“You’re welcome.”
He took the chair on the other side of the fireplace. The heat from the fire was just enough to keep them from seeing their breath.
“Why are you so determined to sell this place?”
“Because there’s no one left in my family to run it.”
“You could run it.”
The noise that emerged from her was half snort and 100 percent Are you joking?
“I’m serious,” he said, curling his hands around his mug, hoping some of the warmth from the hot cocoa would defrost the room. “A place like this is a gift. How can you just throw it away?”
“It’s not a gift. It’s a curse.”
He studied her face in the firelight. Gone was the hard-edged annoyance from before, replaced by a softer and far more devastating emotion. Loneliness.
Sadness oozed off her like melting snow.
“What happened?”
She looked over quickly. “What?”
“What made you hate this place so much?”
“Nothing.”
“No one hates a house the way you hate this one without a reason. And that reason is usually not the house itself but what happened inside it.”
She stiffened. “Have you heard anything yet?”
He’d left a message with every person he could think of to pull their cars out. The answer had been the same every time. It wasn’t going to happen for a while. “Sorry. I don’t think we’re getting out tonight.”
A howl of wind seeped through the peeling weather stripping around the windows. If he wasn’t mistaken, she tensed as if afraid. “What are we going to do?”
“The only thing we can do. Settle in and try not to kill each other.”
“Settle in? What the hell does that mean?”
Simon kicked his legs out in front of the chair and settled his mug on his stomach. “It means get cozy and accept reality that we’re going to be here for a while.”
“I can’t—I can’t stay here.”
He rolled his head to look at her. Her fingers gripped her mug so hard that it trembled, and her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths.
“Chelsea.”
Her head whipped in his direction. “What?”
“You okay?”
The mug shook in her hand again. Jesus, was she afraid of him? Is that what was going on? She was afraid of being stuck in the house alone with a man she didn’t know? It would make sense, but still, Simon sensed something else was going on.
“Would you feel more comfortable if I stayed in a separate part of the house?”
“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “You don’t have to go anywhere else.”
Simon set his cup down and stood up. She watched him approach her chair and held his gaze as he crouched in front of her. “I promise you’re safe, Chelsea. I’m not going anywhere if you don’t want me to.”
The relief in her eyes was as shocking as the way it affected him. He didn’t want to throttle her anymore. He wanted to hug her. And come hell or high water, he was going to get to the bottom of why she hated this house.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Not gonna lie. I’ve had a lot of fantasies about taking you out on a dark country road.”
Colton peeled his eyes from the windshield to grin at Gretchen in the passenger seat. She’d picked him up at home in his own car with the joke, “Get in, loser. We’re going to meet my dysfunctional family.”
“It’s coming up,” she said, pointing to a small sign in the distance that said tasting room.
He turned into the parking lot of what looked like a historic farmhouse. He instinctively reached for the glove box to get his hat and fake glasses, but she was already holding them and passed over both with a smile. As they got out, she explained that the farmhouse and barn were mostly original but had been updated throughout the decades. A wraparound porch was decorated for Christmas in a rustic, homespun way. Rocking chairs and blankets. Real evergreen garland and old-fashioned lights. He started toward the porch and what appeared to be the front door, but she tugged at his elbow.
“This way.”
He followed her around to the side of the house, where she punched in a security code to a side door. From there, they entered what appeared to have been, at one time, a mudroom of sorts. The kind where a man might kick off his winter boots and wash up over a basin of water before going in for supper. The room had clearly undergone updates over the years—steel door and security system included—but it was too small and rough-hewn to have been anything other than the real deal. The walls were made of cold, gray stone, and the ceiling was low enough that Colton could’ve flattened his palms on it if he stood on tiptoes.