“Hey, hop in.” Jackson tipped his head toward the passenger door. “I can have you cleared in a couple of minutes.”
Shane yanked the passenger door open and knocked the snow off his boots before getting into Jackson’s pickup truck. There had to be at least a foot of snow on the ground, but it was hard to tell with all the drifting.
“How much snow fell?” he asked, but Jackson shook his head and laughed.
“Snowfall totals. That’s cute. How the hell did you end up on the floor with Miss She’s-Not-My-Type in the middle of a goddamn blizzard? And sorry I barged in on you,” he added, putting the truck in gear.
Shane dismissed the apology with a wave. “Don’t worry about it. We were just sleeping.” He avoided the other question like it was every strain of the plague.
“Uh-huh. Right. I’m sure that’s exactly how her bra made it to the floor. Are you gonna tell me that you made water balloons with the condoms missing from my wallet, too? ’Cause really, I could call bullshit on you all day.”
Shit. Time to concede. “Okay, okay. She came out yesterday morning to talk to me about her car and got stuck here in the snow. You think I was going to let her drive that BMW with the roads like they were?” Shane shrugged. “So, you know. You called to say the roads were closed, and then we were stranded together...” He trailed off, letting Jackson fill in the blanks.
Jackson shook his head. “Leave it to you to get stranded with a pretty girl. If it had been me, I’d have been stuck with Mrs. Teasdale or something.” He arched a brow at Shane, maneuvering the truck to keep clearing the snow. “You know, when I told you I thought you should get laid, I didn’t think you’d actually do anything about it.”
Something he couldn’t quite name needled its way into Shane’s system, snapping his head up. “What happened with Bellamy isn’t like that.” The words came out on a warning, low and with more of an edge than Shane intended.
Which Jackson clearly noticed, because his brows shot halfway up his forehead. “No disrespect. It’s just that she’s the first woman you’ve been interested in since you moved here last year. I’m a little surprised, is all.”
The scrape and rumble of the snow plow was the only sound between them for a long pause.
“Sorry. I’m a little surprised, myself.” Shane looked out the window at the snow drifts. “Thanks for making sure she gets back okay. I know it’s out of your way.” Jackson really had been stretching the hell out of the truth when he’d said going by the resort was on his way home.
He chuckled. “Look, if you’re going to get juiced about a woman, she must be something special. I figure it’s not a bad plan to make sure she gets back intact. Plus, I’m just that kind of guy.”
Unable to help it, Shane cracked a grin. “Yeah, you’re a regular saint.” He paused to snort before continuing. “And this thing with Bellamy isn’t serious. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like her and all, but she’s definitely an uptown girl.”
He thought of Bellamy’s fancy background. When she’d finally admitted last night that she’d earned her MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, he wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or a little sick. It wasn’t just one of the best MBA programs in the US. It was ranked in the top five in the world.
And Shane lived in a five hundred-square-foot cabin in the mountains and wanted nothing more than to be a grease monkey for the rest of his natural born life. Talk about incompatibility.
Except she’d been so down to earth when she’d told him how she’d made half a dozen eggs explode like a bad science experiment in her parents’ microwave, then risked life and limb to scale a nine foot ladder to clean the ceiling so they wouldn’t find out. And her laugh was the perfect combination of provocative and sweet, just enough to make him feel torn between wanting to laugh along with her and kiss her until he ran out of air.
He didn’t even want to get started on how good it felt to do more than kiss her. He’d just gotten rid of that hard-on, thank you very much.
“Hellllloooo, earth to Shane?” Jackson waved a hand across Shane’s field of vision, making him jump.
“Sorry, what?” He really needed to snap out of it. Spacing out like that definitely wasn’t his bag, no matter how enticing the vision might be.
“I said, just because she’s a city girl doesn’t mean it won’t work out. Who knows? Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
Shane shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to blot the thought of Bellamy’s laugh from his mind. The sound was there to stay, even if the rest of her was headed back down the mountain in less than a week.
“Maybe.” He shrugged, focusing out the window again.
But the word tasted as cold as the snow they were shoveling.
18
“Oh my God, are you okay and if you try to tell me nothing happened between you and Mr. Goodwrench, I will so call you out! You were snowbound together for twenty-four hours. And, really, are you okay? Because, you know. Snowbound.”
Bellamy looked at Holly and laughed. “Wow. Hello just isn’t in your repertoire, is it?”
Holly looked back as if Bellamy had lost her mind. “Um, no. So?”
“So, to answer your question, I’m fine,” Bellamy said. She hugged Holly, then Jenna, before heading into the kitchenette with both of them hot on her heels.
Jenna fastened her with a wry smile. “Glad you’re back in one piece. There’s got to be at least a foot of snow on the ground out there.” She clucked her tongue and aimed her glance at the postcard-perfect view from the main room of the suite.
“Fifteen inches, but that’s the unofficial total.” At least, that’s what Jackson had said just before they’d left the garage, with Bellamy following slowly behind. The roads were still pretty slick, but the longer trip back gave her plenty of time to think about all that had happened in the last couple of days.
Some of the images were a lot more appealing than others.
Bellamy pressed her glorious post-sex smile between her lips in an effort to conceal it. “Do we have any food left? I’m starving.” Her stomach chose that exact moment to chime in with a loud gurgle, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, she realized how hungry she really was.
“Oh, God, honey. Of course you should eat.” Holly rushed forward to yank on random cupboard doors. “And if you should feel some burning urge to, I don’t know, tell us every gory detail of being stuck in a blizzard with the red-hot mechanic guy in between bites, we wouldn’t shush you. Pretzels?” She shook a half-empty bag at Bellamy, eyebrows lifted.
“That’ll work.” At this stage of the game, Bellamy wasn’t above instant gratification to keep her stomach from imploding, although what she really needed was an actual meal, complete with food groups. “But I’d give my left arm for a good omelet.”
Jenna snorted and slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar. “Then don’t order one from room service.”
“Right. I’ve got to get back to Joe’s. I think I can finagle flatbread pizzas out of that toaster oven if I play my cards right.” Bellamy canted her head at the oven where she’d successfully melted the Brie over thick slices of French bread a couple days earlier. The pretzels were kind of a disappointment after the thought of pizza, but she was too hungry to be picky.