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coffee and orange juice arrived. He picked up her hand and curled it around the glass of OJ. “Vitamin C in liquid form. Someone in your zombified condition is just begging to get sick, so we’re fighting that shit off with OJ and bacon. I threw the bacon into the mix because bacon can fix anything. Drink.”
    She could only follow orders, and only if they were simple. She raised the glass and the first hit of bright, tangy citrus brought a faint ray of sunshine into her dim and hopeless world. “My God.”
    “What?”
    “That’s the best orange juice I’ve ever tasted. I wonder what brand this is. God’s brand, probably.”
    “Red, your body’s so pushed beyond its limits that anything you put in your mouth right now would be the best thing you’ve ever tasted. Keep going. Bacon’ll be here soon.”
    Suddenly her stomach let out a growl that she was sure the entire diner heard. “Let’s revisit this home thing.”
    “Look, it’s not like I want this to happen either, but what’s the alternative? Leave you here? Let you stumble around in a fucking blizzard? What’s the answer?”
    She shook her head, helpless. Hating her helplessness. “I don’t know.”
    “Drink up. Once you’re done with your juice, you’re having a little coffee. Not a lot, just enough to get you through the next hour.”
    “I don’t want you to be forced to take me in, Quinn. I’m not your responsibility just because you got stuck transporting me.”
    “I know what my responsibilities are. How do you take your coffee?”
    “Four sugars, four creams. Look—”
    “ Four ?” His surprised laugh was deep and mellow, and it rolled out of him to fill the small diner with life. It had to be her fatigued brain imagining things, but Mia could have sworn the room’s cracked linoleum floor and the heavy wood paneling brightened and warmed with a golden glow just from that deliciously masculine sound alone. “So basically you like super-sweet coffee-flavored cream?”
    “I’m too tired to tell. Are you judging me?”
    “I’m judging that you’re too cute to be allowed out on your own. Who knows what would happen if some wild mountain man got a good look at you? I can’t let you out of my sight.” He leaned across her to get the sugar, and her world was momentarily filled with a nice, clean scent mingling with something deliciously spicy—nutmeg or cardamom.
    Something yummy. Something lick-worthy.
    Holy crap, she wanted to lick him.
    She stifled a shiver and tried one last time while he took care of her coffee, all the while unable to remember when anyone had ever doctored her coffee up for her. “I don’t want to force you into playing host, and you obviously don’t want to be my host. I hate being a burden.”
    “No one on this earth can force me to do a damn thing if I don’t want to do it. I do whatever the hell I want. Just ask my oh, so loving and supportive family. I’m sure they’ll only be too happy to tell you all about that.”
    There was a world of bitterness threading through those words, so much so that even her exhausted mind took note of it. “If you do what you want, yet you obviously don’t want to have me as a house guest, why are you going to take me home with you?”
    “Because Mother Nature is currently being a bitch, there are no other available beds for fifty square miles, and I don’t want to deal with the guilty conscience I’d get if I just dumped your ass here to wait out the storm.”
    He wasn’t making her feel any better. “But—”
    “I’m done discussing this, Red, do you hear me? I’ve come up with a solution, so whether you’re comfortable with it or not isn’t my problem. Personally, I think you’ve had enough problems to deal with the past twenty-four hours, so it’d be stupid of you to create another one, and the one thing you’re not is stupid. Exhausted, stressed, stranded, starved and so sleep-deprived you can’t see straight, yeah. But you’re not stupid.” As