Baby It's Cold Outside (12 page)

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Authors: Addison Fox

BOOK: Baby It's Cold Outside
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“Hey. I showered this morning. And so did the guys back there.” Walker shot a look toward the back of the restaurant, satisfied to see that everyone looked reasonably clean. “Well. Most of them, anyway.”
“Yep. Ego and long stretches of loneliness are a dangerous combination.”
“I’m not lonely.” And he wasn’t. He could find female companionship when he wanted it. He lived life on his terms. He was happy.
And damn it, he wasn’t lonely.
The laughter had stopped, leaving in its wake a broad smile that lit up her face. “Then you make up for it with ego.”
Walker couldn’t resist smiling back. “You have that right.”
Their waitress arrived, putting down the check. He reached for it automatically, causing another raise of those sleek eyebrows.
“I’m here for research. I can get it.”
“You were here to eat. With me. So I’ve got it.”
“Walker.” She extended a hand. “I don’t want to make a stupid deal out of this, but I
am
working.”
He already had the cash out of his pocket and the bill back to their waitress before Sloan could protest any further. “So come on then and work. I’ll give you the downtown tour. I need to walk off these pancakes.”
Without waiting for her to agree or disagree, he stood and shrugged into his coat, then held hers out to her. “I see you remedied your coat situation.”
“Just this morning. Sandy was more than happy to oblige.”
“I’ve no doubt of that. Did she rake you over the coals?”
“It’s a price I paid willingly.”
He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Sucker!”
Even as the word lingered between them, Walker knew the moniker was far more applicable to him.
Sloan ignored him and pulled her hair from where it was stuck in her collar, the long fall of blond drawing his attention like a compass to true north. Mouth dry, he struggled for some response that wouldn’t give away how thoroughly she affected him.
And as they stepped out onto Main Street a few minutes later, he was still trying to come up with something.
Chapter Seven
 
“T
our” wasn’t really the right word, Sloan thought reflectively a half hour later as they passed a monument that stood at the far end of town. A love letter would have been a better description of her walk through the town of Indigo with Walker Montgomery.
He’d guided her from one end of Main Street to the other pointing out landmarks, from where the town’s most ardent moose liked to come cozy up while looking for love, to the place he, Mick and Roman got drunk (and sick) for the first time.
It was interesting, she mused, as they neared the far end of town, how much pride she could hear in his voice when he spoke of these things.
He loved living here. Really, truly loved it.
“What’s the monument for?”
She expected him to say it was a war memorial and yet again, had to change her expectations at the answer.
“Love.”
“Really?”
“The grandmothers commissioned it.”
“An entire monument?” Sloan had to tilt her head back to see the top of it. Who did that?
“Julia’s husband died when she was only thirty-six.”
Pulling her gaze away from the top, she turned toward him. “Losing a spouse at any age would be hard, but to lose someone that young—it must have had a huge impact on her.”
Walker nodded and an unexpected softness tinged the hard edges of his jaw as his mouth curved into a slight smile. “It had a huge impact on all three of them.”
Sloan moved forward to look at the monument, glancing over her shoulder as her boots crunched on the snow. “Is that where the competition came from?”
“In part. They wanted a celebration to kick off the unveiling of the monument. And at that celebration, my mother and father hooked up after the dinner and dance that was tied to the festivities.”
“So you’ve got quite a legacy to live up to.”
“At times.”
As she walked around the base of the monument, she couldn’t stop the warmth that filled her as she observed the smooth lines and curves of the granite. Again, another assumption blown to bits. She’d seen the monument from a distance and immediately thought it was a war memorial.
And instead it was the antithesis.
The monument suggested a man and a woman wrapped around each other, even though it was more an abstract sense of movement than two clearly defined bodies. Long, curving lines matched with hard-edged corners. A sensual feast chiseled out of one of the most unyielding substances on earth.
As she simply stood and soaked in the sensuality the piece evoked, she wondered if she was as unyielding as the granite that arched before her. How could she have—even for one moment—thought it was a war memorial?
It was yet another testament to assumptive thought and a stubborn close-mindedness that seemed to have gripped her since stepping off the train the evening before.
“Do you like it?” Walker’s breath puffed out in front of him, the husky timbre of his voice magnified by the biting cold.
“It’s beautiful. And unexpected. Pretty much like everything else in this town.”
“You haven’t been here that long.”
“And hardly anything is what I thought it would be.”
“What were you expecting?” Sloan turned his words over in her mind, unable to decipher a lick of snark in them. He must have sensed the question in her gaze because he added, “And there’s no prickly stick in my ass prompting the question.”
No, there wasn’t.
“I’ve spent my life in an environment that’s all about expectations. And I guess I never realized how many of them I had myself. It’s sort of an irritating discovery, truth be told.”
“Irritating?”
“Deeply.” She sighed and kneeled down as her gaze landed on the edge of a carving etched in the marble base of the monument. With her gloved hand, she brushed away the snow caked there to reveal words.
The rush of emotion caught her—blindsided her, actually—square in the throat. On a whispered breath, she read the engraving. “‘For those we aren’t allowed to keep.’ ”
Silence descended between them and in the still quiet, Sloan heard the distant honk of a car horn, the light punctuation of shouted conversations farther down Main Street.
“You should probably stand up. Your jeans aren’t made for kneeling in the snow.” As Walker extended his hand to her, helping her rise, Sloan couldn’t quite keep the unexpected sentimental tears from spilling over.
With a peculiar clarity, she couldn’t help but compare these tears to the ones she’d shed only a few nights prior, after her encounter with Trent. Where that had left her empty and sad, this left a different sort of mark.
Something quieter. Deeper. And oddly, more hopeful.
True love
did
exist.
It lived and breathed, floating on the air and dancing a merry tune between those lucky enough to find it.
“Thank you for bringing me here.”
Walker removed one of his gloves and ran a finger from her chin to her jaw, then over her cheek to catch a tear on the tip. Her stomach tightened at the tender ministration, the barely-there touch registering with the force of a hurricane.
A lock of dark hair blew against his forehead in the light breeze that swirled around them as he reached toward her other cheek. With the same tenderness, he brushed away another tear as she fought the urge to lean in to him. Caught in the moment, need rose up to replace the nerves in her belly with a growing, greedy desire for more of his touch.
She wanted to take, but something held her back. Nerves? Fear?
With one last glance toward the monument, she stepped back, turning herself in the direction of downtown.
“We should get back.”
He gave a short nod and a simple, husky, “Yes.” But as she walked next to him down the frozen sidewalks of Main Street, Sloan felt the heat of desire that burned the air hot between them.
 
The words blurring before his eyes had Walker reaching for the pair of wire frames that lay next to his coffee mug. With the reluctant grace of someone who knew he was losing the battle, he shoved the glasses onto his nose and stared down at the brief that awaited his attention.
“You wearing those to poker night, Mr. Professor?”
Walker glanced up to see Mick O’Shaughnessy standing in his doorway, a leather jacket slung over one shoulder and a steaming mug in the other hand. “Who the hell let you in?”
“The ever-delightful Myrtle.”
Far too many manners had been drilled into him—and the door stood way too open—for Walker to laugh at Mick’s description. However, Walker suspected the word “delightful” had never made it into the same sentence as the name Myrtle Driver in all the woman’s sixty-plus years.
“She got you coffee, too?” Walker gave a dry stare at his own now cold mug, acknowledging the fact that in the decade he’d employed Myrtle, the woman had never so much as brought him a glass of tap water.
“What can I say?” A broad, cocky grin spread across Mick’s face. “It’s damn good coffee, too.”
“Nothing. You can say nothing.” Walker crossed the room to the small sink in the corner of his office, dumping the cold coffee and then pouring a fresh cup from the perpetually full pot he kept on the small counter next to the sink.
After dumping in a liberal amount of sugar, he grabbed the seat next to Mick, stretched out his legs and balanced the mug on his knee. “What’s up?”
“I finished up my runs early today. Thought I’d see if you wanted to grab a beer.”
“I could be persuaded.” Walker thought about the work he’d drowned himself in since his morning walk with Sloan and nodded. The legal brief on his desk was his last chore of the day and it would keep. “In fact, it’s inspired. You, however, may not want to go with me once you find out I’m a traitor to the cause.”
Mick took a sip of his coffee, his gaze speculative over the rim. “Because you’re entering the auction?”
“Fuck.” Walker scrubbed a hand over his jaw, the day’s stubble making a satisfying scratch. “There really are no secrets in this town. How’d you find out?”
“The note I got in study hall pretty much tipped me off.”
“Smart-ass.”
“It’s all anyone out at the airstrip could talk about.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Hell no. I barely had the damn plane on the ground before Maggie was chattering in my headset. She claims she heard it from Renee who heard it herself at the diner this morning.”
Of course. Even he wasn’t dumb enough to think he and Sloan had any privacy during breakfast. “At least she let you land.”
“True,” Mick added drily. “She’s actually quite smart and pragmatic under that mile-long streak of gossip she’s always spouting. She’s already working on me. And then she got Darlene in on it; she harangued me some more while signing off on my paperwork.”
“Work? There couldn’t have been much of that going on today.”
“Other than my paperwork, I don’t think she did a lick of it. Instead, she spent the day making a list of the women who are landing in a few days’ time so she can pass out a checklist. Apparently she’s created some bachelorette scoring system and everything.”
“Does TSA know she’s copying their names for a distribution list?”
Mick raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
“Shit.” Walker did another scrub with his fingers, this time over his suddenly aching temples. “What the hell have our grandmothers wrought?”
“The apocalypse.”
“You competing?”
“I think I’m rearranging my sock drawer that day,” Mick drawled.
“Now that Sloan’s in, Grier may not be far behind.”
Mick shrugged as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips for another sip, but Walker didn’t miss the stiffening shoulders or the slightly too-casual tone. “Doesn’t mean I should give my grandmother the satisfaction of actually entering the auction.”
“Suit yourself.”
Mick stood and grabbed his jacket. “Come on. Let’s go.”
A quick knock on the doorframe stopped them. “Walker. I need two minutes.”
With a glance at Jessica, he nodded. “Sure. What’s up?”
“More affidavits from the men on Jonas’s crew. All of them claim he talked about a daughter.” Walker took the papers from her, eyeing Mick before scanning the information quickly.
“I’ll give you two some privacy. Walker, come meet me at the Indigo Blue when you’re done.”
Walker didn’t miss the smirk on his friend’s face but refused the bait.
If Mick wanted to spend the evening in the company of some New York bachelorettes—which he had no doubt the man did—who was he to argue? With an eye to the affidavits, he glanced up at Jessica. “They don’t say which.”

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