I yawned and stretched, enjoying the new twinges and aches. My muscles screamed, We had sex, lots and lots of athletic sex!
Cooper snuffled in his sleep and threw an arm around me when he felt me move. I chuckled, inhaling the sleepy scent of his skin. He drew my back against his chest and tucked his chin over my shoulder, which was quickly becoming my favorite way to be held. “Morning,” he grumbled, his voice just as gruff as you’d expect a werewolf’s to be first thing in the morning.
“Hi,” I said, enjoying the way his stubble gently scratched at my neck. “Hungry?”
“Always,” he said, yawning as I clambered out of bed.
I shrugged into my robe. Cooper wrapped a sheet around his waist, as he’d apparently abandoned his pants somewhere in the woods. We raided my fridge for a breakfast of French toast and bacon. I laid out two full packages of bacon to fry, more than I could eat in weeks. But I’d seen the way Cooper could throw down the pork products at the saloon. I was going to have to spend a lot more on groceries if he hung around often.
I tamped that thought down. Making plans for Cooper was dangerous. As far as I knew, this was a one-time thing. Still, I was already certain that I wouldn’t sleep with another man while I was here. What was the point now? Brad Pitt could be stranded outside my door in a blizzard, begging me to use my body heat to prevent him from getting hypothermia, and any number of tricks he could come up with would not compare to Cooper and the Mighty Morphin Power Penis. Alert the male population of Grundy: I was ruined for all other men.
Of course, the number of orgasms I’d had in the last nine hours would probably keep me for the next year, so I was grateful either way.
So, instead of calculating my sexual schedule or lack thereof over the next few months, I mixed the French toast batter and thought of Evie, of how smug she would be if she knew how completely her Cooper-related predictions had come true. And how absolutely unnerved I was by Cooper’s intent interest in my movements around the kitchen, something that didn’t go unnoticed by Cooper.
“So I guess I make you a little nervous, huh?” he asked, smirking.
“No,” I said, huffing out a laugh. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you’re putting garlic in the French toast,” he said, nodding toward the bowl, where I was indeed sprinkling garlic salt with beaten eggs, vanilla, and brown sugar. I smiled, rolled my eyes, and dumped the bowl into the sink to start over.
“That was not because of you, that was because I don’t have my glasses on,” I told him primly.
“Yeah, yeah, futile denials of my animal magnetism don’t put French toast in my belly. Hurry up, woman.”
“Nice.” I snorted, cracking more eggs. “So, you realize that we can never tell Evie about this, because she will gloat for all time.”
“I’m willing to enter the sexual witness-relocation program as long as they place us in the same city.”
“Agreed.”
“So, what do you want to do today?” he asked, watching as I slid the first slices of battered bread into the frying pan. I tried to hide the trill of happy nerves. He wanted to stay. The proud intellectual portion of my brain made well-organized, thoughtful arguments for us to get to know each other better, while the hornier, dumber cranial lobes screamed, Sex! More sex! Let’s hear more of Cooper’s orgasm noises! Naked Cooper, now!
I tried to be more eloquent than my id.
“Well, pardon me for pointing this out, but you don’t have any clothes here,” I said, trying to look innocent. “It kind of limits our options.”
He grinned. “I was hoping you’d notice.”
“You know, you don’t have to put up a ‘dating guy’ front with me. If you want to spend the day having sex, that’s all you have to say.”
“We may have to call in the National Guard to airlift us more condoms,” Cooper said, snickering and pulling me into his lap.
“I bought the economy pack at Bulk Wonderland,” I told him. “I think we’re covered.” Cooper’s expression flip-flopped from paralyzed fear to outright joy. I shrugged. “I like to be prepared.”
WHEN I WOKE on Monday morning, Cooper was gone. He’d left a note on his pillow saying he had to meet an elk-hunting party at Becker Ridge. The weather was stable, if a bit cold, and as long as it held, he would be gone for three or four days. He promised to come back as soon as possible. “Do me a favor,” he wrote. “Don’t wash me away. Wash your hair, your face, anything but the scent of me from your body. It’s a wolf thing. I’ll explain when I get back.”
“Ew,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Cooper was going to have to deal with my indifference to “wolf things,” because I was not taking a three-day bathing break. “Surely, this is some sort of practical joke at my expense,” I said to myself.
I stepped into the shower and reached for my body wash. And I found I didn’t want to wash him away. Not because he told me not to, but I liked being able to smell him on my skin, that musky woodruff and spice flavor. And I hoped, wherever he was, he hadn’t washed me away, either, that I would stay with him.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I grumbled, shutting off the shower and moving over to the sink. I ran the water hot and shampooed my hair carefully. I took what I considered a conscientious sponge bath and prayed I wouldn’t develop noticeable BO over the next few days.
I dressed for work and bundled into one of my “mid-range” coats for milder winter weather. It was only supposed to get down into the twenties that day. I loved how the locals said “only in the twenties,” as if it was no big deal. In Mississippi, a half-inch of snow would close the schools for three days and cause a panic at Wal-Mart. There is some sort of instinct coded into Southern DNA that sends us all running for the bread and milk aisle at the slightest sign of frozen precipitation. Snow days were a rare and precious thing when I was growing up. So it seemed wrong, somehow, to be getting ready for a workday when I could see a blanket of white out of my window. But work would keep my mind off Cooper, which was a much-preferred alternative to mooning and cabin fever.
I stepped out onto the porch. The ground was covered in an increasingly fluffy blanket of white. The air seemed cleaner. The day was quieter, the earth and its sounds slightly muffled. Everything crackled and shone in the bright but somehow shallow light. I stood still for a long minute, taking it all in. I felt blessed to be able to see that sort of beauty, to know that this was home. I was grateful to Tim for breaking off our engagement. Hell, I was grateful to my parents for driving me across the continent, if it meant I could wake up to this. Charmed, I took one step off of my porch and—
FWIP! Splat!
I was laid out on my back like a rag doll. I lay there for a long, silent moment, staring at the foot-long, obscenely shaped icicles that clung to the edge of my porch roof, and flashed back to the scene in A Christmas Story, where Ralphie Parker fakes an ice-related eye injury. Was Mrs. Parker right? Did people really die from icicle injuries? This would be an extremely embarrassing way to meet one’s maker—impaled through the head with penis-shaped ice skewers because my legs were too worn out from a sex marathon to keep me upright.
I giggled, trying to imagine how my obituary would read. I just lay there and laughed like an idiot in the snow for a full five minutes before going into the garage to break open my brand-new bag of rock salt.
I was so glad Cooper wasn’t around to see this. I would never live it down.
AMONG OTHER THINGS, the first big snow showed me how woefully unprepared I’d been for winter, clothing-wise. I stepped into my first ankle-deep snow drift while climbing into my truck and realized exactly how permeable my three-hundred-dollar hiking boots were. Faced with an entire day of running around the kitchen in soaking-wet, squeaking boots, I knew I had to replace them and fast. And if I was honest, I was going to need two or three pairs, plus a load of sweaters, thermal shirts, snow pants, and winter-weight jeans. I really wanted to do it while Cooper was out of town, so he wouldn’t be able to do the “I Told You So” dance.
All Evie had to hear was “shopping” and she planned yet another girly-day extravaganza for the following afternoon, featuring outlet malls and facials. I tried to put her B-52s CD in the stereo as we reached the town limits, but she turned the volume all the way down and gave me a pointed look.
“OK, spill,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Something’s different about you. Your eyes are bright. You’ve had a big, stupid smile on your face for days.” Evie’s eyes narrowed at me. “You’ve had sex.”
I blanched but tried to play off my surprise with a smirk. “Yes, I’m thirty years old. Being a virgin at this point would be rather sad.”
“I mean recently,” she accused. “You have had sex recently. And you didn’t tell me!”
“Evie, I must confess,” I said in mock solemnity. Evie’s grin was a mile wide and quite smug. “I finally succumbed to the charms of Leonard Tremblay. The dark delights of his hot tub were simply too delicious to resist any longer.”
Evie’s mouth drooped to one side as she shuddered. “Ew.”
“Let that be a lesson to you about asking prying questions,” I scolded.
She shook her head in horror, focusing her eyes on the road. “The images you just put in my head will never go away. That’s pure evil.”
“Is this why you agreed to come with me today, because you want to rip answers from my tongue?”
“No. I really do need some new clothes, and Buzz hates shopping with a passion. This is just a clever use of our driving time.” She shrugged, turning back toward the wheel and staring out the windshield. She didn’t speak for a long moment.
I glared at her. “So. . . you turned my girls’ day out, a rare treat that I’ve been looking forward to all day, into an ambush interrogation. And you’ve made me very uncomfortable and spoiled my mood—not that I’m trying to make you feel bad.”
“So, I guess I’m paying for the facials, huh?” she muttered.
“And maybe some waxing,” I said primly.
“I am not getting a Brazilian,” she told me. “Even my guilt has its limits.”
Evie managed to protect her nether regions from hot wax, but she did get the technician to “surprise” me with an eyebrow shaping while I was in the facial chair. She laughed more than should be legal in a hair-removal situation.
“I DON’T SEE why you’re still bitching,” Evie snickered as we hauled a few shopping bags in through the kitchen entrance of the saloon. It was just after closing time, and the bar was empty. Buzz was supposed to be waiting for us so Evie could give him a ride home. “You had a beautiful natural arch to your brow that was just begging to be set free.”
“It’s all fun and games until I end up looking permanently surprised,” I countered.
The saloon was unnaturally still and quiet without customers. All I could hear was the faint echo of the jukebox playing some old Waylon Jennings song.
Evie called, “Buzz, there are two ladies in need of assistance out here!”
Pete popped his head around the corner from the bar. “Hey, Evie, let me take those.”
Evie quirked her lips. “What are you doing here, sweetie?”
“Buzz asked me to wait for you. Alan got a call from the state police,” he said. “Some hikers went missing on the far northwest edge of the preserve. You remember those kids from ASU who came in the other day, tried to show fake ID for beer? They were planning to go up the mountain and play Survivor Man before the big weather hit.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t remember a specific pair of hikers over the last couple of days. So many tourists filtered through town that I’d stopped paying attention. The guilt of not being able to remember their faces gnawed at me. I’d started to see the world the way most people in town did. People who were from Grundy and people who weren’t.