“I’m so glad you’re okay now and that he’s no longer alone.”
“Thanks, Win.” Nate glanced back at her. “Do you know why he cooks so well?”
Winona had no idea. “Because he likes to eat?”
“That’s part of it.” Nate chuckled. “Learning to cook with my mother’s old recipes made him feel that she was still with us.”
“Oh.” That put a lump in Winona’s throat.
“I can understand that.” Jason’s voice held a hint of sadness. “There are things my mother made, like her mole poblano, that were special. No one made mole sauce the way she did. I think she sweetened it with sitol—saguaro syrup.”
“If you’ve got the recipe or can get a hold of it, you should give it a shot—or let my old man try to make it. He’d love the challenge, I’m sure.”
“I just might do that.”
Nate drove the truck around a bend in the road. “There it is.”
The cabin wasn’t the small, rustic cabin Winona expected, but a log home, its porch light on to welcome them.
“This is beautiful.” The place was bigger than Winona’s house.
Nate parked near the front stairs, handed Jason the keys. “They brought your bags here earlier. I think one of the men got a fire going in the wood stove, so it should be nice and warm. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at nine for breakfast, and then we can see the horses and do some riding if you like.”
Winona and Jason thanked Nate and climbed out, Winona waving as Nate backed up and drove away. They walked up the stairs through about three inches of accumulation, Winona inhaling the scents of snow and wood smoke, coyotes yapping and howling in the distance.
“It’s so peaceful up here.”
“They call this a cabin?” Chuckling, Jason pushed open the door and stepped back so that Winona could enter.
She flicked on the lights and found their bags sitting in a short hallway just inside the door. “This is nice.”
They gave themselves a quick tour. A leather sofa sat across from a flat-screen TV, a wood stove in one corner, a fire roaring inside. The blinds were drawn back so that she could see the sliding glass door and the hot tub that glowed blue on the deck beyond, steam rising off the water.
There were two bedrooms. One was off the living room and had a queen-sized bed and an en suite bathroom with a large tub. The other was off the kitchen and had a bunk bed and a leather recliner. There was a second smaller bathroom near the back door.
“These Wests don’t do anything halfway, do they?” Jason picked up his duffel. “You can have the big bedroom. I’ll take the bunk.”
Before they could debate the issue, he disappeared into the back.
Winona carried her bags to her room. “I don’t know about you, but I’m heading straight for that hot tub.”
She set her bags down on the bed, closed the bedroom door, and changed into her bikini. She’d forgotten to bring a towel, but there were plenty of those in the bathroom. She tucked one under her arm and stepped out of the bedroom.
She stopped mid-stride and stared.
Jason stood there in a pair of black swim trunks, a towel in hand, his torso beautifully bare from his muscular shoulders to the rounded slabs of his pecks and his well-defined abs and obliques. The man was a walking anatomy lesson. Could he possibly be any sexier?
His gaze slid over her, pausing on her breasts and belly, sending a trill of excitement through her. It had been such a long time since she’d been with a man, so long since a man had made her feel desired or even desirable.
You’ll be sorry if you sleep with him.
Yes, she probably would. But she might regret it even more if she didn’t.
“You ready?”
Yes. Yes, she was.
Chapter 11
Jason had only himself to blame.
He could have turned down the Wests’ offer of a night at the ranch and gone back to McBride’s. He’d be shooting the shit with Zach over a couple of beers now instead of wondering how he was going to keep his hands off Winona.
God, she was perfect. Everything about her made him want her—the gentle curves of her breasts, the flare of her hips, her slender legs, the way her gaze moved over him. But he’d been down this road before, and it led nowhere.
None of those women were Winona.
They sure as hell weren’t.
Winona started toward the door. “This water is going to feel so good after hiking in the cold wind.”
“Yeah,” he managed to say, following her, his eyes drawn to the irresistibly sweet mounds of her ass, which shifted enticingly as she walked.
She opened the sliding glass door and stepped outside into the snow without the slightest hesitation.
Jason had never walked barefoot in snow before. “That’s cold.”
“Don’t tell me a little snow is too much for a Desert Person,” she teased. “In the winter when we do the inipi—our name for the sweat lodge ceremony—we often have to walk barefoot through snow. When I walk from the lodge to the women’s tipi to change afterward, my hair and clothes freeze almost instantly.”
He couldn’t imagine that. “Don’t you worry about hypothermia?”
“We’re so warm from the lodge that the cold feels good.” She held the handrail and stepped down into the hot water, her sigh of pleasure as she sank up to her chin sending a rush of blood to Jason’s groin. “Oh, this is wonderful.”
Jason did his best to hide his growing erection as he made his way down into the water, the heat sending tingles of pleasure up his spine. “Is now the time to tell you I’ve never been in a hot tub before?”
She gaped at him. “Never?”
“Never.”
Snow fell steadily from the sky, melting on the surface of the water and landing in their hair and on his bare shoulders, the forest around them silent. Even the coyotes were quiet now. Overhead, storm clouds hid the stars. It felt magical.
Or maybe that was Winona.
She moved toward him through the water and ran a finger over the scar on his shoulder, concern on her pretty face. “Is this where you were shot?”
His pulse tripped.
He looked down at the line of heat her fingertips traced over his skin. “Yeah. A trafficker took a shot at me from behind some rocks. It wasn’t bad—just a deep graze.”
“I bet it was painful.”
“At the time, I was just pissed.”
“Did he get away?”
Jason shook his head. “The Wolf pack surrounded him and brought him in.”
She ran her fingertips over his tattoo. “Does this mean something?”
He watched her as her fingers explored the maze, his blood hotter than the water now. “It’s the Man in the Maze. The little guy here is I’itoi, who helped Creator make our people. He’s a bit of a trouble-maker. We call him Elder Brother. The maze represents the journey of life and death—the choices we face, the unexpected turns, the dead ends. The center represents your dream, the purpose of your life, the end of your journey.”
Lips he wanted to kiss curved in a smile. “I like that.”
Then she touched the scar above his left nipple. “Were you shot here, too?”