Page 49 of Burnin' For You
He couldn’t help a smile. “I doubt that.”
“Have you ever eaten my baking?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
Or—shoot, had he really said that? He wanted to gulp it back the minute she stopped, looked at him, her mouth open.
Because to his ears, it sorta sounded like...
“No. You wouldn’t. Trust me. I’m not a girly-girl, and I can’t cook.”
Huh. “What does cooking—or baking—have to do with being a girly-girl? Some of the world’s best chefs are men.”
She started moving again. “You don’t get it.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I don’t want people to look at me like that—”
“Like what?”
“Like…I’m a hot cake.”
She stopped, turned and stood there, her hands on her hips, looking up at him, so much ferocity in her gaze that he just wanted to burst out laughing.
Because that was exactly what she was. Sweet and hot. So she didn’t have the traditional curves. She was strong and lithe, even hidden under her pilot jumpsuit, and could too easily resurrect the way, however briefly, she’d moved with him on the dance floor. Graceful. She embodied all sorts of hotness.
And that package came with a giant-sized allotment of kindness and determination to save his hide.
Yeah, she hadhot cakewritten all over her.
Oh shoot, his humor must have shown on his face, because her expression changed from ferocious to incredulous.
“You—what you are you thinking, Reuben Marshall?”
“Nothing.”
He strode out ahead of her.
“I don’t believe you.”
He was grinning, but slowed his pace, not wanting to aggravate her knee more.
“It’s just—” No.No.He couldn’t actually say the word.
And then, abruptly, he stopped. Through the thinning trees, under the waning of the sun, he made it out—the forest road. A gravelly strip of salvation.
She caught up to him, and before she could launch into another barrage, he pointed to the road. “We follow that, and we’ll find the trail to the lookout tower. We’ll have a chopper in here by midnight.”
She seemed relieved enough to let him off the hook as they came out to the road. Asphalt and gravel, it cut north from Yaak. One could follow it all the way to Canada.
“If we follow this about a mile or two, we’ll be about a half mile from the Garver lookout tower road. We’ll have to do more bushwhacking and maybe cross Pete Creek again—”
“No—”
“Sorry. The road intersects it just north of here. But…” He turned to her. “Are you sure you don’t want to hunker down here and wait? I’m sure someone will come by—”
“No. I can make it.”