He might have thought it was the fact that he hadn’t kissed a woman in over a year. But it wasn’t. It was Kensie. The smell of her, some faintly spicy perfume filling his nostrils. The feel of her, little more than an outline through her thick coat. The soft sounds she was making in the back of her throat as she started to kiss him back.
It was less than twenty degrees out here, but he was fast becoming as overheated as he’d been those first days serving in the desert. The thought sent his heart into overdrive, memories of his friends in happier times mingling with Kensie, with the way she was clinging to him.
It was all too much.
Colter let himself have one more taste of her and then he pulled back, breathing hard. Staring down into her dazed eyes, he tried to get hold of himself.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, barely able to speak.
Confusion knitted her forehead and then she tipped her chin up. “I’m not.”
She tapped the side of her leg like she’d probably seen him do to get Rebel to follow, then headed toward his truck. When he didn’t immediately move, she glanced back, her hair flipping over her shoulder, full of sass. “You coming?”
Rebel was staring up at him, too, her expression plaintive, her tail sweeping slowly, clearing snow from the road.
After that kiss, she thought he might not follow? Still feeling as though his heart might pound its way right out of his chest, Colter hurried after her.
He barely even felt his leg.
Chapter Six
Kensie had hardly slept last night as thoughts of the kiss she’d shared with Colter played over and over in her mind. Instead, she’d tossed and turned in her surprisingly plush, comfortable hotel bed a few miles outside of Desparre. The outside looked like an enormous log cabin, but the inside was as opulent as anywhere she’d been in Chicago.
According to the manager, the hotel attracted mostly tourists from out of state during the summer months. They’d hoped to make Desparre a destination spot, a look at the “true” Alaska. Instead, they were slowly failing, the manager had whispered to her sadly. Kensie had the hotel practically to herself.
She should have felt pampered. But all she’d wanted to do was drive out to another log cabin, this one much smaller and filled with the overwhelming presence of a man who was no good for her.
She still couldn’t believe he’d kissed her. Yes, she’d felt his reciprocated attraction from the start. But he was broken, possibly even more broken than she was.
He hadn’t shared much about his time in the military besides his role and the fact that he’d been a soldier for almost a decade. Maybe he just didn’t know how to do anything else. Or maybe the soldier in him couldn’t live with a physical disability.
Kensie didn’t care about his physical limitations. But she did know two things: he was too emotionally damaged to be relationship material, even if she was looking, and she couldn’t let him distract her from this chance to find Alanna.
Right now, still yawning from her sleepless night, Kensie darted a furtive glance at Colter. He walked beside her, Rebel between them, near the store where Alanna’s note had been found. The plan this morning was to canvass the nearby stores, see if they could find someone who knew anything.
Colter looked like he hadn’t slept any better than she had. With his light skin, the circles under his eyes seemed even more prominent. Every twenty feet or so, his right leg dragged a little. For him to even let her see that much, she figured it was hurting him badly. That could have been the reason for both his lack of sleep and his grumpiness.
But she suspected the latter had more to do with the kiss they’d shared last night. When he’d picked her up downtown this morning, he’d handed her a disposable cup with the scent of coffee wafting from it and given her a gruff nod hello. Not exactly the slow, intimate smile she’d been expecting, but maybe it was a good thing.
Except right now, his continued brooding was beginning to annoy her. She didn’t want to be ungrateful for his help, but she also didn’t want to tiptoe around him.
“Maybe we should split up.”
He frowned at her with the most direct eye contact he’d given her all morning. “Why?”
She pointed up ahead at the two businesses sharing a parking lot: a snowplow store and a diner that smelled like grease even from a distance. “We’ll accomplish more, faster.”
He grunted like he didn’t believe her explanation, but she was actually grateful as he and Rebel headed off to the diner. The man may have been emotionally unavailable, but he was also six foot two of muscled temptation. Her willpower was pretty good, but even in his bad mood, walking beside him had made her unusually aware of his every move.
Time to focus on Alanna, Kensie reminded herself as she pushed open the door to the snowplow supply store. As the heavy door slammed closed behind her, she stared in awe. It was more like a warehouse than a store, filled with machines that dwarfed her. At the far end she saw a huge garage door and a checkout counter.
While most of the people she’d met in Desparre looked like they’d either been here forever or the extreme weather had aged them before their time, the guy manning the counter was young. Maybe twenty, with three piercings on his face and tattoos snaking out of both sleeves. He looked like part-time help.
She forced a friendly smile onto her face as she approached. Years of pleas on news stations and talk shows beside her parents, of trailing behind them as they questioned potential witnesses, had taught her that people responded to two things: a friendly approach and a sob story.
This was the part she hated most, selling
