Page 60 of Snowed In with Benefits

She gestures around to the whole workshop. “For showing me your work. For sharing this with me and for letting me take pictures of it. It’s truly beautiful.”

I shrug. “It’s nothing special. Just something I do to keep my hands busy.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s more than that.” She pauses for a moment, then continues. “Preston used to downplay my photography the same way. He made me feel like it was nothing, and I’ve been trying to stop doing that to myself.” Her eyes burn into mine. “You shouldn’t do it either. You’re really good, Emmett. You’re brilliant.”

The shock of hearing my name in her mouth shoots through me. Not lumberjack. My actual name.

“That’s the first time you’ve said it. My name.”

She blinks, caught off guard. It’s like she didn’t realize she’d done it until I pointed it out. She looks at me. I look at her. I want to… I don’t know what I want. I want something. The moment is loaded, I can feel it, but I don’t know what to do with it. I want to touch her. I want my hand back in her lap. Her lips look like the place I need to be, but I don’t know how to get there.

I’ve never been good at this part. The twins are good at it. Hunter charms his way through doors I don’t even know how to knock on. Beau kicks them down. I just stand on the other side and wait for someone to open up, and nobody ever does, because I look like the kind of man you lock your doors against.

She stands up and the moment is over. She brushes her hand over the fingers of my wounded hand. A shock of some sensation I can’t name rushes through me.

“Thanks again. I really appreciate you letting me in here.”

I grunt back at her. I don’t know what to say. She puts the kit away, picks up her camera, and leaves.

I sit there for a long time after she’s gone. The workshop is quiet again. My hand throbs under the bandage. The rack is half-finished on the bench. The lopsided duck is somewhere on the back shelf, behind the rough pieces she spent the most time photographing.

She called me brilliant. She said my name like it was a word she’d been saving.

I pick up the knife. I go back to work. But the quiet feels different now. It feels like it’s waiting for her to come back and fill it.

25

JOSIE

It’s been a couple of days since I bandaged Emmett’s hand and I find myself settled into this household in ways that would have seemed impossible a week ago. It’s like the house has expanded to hold me, although I still feel bad that Beau is sleeping on the couch for my sake.

The hand balm is working miracles. I rub it into my cracked knuckles every morning and every night, and the lavender-honey scent has become part of my routine now, as natural as brushing my teeth. Every time I open that little carved pot, I think about the man who spent an entire day making it for me without being asked. The man who barely seems to tolerate my presence, but who noticed my hands were hurting and did something about it. I don’t know what to do with that contradiction, so I just keep rubbing in the balm and letting it soothe the cracks.

I’m not just comfortable with the guys. I’m comfortable with the domesticity. I’m in the kitchen, washing dishes while Emmett dries and it’s the most comfortable that I’ve been with him yet. He doesn’t say much, but I’m learning his grunts and his micro-expressions and the particular way his beard shifts when he’s smiling underneath it. I pass him a yellow plate and he takes it carefully in his huge hand. I like his hands. They’re working hands. Scarred and calloused and capable, and the bandage I wrapped around his palm is still there, a little grubby now, but holding firm.

He catches me looking at it and I glance away quickly, heat rising in my cheeks. I busy myself with the next dish, scrubbing harder than necessary.

“What are you all up to today?” I ask the boys.

“Sealing the window upstairs,” Beau says as he looks out the window. “Been noticing condensation on the sill.”

That just serves to remind me how very tall he is. I wouldn’t be able to see the windowsill without a step stool.

“I’m bringing stuff in from the storeroom,” Hunter says. “If you don’t mind, Emmett. The pantry’s just about empty since somebody has been cooking so often.” He winks at me and I blush. I have been volunteering to cook more lately. It’s not just that I’m trying to be helpful, to pay them back for their hospitality; it’s also that I can’t get enough of Hunter’s reactions to the things I cook. It’s never anything special, but his raving gives me validation I didn’t know I needed.

“Do you need any help with that?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Sure, if you’re bored. It’ll go faster with two of us.”

“Consider me bored, then,” I tell him with a grin.

Once the dishes are done, we get to work. First in the pantry, pulling stuff out and setting it on the counter so it can go back in last to be used first. He’s right, there’s not much left here. I follow him into the living room and pause when he heads for the workshop.

“Storeroom’s in here,” he tells me. “Just try not to trip over any of Emmett’s projects.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say solemnly.

I mean it too. Emmett’s work is too beautiful. Being back in this room now, after the intimate moment I shared with Emmett, feels strange. It’s like I’m walking in on somebody’s memory. Even though the memory is mine, I still feel like an invader somehow. Maybe it’s because I know that the feelings that stirred in me when I bandaged his hand only flow in one direction. Maybe it’s because so much of the stuff in here seems so very personal to him.