“Or she can help out,” Bobby said, nodding toward Sophia. “I’ll be the lead dog in my truck; you can drive the company rig behind me, and she’ll bring up the rear in the SUV.”

“I don’t need this, Bobby,” James said coolly.

Bobby stopped to light a cigarette, bending his head and cupping the end of his filter tip as the snow fell in fits and starts all around him. “If anything goes wrong, we’re on the scene to help. That’s all.” The cigarette bobbled in his lips as he talked, then finally caught. He drew in a big lungful of smoke.

“Fine,” James grumbled, not happy, but anxious to get going, to get his life back on track.

With Ralph following at James’s heels, the three of them made their way past a delivery truck from a local appliance store that was backing up to the open barn doors. The rear warning signal was beeping insistently as the truck’s tires ground over the snow and gravel. Bruce Porter, a jack-of-all-trades, was standing in the open doorway and waving the truck backward.

They crossed the lot to Bobby’s pickup, where James found himself once again stuffed inside, squeezed between Knowlton and a beautiful woman, his dog in the passenger well at their feet.

He should just accept Sophia’s help, he thought as Bobby put the pickup into gear. Why was he fighting it?

He slid a glance in her direction to find Sophia watching him, a small, almost playful smile on her lips.

That’s why, man. You’ve got no idea what’s going on in her head.

“What?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

“Nothing.”

She pressed the length of her thigh closer to his, and despite his trepidation, he sensed that he could be easily aroused by her, that he was being aroused by her, even though he’d spent too much of the last few days thinking of Rebecca, and even though he wasn’t completely convinced he could trust Sophia at all . . . which was a pretty good summation of what his downfall had been ever since he began noticing the opposite sex. His Achilles heel had nothing to do with his heel but everything to do with his goddamned cock.

He ignored his own body’s signals as Bobby drove along the lane, wipers scraping off snow and ice, defroster working overtime, every now and then a branch from the thicket between the two lanes brushing the side of the Chevy.

Once they were on the county road leading toward town, Sophia started in again.

“I just think it would be best if you had someone taking care of you for the next week or so,” she said.

“We covered this.”

“But—”

“No, Sophia.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’m staying at the hotel. Someone’s there twenty-four/seven. Just a phone call away.”

“The inn’s booked,” Sophia said.

“I’ll figure it out.”