“You’re freezing,” he murmured. He scooped her hands up and held them in his.
It was too tough to resist. Claire rose to her toes and pressed her lips to his. And slipped her hands under his jacket, digging until she found the skin of his abdomen.
Leaping back, Grady squealed, “Fucking shit that’s cold.”
“Aw. I thought you wanted to warm me up.”
He grinned and stepped close again. “Let’s try that again. You took me by surprise, that’s all.”
Before she could nail him with frozen fingertips to the tummy again, the back door swung open and a barrage of snowballs fired at them. Ryder and Haley were laughing like a couple of idiots, even after they ran out and hadn’t done more than hit Grady’s boots.
As the laughter eased, Ryder looked at Claire and shook his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
“What?” she asked.
“You are as ornery and sappy as Grady. If I’d had half a brain that night we’d met, I’d have offered to be roomies and sent you to meet my softhearted brother.”
She leaned into Grady and snuck her hand under his sweatshirt, his skin blazing hot against her frozen fingertips. This time, he didn’t leap away, but held her closer. Grady winked at Ryder and said, “I hope to hell that when I meet the perfect match for you, she’ll be willing to tolerate you.”
“Smartass,” Ryder said with a laugh.
With a shake in her head and a growing sadness in her brow, Haley stuffed her ungloved hands into her pockets and said, “Where was all this relationship-clairvoyance when I married that asshole?”
Grady let out a long sigh and said, “I haven’t coldcocked anyone in ages. We can swing by San Francisco on our way back north, and I’ll stop and pay Nate a visit.”
“Get in line. I get the first punch,” Haley snarked. She looked around and finally seemed to settle. “Think Patricia heard us?”
Ryder raised an eyebrow and teased his hands in his dark hair. “I’m done trying to please her. She can spend the next thirty years groveling, or I’m out.”
“Holy crap, the GrandCanyon looks massive from up here.” Grady watched Claire as she grinned as wide as the window she looked out, as giddy as she had building the snowman early that morning.
Grady’s hand laced with hers, he leaned close and looked out over her shoulder. “Want to stay there our first night on the road?”
“Have you ever been?”
“I have not.”
“Then we shall stay there,” she said as she unbuckled and made him switch places. “Your turn. It’s so different up here compared to down there.”
“The view’s better from right here,” he whispered.
Blushing and adding a snarky eye-roll, she leaned in and landed a lazy kiss. “Then to San Francisco. You’ve got a fight to start.”
“Maybe on our next visit, we’ll make a long road trip and make the national park loop.”
“I like it.” Claire pulled out the crossword puzzle she’d spent most of the flight down on and glared.
Two blank boxes in the bottom right corner dominated the otherwise full scramble of letters. “So close,” he teased.
“Irreparably incomplete. I don’t even know where I went wrong. But you know what? I’m okay with it.”
Suitcases in opposite hands, they linked hands as they walked down the terminal to passenger pick up. Claire bubbled brighter as they neared the exit, scanning expectantly. Grady’s chest rose and fell with the gust of wind that washed over them, the arid, sandy scent soothing compared to the chill moisture they’d left. “The air down here always makes me feel like I’m on vacation.”
She took a deep breath and smiled. “I suppose it will always smell like home.”
Past security, a twosome waved madly on the sunny sidewalk. “Friends of yours?” he asked.
“I have no idea who those people are,” she answered with a wink.
