Coldhearted Boss

I wish I could distract myself, but I didn’t bring a book and the light is off anyway. I try to close my eyes and tell myself to go to sleep, but I’m too hot and I’m not tired and I’m still on pins and needles waiting for my roommate to arrive. Surely he won’t stay out much later.

That’s when I hear the cabin door creak and my heart leaps into my throat.

He’s here!

Or a bear is sneaking in.

Either way, I play dead, eyes closed and everything.

In an ideal world, he’d dive straight into his bunk and start to snore.

No such luck.

Light suddenly filters past my closed eyelids and I realize he’s turned the lantern back on, though it must be on a different setting than I used because it’s a softer glow, barely enough to let him see what he’s doing.

I hear him over by the dresser and I peel one eye open just enough to see the top two inches of his dark brown hair as he reaches into the drawer for something. BRIEFS. BLACK BRIEFS.

The drawer closes and he steps back and I jerk toward the wall, using some of my pillow to conceal my face and hair. I know he notices because I hear a faint chuckle before the bathroom door closes, taking the lantern light with it. Water cuts on and the sound drowns out the loud hum of the cicadas outside.

He’s showering and I have to listen, which feels oddly intimate: the sound of the stream as it hits different parts of his body. He could be a monster with two heads and five hands for all I know, but that’s not the way I imagine him in there. Mr. Black Briefs.

The water cuts off a few minutes later and I’m under the sheet now with it tugged right up to my nose so I can peer over the top without my whole face showing. It’s absolutely absurd, this game I’m playing, but it seems too late to turn back now. Besides, I’ve already decided I’ll introduce myself in the morning. Right now, I just want to get a quick peek at him and put a face to the man who will be sleeping directly underneath me for the foreseeable future.

And I do get a peek at him. All of him.

Well, save for the low-slung shorts he apparently sleeps in. The rest of him, though? Bare. His broad, tanned chest. The smooth, rigid muscles composing his shoulders and arms. The impossibly sexy rows of abs and the sprinkle of hair leading down. Dark hair, enough to confirm he’s a man but not so much that I’m worried he’s part werewolf. He’s tall and trim and I’m so hung up on that body—the sharp difference between my curves and his seemingly endless firmness—that it takes me a moment to drag my gaze up to his face.

When I do, the earth falls out from underneath me.

He can’t be here.

In this cabin.

My eyes are playing a trick on me.

There’s no other explanation.

Because it looks like him.

The man from the bar, the man I took into the bathroom and seduced…

The man I stole from.

No.

Technically, I did take his wallet, but then I gave it back. No harm, no foul.

Except, that can’t be right. There must have been a foul because I’m here now and there’s no way it’s a coincidence. My body whirs to life as if preparing for fight or flight. I have a panicked urge to kick off my sheet, jump down from the top bunk, and bolt right out the cabin door. I spiral through a list of possibilities so quickly: he found me, and he brought me out here on purpose, and now he’s going to—

What?

Kill me?

For some reason, finishing the thought actually forces me to stifle a laugh. It’s totally crazy.

The fact is, coincidences do happen. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s not really all that much of a coincidence at all. He was probably at the motel in Oak Dale a month ago because it was the only place to stay within two hours of this jobsite. He and the other suits must all work for Lockwood Construction and they were in town that weekend working on some aspect of this project. There, that feels better. Talking myself out of paranoid hysteria is the right thing to do.

The alternative just doesn’t make sense.

It’s not feasible that he set this whole thing up to exact some kind of revenge.

It’s just not.

The light from the lantern cuts out and the cabin falls back into complete darkness, made even blacker by the fact that my eyes haven’t adjusted. I lie perfectly still and listen to him as he pads across the floor and folds himself into the bunk beneath mine. He settles in place and the cicadas hum loudly, acting as a white noise that drowns out the sound of my heart thumping hard in my ears.