Read Online The Smoky Mountain Mist by Paula Graves - Free Book Online Page A

next door down on the right. There’s a robe in the closet that should fit you. I’ll see if Paul’s left any clothes around you can borrow for the night.”
    When he emerged from the shower fifteen minutes later, he returned to the bedroom to find the bedcovers folded back and a pair of sweatpants and a mismatched T-shirt draped across the bed. A slip of paper lay on top of them. “Sorry, couldn’t find any underwear. Or anything that matched. After I shower, we’ll find something to eat.”
    She had finished her shower first and was already downstairs in the cozy country kitchen at the back of the house. “Something to eat” turned out to be tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
    Rachel had finally shed the dress she’d worn to Smoky Joe’s the night before, replacing it with a pair of slim-fitting yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt that revealed her long legs and slender arms. She was thinner than Seth normally liked in a woman, but he couldn’t find a damned thing wrong with the flare of her hips or the curve of her small, firm breasts.
    “Is tomato soup okay? I should have asked—”
    “It’s fine. I can grill the sandwiches if you want.”
    She turned to look at him, smiling a little as she took in his mismatched clothes. Her stepbrother, Paul, was a little slimmer than he was, so the clothes fit snugly on his legs and shoulders. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?”
    “The shower worked wonders,” he assured her, bellying up to the kitchen counter beside the stove, where she’d already prepared the sandwiches and set out a stick of butter for the griddle pan heating up over the closest eye. He dipped to get a better look at the stove top, relieved that it was a flat-top electric with no open-flame burners.
    She gave him a sidelong glance as he moved closer to where she stood stirring the soup. “I’m not used to cooking with company.”
    “Me, either.” He dropped a pat of butter on the griddle pan. It sizzled and snapped, and they both had to jump back to avoid the splatter.
    Rachel laughed. “I see why. You’re dangerous.”
    “We could switch,” he suggested. “Surely I can manage stirring soup.”
    Switching positions, they brushed intimately close. As Seth’s body stirred to life, he realized the cut of the sweatpants wasn’t quite loose enough to hide his reaction if he didn’t get his libido under control, and soon.
    Just stir the soup. Clockwise, clockwise, switch it up to counterclockwise—
    “Why are you so interested in what happened to me last night?” Rachel broke the tense silence.
    He glanced at her and found she was looking intently at the griddle, where she’d laid both of the sandwiches in a puddle of sizzling butter, her profile deceptively serene. Only the quick flutter of her pulse in her throat gave away her tension.
    “What is it they say? Save a person’s life and they’re your slave forever after? Maybe I’m just waiting for you to pay up.”
    She cut her eyes at him as if to make sure he was teasing. “Yeah, that’ll happen.”
    He grinned. “Maybe I’m sucking up to the new boss.”
    Wrong thing to say. Her slight smile faded immediately. “New boss. I haven’t even let myself think about that yet.”
    “Is that going to be a problem? Me being an employee, I mean. And being here like this. Because I’m feeling a lot better, really. I don’t have to stick around so you can watch out for my mental state.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I was thinking about being the boss, period. All those people depending on what I do and say now.”
    He had stopped stirring while they were talking, and a thin skin was forming on top of the soup. He started stirring again, quickly whisking the film away. “Hasn’t that been the case for a while now?”
    She was quiet a moment. “I guess so. It just didn’t feel real as long as my father was around to be my safety net.”
    To his dismay, he saw tears glisten in her eyes,