by Laura Kaye
By ten in the morning, she’d talked to her sister Susan, amazed to learn her two nieces had been done opening presents for hours already, and her brother Aaron, who quickly handed her off to his wife. She liked Nora well enough and enjoyed talking to her, but knew her brother’s cursory greeting stemmed from his continued discomfort around her. He didn’t know how to make things better for her, and his instinct, as a man, as the big brother, was to fix it. Not being able to help her put him at a complete loss. Megan didn’t hold it against him.
As noon approached, Megan talked herself into getting dressed and having a bite to eat. She was about to dig into a bowl of chili and homemade cornbread when the phone rang again.
“Megs! Merry Christmas!” came her best friend’s voice.
Megan smiled. Kate always did that for her. “Merry Christmas to you, too. You just wake up?”
“Damn straight. Well, Ryan woke me up with some yuletide cheer earlier, but we fell back to sleep after.” Kate snorted.
“Aw, too much information, woman. I don’t need to know about his little yuletide cheer.”
“Who said it was little?”
“Argh. La-la-la, so not listening.”
“All right, all right,” Kate said. “So, how are you? The truth.”
“Meh.”
“That good, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“Oh, Megs, what the hell are you doin’ way up there by yourself?”
“Honestly? I couldn’t face Christmas at my parents’. I know they want me there, but I hate feeling like the elephant in the room. Everyone tiptoeing around me. It sucks.”
“Big hairy balls.”
“Exactly.” Kate’s goofy side had often been a lifesaver, but not today. Megan sighed. “I can’t believe it’s been two years.”
“Me neither. It’s so hard to imagine.”
“They say the first year is the worst, because every sunrise represents the first time you experience that date without the person you lost.” The first Valentine’s without him, the first birthday without him, the first summer alone, the first Thanksgiving without him to be thankful for. The first Christmas. Megan stirred her cooling chili and struggled to put her thoughts into words. “But, honestly, the only thing different about the second year is you feel like you can’t talk about it anymore. Everyone expects you to move on.”
“You can always talk to me. You know that, right?”
“I do. Thanks.” She huffed. “Jesus, I’m sorry to be so damn morose. Maybe we should talk about Ryan’s yule log again.”
Kate barked out a laugh. “Hmm…yes, that is a big, happy subject.”
“Shit, on second thought.”
They hung up with promises to talk later in the day. After.
Despite their joking, the honesty of the conversation chased away Megan’s appetite. She wrapped the bread and chili for later and wandered around the cabin, relocating from one seat to another without any real purpose. A lull in the storm brightened the afternoon. Needing fresh air and a little distraction, Megan bundled up and shoveled the sidewalk for the second time, estimating perhaps ten new inches covered it.
She was officially snowed in.
As she stomped back up the cleared path, her eyes looked where her mind told them not to. The snow family remained, though the constant snow had weighed so heavily upon the woman’s arms that they’d collapsed to her sides, her pink gloves presumably buried somewhere beneath the new snowfall. Megan frowned when she looked at the man. Both his hat and eyes were gone. Blown away or, like the gloves, buried.
Back inside, her eyes drifted where she didn’t really want them to go, to the clock on the microwave. Little after four. Her stomach clenched. About two and a half hours until the anniversary came and went, until John had officially been gone for two years. She found herself glad she hadn’t eaten that chili.
Mismatched picture frames drew her to the mantle. Smiling faces shined out from the past. A candid of her whole family. Her and Susan kissing Aaron’s cheeks at his wedding. Mom and Dad’s portrait from their twentieth anniversary. And half a dozen shots of her and John—their wedding, skiing, her sitting on his lap. Happy and healthy. Alive. She turned away, but he was everywhere. In the rustic moose throw pillows he insisted they had to have, despite the fact no moose resided in these mountains. In the beautiful Mission-style lamps they found at an antique store outside D.C. In the stars on the bedroom ceiling, in the closet full of his clothes.
By five o’clock, the snowstorm returned with a vengeance, dumping more white fluff while the wind whipped through the surrounding trees. When the lights flickered for the first time, Megan groaned. No way the electricity would hold against the storm’s relentless onslaught. At least she’d stocked the firewood rack when she first arrived. She built a strong fire, providing a blazing source of illumination should the lights fail completely.
The flickering continued at uneven intervals. She’d never seen the electricity falter so much without simply failing altogether. Despite the crackling heat of the fire, the great room air chilled. She tugged on a fleece hoodie and checked the thermostat. The LED screen flashed. She frowned as she reset the program, but the screen just kept flashing. Jeez. First the Freon leak in the air conditioning unit and now the heat was on the fritz. Not much she could do about it with this storm, though. She’d have to schedule a repairman before she headed back to D.C.
A fresh pot of coffee would ward off the chill. She wandered to the kitchen and froze. “What the hell?” All the LED screens—on the microwave, the oven, the coffeemaker, the digital alarm clock on the counter—blinked. Odd. Especially since the clock had a battery backup and, like the thermostat, the coffeemaker wouldn’t reset.
A high-pitched tinkling, like a small ringing bell, sounded from somewhere outside. Goose bumps erupted over her arms. She didn’t have a wind chime, and the next nearest house was over a half mile through the stand of trees to the west.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled.
She dashed to the entryway and peered through the glass panes on both sides of the door. Without light, her effort was useless. A wall of darkness swirled beyond the glass. She reached to the side and tripped the light switches, then turned back to the window.
A strangled scream stuck in her throat.
Chapter Three
Out of the darkness, from the heart of the howling snowstorm, a hunched-over man staggered up Megan’s front steps. She wrenched back from the door, her heart pounding in her chest. Panicked, she skittered behind a couch.
Who the hell could he be? Nobody could have walked or driven here in this weather. Her breath came in fast rasps. The lights flickered again, then again. Her eyes trailed to the fireplace tools on the hearth. Maybe she should grab the iron poker. Just in case.
The lights wavered, struggled to hold on. From outside, a solid, deadweight thump startled a gasp from Megan.
Help him.
The words were so quiet they might’ve been a thought, but in her current state she still whirled, fully expecting the impossible—that someone else was crouched next to her behind the sofa. Of course, she was alone. She peeked around the corner of the couch, her panic subsiding into a feeling of absurdity.
Help who? The man. Just a regular, ordinary man. Who must be in trouble. She remembered how he seemed to stumble on the steps and the thump. He’d fallen. She rushed from her hiding place like a sprinter at the sound of the gun. Peering through the sidelight, she whispered, “Oh, shit.” She was right.
She tore open the door. Jesus, he was big. No one she knew from the neighborhood, though there were always tourists renting surrounding cabins to take advantage of Deep Creek Lake and the Wisp Ski Resort. God, he wasn’t dressed to be out in this weather. No coat. No shoes. What the hell was she going to do with him?
C
old wind buffeted her and nipped at her skin, making her nearly frostbitten cheek tingle uncomfortably. Her hesitation wavered, then dropped away completely. What choice did she have? She couldn’t leave him out in this blizzard.
The bitter wind sank into her bones as she stepped shoeless and coatless—like him—onto the porch. She didn’t have to check for a pulse. Each shallow breath sent up a small fog from his mouth. Megan crouched behind his shoulders and wedged her hands underneath. Two fistfuls of red plaid flannel in hand, she pulled. He barely budged as she grunted and tugged. She tried two more times.
Shit, but it was mind-numbingly cold. “Come on, dude. Work with me, will ya?” she muttered, her hair whipping around her face.
Megan rethought the problem and stepped around to his bare feet. How could someone walk to this cabin without shoes? She shook her head and crouched, back facing him, between his legs. Securing an ankle under each armpit, she cupped his heels and pushed herself into a standing position. This time, when she moved, he moved. The guy was so big and heavy, she felt like Rudolph pulling Santa’s sleigh without the help of the other eight reindeer.
The warm air from inside the cabin embraced her body, its comforting tendrils drawing her over the threshold and into the slate-covered foyer. The lights flickered again, sending out a quiet electrical hum that raised the hair on her arms and the back of her neck. She tried to drag the man carefully, but his head still thumped as it crossed the shallow ridge of the doorjamb. She winced. “Sorry.”
As soon as he was clear of the door, she set his feet down and ran to close it. The indoor temperature had probably dropped twenty degrees while she’d been outside figuring how to lug his sorry butt in. She engaged the dead bolt, and the lights died. She gasped and pivoted, flattened her back to the door. He lay, right where she left him, melting snow all over her hardwoods.
Knowing he needed warmth, she recommenced with the lift-and-drag routine until she had him right in front of the fireplace. The crisis of his exposure to the elements behind them, she looked him over more closely. The first thing her eyes latched onto was the shirt and scarf—John’s clothing. The pieces she’d used on her snowman. Was it possible this guy had walked here…in what? The pair of faded jeans he wore and nothing else? And then…he’d grabbed the clothes in desperation before collapsing at her door? Everything about that was two kinds of strange.
Well, she wouldn’t know anything for sure until he woke up and could tell her what had happened to him, so for now she’d concentrate on warming him back up.
She grabbed the thick chenille throws from the sofa and draped the first over his torso, tucking it as far under his body as she could. His crisp, clean scent, like snow on a spruce, filled her nose. Long as the blanket was, it still didn’t reach below mid-shin.
With the second blanket, she started at his feet. Amazingly, while his feet were red, they didn’t seem to suffer any of the telltale signs of serious frostbite. She wrapped his legs completely, trying to give him a little extra cushion against the floor’s hardness. While she was at it, she sacrificed her comfy down pillow to the cause, flattening it out with her hands before sliding it under his head. His hair was a mess of longish strands that hung onto his forehead and down to his collar. It looked pitch black, but then it was also sopping wet.
Maybe she should call 9-1-1. Could an ambulance even get here in this weather? She shook her head.
Megan stood and stretched, admiring the man’s surreal good looks. Even asleep, unconscious, whatever, the guy was ruggedly handsome. Mop of shiny black hair, strong brow, square jaw, fair skin, full red lips. A male Snow White.
Her eyes traced down. Very male. No wonder she hadn’t been able to lift his shoulders. They were broad and well muscled, which the tight wrap of the blanket emphasized.
Jesus. She hugged herself. What was she doing? She was all alone, stranded in a blizzard, with a strange man in her cabin. A why-this-was-stupid ticker ran through her mind.
But did she have a choice?
§
Hot. Too damn hot.
Sweat soaked into Owen’s shirt and jeans, making the latter rough and heavy against his sensitive skin. His hair was heavy and damp where it covered his forehead. He tried to lift a hand to wipe his forehead, but it wouldn’t move. Something restrained him. He struggled, moaned.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”
Owen’s eyes snapped open at the sound of her voice. An angel hovered over him in the darkness. He sucked in a breath and flew into a sitting position, tearing out from under the tight blankets. She gasped and yanked herself back from him.
“Where am I?” He looked down at his hands, turned them over, practiced flexing his fingers and making fists. He wiggled his toes against the weight of the blanket.
“You’re at my cabin. I found you on my porch.”
He dragged his gaze over her. The fire illuminated the halo of loose golden curls that framed her face and covered her shoulders, made her inquisitive blue eyes sparkle and dance. He frowned at the crimson puffiness of her cheek. His fingers itched to trace the wound. His lips puckered as he imagined kissing it. Her beauty reminded him of the first snowfall of winter—clean and new and bright. Full of possibility. Far from diminishing her, the injury highlighted her fairness by contrast.
“It’s Christmas,” he said.
She eyed him and nodded. “Uh, yeah.”
He pushed the covers off his lap and yanked the suffocating wool from around his neck, relieved to be rid of their warm weight. The fire crackled beside him, drawing his gaze. He shrank back and swallowed thickly.
“How about something nice and warm to drink?” She rose to her feet, words spilling out of her in a rush. “I’ve, um, I’ve got a Coleman coffeepot just, uh, out in the garage. Operates on batteries, so—”
“I’d like something cold. If you don’t mind.” He followed her movements with his eyes. She was tall and thin. Too thin.
“Oh, okay. No problem.” She turned and strode into the kitchen.
Following her lead, he stood, testing his body, getting his bearings. He took a few tentative steps, enjoying the chill of the floor against his bare feet. He rolled his shoulders, twisted his neck from side to side. His muscles came to life as his body made its first halting movements.
He glanced to the kitchen and found her watching him. Her gaze lit on him like a caress.
“Want water, juice, or soda?” she called.
“Water, please.”
She returned with the glass immediately. He downed the whole thing in one greedy gulp.
“May I have another? Colder, if you can?”
She gaped at him. “Ice?”
“Mmm, yes.”
A blush bloomed on her face. Curious. He liked it. Wanted to touch the flushed skin.
She handed him his second glass and gestured to the couch. “Would you like to sit down?”
He took a smaller drink, his eyes following the sway of her hips as she walked around the sofa. After a moment, he joined her. The leather was cool and comfortable.
“So”—she clasped her hands together in her lap—“why were you out in this storm?”
He frowned. Tried to think. “I don’t know.” He couldn’t remember much before waking to the vision of her over him.
“What? You mean, you don’t remember?”
He dragged a hand through his wet hair. Concentrating made his head ache. “Uh, no, I guess not.”
“Oh. Well, are you hurt anywhere?”
He looked himself over, moved the parts of his body in sequence. “I don’t think so.”
“You collapsed on my porch. No shoes or coat.”
The image of a swirling snowy nightscape flashed behind his eyes. He blinked, tried to hold on to the image. “I did?”
She nodded. Fidgeted w
ith her fingers. Stuffed her hands between her thighs. “So, uh…”
He watched, fascinated by all her small nervous movements. Such a pretty woman. “Why are you here all alone on Christmas?”
She paled, her mouth dropping open. Then she gasped. “Oh, my God.” Her eyes cut to the dark components under the TV. She cursed and flew from the couch. More curses came from the kitchen. He rose, regretting his question, and went to where she was rooting through a bag on the kitchen counter. She pulled out a small cell phone, pushed some buttons, then groaned. “Why is nothing working?”
“Can I help you?” A pit of guilt took root in his stomach. Though he didn’t understand the urge, he would’ve done anything to ease her apparent panic.
“The time. Do you know the time?”
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“I can’t have missed it. Please tell me I didn’t miss it.” She ran across the broad open space and disappeared into a dark room, then returned moments later carrying a small glass-domed clock with a shiny brass pendulum. She placed it on the stone hearth, face toward the undulating flames, and settled onto her knees.
Something stirred deep in his gut, niggled at the back of his mind. A feeling like déjà vu gripped him. His forehead ached as he struggled to concentrate, to make sense of the odd sensation.
A low moan yanked him out of his thoughts. The woman curled over the stone hearth in front of the clock, her head buried in her arms, her shoulders shaking.
Her tears called to him. Down deep, on some fundamental level of his psyche.
Just as he stepped toward her, images and words flooded his consciousness. The panel of gods, the pleading man. He sucked in a breath.
All at once, he remembered his purpose. He remembered himself.
Chapter Four
She’d missed it. She’d missed the anniversary of John’s death. While she sat admiring another man in the cabin she’d only ever shared with John, 6:37 p.m. came and went.