“Maybe you should stay out of the snow and let your feet heal. They aren’t looking all that great.”
“This is how they always look.” I laughed as we both looked at the blotchy red and white patches on my feet. “I’m kidding; you’re right. I need to put some warm socks on and stay in. I suppose I could get the radio tomorrow.”
“I would offer to go get it, but it was really cold out there, and I’m terrified of heights. I’ll let you get it tomorrow,” Jordan said and smiled playfully at me. “I really am sorry for being so rude earlier. I don’t always handle stress well.”
It was a genuine apology, and I appreciated it. Especially because I had been the one who instigated it. This whole situation was so far out of my normal life that I really didn’t know how to handle it. If I was stuck up in my cabin for a snowstorm by myself, it would have been just fine. I’d have done my chores, made sure the snow wasn’t piling up, cleaned the house, maybe even relaxed with a good book. But having Jordan there with me gave me a new sense of unease. I wasn’t used to having to take care of someone else.
“I think we both know that we need to start fresh. It is Valentine’s Day and all.” I smiled at her.
“Yeah,” she said with a forced smile. “It’s actually nice not to have to deal with all of that.”
“Oh, come on! You’re a beautiful woman. I bet you have a fantastic time on this made-up holiday.”
“I came to the mountains to get away from this holiday and everyone trying to set me up because I’m single. God forbid a young woman should be single.”
“Your friends were trying to fix you up?”
“More like they were trying to get me to go out to clubs and find a new boyfriend.” She rolled her eyes. “Since when did it become the norm that a woman has to have a boyfriend? I’m doing fine on my own.”
I gave her a knowing glance. I mean she was probably doing fine on her own in the city, but in the mountains, she definitely needed some help. “Well, maybe you need a little help,” I said with a smile, hoping that she wouldn’t take it the wrong way.
“Yes, on a mountain in freezing weather, I needed your help. But back home I manage to pay my bills and keep my apartment just fine. I don’t need a man, and this holiday is just annoying.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself of all of this.”
“Maybe,” Jordan admitted.
I brought the soup to the table, and we sat quietly for a few minutes as we ate. Canned potato soup was one of my staples in the winter months, but from the look on Jordan’s face, she didn’t seem to be enjoying it all that much.
“Not your favorite?” I asked.
“I just realized I’m basically only eating carbs right now.”
“In the winter mountains, carbs are your friend.”
“Good thing I don’t have my pants on then because I wouldn’t fit in them after all of this.”
“I doubt that.”
“Seriously, I just look at a carbohydrate and my ass gets bigger.” She laughed and continued to eat the soup and bread.
“Nothing wrong with a little curve in that area.” I winked.
Jordan just shook her head and laughed at me. She was like so many other women that obsessed over their figure. I honestly wished that women wouldn’t worry so much about it. Most of us guys don’t know the difference between a size two and a size ten.
“Oh, so you like chunky women?”
“Honestly, the size of her pants is pretty far down on the list of things I worry about when I meet a woman.”
“Says the mountain man who hasn’t had a woman in a year.”
“Hey now,” I growled. “I’m not just going to bring any woman up here. This is my secret getaway.”
“You said you’ve been up here for a long time, though.”
“Yes, about two years.”
“So it’s not really a getaway.” She shrugged.
There was no way I wanted to get into the details of why I was living in my mountain cabin. The last thing Jordan wanted to hear about was my broken heart and how I’d come up to the mountain to find myself. Even the thought of explaining this to her made me uncomfortable.
Jeff knew me and still had a hard time understanding why I’d unplugged from the world. It was highly unlikely that Jordan was going to get where I was coming from with my move from society. It was probably best if I didn’t get into too many details.
“I used to live in the city. I came out here for a break,” I offered.
“This is some break. How can you even survive up here? Do you have internet?”
“No.” I laughed.
“No phone either?”
“No,” I said, continuing to chuckle. “I have a cell phone, but it only works when I’m out of the woods. I usually go into town once a month or so.”
“Once a month?” she said in shock. “You stay up here for a month at a time? How does your family get hold of you? Do they deliver mail here?”
“That’s a lot of questions. Maybe tomorrow we can talk more about the details of my pitiful life,” I said laughing.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. Who am I to talk? I can totally see the appeal of living up here. Get away from all the demands that everyone is putting on me. But I don’t think I could unplug from everything for longer than a few weeks.”
“That’s probably how long you’ll be up here.” I shrugged my shoulders.
“Really? What? A few weeks!”
She genuinely looked surprised at what I was saying. I didn’t know why, though. There was clearly nearly two feet of snow outside. It was still falling very rapidly, and we couldn’t see more than five feet out the window. It wasn’t safe to venture away from the house. Plus, both of us had nearly frozen our toes right off from the early morning hike back from the tent.
We absolutely were not venturing away from the house anytime soon. I had plenty of food and water. My cabin was big enough for the two of us, and I wasn’t about to risk my life just to get her back to civilization.
“Yes,” I said without going into details.
I expected Jordan to argue with me. She was a spitfire, and I thought she might have some sort of plan up her sleeve for how I could risk my life to get her down the mountain. What I hadn’t expected was the flood of tears that started.
A crying woman is like a bomb. You really want to stop it but getting closer to it doesn’t seem like a good idea. I sat looking at her trying to figure out what to do. We didn’t know each other well enough that I could understand why she was crying, but since I’d just mentioned being stuck with me for a few weeks, I had to assume she really didn’t want to be there.
“I’m not always this hard to live with,” I said. “I can try to be a little less abrasive.”
“It’s not you,” she said through her tears. “People are going to think I’m dead.”
I winced at the realization that she was right. If her friends and family knew she had gone up to the mountains alone, and she didn’t return after the snowstorm, they definitely were going to send search and rescue out for her.
“At least you’re not dead.” I tried to lighten the mood.
“They are going to be so worried. My friend Emma will probably have a heart attack. Man, I can’t believe I was so stupid and came up here alone.”
“It wasn’t stupid. Hiking and camping on your own is very liberating. It was just not a good weekend to do it.”
“Basically, I’m stupid.”
“Hell, I didn’t know the snow was going to hit this hard either. Does that mean I’m stupid as well?” I asked and crossed my arms waiting for her to say I was stupid.
“No.”
“Okay then, let’s stop with the name calling. I have been meaning to get an emergency phone but never did it. That wasn’t smart on my end, either. We both could have made different choices, but here we are. And we are alive, and we will be just fine as long as we stay in the cabin.”
; “You don’t want me going out to get any more wood?” Jordan asked.
“Well, we should both go get some wood and put it on the porch and cover it up so it will dry out a little. But under no circumstances are you going alone. It’s too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous to go to the shed and get wood?” She laughed.
“Yes, there are a lot of cliffs around here, and if you venture away from the house, you are likely to fall right off them. Then all your friends and family will be right, and you will be dead.”
“Wow, that’s a bit harsh.”
“This weather is brutal. We are going to be just fine if we stay here. I have plenty of food, and we will be warm. Even if the solar panels stop working, we have wood to stay warm. It might be dark in here, but we will be alive when this storm passes. Promise me you will not go outside alone.” I was serious about this promise. Jordan had already proven she liked to push the envelope when it came to being independent. The last thing I needed was for her to get it in her head that she could make it down the mountain on her own. If there happened to be a break in the snow, that didn’t mean it was safe to hike down the mountain.
“I promise.”
“I mean it. The weather might look nicer when the snow stops, but this much snow is very dangerous. It hides things that you would normally see. We can’t go back down the mountain until I’m sure we can do it safely.”
“Fine. I said I promise.”
“Okay, but for some reason, your promises still make me nervous.”
“Ha, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, happy Valentine’s Day,” I said and held up my glass of water for a toast.
Jordan smiled widely, and at that moment, I couldn’t fathom any man ever breaking up with her. She clearly had to be the one who broke things off with this boyfriend of hers.
“Happy Valentine’s Day.” She banged her glass against mine. “May all our exes have a worse day than us.”
“Amen to that.” I laughed.
“Oh, so there is someone in your past?”
“I never said there wasn’t, only that I didn’t have anyone I wanted to bring up to the cabin.”
“Thanks for saving me last night. I know it was stupid, and if I didn’t say it meaningfully the first time, I’m genuinely so grateful to you. I might have frozen up there. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have died, but it would have been a rotten night. Thank you for coming back for me, and thank you for bringing me to your cabin. I’ll even volunteer to sleep on the couch.” She winked playfully at me.
“Oh, I wasn’t giving up my bed. You’re welcome to sleep in it with me.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt the sexual undertones in our conversation changing. I didn’t mean that I was inviting her to have sex with me, but by the smile on her face and the red that flushed her cheeks, I was pretty sure that’s what she thought I was saying.
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“The bed is more comfortable than the couch, that was all I was saying. We are two adults. Certainly, we could share a bed. We just shared a tiny sleeping bag.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Jordan said and drank her water.
“No, no, that’s silly. You take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make things weird.”
“No, thank you.”
This girl was driving me crazy. I was willing to give up the comfort of my own bed, and she was turning it down. What sort of woman actually wanted to sleep on a lumpy old couch instead of a comfortable bed?
“I insist. You take the bed.”
“Well, I already said no. And I insist on you not telling me where to sleep.” She was smiling, but I felt like things were going downhill between us again.
“Sleep wherever you want, but I’m sleeping on the couch,” I said firmly.
“Really? I’m trying to be nice here, and you’re being a jerk again,” she huffed.
“I’m trying to be nice, and you’re being rude.”
“I see why you live alone in the woods now.” Jordan stood up, and the screech of her chair echoed through the cabin.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I yelled.
“That you’re impossible to live with.” She tilted her head and went to sit on the couch.
She crossed her arms and refused to look in my direction. I laughed at the pouty face she had and how she was genuinely angry with me because I offered to sleep on the couch and give her the bed. “Maybe it wasn’t you who broke up with the dude after all,” I said under my breath.
“What did you say?” Jordan’s eyes were bigger than I’d seen them before as she turned and looked at me.
“Nothing,” I lied.
Chapter 9
Jordan
I was on the couch, and I was staying there. I wasn’t going to owe him anything. If he gave up his bed, then he’d think that I owed him, and I didn’t want to have that thought even cross his mind. Nope, I was sleeping on the couch.
Caleb messed around cleaning the kitchen for a little bit and then stood looking at me while I lay on the couch. For a minute, I thought that he might try to pick me up and move me to the bed. He was strong enough to do that, and I couldn’t have argued with him. Well, I could have argued all I wanted, but he would have won any battle of might.
Luckily, he just scoffed at me and went to his bedroom. I smiled at the little battle that I’d won. It seemed like an odd battle to be fighting. He was trying to give up his bed, and I didn’t want it, but it was the principle of the matter. Dinner was good, and I really did like Caleb. He seemed like a nice guy, besides the fact where he wanted to be right all the time. But I was sort of that way as well, so I understood his bull-headed nature. We were probably going to fight a lot while I was at his cabin, but at least he wasn’t a murderer.
As it got dark out, I couldn’t help wondering about Emma and my family. I hadn’t even told my mom and dad that I was going hiking, so they would only be worried about me if Emma blabbed about the whole thing. And Emma was for sure going to blab. She had probably already contacted the police who would have reached out to my parents. I bet the police were at that work retreat and probably grilling Rob about me as well. I felt so bad that everyone was worried about me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“The lights need to be turned out, or we might not have any for tomorrow. The solar panels haven’t been charged,” Caleb said as he stormed out of his room and flipped all the lights out before going right back to bed.
It didn’t matter to me. I was exhausted. Every inch of my body hurt, and I was just so happy to be in a nice warm cabin and not out in that snow. The fact was that I had Caleb to thank for me being alive, but I’d already thanked him, and that was all he was getting. There was no way I was going to continue sucking up to him just because he was a halfway decent guy. He had to know that I didn’t go around needing men.
Okay, well maybe I had spent a lot of my recent years feeling like I needed a guy. But I was different now. I felt different and more independent than I’d ever felt before. I wasn’t going to let this emergency circumstance let me slip back into my old ways. I didn’t need a man.
As I curled up on the couch, I realized that I should have asked Caleb for some additional blankets. Even with the wood stove going, I was getting a little chilly as the night wore on. I had one blanket and was curled up on the couch in as small of a ball as I could manage. There was no way I was going to go into Caleb’s room and ask him for more blankets.
***
I woke up just as the sun was coming up; much earlier than I normally woke up back in my apartment. I was cold, but not dangerously so. The cabin temperature had probably dropped down to 50-degrees, and I quickly put on my clothes that had been warming up by the wood stove.
As I stood there looking at the stove, I thought I should add some more wood to it. I had never put wood into a stove like this one before but figured it couldn’t be all that hard. Bu
t as I touched the metal handle I yelped loudly and pulled my hand away from the heat.
“Shit,” I moaned as I grabbed my hand.
“It’s metal … it’s a stove … it is hot. Don’t grab it,” Caleb said from his doorway.
I must have woken him with my yelling. His eyes were barely open as he stumbled to the stove, reached for a big mitt, and opened the door. He grabbed a couple logs and threw them in.
Caleb had on a pair of pajama pants and nothing else. My pulse raced at the sight of him. It was different than how I felt next to him in my tent. In the tent, I felt like I was going to die, and I hadn’t been thinking about Caleb as anything other than a person trying to save me.
Now I saw every chiseled muscle on his torso, and I wanted to rub my hands up and down him. I bit my lip with desire. He was a beautiful specimen of a man. Even with his thick beard and long hair, I could tell he was very handsome. He was trying to hide it with his current appearance, but it wasn’t working. He looked like one of those television stars who is too good looking to hide it even when they don’t shower or shave.
“Good morning,” I said sheepishly.
“Good morning. I’m sorry I forgot to add wood last night. I hope you weren’t too uncomfortable. I’m going back to bed for a few hours. Try not to hurt yourself.”
“Okay. Thank you.” I watched Caleb as he walked shirtless back to his room. “Um, wait. Do you have coffee?”
“In that cabinet. Do you know how to make it on the stove?”
He knew the answer before he finished the question, and Caleb turned back around and came to help me. I watched as he grabbed a small teapot and filled it with water from the sink. Then it dawned on me, he had running water in this cabin. Sure, he had told me about it the night before, but my feet were in so much pain that I hadn’t fully realized what he was saying. This cabin was miles away from anything, and there was no way he had a well.
“You said something about solar panels heating the water last night, but where do you get the water from?”
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