Isobel was somewhere deep in a dream—soft light, warm air, a low hum of contentment—when a distant sound pried her halfway back to waking. Water. The steady, unbroken rush of it. She rolled over, stretching long, toes curling under the sheet, eyes still heavy.
The ache in her shoulders reminded her she wasn’t in her own bed. Memory slunk in, piece by piece—the barn drive bypassed, the massive truck, the sprawling lodge of a house, and Ryder, drunk as a sailor on shore leave. Her eyes blinked open just as the shower cut off, replaced by the quick rasp of a glass door sliding open.
She sat up, swung her legs over the side, and was halfway through a stretch when he walked in.
Ryder—bare as the day he was born, steam still clinging to him, towel ruffling his dark hair into a careless mess—s
