin.

The knife slips, cutting into my palm.

“Shit!” I hiss at the sudden pain and curse myself for getting distracted. This is why I don’t like things that get under my skin. It makes other things get under my skin. Like knives. Blood wells up across my palm and I grab a rag, wrapping it tightly around my hand. I flex my fingers. I’m annoyed at myself. That disappointment on her face, that’s what did it. I was focusing on that and not paying attention. Damn it all.

I sit there for a minute, squeezing the rag around my hand, staring at the rack I’m building for Beau. It’s a simple thing. Triangular. Functional. But I’ve been carving a mountain scene into the crossbar because I can’t seem to make anything without putting something of this place into it. Grandpa was the same way. Every bowl, every shelf, every chair leg had the mountains on it somewhere. Like he was afraid he’d forget where he was if he didn’t keep reminding himself.

I’m not going to sit here and slash myself to pieces when there’s a perfectly good solution sitting in the next room.