Read Online Completely Smitten by Kristine Grayson - Free Book Online

you can’t stand, I thought I’d change my policies just this once.”
    She had laughed and then lit into the food. He probably thought her some kind of pig, the way she was eating. But it all tasted so fine. He’d even made fresh garlic bread. She couldn’t complain that the stove heated the building so much—not when it enabled the food to be this good.
    He had a lap tray too. He sat across from her in an overstuffed chair that looked as if it had seen better days. The upholstery sagged, and one of the sides looked as if it had been scratched by a cat, even though there was no cat in evidence.
    In fact, he had said he didn’t have one—although he had also said that he needed one, a comment she had found strange at the time.
    He had his feet up on the coffee table and seemed completely relaxed. Not at all like a man who had rappelled up the side of a cliff with a limp body in his arms and then had proceeded to cook a delicious dinner on a wood-burning stove.
    “How long have you been hiking?” he asked.
    She swallowed, feeling self-conscious. Did he think she was eating a lot because she hadn’t eaten in weeks? “Five days.”
    “Five days?” he asked. “All alone?”
    She nodded.
    “Most hikers who come through here have a companion.”
    “You can’t think about things if you have a companion.”
    “Ah,” he said, taking a sip of wine. “A vision quest?”
    She shook her head. “Just a chance to be alone after a hard year.”
    She didn’t want to tell him about the rotator cuff and the choices she was going to make. After what had happened today, that just might be too much. He probably felt sorry for her already.
    “Boyfriend doesn’t mind?” he asked.
    Normally, that wasn’t a question she liked to answer. Letting strange men know she was unattached often led to unpleasantness. But he wasn’t a strange man. She felt as if she had known him for a long time.
    Still, she took another bite of that excellent garlic bread before she said, “There is no boyfriend.”
    “No boyfriend?” He seemed both shocked and dismayed, as if it were important to him that she have someone in her life.
    “No boyfriend, no husband, no pet iguana. My friends and family know I’m here.” That was a bit of a stretch. One friend knew she had left, but no one else did. She didn’t want to be talked out of this. “But there’s no significant other to keep the home fires burning while I’m away.”
    In fact, there were no home fires either. She had given up her apartment for the summer and placed everything she owned in storage. She had planned that when she thought she’d be in Hawaii, training, and she saw no need to change it.
    She needed a new place, and she hadn’t found it yet.
    “I’d think, then, you’d want to take a trip with someone,” he said.
    She shook her head. “There are just times in your life when you want to be alone, you know?”
    “I do.” He swirled the wine in his glass. Her comment seemed to make him sad.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m intruding on your privacy.”
    He raised his head. “I never said that.”
    “You didn’t have to.” She leaned over and grabbed the wine bottle off the coffee table, somehow avoiding spilling her tray in the process. Every one of her muscles screamed in agony at the movement, but she ignored them. Muscle pain was something she was used to. “A person doesn’t live this far away from civilization because he likes company.”
    He watched her pour the wine into her glass and made no move to help. She appreciated that. It meant he wasn’t overprotective. She had been a little worried about that after he put the splint on her leg.
    “I don’t live up here,” he said.
    “Oh? This is awfully well appointed for a rental.” She finished pouring, then offered him the bottle.
    He took it and poured some wine into his glass before putting the bottle back on the table. “I come up here a couple of times a year. I like the isolation on a