by Ellen Mint
A confounding fear rattled in her heart that he’d left, which should have been a godsend. But she spotted him standing before the window. He cradled his chin in his hand, worrying the rising scruff in thought. She assumed he had no idea she was watching him and was about to resume writing.
“It’s stopped.” Tristan’s voice echoed through the cabin.
“Thank God,” she gasped, pressing Save and backing her work up into the cloud. At least this place had working internet and electricity. The heat seemed to come predominantly from the fire, but there were a lot of trees around. And all she had to do was make it through the night, then she’d be free of him.
He stared at her from the reflective window, but she wouldn’t look up. What time was it? The moment she saw it was nearing midnight, a yawn rumbled in her gut.
“There is the matter of sleeping arrangements,” the strange man she’d only met this afternoon declared.
Beth’s heart sank. One bed in the honeymoon cabin. Not a reason for another. “I don’t care how big it is. I don’t want it,” she babbled, rising from the couch.
To her surprise, and small delight, Tristan blinked in confusion, his brow clouding. “What…what are you? What do you mean?”
“The bed, the only bed.”
“Oh!” he gasped as if coming to God. He canvassed the ceiling before landing his sight upon her. “You referred to…yes, of course.”
“Why? What did you think I meant?” The moment the question left her lips, she played back what she’d said without thought and the innuendo it crafted. A blush moved to scamper over her cheeks, which she could disguise thanks to the firelight.
“You take the bed, alone,” he tacked on quickly. “I’ll sleep out here on the couch.”
Beth glanced at the small two-seater. She could probably scrunch up to fit, but no way he’d manage. “I’ll sleep on the couch. You, Mr. Big-Wig Musician, take the bed.”
“Ha,” he snorted. “You think I can’t hack it out here?”
“Damn certain you can’t.” Beth nodded to herself, well aware of the riders most celebs demanded just to sit for a few minutes and talk about themselves. No way anyone who’d gone platinum would demean themselves by sleeping on a couch.
“I’ll have you know, I’ve slept on buses in my touring days.” Tristan broke from his vigil over the snow, his closed-off body sliding closer.
“Oh yeah? I’ve done Greyhound.”
“Vans, as well. One time, I had to sleep on the floor of an overbooked hotel room.”
“Big deal.” She prodded at him without touching him. “You ever slept on the floor of a cargo plane? Or a rickshaw? Or the bottom of a leaking boat?”
Her rather colorful background threw Tristan off. The cocky demeanor melted, his arms falling out of their tight cross as he eyed her. “No. No, I haven’t.”
“Then take the damn bed.” She indicated the bedroom, exhausted by his sudden chivalry. “I can handle myself on a damn sofa for a few hours. And no, I won’t mention it in the article. ‘Musician sleeps in bed.’ Hardly pull quote material.”
The edge of his stark-white canine emerged as he sneered. Had he perfected that in the mirror when younger or was it simply his face reacting to his soul? “You cannot stop riling people up, can you? Like a scrap of splintered wood rubbed over skin.”
Beth moved to rise to defend herself and point out how he knew as little about her as she did him. But the haughty musician spun on his heels and finally trudged off to the open bedroom. Without another word, the door slammed, rattling the cabin’s frame until snow plummeted off the roof. A shudder climbed her spine as she remembered she was trapped in a cabin with a stranger.
A near-stranger known to have a temper problem. He buried it under cold scowls and erudite language, but it was there. It was the sixth or seventh thing people thought about when imagining Tristan Harty. And Beth knew better than to ask about it, especially with no one around to pillow his punches.
Twisting in place, she glared at the short sofa she’d vehemently insisted be hers. Sitting up wasn’t so bad, with her back nestled against the armrest and her feet up on the cushion. But how was she going to sleep on this thing? She’d have to scrunch up like a child in the throes of a nightmare to fit. And he’d thought he could do it?
Too riled up to sleep, Beth turned her back to the closed bedroom and opened her laptop. The blank page mocked her, the blinking cursor questioning why she didn’t get a job in engineering instead.
Because you’re awful at math and fear being electrocuted.
At least engineers didn’t have to deal with being trapped in snow-bound cabins with fickle, thin-skinned musicians. He’d been so damn insistent she not take her car when there’d been a chance and now they were both stuck together. Always having to be right, having to throw his intellectual weight around as if it were a ten-ton wrecking ball.
Flexing her fingers, Beth laid into her keyboard to quickly type, Tristan Harty is an arrogant know-it-all who cares little for the consequences of his actions. The cursor flickered at the end of her cruel cut, wondering about the bias and the rather limp lede. Folding her other fingers into a fist, Beth plunged her pointer to the delete key, pressing to vanish every letter of the accurate but inflammatory sentence.
Tristan Harty is…
The sound of the door opening caused her to crane her head around. Instinctively, she closed her laptop as the subject of her non-start barreled out of the room. A blanket curled from his arms down to the floor and a pillow nestled against his chest. “Here,” he said, thrusting both at Beth.
She reached for them, confused as to why he’d bothered. Before she could ask, he spun on his heels and marched back into the bedroom, once again slamming the door. Wrapping her arms around the offering ripped from his bed, Beth breathed in a surprising masculine scent. Warmth lingered in the wool fibers. Had he been tossing and turning in the bed before deciding to give the blanket to her? Or had he been holding both blanket and pillow, pacing back and forth, wondering if she’d even accept them?
Despite her annoyance at the man, she wasn’t stupid enough to turn down potential warmth in the midst of a snowstorm. Tucking the pillow behind her back and laying the blanket out over her legs, Beth tried to dive back into her work. She stared blindly at the blinking cursor, watching as the document automatically synched up to the cloud with its half a sentence. As she leaned back into the pillow, warmth curled across her weary back and the smell of sandalwood spiced with juniper wafted around her.
Tristan Harty is confounding.
Chapter Six
He tried shaking her first. Not with any gusto, just a gentle shove of her shoulder poking out from under the blanket. Her body bounced against the couch cushions, but her eyes remained obstinately closed. Despite the awkward position of her knees cuddled to her chest to fit her body in a tight space, she was deep asleep.
Rubbing a hand against his chin and frowning at the rising stubble he was going to have to leave there, Tristan stared at the ashen fireplace. Cold swept through the unheated cabin, and his toes trembled inside the only pair of socks he’d thought he’d need for a day. After glancing back at the outside world, he leaned closer to the slumbering woman.
With his face an inch from hers, he began again. “Hey.” Slowly, her lush eyelids fluttered. The lids still smeared in dusky shadow fluctuated until an edge of brown cracked from below. “You’re going to want to see this,” he finished, rising away from the woman fleeing her dreams. Judging by the frown knotted on her lips, it’d been one where they weren’t isolated together in a cabin.
Ms. Cho sat up, the green wool blanket tumbling from her pink-bloused shoulders. Oh, God! He trailed the movement, from her mostly chaste collar down the full cup of a breast pressing against the tissue-thin fabric. A dark pink nipple strained the shirt further, ensuring that no matter how hard Tristan tried to look away, he was trapped.
“What?” she thundered, clearly not a morning person.
“You…you’re—” Finally, he hurled the awe-struck hormonal teenager into a box and ripped his stare away. He raised a hand to try and shield his gaze, but it froze upon his spotting a tan bra with black lace over the cups resting on the armchair. “You’re not dressed,” he gasped.
Movement told him that Ms. Cho had risen from the couch, though he couldn’t watch. “Most women don’t sleep in their bras,” she grumbled from deep in her chest. A flutter near his body told him that she’d yanked said object of clothing off the chair. Shit, is she putting it on? Should I turn around?
“What do you want?”
Dropping his enforced blinders, Tristan found a woman who looked more furious than a wolverine, with a black blazer buttoned up over her chest. The bra was nowhere to be seen. And she noticed he was staring at her breasts. Damn it!
With a wince, Tristan pointed at the window. “That. You should go see that.”
Scowling, no doubt at his unplanned leering, she stomped away from him to the window. And froze. White eclipsed almost every landmark of the front drive. Tips of trees poked above snow that drifted to three, nearly four feet deep. They looked like snorkelers attempting to make it through the thick white sea.
Ms. Cho’s shock snapped to nervous energy. She ran for the window, her nose smudging up the frozen glass as she stared at what he’d already tried to check. The road was gone. Her car remained, but the snow blew from the storm until it hugged all the way up the driver’s-side windows. There was no chance of either of them getting into the car, never mind using it as a means of escape.
They were truly trapped.
A guttural curse rolled from her lips, the reporter smacking her forehead to the cold glass as if that would help. “You said there’d be no more snow.”
“I guessed,” Tristan answered. “Snow can be tricky to…guess.” Why was he apologizing? Why did he feel guilt seeping from his pores?
She whipped her head back to him. “Aren’t you some snow god?”
That was the first time he’d been called a god, even with biting sarcasm.
“Know all about it from your time in North Dakota?”
“Minnesota.” Tristan sighed.
“Wherever it is, you don’t know that much about snow!” she snapped. Rubbing both hands to her cheeks, she pushed her rounded face inward while cursing to the heavens. “What am I going to do? What can I do? What the hell do I do?”
He had no advice, having only woken a few minutes prior, taken one glance outside and realized his new fate. Ms. Cho placed all her anger at the situation upon him. “You know what this means?!”
They were trapped.
“We’re stuck together for another day,” she said
Or longer. Tristan grimaced at the thought of an extended stay in this cabin in the mountains, then frowned at her phrasing. “I wished for this predicament as much as you did.”
“Sure,” she snorted, her arms crossed under her, uh, unbound chest area. Crap. Heat prickled up the back of his neck as her pouting swerved to the man who once again let his eyes wander. Slamming the cursed things shut, he couldn’t escape the image his libido was quickly building of her fully topless.
“I have to call the office. And Steff. And Mads. And…” She paused in her recitation of people he didn’t and would never know. Placing her palm before her mouth, she breathed upon it and sniffed. That brought a scrunch of her nose and a toss of her head.
“I can at least wash up first,” she pronounced. That eyebrow of hers peaked into place as if she was waiting for him to argue.
Tristan extended a hand to the bathroom he had yet to visit properly. “Be my guest,” he announced as if the cabin was his. Shit. Were they going to have to pay for this screwup? Or did the magazine rent it out? One more thing to ask Barry.
A groan rumbled in the bottom of his gut as he thought of his manager hyperventilating over the weather report. Ms. Cho hauled up her bag, including the laptop and notebooks, and carted them all off to the bathroom. He heard the lock click rather loudly into place, as if to remind him to keep himself in check.
That shouldn’t be difficult. She was, on the whole, one of the most unpleasant people he’d ever met. Not for her features, or her body. Another image drifted through his mind of her little nose crinkle being kissed away by tender lips. No. It was her manners, or lack thereof. Clearly, she believed that she was the alpha and omega, answerable only to God himself. Assuming she didn’t plan to take that job as well.
The gentle rain of water bounding against a tiled floor echoed from the bathroom. In an instant, the picture of her topless flooded his mind. That silky soft-pink blouse sliding off her skin, pinpricks of freckles caressed by the falling water. How her nipples hardened at the chill of the water beading on her skin.
Get it together, Harty.
After banging a fist on his skull as if that would wake up his brains, he dug his phone out of the back of his jeans pocket. He dialed up Barry fast, the click coming as Tristan’s finely tuned ears picked up the sound of water bouncing off a warm body.
“Hi,” he squeaked, then strangled his voice to a deep baritone, “Hello.”
“Tris? Jesus tap-dancing Christ! Are you okay!”
“Yes, yes, Barry. Calm down. I’m fine. A little stranded, but the cabin’s standing. We still have power…” And if there weren’t any more storms that should keep. He glanced to the fireplace and the waning log pile. That’d have to be remedied or they’d freeze.
Perhaps Ms. Cho would accept the idea of their being locked together in a sleeping bag to preserve body heat. He snickered at the idea and how it was doubtful either would make it out alive.
“This is a disaster, kid. A. Dis-As-Ter!”
God, I knew Barry would be out of sorts, but it shouldn’t be this bad.
“We need to get you out of there, ASAP! I’m gonna call nine-one-one.”
“Barry…” He groaned, fairly certain his manager had already tried and had been told they couldn’t do anything.
“The National Guard. Someone who can dig you out of there!”
“Barry! We’re fine. I’m not required to appear anywhere in person for…what, a week?”
“Three days,” the manager with the schedule tattooed onto the inside of his eyelids mumbled.
Tristan shook his head, a bounce rising up his legs. “Great. Three days. The sun’s out now, that’ll take a good chunk from the snow. They’re probably clearing highways and interstates. After that the main roads, then finally someone can get up here to pluck me out. Can’t be more than twenty-four hours. Forty-eight at the worst.”
Silence fell from the outburst of optimism. It lasted so long he moved to check his phone, when Barry spoke, “Tris? Yer still there with the reporter.”
“Yes, I know this.” Hard for him to forget.
“Just…are you sure you can last twenty-four hours without, ya know…” Barry didn’t need to finish the thought, nor did Tristan want him to.
“It was one time…!”
“Uh-huh, and I know, I know, you were in a bad place. I hear that. But she don’t exactly seem the kid-gloves type.”
Understatement. Tristan glared at the bathroom door. The shower ceased, which meant she was probably trying to dry herself off with no towel in the place. Shaking her hair and causing her breasts to…
“Kid? Kid!”
“What? Yes. I’m here. What?” He tried to focus on the task at hand, except there wasn’t really one to properly distract him. Not until they could get a plow to free them both.
Barry took his time, no doubt running every worst-case scenario through his head. Wonderful. It was never good when Barry tried thinking. “Look, I know yer not fifteen anymore. Though, God, I wish I was thirty-seven again. But it really ain’t smart to sleep with a reporter.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I cannot stand the woman! She’s arrogant, callous, supercilious, demanding.”
A clicking noise rolled over the phone. “As if that don’t sound f
amiliar.”
Tristan’s brow clouded, his hand digging into the phone as he cursed. “Do you have something you wish to tell me?”
“Not a thing, kid. Watch yourself. Keep away from the windows so the glass don’t get ya.”
“That’s tornadoes,” Tristan sighed.
“And call me in an hour so I know you ain’t dead,” Barry the eternal worrier ordered.
After a quick goodbye, Tristan shut off his phone. The studio would be calling, wondering why he was trapped behind the blizzard while Barry wasn’t. No doubt they’d expect him to pay for this mess. Or take yet another cut from the measly amount he made on sales. What was it? Every hundred downloads gave him one one-hundredth of a penny? At that rate, he could get himself a bag of marbles back in 1920 in ten years.
Flicking at the silent phone, Tristan picked at the protective case. It was starting to crack at the edges, the plastic printed image rising up. The bottom of a black-and-white photo was tearing into jagged pieces with each call or text.
Twenty-four hours. What was he going to do in twenty-four hours with a stranger? A rumbling in his stomach answered that question. They’d have to take stock of the supplies, ration it out in case of the worst. Not to mention getting wood for the fire. Keeping that dry and…
“May I use your toothpaste?” her voice echoed from the bathroom.
“What?” Tristan was so deep into scheduling he was fully thrown by her intervention.
The door cracked and her head poked out. Without a towel, her black hair clung to her head, revealing wide pale ears poking between ebony waves. Between those and the big brown eyes, she looked almost adorable.
“May I use your toothpaste?” she asked again, the door hugging tight to her naked skin.
“Yeah.” Tristan nodded. “Yes.”
“Thank you,” she said curtly and closed the door between them.