Accidentally His

by Brooks, Sarah J.

  I felt the warmth of his body almost instantly, and shooting pains began to form in my feet. “I feel like my feet are on fire now. It hurts,” I said through clenched teeth. “Do you want me to do that to yours?”

  “Yes, please,” Caleb asked as he bent his legs and tucked his feet into my armpits. I pressed my arms down and around his toes as he held them in place. His feet were rather large compared to my torso, but a little armpit warmth was better than none at all.

  “This is by far the weirdest Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had.” I giggled.

  “It’s Valentine’s Day?”

  “Yep, I know this day very well.”

  “Hmmm, I guess I wasn’t really paying attention to the calendar.”

  “I bet living up here it’s easy to lose track of the days. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a weekday or a weekend when you’re on a permanent vacation like this.” I snorted a little as I laughed at the idea of being in a cabin with Caleb for Valentine’s Day. At least we were out of the snow; I was grateful for that. And to be honest, sitting almost naked under a blanket with Caleb wasn’t the worst Valentine’s Day I’d ever had.

  My feet were warming up, and the pain was increasing. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath as I did the best I could not to be a total baby about things. It was very difficult, though. I wanted to pull my feet out and not let them warm up anymore, the stinging pain of the skin coming back from being frozen was far from anything I’d ever felt before.

  “It’s a good sign that you’re in pain,” Caleb said trying to encourage me. “I’m going to take a look at your toes really quick.”

  He pulled one of my feet out from under the covers and examined my toes before placing the foot back into his armpit. It was a remarkably simple idea to put our feet into each other’s armpits, and it was working really well.

  “Are your feet in pain?” I asked as I looked at his toes.

  “I’m okay.”

  He wasn’t even flinching as I readjusted his toes to put some of the smaller ones into my armpit. From the look of him, I didn’t think Caleb was the sort of man who ever really complained.

  His eyes were big and brown, and for the first time, I noticed the slight wrinkles around his eyes. He was older than I’d thought he was when I first saw him out on the trail. Originally, I thought he might be in his late twenties, but Caleb looked like he was closer to his forties than I’d guessed.

  “How old are you?” I blurted out without censoring myself. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that. It was rude. I’m sorry, just ignore me. When I get nervous, I babble on and on.”

  “I’m thirty-seven,” he replied without hesitation.

  “How long have you lived up here?”

  “Just a couple of years. I built this place myself.”

  “Really? Like everything?” I asked a little surprised at his answer.

  “Yep.”

  I looked around at the cabin and took in the details of the building. Each of the logs looked like they had been chiseled out to fit exactly where they were. Certainly, he couldn’t have built this house without the help of other people. How would he have gotten the heavy logs up the wall? How would he have raised the boards onto the roof?

  “Yes, all by myself,” Caleb said as I looked up at the ceiling.

  “How did you do it all?”

  “I’ll tell you more about it later. How are your toes doing? You look like you’re not in as much pain as before.”

  “I think they are getting better. How about I go and grab some of that wood outside so we can try to start a fire?”

  “No, I’ll do it.” Caleb laughed at my suggestion.

  Oh, now I saw what kind of guy he was. He didn’t think a girl like me could actually be helpful in a situation like this. Of course, I couldn’t manage to gather firewood. I mean I’d just screwed up the whole hiking and backpacking thing, so I certainly wasn’t smart enough to carry in firewood. I felt my agitation building as I looked at Caleb. He genuinely didn’t trust me to even gather firewood. How utterly stupid was that? It didn’t matter that I’d stuck with him through the snowy walk and hadn’t complained at all about my freezing feet. He still didn’t think any better of me than any random guy out there.

  “I’m not helpless!” I said and got up from the couch. Standing in my bra and panties I stood over Caleb with my hands on my hips. “I’m going to go get the wood,” I demanded.

  “Fine, but …”

  “No, I don’t want to hear another word about it. Don’t be a jerk. Just let me go get the damn wood.” I stormed over to my pile of wet clothes on the ground and picked them up. There was no way I could put those back on after just getting warm. I was seething with anger over the situation but didn’t want to admit that I had to ask Caleb for some clothes.

  How could I storm out of the house and show my independence if I had to pause and ask him for something to wear? I was stuck. I couldn’t exactly walk outside in my underwear, and I wasn’t about to turn around and admit that I needed his help. Instead, I looked around the cabin and found where the bedroom was. I looked at Caleb for a brief moment and then headed for the bedroom.

  “Nothing’s going to fit you,” he hollered back at me from the living room.

  There was no need for me to respond because Caleb was exactly right. His extra-large shirts were going to be more like a dress to me, but it didn’t matter. I just needed some warm clothing to put on and go outside.

  I opened the closet and to my surprise, there were two very expensive suits hanging in there. They were so out of place that I stood staring at them for a minute trying to figure out why a man who lived in the woods had suits that were more expensive than my car. I’d have to ask Caleb about them later.

  I pulled a long sleeve flannel shirt from one of his drawers and a pair of long johns. It wasn’t ideal, but I rolled them both up to make the perfect length for me. Caleb had a queen-size bed in his room; for a man as large as he was it sort of surprised me that he had a normal bed. I assumed his feet hung off the edge of it; there was no way that bed fit his 6’4” frame.

  The bed had several layers of blankets on it including what looked like a handmade quilt. I wondered who had given it to him and how they felt about him living up in the mountains all alone. Had it been his mother or grandmother? Were they still alive?

  “If you’re trying to rob me, the safe is in the kitchen,” Caleb said playfully from the living room.

  “I’m not robbing you,” I replied and walked out of the bedroom.

  “Wow,” his mouth opened, and his eyes bulged as he stared at me.

  “What? Did I forget to button something?” I asked and quickly looked down to make sure I was fully covered.

  “I’ve never seen that flannel look so good.”

  I instantly smiled before I remembered I was still mad at Caleb. Without responding, I pulled on a pair of his dry boots and put my coat and gloves on and stormed out the front door.

  He wasn’t going to get to me so easily. I stood on the porch looking over at the snow pile and trying to figure out the best way to go about getting the wood. The last thing I wanted to do was put my feet into the snow again. They weren’t even fully thawed yet. I grabbed the shovel from the porch and slowly started making a path over to the wood pile. The wood was nestled up against the small building next to the main house. It had a lot of snow on it but was slightly covered by the roof of the shed.

  Because the shed was so much smaller than the main house, I could see pieces of the roof and what looked to be solar panels. I peeked inside the shed and grabbed a broom to wipe off the panels on the roof. Even though I couldn’t reach all the way to the top, as I wiped the snow from the edge of the roof, the rest moved downward so I could wipe it off. I knew they needed to be exposed to the sunlight if they were going to have any chance of working.

  As I placed the broom back inside the shed, I took a moment to look around at what was in there. It didn’t look like a shed I imagi
ned seeing on a mountain like this. Instead of being filled with wood and building supplies, this shed had electronics in it.

  “Are you alive out there?” I heard Caleb yell from the front porch.

  I looked at him and saw that he had dressed. “I’m fine, get back inside before you freeze your toes off!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He laughed and shut the door.

  I grabbed a stack of wood in one arm and the shovel in the other. After dropping off the shovel at the front door, I placed the wood in front of the door and returned to grab another load. By the time I returned to the house, the first load had disappeared, so I placed my new pile in front of the door as well.

  Caleb continued to gather the small piles of wood that I brought in until I came back to the house and he was standing at the door.

  “No more will fit inside. Just set it over there and come in,” he ordered.

  Reluctantly, I did as he asked. He disappeared back into the house, and I took just a moment to look at the scene around us. There were snow and trees as far as I could see. Even if the snow stopped that very moment, I suspected it would still be a couple of days before I managed to get back down the mountain. I couldn’t even imagine how worried Emma was. She’d probably already called the police and reported me missing.

  “OK, so what else do I need to do?” I asked as I took the boots and coat off inside the front door.

  “I think you’ve proved your point. How about you come and sit down and stop with the whole attitude?”

  “Attitude? Really? Me helping is having an attitude?” I asked with a very distinct attitude.

  “Yep.”

  I could hardly contain my anger as I looked at his smug face. He actually thought my nice gesture was me having an attitude with him. What sort of self-absorbed person took a nice gesture and turned it around like that?

  Chapter 8

  Caleb

  So she wanted me to think she was independent. She had just almost died alone on a mountain, but now she wanted to prove that she was independent.

  “Maybe I’ll just let you do everything,” she said, hands on her hips. “That’s what a big strong man likes, right? Don’t let the poor helpless little girl do anything at all.”

  “Wow, you have a pretty big chip on your shoulder for someone who almost froze to death on the mountain.”

  “I didn’t almost freeze to death,” she yelled back at me.

  “Sure, keep telling yourself that. Don’t bother to thank me for keeping you from dying up there and letting you come stay with me at my cabin.”

  “Thank you!” Jordan yelled and stormed back to the bedroom and slammed the door before opening it again. “And by the way, I did say thank you this morning.”

  She slammed the door again, and this time she wasn’t opening it back up as I heard the lock on the door click. Women were so damn emotional. There was no way I was going to survive having this girl in my cabin for another day, and from the looks of the snow that continued to fall outside, it was likely she was going to be stuck with me more than a day.

  I was an asshole. I knew it, and in the calm aftermath of our argument, I regretted acting how I had toward her. My feet were killing me, and I didn’t like that she thought she needed to take care of me. No one needed to take care of me. Of course, that appeared to be exactly the same thing she had been thinking with her exuberant display of independence.

  As the morning continued, I made a plan to apologize to Jordan the second she came out of the bedroom. I’d suck up my pride and smooth things over. It wasn’t going to be easy for me. I definitely wasn’t the sort of guy who went around apologizing when I knew I was partially right in an argument. But if we were going to live together under these stressful circumstances, I had to make an effort.

  It was pure white out the living room windows. Although the snow had lightened up a bit, the wind was blowing everything around so much that I couldn’t even see the shed. The pain in my feet had subsided, and luckily it didn’t look like I’d done any permanent damage. I had been really concerned about my pinky toes after seeing the white skin and not being able to feel them, but I was totally thawed now and could move all my toes.

  By two o’clock, I started to wonder if Jordan was planning to come out of the room at all. I could hear her moving around in there, so I didn’t worry that she was dead. Certainly, she would have to use the restroom at some point. I convinced myself that it wouldn’t be much longer, so I started to make some food.

  When I was in the city working full-time, I hardly ever cooked at all. I ate out for nearly every meal and snacked on random chips and other junk. On the mountain, I’d had to change my eating habits. Running a traditional stove or microwave wasn’t a good use of my electricity, so I put the wood stove in. It worked to heat the house as well as cook my food. It had a compartment for baking and a stove top for boiling water and cooking canned food.

  I was by no means a healthy eater during the winter months. I subsisted on canned food and dried meat. I had learned how to bake bread, though, and on this particular afternoon, I decided to show off my baking ability hoping that Jordan would smell the bread and decide to come out of the room.

  I opened some canned soup and put a couple small loaves of bread that I had frozen into the oven. Twenty minutes later, the cabin was filled with the delicious smell of freshly baked bread, and as I took it out of the oven, I kept my eyes peeled to the bedroom door just waiting for Jordan to fling it open.

  She didn’t come out.

  An hour went by, and the soup was cold again, and the bread hardening around the edges. This was ridiculous. I couldn’t take it another minute. “Are you ever planning on coming out of there?” I said loudly as I pounded on the bedroom door.

  “No,” she yelled back at me.

  “I made some soup and bread if you’re hungry,” I said trying to remain as calm as I could.

  “I’m not eating your food. You’ll probably poison me and then request that I apologize while I’m vomiting.”

  “Wow, that’s a little dramatic.” I laughed.

  Jordan flung the bedroom door open and was standing in the doorway with my half-buttoned flannel shirt and nothing under it. I could see the shape of her breasts from the unbuttoned area, and I couldn’t stop staring. That shirt had never looked as damn good as it did at that moment.

  But Jordan was still fuming with anger. I stopped laughing because I was utterly distracted by her perfect body. Even angry she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever laid eyes on. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a ponytail and her cheeks were flushed. She looked amazing.

  “Really? You’re going to laugh at me? Are you always this rude to women that you have in your cabin.”

  “Yes,” I said honestly.

  “What? Why would you admit that, and why would you bring a woman to your cabin and be mean to her?” she asked a little confused at my answer.

  “Well, you’re the only woman who has ever been in my cabin. So I suppose I am rude to all the women who have been here.” I shrugged my shoulders and motioned to the cold soup that was on the table. “Would you like me to re-heat the soup? You have to be hungry.”

  She looked at me skeptically before nodding in agreement. I took one last look at her beautiful body and then turned back to the stove and put the soup into the pot I had warmed it up with before.

  “Did you bake this bread?” Jordan asked as I heard her sit down at the table behind me.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s really good,” she said with a mouth full of it.

  “If you want to make a bread bowl with it, you can pull the center out, and I’ll put your soup in there.”

  “No thank you. I’m just going to eat it while I wait,” she said continuing to talk with her mouth full. “It’s really good. I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy who could bake bread on his own.”

  I smiled but didn’t turn around. This was more like it. I didn’t want to fight with her. My agitation ha
d been misplaced. Even though she had a bit of an attitude, I’d put up with much worse from my friends and brother.

  “I’m sorry for being a jerk earlier. I was in pain, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you like that.”

  “I was a jerk too.”

  “Yeah, you were.” I laughed and turned to see her leaning over the table.

  Her perfect breasts were busting out of the flannel shirt, and my body thrust to attention at the sight of her. Living alone in the cabin had been one of the best ideas I’d ever had to re-center and get my life together. But I wanted to have this woman in my bed that very moment. The urge to be inside of her was overwhelming, and I had to turn back around to face the stove. How was it possible that I’d gone over a year without having sex?

  I was wrapped up in my memory of the one-night stand I’d found at a bar at the bottom of the mountain. That had been about a year before, but other than that, I’d been all alone. What sort of red-blooded man can survive that long without having a woman in his bed?

  “Can I help at all?” Jordan asked as she stood behind me.

  I froze at her close proximity. If I turned around, she was going to see just how excited I was to have her there with me. As much as I would have loved to show her my raging hard-on, I didn’t suspect it was the best time to let her in on this secret of mine. In fact, if she saw just how hard I was for her, it was more likely that she’d get offended than reciprocate the excitement. I stayed facing the stove, for safety.

  “I’ve got it,” I said with a nod of appreciation. “How are your feet doing?”

  “Good as new.” She laughed and looked down at my giant wool socks on her feet. “These things are amazing.”

  “They have never looked so good.” I said with a laugh.

  Jordan smiled back at me. Our eyes met for a brief moment, and I thought I saw desire in her, but I couldn’t be sure. I quickly looked out the window at the snow that was blowing around.

  “It sure is snowing hard still,” Jordan said after following my line of sight.

  “I think it’s a lot of wind too. It’s just blowing everything around. I have a weather radio, but I think I left it on the roof of the shed. I’ll get it after we eat.”