Instead, he fixed his grip on the steering wheel and held tight enough for his knuckles to turn white as the healthy post-coital rush of endorphins seeped through him, giving rise a far more dangerous contentment. He had to keep his mind and his eyes on what mattered. This single country lane had no streetlamps. He could see no further than the cast of the headlights. He was driving the speed limit but he felt he was hurtling headlong into darkness far faster than he should be. Any minute something or someone could loom up into that light, and he wouldn’t have time to brake before the impact.
He’d never seen Jenny coming, that was for sure. Since Brazil, he’d made a point of living one day at time, looking no farther than the birds he could track through the lens of his camera. Seemed like the best prescription for what he was ailing from. But under this unexpected contentment, he was still the man he was before she loomed up out of the darkness to knock him senseless, even if the impact still scrambled his mind. He’d only known her for days. This thing between them was supposed to be limited to great sex. He had no right to hold the hand of this woman, to make any deeper promise.
The breeze had kicked up into burst of rain-heavy gusts by the time he drove into the driveway, his mind till turning in circles. He turned the engine off. Next to him, Jenny flexed like a sleep-roused cat.
“I don’t know about you,” she murmured in a silky voice, “but I could sleep for twelve straight hours.”
“Yeah,” he said, just before he hopped out of the truck to avoid the heavy-lidded look in her eye. They’d be sharing a bed tonight, that didn’t have to be said, yet already he was feeling a creeping uneasiness. What kind of message would he be wordlessly telegraphing when he pulled her against him in the darkness, not for another bout of mind-blowing sex, but just so her head would tuck under his chin, so he could fall asleep with the scent of strawberries in his head?
“Hey Logan, I left my sunglasses and shirt on the lounge chair out back this morning,” she said over her shoulder as she headed around the side of the house. “I’m going to fetch them before the wind carries them off.”
He nodded a reply, fiddled for the keys, and entered the cabin. Tossing the keys on a counter, he sauntered down the hall to the bathroom, flicked on the light, and splashed his face cold. With water dripping off his jaw, he stared at the unshaven man in the mirror, wondering how long he could stretch the little time he had with Jenny and pretend this was just about ground-shaking sex. With this trouble knotting tighter in his mind, he brushed his teeth, stripped to his boxers, changed the tangled sheets on the bed, and wondered what was taking his girl so long.
His girl.
Pulling on a T-shirt, he strode into the kitchen, shading his eyes against the glass to peer into the darkness through a back window. He didn’t see Jenny, but he saw light pouring out from his shed, flickering with the movement of her shadow. He jerked away from the window. A dark hand closed over his heart. She didn’t belong in there. She hadn’t been invited.
He gripped the doorknob and hesitated, the brass heating in his hands, vacillating between confronting her or just turning back to the bedroom and ignoring the intrusion. He didn’t want to explain himself. He’d told exactly three people the truth, and he never wanted to speak of it again. But his stomach knotted as he stood there, debating. There was no way to dodge the questions she would have on her lips, or in her eyes.
Gusts of wind tugged at his tee-shirt as he padded barefoot through the grass under a sky eclipsed of stars. Rain was coming, and soon. Stepping into the doorway, he found her seated on a stool inside, cradling one of his finished pieces in her hands. She looked up as he entered.
“I…I didn’t mean to pry,” she stuttered, lifting her cupped hands. “I’m sorry.”
Logan’s throat tightened. She held a carving of a Western Meadowlark. One of his earlier pieces, simpler than the bird carvings he was working on now, still lying about in raw wood upon the table, unpainted, awaiting his attention.
“The chairs were overturned on the grass,” she said, lowering her cupped hands to her lap. “The wind is kicking up, so I figured I’d put them away. So I dragged them in here and….”
He glimpsed a folded lounge chair leaning against the inside wall, and the plastic table upon which he’d set her burger earlier in the day. An accident, this intrusion. She hadn’t meant to pry. He should have padlocked the door if he wanted to keep secrets
“It’s late.” He banked his anger, knowing it was unreasonable. He hadn’t marked out this shed as off-limits, or forbidden her to enter, or said a word about what he was doing back here while she worked in the lab. Only twenty-four hours ago they were roommates trying to keep out of each other’s way. “I’ll close up,” he said, stepping away from the door to give her space to walk through. “You go ahead inside.”
“Did you really make this, Logan?”
His ribs tightened, dug deep. She didn’t budge from the chair. But he
