Crossing the room while double-checking to ensure no visible trace of Alexa remained, she pressed her fingers to the beating pulse in her neck before opening her door a crack. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” He tried to peer into her room, but she’d wedged herself into the opening. “I’m hungry, but I didn’t want to use the kitchen without permission. I saw the light on under your door or I wouldn’t have knocked.”
“Oh.” Seeing him standing in the dark hallway inspired another fantasy—one of him playfully holding up a jar of honey before forcing his way into her room and locking the door behind him. He had, after all, enjoyed using food as a form of foreplay.
Fortunately, he hadn’t noticed the awkward pause caused by yet another daydream, because his gaze had dropped to her feet and stuck there. She looked down and stifled a groan. Apparently he’d never seen a grown woman wearing plush bunny slippers. Fur-lined stilettos were more likely his preference. “You can grab a snack if you’d like. I’ve got plenty of fruit and cereal on hand.”
He shook his head and leaned against the doorjamb, crowding her. She detected a faintly spicy scent, which brought back another visceral memory of collapsing against his shoulder and nestling her face close to his neck. Her eyelids suddenly felt heavy from the heavenly recollection.
“I’m hungry.” He shifted his weight to his other foot. “I want hot food, and I don’t know where you keep stuff.”
Midnight cooking had never been part of the deal, but Wyatt looked tired and helpless. He’d been pushing himself all week with Trip. Thankfully, the past four days had come and gone without incident.
Resigned to her fate, she stepped into the hall, chenille robe wrapped tightly around her body.
“Let’s go see what I can whip up.” Emma admitted to herself that she enjoyed feeding others. Food comforted. It lingered. It aroused the senses, as he well knew. She rather looked forward to comforting him in this safe way. “How about poached eggs, sliced avocados with cayenne pepper, and a little multigrain toast?”
“Sounds awesome.” His hazel eyes twinkled, sending her heart aloft like a hot air balloon. What might it be like to have him look at her like that every day? The juvenile wish made her give herself a mental eye roll. Honestly. As if he wouldn’t lose that intrigued look by week two, or sooner. “Thanks.”
Unlike her, Wyatt wasn’t wearing silly slippers or fuzzy pajamas. His thin sweatpants hung low on his hips. A fitted, long-sleeved shirt clung to the defined muscles of his shoulders, arms, and chest. As usual, he exuded some kind of magnetic pull, making her body whirr with yearning.
What she couldn’t quite decide was whether it had to do with Wyatt, per se, or with the fact that he represented her one and only experience of breaking from societal expectations. Or maybe it was because she’d spent hundreds of hours with “Dallas.” Had she now confused her book’s hero with the real man, who would surely be more flawed than the fictional character? Still, she felt like the heroine in her book now, walking beside Wyatt, her pulse kicking about, her skin prickly with heat.
As they made their way along the shadowy hallway to the creaky stairs, Wyatt asked, “Would you be a little afraid to be alone in this big house?”
Suppressing a giggle, she glanced over her shoulder. “No.”
“You don’t think spirits hang out with all this old stuff?” He slid a sideways glance at a headdress near the landing.
She stopped, midstride. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Maybe. Back in Vermont there’s Emily’s Bridge, which is really the Gold Brook Bridge in Stowe. But people say a girl named Emily has been haunting it since the ’60s.” Wyatt shrugged, utterly serious. “Haven’t you ever had the feeling that something else was in the room with you? Felt a shift in energy?”
Given the gravity of his hushed tone, she had to consider it. “If I have, I probably assumed it was the heat kicking on or a draft from the old windows.” Emma kept walking toward the kitchen, thankful Mari’s stupid cameras, which looked a little spooky at night, weren’t rolling. “I wouldn’t have taken you for someone who believes in haunted houses.”
“You mock me.”
“No. It’s just . . . there’s no proof they exist.”
“There’s no proof that God exists, either, yet most people believe in Him.” Wyatt grinned. “Based on the cross in my room, I’d guess that includes you.”
Emma frowned, imagining her mother’s horror at the comparison. “I suppose I can see the analogy.”