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It was the next morning, and Mack was nowhere to be found.
I was in the kitchen, downing my second cup of coffee and waiting for the apple cinnamon muffins I’d mixed up a half hour earlier to finish baking. Their scent filled the kitchen, and the heat from the oven warmed the room, making it the coziest spot in the house. Looking out the window at the bare-branched trees draped in white and the fresh blanket of snow that covered the lawn, all magnificently stark against the back drop of a blue sky, it seemed like a perfect morning indeed. The only thing spoiling the serenity was the incessant hum of an engine outside: Gunnar’s snow blower.
I turned my thoughts back to the man sleeping upstairs in one of my guest bedrooms. I wasn’t too concerned about Mack. He was probably still sleeping. But it was closing in on nine o’clock, and I didn’t know if I should go and wake him up or just let him sleep. He’d been the one to say that he wanted to get back to DC as soon as possible, and I knew that every minute he spent sleeping was one less minute he’d have back home.
As if he could read my mind, Mack appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, scratching his jaw and yawning. In nothing but his boxers. I’d delivered all of his dried clothes before he’d retired for the evening, despite his insistence that he didn’t need them just yet.
I skipped a good morning greeting. “Where are your clothes?”
He glanced down at his attire. “In the bedroom?” He shivered and ran his hands over his arms.
“You shouldn’t walk around naked in other people’s houses,” I said.
He pushed his dark hair back off his face. Without the hair gel slicking it back, it actually looked wavy. “I’m not naked,” he said. “Naked is how I sleep. Besides, I have these on.” He motioned toward his boxers before frowning. “What on earth is that noise?”
“Snow blower,” I said. “Gunnar’s outside clearing his driveway.”
“We got that much snow?”
I nodded. “Are you hungry?”
He sniffed the air. “Yes. And something smells amazing.”
“Muffins,” I told him. “Apple cinnamon.” His eyes lit up and I added, “Which you can have after you come back down here. Dressed.”
Mack broke into a smile and clucked his tongue. “I had no idea you were such a prude.”
“And I had no idea you were such an exhibitionist,” I shot back.
He headed for the coffeemaker but I stepped in front of him, trying not to stare at his tanned chest. I had never been attracted to him—and I wasn’t planning on starting now—but it would be almost impossible to ignore how toned his chest and abs were.
“No coffee, either,” I said, shaking my head. “Clothes first.”
He grunted. “Such a stickler.”
I leaned against the counter, my arm out in front of the coffeemaker, like a rail crossing at a train track. “How do you think I kept that office of yours running so well for all of those years?”
“Good point,” he mumbled. He pivoted on his heel. “Save some of everything for me.”
He was back downstairs five minutes later, dressed in the outfit from the night before. He’d somehow managed to slick down his curls, probably with water, since I was pretty sure I didn’t have any hair products in the guest bathroom.
He filled a mug and settled himself at the kitchen table. There was a basket of steaming muffins in the center, along with a bowl of cut cantaloupe. He reached for a muffin and unpeeled the wrapper just as I was wrestling on my snow boots.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Going out to shovel.”
He frowned. “Why? Sounds like your neighbor is doing your driveway right now. Or a 747 is using it as a landing strip.”
He was. The snow blower had gotten louder and I knew Gunnar had worked his way over to my driveway. But that didn’t mean I was going to let him do all the work by himself. I had a snow shovel and two feet. I could help. And I intended to.
“Are you going to join us?” I asked.
Mack looked up, his mouth full of muffin. He washed it down with some coffee. “What?”
“Are you going to help us shovel?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t planning on it.” When he saw my expression, he added, “I don’t have the clothes for it. Or the shoes.”
“I thought you needed to get back to DC.”
“I do,” he said. He polished off the muffin and grabbed another one.
“So wouldn’t it make sense to help shovel so you can get to your car sooner?”
He thought about this for all of two seconds, and shook his head no. “I could slip and fall out there. Break a leg or something. Then that would really set me back. So I’ll just stay in here and let your studly neighbor take care of the snow removal.”
I just shook my head.
Mack Mercy was a heck of a private investigator, but as a man?
He bordered on impossible.