by Sophia Gray
Before he could say anything more, I took three steps and got in his face, grabbing him by the scruff. For a split second, the smile faltered and he looked genuinely scared. Then the second was gone and he was once again the cocky asshole I had the misfortune of calling brother. Getting my face up close to his until our noses were nearly touching, I said through gritted teeth, “How the fuck would you have known what Pa would have wanted?”
He tried to lift his shoulders in a shrug, but with me holding him so tightly, he couldn’t really do it properly. It made him look like invisible strings were tugging him on. “He was my pa, too.”
I shoved him away, disgusted. “Fuck you,” I told him.
“No, Ciaran, this time it’s fuck you,” he growled at me, almost baring his teeth as though he were a wild animal snarling. It didn’t seem so far off from the truth at the moment. “I’ve stood in your shadow long enough. This time, it’s on you. After Macalister—”
“Macalister was in self-defense!” I retorted immediately.
He snorted. “So you say. But he’s dead and conveniently can’t tell his side of the story. You’re a murderer, Ciaran. I’ve always known it and now everyone else does, too.”
“You bastard!”
We almost came to blows then. We would have if a car hadn’t pulled down that road. It looked like a police car and it was enough to encourage both of us to just walk away from the impending fight. Besides, it wasn’t like we wouldn’t get the chance to go at it again later. I gave him a grim look that said as much, then turned to head back to my bike. I heard more than saw him do the same.
I was a little ways off the road, my bike buried in the trees somewhere to avoid being seen—I wasn’t on the best of terms with the cops. As I made my way over towards it, I heard the soft crunching of fresh snow. I frowned; it wasn’t the snow beneath my own feet. I was about to turn when the blow came.
A metal bar swung from out of nowhere made hard contact with my head. It sent a shock of pain through me, making my body send off all kinds of warning signs, but it was too late. My system shut down. I blacked out.
I jerked myself awake, or maybe it was just that the car had stopped moving. The heating was still trying desperately to fight the cold, for which I should have been grateful, but strangely enough I felt as though I was burning up. The heat felt like far too much for me and all I wanted was for it to stop blowing in my face.
A groan escaped my lips before I could stop it.
“Oh, thank God!”
The sound of a woman’s voice was enough to get me to jerk my eyes open. I saw it was the same woman from before, her dark locks damp from melted snow and speckled by flakes of freshly fallen snow, her blue eyes just as large as I recalled.
So I hadn’t imagined her, I thought lazily, having difficulty focusing.
I felt darkness struggling to swallow me again. I fought it, but I somehow knew it was a losing battle. Maybe it was the blow to my head, or maybe it was just the rough shape the cold had left my body in, but I was having difficulty focusing and staying awake both. I was also having difficulty deciding if this was all real. There was still a part of me that was delirious enough that I was half convinced the beautiful woman next to me, talking in a soft, soothing voice wasn’t real, couldn’t be real.
But she felt real.
Her hand shook at my shoulder as her full lips formed around words that my ears barely caught. “Please, I need you to stay awake! I’m not strong enough to carry you!”
It was a mixture of the desperation in her voice and the admission that she wasn’t strong enough that drove me to fight so hard to stay awake. She needs me, I thought blearily, despite the fact that I was feverish, delirious, and probably had a concussion.
“That’s it, hang in there,” she murmured softly as she pressed herself to my side, sliding her shoulder beneath my arm. She felt tiny beside me, the size of a fucking fairy. But despite her words, she was stronger than she looked. She managed to help me out of the car—I slipped to one knee once, but she got me back up—and supported me as we stumbled through the snow.
My voice was like gravel as it came out and I wasn’t entirely sure that it was coming out coherently, “Where…are we?”
The snow was still deep and getting deeper, I noticed. The blizzard hadn’t let up. But we’d pulled into what might have been a snow-covered parking lot outside of what looked like some rustic tourist trap that was in need of some serious renovations. The place looked like it was close to falling apart, probably only held together by rusted nails and superglue. But it had a charm to it. The buildings, which looked like they were scattered about, the walkways between each covered with pure white powder, were log cabins. I thought they might be real log cabins even, not just the kind of siding made to look like it. The one nearest looked small but cozy, with a small covered porch, the overhang weighed down with a heavy blanket of snow.
Beside me, the woman huffed, her breath coming out in smoke-like puffs in front of her pretty, pale face. “It’s…oh, hell, I don’t know,” she said, sounding adorable as she said a curse word that was so mild and yet was probably very risqué for her. “It’s the first place I saw to turn off and you need to get out of this cold.”
I felt my lip try to tug into a smile. That was when I noticed that my head wasn’t the only thing that hurt on me. The cold had numbed a substantial amount of it, but my body felt bruised all over. My lower lip was split wide open and I noticed that my ribs felt like they weren’t doing so hot either. I realized that bruises covered my body. Probably, I had been kicked while unconscious.
Bastard, I thought, not sure it was Shane, but willing to pick a fight with him over it anyway. If fingers were going to be pointed, they would probably be at him.
“Hotel?” I ground out. Now that I’d noticed my ribs, I noticed that it hurt to take deep breaths.
“Maybe,” she admitted. “Let’s check over here.”
We headed to what looked like a main office. It was rustic like everything else and looked to be pieced together just as well. We stumbled through the door. It wasn’t warm inside, but at least it wasn’t snowing and there wasn’t any biting wind. Not that my feverish body could really be convinced it cared about that right now.
“Hello?” she called out.
I didn’t have the energy to look around, but when we went to the front counter, I allowed myself to slump there. Though there was a chair beside us, it appeared that neither of us were willing to risk putting me down in it given I would likely pass out and not get back up. Even slumped over the counter, just barely on my feet, I felt my eyes tug themselves closed. I heard rustling and then a jangling noise.
The woman let out a victorious, “Ah-ha!” then came back around to me. “C’mon. Let’s see if this cabin is in any sort of shape.”
She pulled me along and somehow managed to get me up three steps to the porch of one of the log cabins. She fiddled with the key that she must have retrieved from the office and after a moment, I heard a click. She pushed the door open.
“Thank God,” she breathed. “C’mon.”
Once again, she threw my arm around her shoulders and ushered me inside. After that, I couldn’t say exactly what happened. I remembered collapsing. It was either on a bed or a couch, the padding beneath me soft and smelling slightly of musk. There were sounds. Shuffling and quiet cursing. Scraping noises. Finally, I heard the distinct sound of a spark and that got my eyes open just long enough to see the ember flames jumping on a neat stack of logs. Sitting beside the fireplace was the beautiful woman, her features aglow in the firelight, making her look just as ethereal as the first moment I’d seen her.
I mumbled something, then dozed off again.
I awoke on and off through the night. Each time I would catch sight of her. She’d be pacing or she’d be cursing, or she’d be kneeling by the fire, stoking it and making sure it stayed strong and bright. Sometimes she’d be checking her cellphone, holding it up towards the ceiling as tho
ugh trying to get service, only to bring it back down a second later and curse.
The night was both incredibly short and very long for me. My sleep was fitful, full of half-waking dreams and nightmares mixing in with reality. I dreamt of the woman sliding her petite body on top of me and running her hands over my chest. I dreamt of her grinding against my hips until I felt like bursting beneath her. And then I dreamt of her sweetly brushing the damp hair away from my forehead or singing sweetly until the dream shifted again to something else.
All the while, I knew the snow continued outside. I sensed it, the quiet as it fell, the cold as it wrapped over and across everything until the powdery white was like the tip of an eraser, sweeping away all the mistakes of the world.
And beneath that sense was another one, far more urgent.
The sense that I had to get out of here, because my being here was putting this woman in direct and very real danger.
Chapter 3
Elle
The snow wouldn’t stop. We were stuck in that damn little cabin until it did, and even then I wasn’t sure if I could dig my car out—or if it would even start after sitting there freezing all night.
I felt a twinge of guilt knowing we were staying here without permission and without paying. I promised myself I would leave this place twice as clean as I found it, and if I ever made it big, I’d send them a boatload of money.
I’m sure they’ll totally be grateful for an IOU from an aspiring singer, I thought dryly. Fact was, I was probably never going to make it. I was going to be a nobody forever. But I reminded myself I had to try.
Just like now. I had to try to keep both myself and my tall, dark, and handsome stranger over there warm. It wasn’t an easy task, made harder by the fact that every time I found a blanket to throw over him, he’d just shuck it off. I knew it was because he was feverish, but I also had decided it didn’t matter. I had to keep him warm. So I spent half the night staying near him and soothing him as best I could, making sure he stayed warm and covered. The rest I spent searching the place for extra blankets, clothing, and more firewood.
Thankfully, there had been a sizeable stack of wood beside the fireplace there in the main room, which was where we were holed up. It might have been easier to get and keep one of the other rooms warm since they were so much smaller, but I didn’t have time to think that far ahead when we first got through the door. The man was too big for me to carry unless he was conscious, and he had been losing that since I’d gotten into the main office and stolen that key.
I can’t believe I stole something and then broke in to a cabin! I’m going to hell for this.
As soon as I’d gotten that door open, he all but stumbled inside. Even with my support, I wasn’t getting him any farther than the deep red colored couch in the living room. I was hopeful that the padding of it would at least make him comfortable and help to keep him warm.
I threw another log onto the fire and picked at it with the poker. It hadn’t taken long to get the fire going, thankfully, since the wood was dry and old, too. The older and drier the wood, the quicker it burned. I remembered that from all the times I used to go camping with my brother and his bozo friends in high school. It had been their excuse to go out and drink, but I’d taken it as the time to learn useful skills for later in life.
Proof that I’m definitely the smart sibling, I thought triumphantly as the fire blazed, giving me precious warmth.
I held my hands out to the fire for a moment longer, then went to look around again. I’d managed to find a couple of blankets—one was thrown over my lovely mystery man and I had the other draped across my shoulders—as well as some sweaters that might fit him and were huge on me. I’d been hoping that there might be some canned goods or something stashed away in case the snowstorm didn’t let up, but I hadn’t found much yet. Just what looked to be a nest of some kind, probably for mice, and some extra matches. Not a whole hell of a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I was grateful for the matches.
I wandered into the kitchen again, planning on checking the other half of the cabinets. There were two reasons I wasn’t lingering in the kitchen long enough to check them all at once. The first was that the fire was in the room next to it, sealed off deliberately by a door so I could keep just that room warm easily. The second was that every so often I’d hear the man moan and I’d rush back hopefully to see if he’d awoken. I was really worried that he was in rough shape and he might not pull through.
“I really need to find some food or water or something,” I muttered to myself, my voice loud in the silence.
I began to go through the cabinets again, searching for any cans or sealed packaged goods that might still be okay, like bottled water. If push came to shove, I could melt snow from outside, but I really didn’t want to have to do that. It made me think to check that the water was running, that the pipes hadn’t frozen.
Crossing my fingers, I tried the kitchen sink. I was surprised when a trickle of water came out. Which meant the cabin wasn’t all that deserted. Maybe the people who owned it were out of town or something, but the place had clearly been set up properly to withstand a serious winter.
Which means there really might be food here!
With renewed hope, I began going through the higher cabinets until I finally found something. Yes! I thought, silently doing a victory dance. There, filling the shelf in nice little rows, were several canned goods. I saw some stews, some potatoes and corn, and even some spam, though I shied away from that one.
“Only if we’re snowed in for, like, weeks,” I muttered aloud, eyeing the can suspiciously.
I pulled several of the stew cans out and then closed the cabinet. I wasn’t necessarily starving—though I was a starving artist technically, so when there was food, it was a big deal—but I figured stew would help warm up the man in the living room.
Pulling the blanket closer to me, I huffed out a breath that turned to fog in front of my face, then went back to the living room. I half opened the can so it wouldn’t be under pressure, then put it over the fire to heat up. Since the place had running water, but no electricity, the water had to have been gravity fed. It meant there wouldn’t be any warm water, but I was grateful that I wouldn’t be without water at all.
Especially the toilet, I thought. That would be just gross. I could rough it if I had to, but that didn’t mean I wanted to.
As the stew cooked, I went over to check on the man. I stared down at him curiously, studying him as he lay there unconscious. I might have felt like a bit of a stalker, but I was too curious about him and what the hell he’d been doing out there to really think too much on it.
His skin was pink with his fever and slick with sweat. I mopped his dark hair to the side gently, the strands thick and silky beneath my fingers, despite being damp. My fingers lingered in his hair longer than they needed to as I stared down at his masculine, rugged face.
His eyes had been beautiful, startlingly green, what little I’d seen of them, and I found myself longing to see them again.
More than that, I wanted to actually talk to him. I wanted to hear the deep gravel of his voice again—it had sent a thrill through me when he forced it out earlier, echoing through my very bones. I couldn’t say what it was about him, but I was drawn in a way that I’d never been to a man before.
Probably just been too long, I thought mildly.
I wasn’t one of those women who believed in marriage before sex or anything like that. If that were the case, I’d be a twenty-eight-year-old virgin, and I just wasn’t okay with that. Life was about experience and I wanted to embrace as much of it as I could before I ran out of time and youth to do the things I wanted to. Still, that didn’t mean I went around sleeping with every Dick and Tom who wanted to put it in me. I never went home with guys from the bar—because you just never knew—and I didn’t like to have sex outside of relationships, though I had from time to time. It wasn’t that I was morally opposed. A girl had needs, and sometimes those needs
had to be met without the strings attached. But I admitted to myself that I was the kind of girl that needed more than a physical connection. I needed emotional fulfillment, too, and I didn’t get that from one-night stands or friends with benefits. Maybe that worked for some people, but not me.
As I realized I had been staring down at him for several long minutes, I felt my cheeks heat up. Not that he could tell; he was still unconscious. Still, I felt suddenly weird for staring for so long—and for thinking about things like sex and relationships and the strange, yearning attraction I felt for him.
Shaking my head, I moved away from him and back to the fire. I took the can of stew out of the fire. I had to go and find a bowl from the kitchen, which left me freezing all over again, then I tested the temperature of it and the taste. When I was satisfied that it at least wouldn’t kill him, I went back to the side of the couch. I tried to get him to sit up enough that I could feed him the stew. It was difficult and he didn’t take more than a few bites, but at least I managed to get something warm into him.