A Family Under The Stars

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His attempt at a positive sentiment matched her own, but with more confidence. She flexed her fingers. They would be perfectly safe. Just like her daughters were perfectly safe back in Sugar Falls. And as long as she didn’t think about how this was the first time she’d been away from her girls, perhaps she could think of this as a working vacation. What a great story she’d have to tell her children, and her blog followers, when she got back.

“Are you cold?” she asked, seeing that his flannel shirt was soaking wet. Focusing on someone else distracted her from worrying about whether she’d remembered to pack Audrey’s multivitamins or Elsa’s miniature neck pillow.

“I’ll be fine once I get dried off a little bit.” He began tugging at the buttons and Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that once she saw him shirtless, she’d never be able to forget the image.

Maybe she shouldn’t be focusing on him. She racked her brain for something to take her mind off the man undressing a few feet away from her, then remembered the pan of food sitting beside her. “I don’t suppose you grabbed any dishes or silverware?”

“Nope,” he said. She looked up at his bare torso, but her gaze didn’t go any higher than his chest, the golden skin taut against the contours of his muscles. Yep. Looking at him had been a big mistake. Before she made things worse by lifting her gaze to his face, her eyes shot away and focused on the baseball cap he’d tossed to the corner. She hadn’t seen him without the thing on and found herself desperately hoping that he was bald with some sort of misshapen skull that would detract from how stupidly attractive he was from the eyebrows down.

Charlotte peeked up to see a head full of thick, brown hair, damp and slicked back from his forehead. Hell. The guy was completely perfect. And she was trapped in tent with him and her own racing heartbeat.

Actually, she wasn’t trapped at all. She could unzip this thing and walk out any time she liked. As long as she didn’t mind getting electrocuted or pelted in the face with icy water. But a bit of fresh air would clear her head. “I’ll just run out and grab some plates and utensils real quickly. Do you know which box they’re in?”

“I don’t think leaving shelter right now is a good idea,” Alex said. “I know you probably take table settings and all that fancy dining stuff seriously, but maybe your readers would be interested in how good campfire meals taste when eaten straight from the pan.”

“You mean with our fingers?”

“That’s how people used to do it before they invented silverware.”

“Right.” The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was some sort of stuck-up princess. Actually, she shouldn’t want him to think about her at all. “Here, you first.”

“Wait, tell me what all you foraged,” he said, one eyebrow raised as he looked at the skillet. “Not that I don’t trust you, but there are plenty of poisonous plants growing around here and...”

“Actually, I studied a book on local plants before I came out. I didn’t use anything I wasn’t completely sure about.”

“Of course you didn’t,” he chuckled. “You’re a rule follower and a list maker.”

“And I’m an excellent packer,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted while reminding herself that the girls would be perfectly fine without her for one night. But when he squatted down next to her, his brow wasn’t the only thing raised. Her pulse had skyrocketed and she was in danger of becoming lightheaded.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“It means that I brought some dried seasonings with me in case we couldn’t find any.”

“It really is all about the staging and presentation, isn’t it?”

“Your tone is implying that I’m some sort of big faker.”

“Aren’t you?”

This guy must have some serious trust issues. Not that she didn’t. But she didn’t go around voicing them to strangers. She doubted he was trying to insult her directly, but she was getting the feeling he didn’t think too highly of her. “Not if I’m honest about the added ingredients,” she said, wishing she didn’t care about whether he liked her or not. But wanting to fit in and belong was an old habit that resurfaced in stressful moments like these. “I did find ginger, which I was expecting, as well as shortstyle onions and camas. I brought along the dried mustard, though, and the rosemary and parsley for the vegetables.”

He studied the small roundish-shaped bulbs she’d browned in the pan along with the fish. Charlotte had never eaten camas before, but her research said it had a potato-like flavor. He popped one into his mouth and chewed for a few seconds before swallowing. “I have to say, I’m pretty impressed.”

Her heart fluttered against her rib cage at the compliment. This was why she cooked. Because even if people didn’t appreciate her, they always appreciated her food.

She looked at the way the light sprinkling of hair covered his chest before tapering down into a narrow line over his stomach and almost admitted that she was pretty impressed herself.

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for strength because being surrounded by all this nature was sure bringing out her most uninhibited instincts. Not only had she never eaten straight out of a pan, she’d also never shared a meal with a half-dressed man.

He sat beside her and she put the skillet between them, thankful they both were facing the zippered door and not each other. Their temporary shelter had been advertised as a three-man tent, but there was barely enough room for her overactive imagination in this small space, let alone another person.

He ate a bite. “Wow. This is good.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean really good.”

“Did you think it wouldn’t be?”

“I didn’t want to doubt you, but Com says to never trust a skinny chef.”

“I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment.”

He let his grayish-green eyes travel over her again and she felt her nipples tighten in response. “It’s definitely a compliment.”

“Which part?” she asked. “The not trusting me part or the too-skinny part?”

“I didn’t say too skinny. In fact, I’d say you were just right.”

Suddenly, this tent felt like a portable steam sauna. Tiny curls sprang to life around her hairline and she adjusted her elastic headband—which wasn’t as sturdy as her normal tortoiseshell one, but went better with this casual outfit—to keep the wayward things from tickling her face.

They needed to get back to a neutral topic.

“Speaking of your grandfather, Commodore gave me a little history of the waterfall and some of the local legends.” There, that was a safe enough subject.

“Are you sure you mean Com?”

“Yes. That was your grandfather who drove me up here to meet you, right?”

“Yeah, but the old guy barely says more than two sentences at a time if he doesn’t know you. And if he does know you, you’ll wish he only said two sentences.”

“Really? He talked quite a bit, actually, about how he and your grandmother moved to Idaho after he got out of the Army because they wanted to start a family away from the...what does he call the suburbs?”

“The land of maggots on a grizzly bear?” he suggested.

“Yes, something like that. Anyway, he said his bride fell in love with the falls the moment she set her eyes on it and told him she’d rather have a boat than a house.”