Gone Too Deep by Katie Ruggle Page A

transfer my things?”
    At his nod, she hurried toward the door.
    â€œWait.”
    The sound of an unfamiliar male voice made her stop as if she’d hit a wall. The growly rasp of that one word rippled up her spine, heating her blood and giving her goose bumps. Shocked that he’d spoken, and by her reaction to his deep, rough voice, she turned to see George had left the table and was grabbing something off the counter. He held out a flashlight.
    â€œOh, right. Thank you.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she imagined the doll with the string on her back again. Flushing, she reached to take the light and hurried back out to her car.
    Once she’d dodged through the front door, pulling it closed behind her, her shoulders relaxed. Ellie laughed at herself. How was being outside in the dark, surrounded by a predator-filled forest, less nerve-racking than being inside a warm, cozy cabin with George? He, at least, was not going to eat her.
    At that thought, a hot blush warmed her cheeks, and she hurried to her car, trying to rein in her unruly imagination.
    Her suitcase was small, since she’d thought she’d be in Simpson only for a night or two, so she’d crammed all of her new clothes back into the Screaming Moose bag. She grabbed the bag, her suitcase, and her purse, and then hauled the entire load into George’s house. When she returned to the kitchen, he was washing dishes at the sink, but he quickly dried his hands and came over to relieve her of her burden.
    â€œThank you.” She grimaced at his back when the words slipped out unbidden, then shrugged. There were worse things she could be repeating over and over. Ellie realized that George wasn’t just piling her things next to the backpack. Instead, he’d unzipped her suitcase and was digging through it. He’d already created what she assumed was a reject pile, and her clothes were quickly finding their way into it.
    Scurrying over to him, she opened her mouth to object at the intrusion of privacy and then snapped it shut. Ellie reminded herself of her vow to be as low-maintenance as possible. It was hard, though, and she couldn’t hold back a whimper of embarrassed protest as her favorite push-up bra was tossed aside.
    His earlier frown at her still-full plate was nothing compared to his current scowl at her now-empty suitcase.
    â€œMost of my new clothes are in here,” she told him, nudging the Screaming Moose bag with her toe. “I’m wearing the rest of them.” She’d put on the same layers as she’d worn the previous evening.
    Still crouching, he turned to Ellie and abruptly tugged up the waist of her fleece top, revealing the first of two underlayers. Shocked at the unexpected manhandling, she stood frozen as he lifted her second top as well, to expose her base long-underwear top below it. With what sounded like a satisfied grunt, George repeated the process on her lower half. Recovering from her startled paralysis, she stepped back, tugging the waistband of her fleece pants out of his grip.
    As she stared at him with wide eyes, he turned away from her and started sorting through the contents of the Screaming Moose bag.
    â€œYou know,” she started tentatively. Low-maintenance! her brain was screaming. Be low-maintenance! It was one thing not to be demanding, though, and a whole other thing to allow him to paw her, even if that pawing was well intentioned. “If you’d just asked what I was wearing, I would’ve been happy to tell you.”
    George did not respond to that, not even with a silent shrug. She sighed and squatted down next to him. Picking up a pair of wool socks that had landed in what she was pretty sure was the “take hiking” pile, she rolled them together and tucked them into the main section of the smaller pack.
    When she picked up another pair of long-underwear bottoms, she saw George was watching her. “I read somewhere that rolling