Page 33 of Cowboy in Colorado

Ugly crying.

Can’t see through my tears, snot dripping from my nose, shoulders shaking, hair sticking to my cheeks and nose and chin—that kind of ugly crying.

“Brooklyn, breathe.” His voice is close, that same low, soothing murmur he uses on horses.

And it works.

I suck in a breath. Another.

“There you go. It’s okay. Just breathe.”

It’s not okay.

I bite my lip and try to breathe, but all I can smell is Will, and him being wet only brings his natural scent out all the more. His body heat radiates against me, and I’m so cold, so wet. Shivering, shaking uncontrollably. I feel myself leaning forward. His body is hard, a wall of muscle.

His heart beats steadily against my cheek, and I feel his hands resting awkwardly and reluctantly on my shoulders. “Breathe, Brooklyn. You’re safe. It’s okay.”

I breathe him in, hear his voice—and my sobbing lessens.

I have never felt so small or so weak in all my life—yet, here, in this cabin, with his arms around me, I’ve also never felt so safe. Yet I can’t seem to stop the tears. They lessen, so I’m no longer ugly crying, just helplessly sobbing, but I can’t entirely calm down, either. I hurt all over. I ache. I’m soaked and chilled to the bone, and I haven’t eaten since this morning, and I’m just utterly overwhelmed by everything.

I shake my head when he continues to murmur soothing words. My fingers claw into the wet cotton of his shirt, until I feel the hard muscle beneath. His hands splay across my shoulders, and another shiver wracks my body.

“You need to dry off and warm up,” he says. “Come on.”

He leads me across the room—which I have been sobbing too hard to even see, as yet—and settles me down to the floor. I’m sitting on something soft and thick, a pelt of some sort. He drapes a heavy, thick, warm blanket over my shoulders. “Just sit tight for a minute.”

I close my eyes and focus on gathering some sort of composure. Breathe in, breathe out. I draw on my yoga training—sit cross-legged, head bowed, body slack and at rest, focusing on my breathing. Calm from top down, settling my nerves from scalp to toes, inch by inch, and I push away all thoughts again and again until my breathing is normal, slow and steady.

When I open my eyes, Will is squatting in front of the fireplace, stacking wood and kindling. His shoulders are impossibly broad. His shirt is sticking to his skin, showing the rippling muscles across his shoulders and around his spine, shifting as he moves. He strikes a match, sets a piece of kindling alight, touches that flame here and there until the fire is licking at the rest of the kindling. He blows gently, and the flames build, rise, engulf the wood, and then within seconds there’s a blaze roaring.

I huddle under the blanket and soak up the heat from the flames as they begin to reach me. Finally, I examine my surroundings.

It’s a small, one-room cabin. Tightly built, not a droplet of water showing anywhere, warm and dry. At first glance, it looks as rustic as you’d imagine a place like this, way out here. Literally one room: walk in and the kitchen occupies the back right corner—a refrigerator, a length of counter with a sink and cabinets below and above, a stove and range, some drawers, a floor-to-ceiling pantry. The back wall, just left of the kitchen, contains a shower stall, the showerhead suspended from the ceiling, knobs on the wall, a glass door. It’s tiny, and I have a hard time picturing a man Will’s size using it.

God, no, no, no—do NOT picture Will Auden in the shower. Do not.

Too late.

A blink of my eyes and my imagination runs wild—he would fill the tiny stall, shoulders brushing each wall, hot water droplets sluicing down his hard, rippling muscles…down his bare back to his taut, round, bare buttocks. He would be facing away from me, and I’d watch the water drip down his butt, and his head would be tilted back, his hands scraping over his scalp. He’d turn, then, and those fierce, vivid blue eyes would fix on me, and his hands would drop to his sides…and water would run over his shoulders and down, between the slabs muscle that is his chest, over the ridged six-pack abs…following the V-cut angling in to his manhood…

I blink again, shaking my head to rid myself of the idiotic images running rampant in my brain before it feeds me anything truly X-rated.

Nope, nope, nope.

What else is there in this little cabin?

A toilet next to the shower, just right out there in the open. The back left corner of the cabin contains a free-standing armoire type thing, clearly a handmade piece, carved with skill and love for the craft. Along the left wall is the fireplace, wide, deep, built with huge boulders running upward, a wooden mantle crossing at shoulder height. The bed is along the wall just beside the door, under the window—there is a window on either side of the door, and over the sink, letting in plenty of natural light—of which there isn’t any, at the moment, considering the late hour and the sky-blacking storm.

There’s a small wooden table, again handmade, with two chairs in the open space near the kitchen, a wood rack next to the fireplace containing firewood and a crate containing kindling and old newspaper; on the other side of the fireplace there’s a fireplace poker set—blackened tips of varnished, antique metal. The roof overhead is angled, with exposed wooden beams like at the Big House, but on a much smaller scale. And, oddly, there are electric lights hanging from the beams, antique-looking with Edison bulbs—unlit. There is no sound of electricity, no ticking clocks, no humming of the refrigerator—just the crackle of the flames.

Will is still crouched in front of the flames, watching the fire burn. I’m sitting on a bear-skin rug, the head is intact, teeth huge and white, eyes dark, jaw wide and furious. The fur is thick, coarse but still somehow soft. There is no couch, no easy chair, just a wooden bench with a high back facing the fireplace, cushioned by pillows made from old flannel shirts.

I look around again, at the workmanship of everything, and I have a feeling Will hand-built everything I’m seeing. It is unsurprising, and fits him, but the skill and quality of this cabin is a testament to his overall capability.

“You built this place?”

He nods, still facing the fire. “Well, sort of. There was a cabin here already, but it was old as the hills when my family first settled this piece of land. An old trapper’s cabin, probably, built by a mountain man from the earliest days of white exploration west of the Mississippi. We left it as is and used for hunting and as a base when looking for strays in these hills, but in time it got too run-down to be safe.” A pause. “So, I rebuilt it. Most of the logs in the walls are original from the first cabin, just sanded down and refinished.”