“I know what we can do,” he said. He slipped between the sleeping bags and turned down the top edge so that she could get in. “I have season two of Stranger Things on my phone. We can watch that.”

“Don’t you need Wi-Fi to stream TV shows?” She held both hands up. “Please don’t tell me you brought a Wi-Fi hub.”

“I did, actually, but we don’t need it. I downloaded it to my phone.” He patted her side of their makeshift bed. “Come on.”

Taylor knew she should feel more reluctance at crawling underneath the covers with him, but the fluffy sleeping bags looked too inviting for her not to do it. She settled in next to him, taking care not to brush against him. He immediately negated her efforts by shifting over a few inches so that their arms touched from shoulder to wrist.

Halfway through the first episode, Taylor said, “I’m not sure this is the best thing for me to watch while out in the woods alone.”

“Except that you’re not alone,” he said, his eyes bright with amusement.

“Don’t go getting any ideas, Twenty-Three.” She scooted even closer to him and wrapped her arm around his. “This is for heat and just in case I get scared. That’s it. Nothing else.”

“Whatever you say,” he replied. “Will there at least be a good night kiss?”

“No! Absolutely not.”

Because Taylor knew she wouldn’t want to stop at a single kiss, not when they were both snuggled up against each other with the entire night stretching in front of them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Taylor reached over to the coffee table in Jamar’s living room and picked up the touch-screen display panel that controlled everything, from the room’s temperature, to the lights, to the television. She glided her thumb along the screen, bringing the temperature up a couple of degrees. Then she set the electronic tablet back in its cradle and returned her attention to her laptop.

“Where in the hell is it?” Taylor growled as she clicked through the five billion tabs open on her browser, searching for the article on ligament tears she’d run across this morning. One of these days she would learn to bookmark websites she wanted to revisit.

“Finally,” Taylor said as she clicked onto the article without bookmarking it.

Ever since the run-in with those drunken assholes at the sports bar Saturday afternoon, she’d turned into a woman on a mission. If Jamar thought she’d worked him hard before, he wasn’t ready for the nightmare she was about to unleash. She would do whatever it took to ensure he was in the best form possible when he tried out for those NFL teams.