“Yes! I can text them to you.”

“That’s perfect. I’ll get it done, don’t worry. Call it an I’m-sorry-I-haven’t-checked-in gift.”

“Don’t even worry about it. I know how busy you guys are at the end of the month.”

“I’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as I can,” he assures me. “Keep me updated about HGTV, yeah? We’re rooting for you.”

“I will.” My face splits into a grin. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“Talk to you soon, doll.”

“Bye, Nate.”

I squeal giddily when I hang up, flouncing sideways to lie across the bed as elation wells inside me. It feels so good to be doing something again, even if it’s for Hunter’s benefit and not my own.

I’ve got to tell Hunter.

I imagine he’ll be excited, right? I think back to what he said last night and his attitude about the whole thing, and surely he’ll be grateful to find that someone is actually interested in this place, right? Of course free publicity will do nothing but good for the business.

Unless he thinks it’s none of my business, that is.

Oh shit.

I hadn’t even considered that. What if he gets angry that I would try to do something like this without his actual permission? I mean, it’s not like we’re old friends. We’re barely even friends with benefits. Is it weird that I would go out of my way to help him like this?

I think you like Hunter.

I roll face-first into the quilt and make a frustrated sound.

When noon rolls around the day after Tess’s and my…incident in the hot tub and I still haven’t seen her, it leaves me anxious. I can’t help but worry that I overstepped somehow, because when I offered to help her, it was about her, and yet when she offered to touch me, I couldn’t bring myself to say no. The memory of her small hands wrapped around my knot and the head of my cock resting in her mouth will be seared into my brain until long after I’m dead, to be sure.

I work through my anxiety by spending the morning in my other form; being on four legs always makes it easier for me to think, and if it means I’m farther away from the lodge and not constantly checking the stairs to see if Tess appears, all the better. The snow under my paws is like a balm on my fevered brain, cooling the heat of the memories there.

It took every bit of my restraint not to ask for more from Tess, not to beg her to let me drag her up to my room and bury myself between her legs. Hands, tongue, cock—I’m not even particularly picky about how. I’m just finding that with every time I touch her, it only makes me want to touch her more. And deep down, I know that’s dangerous. There’s a risk to keeping up what we’ve been doing, one that could end in the same heartache I’m more than familiar with, and yet…I can’t seem to stop.

I tell myself I could, if it came down to it. If Tess came to me and said she was all better, that she didn’t need my help anymore, I could put aside this aching want I seem to feel for her constantly and simply be her friend. But I know that the longer we keep this up…the less true that will be.

I’m plodding back toward the lodge when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky, deluding myself with platitudes about Tess not being the reason I’m heading back. That I’m not returning early only to check on her.

But that would be polite, right? I mean, after last night…wouldn’t it be gentlemanly to see how she’s feeling? What she’s thinking? I don’t know the protocol, and it’s starting to drive me up the wall.

My clothes are in a small bag tied to a tree just out of sight from the back deck, and I quickly change back into them before stomping through the snow toward the lodge. I notice people piling out the back door as I approach—Tess’s brothers stepping outside, without Tess among them, I immediately note.

As I climb the stairs, I nod my head at Thomas, who does a double take, pausing what he was saying to Chase and Kyle as he notices me approaching. “Oh, hey, man.”

“Hey,” I answer.

“Settle something for us,” he goes on. “Who’s hotter, blondes or brunettes?”

I feel like this is a conversation I shouldn’t be having with the brothers of the woman I’ve been casually messing around with, but that doesn’t stop my mouth from opening to immediately answer, “Brunettes.”

“Told you,” Chase says smugly.

Kyle rolls his eyes. “I think both of you are idiots.”

“What about ‘blondes have more fun’?” Thomas points out.

“I think that only applies when they aren’t dealing with meatheads like you,” Kyle scoffs.

“You’re just still sore about Heather Jenkins,” Thomas says.

Kyle’s brow wrinkles. “Who?”

“That cheerleader from high school who called you a nerd,” Chase supplies.

Kyle, who is definitely not as beefy as his brothers, turns a slight shade of pink. “She didn’t call me a nerd.”

“She said you were too smart for someone like her,” Thomas reminds him.

“That’s code for nerd,” Chase adds.

I try to sneak past them, thinking that this conversation really isn’t for me, but Thomas stops me. “Hey, you coming to Fred’s tonight? Tess made a friend in town who invited all of us.”

“That would be Cat,” I tell him.

“Is she hot?” Chase asks.

My lips quirk. “She’s practically married.”

“Ugh, bummer,” Chase sighs. “This town’s too small. There are barely any women here.”

“You’d have better luck in Denver, I think,” I tell him.

Thomas nods eagerly. “We’re going there tomorrow. Boss is giving us the weekend off so we can go sow our wild oats.”

“And pick up supplies,” Kyle corrects.

Chase waggles his eyebrows. “Yeah, but if we find a little strange on the side…Know what I mean?”

“Not really, no,” I say.

Chase cocks his head. “You don’t have a girl?”

Don’t think about their sister. Don’t think about their sister.

“Not for a long time, no,” I answer. “My last serious relationship…It didn’t end well. Haven’t really had any desire to try to start over yet, I guess.”

“You know what they say about getting back on the horse,” Chase says.

Thomas nods with a shit-eating grin. “The horse you get on in this scenario being a hot—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Kyle groans. “Tess would have your balls if she heard you talking like that.”

Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t ask—

“Where is Tess, by the way?” I ask like an absolute jackass. “I haven’t seen her this morning.”

Thomas scratches at his neck. “Checked on her earlier. She said she had some dude to call. I can’t remember who.”

I feel my skin prickle, and I know that it’s none of my business, but suddenly I’m dying to know who that might have been. Surely there’s not someone back home she—

No.She wouldn’t let me touch her if she was already involved with someone. I know she’s not like that. She’s not like Chloe. She isn’t.

“You should come out tonight,” Thomas presses. “You don’t seem to get out much, dude.”

“I’m more of a homebody,” I tell him.

Thomas nods. “Yeah. Totally had theories that you were a vampire when I first met you.”

“What?” I can’t help it, I laugh. “Vampires aren’t real.”

“Dude, werewolves are real, why can’t vampires be?”

“First of all,” I say, chuckling, “ ‘werewolf’ isn’t really the proper term. Shifters can change at will. A werewolf can only change during the full moon. I would know.”

Thomas’s mouth forms an O shape. “Oh shit. Tess mentioned that.”

This gives me pause, wondering how much she’s told them. Surely if she’d informed them about what she was, she would have told me, right?

“She did?”

“Yeah, she said you were talking about accommodations,” Chase says.

“Dude,” Thomas chimes in, his face lighting up with excitement. “Can you show us? I’ve always wanted to see that.”