Various States of Undress by Laura Simcox

suppressed a yawn. “Fine.” Then he stretched and although she told her eyes to behave, they zeroed in on his chest like laser beams. Hard as a brick, that chest. And his shoulders . . . wow. As small as she was, he could probably pick her up, throw her right over one of them and sprint in a dead heat across the snow. Not that she wanted him to, really. It would probably jar her teeth right out of her mouth. But still. Entertaining fantasies of this man rescuing her was fun. What happened after he rescued her, though, was a lot more than fun. In her fantasies, he ran his palms gently down the sides of her face and made sure she was fine. And then he leaned forward and tilted her chin up and kissed the hell out of her.
    Like that was ever going to happen.
    “I’m just going to brush my teeth first.” And kick myself back to reality. Without waiting for a response, she threw back the covers, darted through the living room, up the stairs, and into the bathroom. After rummaging through her carry-on for her toothbrush, she stared into the medicine cabinet mirror, rolling her eyes at her bed-headed self. “Get it together.” Her reflection blinked back at her and another image of Jake in his mirrored shades and well-fitting suit popped into her head. “Snap out of it,” she said. Jake’s rare smile crossed her mind next. With dimples. “Focus,” she muttered. “And stop talking to yourself in clichés.”
    “Are you on your phone?” Jake called from the bottom of the stairs.
    “Um. No,” she answered, and bared her teeth in the mirror. She turned on the water.
    “Oh. I thought I heard you talking to . . .”
    “Just to myself,” she yelled, her mouth full of Crest. Great. He probably thought she was weird. An eccentric political celebrity who actually knew nothing about politics. She rinsed her mouth and finger combed her hair, smoothing it behind her ears. No. She wasn’t weird. Her life was weird. Three days ago she’d been engaged and contemplating a Rose Garden wedding. Today she was freezing her butt off in her parents’ cabin with a Secret Service agent who blew her ex-fiancé out of the water. How was she going to stand three weeks of this? That female agent better show up, and quick.
    As calmly as she could, she walked back downstairs, through the living room, and into the bedroom. Throwing on a sweater and jeans over her pajamas, she went to the rug by the back door and grabbed her boots. “I just hope we can find dry wood. There’s usually some stacked on the front porch under a tarp.”
    Jake shrugged on a parka over his leather jacket. Then he put on a ski mask and pulled up the hood of the parka, snapping it under his chin. And then he wiggled into two pairs of gloves. “I’m ready.”
    Carolina bit back a laugh. “Can you put your arms down?”
    “Pardon?”
    She waved a hand at him. “Nothing. But that’s a lot of layers. Even for here.”
    He might have shrugged in response, but she couldn’t tell. “Let me go out first, please,” he said and stomped toward the front door like a navy-blue snowman. After keying in the alarm code, he pulled on the door. It was stuck. He yanked on it. Nothing happened. With a large grunt, he leaned backward and with a sucking, crinkling noise, the door broke free of the ice that had frozen it shut and Jake tumbled onto the floor.
    “Oh!” Carolina hopped forward, a boot in hand. She tossed it onto the sofa. “Are you okay?”
    “Look at that,” Jake muttered, pointing a stiff arm toward the door.
    She looked and her jaw dropped open. “We’re snowed in.” A few inches of bright blue sky shone at the top of a wall of snow where the door had been. “I’ll get the shovel.” Reaching down, she offered him a hand. He hesitated, but took it.
    “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he said as he jumped to his feet with agile ease, even with all those extra layers. Fumbling with the hood of his parka, he flipped it back and