Her phone buzzed with an incoming text.
One hand tight on the steering wheel, she picked up her phone and glanced at the screen.
Ken.
The car swerved slightly and she dropped the phone onto the passenger seat, holding tight to the steering wheel. Her heart pounded with alarm and she looked for a place to pull over. When she couldn’t find one, she slowed the car to a halt and put on her blinkers. It was stupid, of course, but the road was empty thanks to the weather, and she was only going to stop for a moment.
Cass quickly checked the phone, terrified of what she’d read. It was like a train wreck—she knew she shouldn’t look, but she couldn’t help it.
KEN: You abandoned me for the holidays? Naughty Cass! Where are you?
Cass bit her lip, trying to figure out the best way to respond. She couldn’t be rude to him. Rose would get upset with her and Ken would just spin it to make her seem unreasonable. She thought for a moment, anxiety spiking, and then quickly texted an answer.
CASS: Cabin in the mountains for Xmas. Have a good holiday!!!
The response came back immediately.
KEN: The set shut down for the week. Got room for one more up there?
He attached a smiley face, as if that would make everything seem sweet, innocent. In reality, her skin crawled. He wasn’t going to visit Rose for the holidays? He was going to try to hook up with Cass? Ugh. She didn’t know what to do.
CASS: No, sorry. Family event! Go see your family!
And she stuck a smiley face on there, too.
KEN: Your family’s back from Europe?
Crap. How did he know about that?
KEN: I’m thinking someone’s playing hard to get. Tell me where you’re at and I’ll get a flight out there. You shouldn’t be alone for Christmas . . . and we need to talk.
No smiley face that time. Cass’s stomach clenched miserably. Talk about what? Talk about “them” even though there was no “them”? Talk about how he’d been discreetly harassing her? Talk about Rose? She knew it was bait to get her to continue the conversation—Ken was great at that sort of thing—but she forced herself to ignore it. She couldn’t keep her car idling in the middle of a mountain pass, no matter that no one else was coming up the road. The wind and the snow were getting worse with every moment, and she’d be stupid to stay here longer than necessary.
CASS: Gotta go! TTYL.
She tossed the phone back in the passenger seat and turned off her blinkers, then started the car again. The tires spun on the ice, and for a heart-pounding moment, she worried she was going to be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. The mountains rose high around her, and she didn’t remember much about this area, just that the roads sometimes closed in the winter due to bad storms . . . and crap! Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? She’d been too rattled, too distracted by the enticing thought of getting away from Ken and his sleaziness.
Cass thought about turning around. Play it safe, go back down to town and forget all about her Christmas vacation. But she was close to the cabin. Had to be. Even driving as slowly and ultra-carefully as she was, it couldn’t be more than another fifteen, twenty minutes away. Town was at least an hour out, and it seemed silly to turn back when she was so close. She leaned forward over the steering wheel and gazed out at the skies, the wipers working furiously against the windshield. Snow was still flurrying down and showed no sign of stopping. Well, she had plenty of food and an entire case of ramen noodles in the trunk. She would be perfectly fine snowed in for a couple of weeks.
And if her return home got delayed, it wouldn’t be the worst thing. In fact, it might not be a bad idea at all. With that thought running through her head, Cass put the car into drive and headed up the road a bit farther. Visibility was no more than a few feet before everything turned into a whiteout blur, but no one else was coming or going, and she could go slow. No problem at all.
She even turned the Christmas music on again.
Just as she rounded another snowy curve, her phone rang again.
“Shoot,” she whispered under her breath and turned off the radio once more. She didn’t answer, though. She stared ahead at the blizzard and glared out the windshield as her ringtone sang happily out in the car. When it stopped, she let out a breath and waited for her voicemail chime to come on. She could answer voicemail later. Much later.
Instead, her phone just rang again.
And again.
And again.
As the car crawled forward and the snow poured down, Cass gritted her teeth and endured refrain after refrain of Beethoven’s Fifth as someone desperately tried to call her. She leaned over and grabbed the phone, sliding it into her lap. The storm was too fierce for her to look at the screen right now, and up ahead, the road would fork, one route leading to her family cabin, the other to the big ranch that extended all through the mountains and into the valley. She couldn’t miss that turn, because she was pretty sure that there was no way to turn around her car at this point, thanks to all the snow. Plus, going downhill in this seemed like a scary proposition. She had to pay attention.
But the car kept going, her phone kept ringing, and that fork in the road was nowhere to be seen. Her nerves fraying by the moment, Cass’s imagination started to get the better of her. What if it was her parents, calling because something was wrong? Someone calling to warn her about the weather? What if it was Rose and there was a problem in the Riviera and she was needed? It was her job to remain on call at all times, no matter the hour. Rose wouldn’t call her while she was on vacation, because she’d promised to give Cass real time off. Every time the phone rang, though, she worried a little more.
Then, it happened. One ring, then a hang up. Two rings, then a hang up.
If it rang again, that was the SOS. When she’d first started working with Rose, they’d established a code to let the other know that there was something super urgent that had to be discussed. Out of habit, she grabbed the phone and fumbled it up to her ear, gaze glued to the disappearing road. Was the storm getting even worse? How did people even see in this sort of weather?
“Hello?”
“You are an expert at playing hard to get.” Ken’s silky voice rolled across her ear.
Horrified, Cass dropped the phone.
There was no emergency. It was just Ken, not taking “no” for an answer.
The phone slid between her feet and landed against her shoe, resting lightly on the gas. She tried to kick it aside, but it got wedged against the gas, and then she spent a moment trying to nudge it away from the pedal. Oh please. She didn’t need this right now. Come on, come on, she silently pleaded with the phone, jammed against the side of the gas. Frustrated, she kicked it—
And accidentally floored the gas pedal. The car surged ahead, just in time to smash into the big tree that split the road in two. She heard the awful crunch of metal before her head banged against the steering wheel.
The world faded.
CHAPTER THREE
He was missing a cow. Damn it all.
Eli rode his horse through the clustered herd again. His mount didn’t like the blizzard weather but knew better than to balk at him. Nearby, flouncing through the snow, Bandit and Jim raced back and forth at the edges of the herd, and Eli pressed a clicker, counting cattle head. They couldn’t go far, because this pasture wasn’t more than ten acres or so, and he’d put out feed and hay for ’em to keep them comfortable through the worst of the blizzard. When the other ranch hands got back, they’d drive the cattle back out farther, but for now, he should have all four hundred right here near the barn.
But he kept getting three hundred ninety-nine.
If it was calving season, he’d assume a cow had split off to drop her calf somewhere. But that was two months away, so there was no reason for a cow to wander away from the herd unless something was wrong. Heck, this was just w
hat he needed. He’d been thinking all day about what he was going to do to fill his time now that the others were gone. Not that it would be a problem—the opposite, in fact. There was so much to do around the ranch that he was having to mentally prioritize what items to tackle first. It was a good thing, because then he wouldn’t notice just how quiet it was late at night, knowing he was the only one on the entire mountain.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Doc Parsons was probably up at the Swinging C Ranch on the other side of the mountain, but that was a little too far for visiting.
Eli whistled at the dogs and then began to ride his prancing horse around the edges of the fence, looking for answers. There was one particular cow that liked to run off, and he looked for the familiar white blaze on her nose in the herd of black cattle. When he didn’t see it, he circled back and looked again, and then cursed. Just as he suspected.
Houdini. Damned cow.
There was one in every herd that didn’t play nice with others. One that always tried to go her own way or was more trouble than she was generally worth. That was Houdini. If there was a fence, she’d escape it. If there was a blizzard, she’d find a way to make them chase her down. The cow had a wandering soul, and he’d threatened to sell her off many times, but fact was, she always gave birth to fat, healthy calves, and that counted for a lot. So they kept her around.
On days like today, though, he regretted it. Now he’d have to go out into the blizzard and hunt her down. With a bit-back curse, Eli led his horse closer to the fences. Sure enough, one had been leaned on until it was knocked over. Most of the herd was smart enough to stay near the hay. Not Houdini. Either she was the dumbest cow they had, or the cleverest. Either way, she was gone and he was gonna have to go after her.
Eli repaired the fence, cursing the entire time, and then got back on his horse. “Jim, Bandit, come on. Let’s go find ourselves a cow.”
To think he’d been looking forward to a quiet night by the fire. So much for that.
* * *
• • •
The good thing about tracking a cow in the snow was that it left a nice, easy trail to follow. Houdini had left a set of footprints that was plain to see, though he was lucky he’d found it when he did. Much longer and the falling snow would have covered it up. He gigged the horse forward, noticing that they were heading out toward the mountain road. That was all right. No one would be coming up the pass during this storm. Likely the roads themselves would be closed off at the base of the mountain if things got bad enough. That was a good thing, considering no one’d be able to see a runaway cow in this blinding white.
Nearby, the dogs began to bark. First Bandit, then Jim. They raced ahead of the horse, disappearing into the storm. Good. That meant they’d found the cow. Thank goodness, because he was about done with this, mentally and physically. It was getting colder by the moment, and while he was used to terrible weather, that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. It was hard on the dogs, hard on the horses, hard on him.
Maybe it was sappy of him, but he also wanted to get back and check on Frannie, see if she’d had her pups yet. All of the ranch dogs were hard workers and well trained, but he had a special bond with that one in particular.
The dogs’ barking grew louder, and he heard the angry low of a cow. Finally. With his gloves, he grabbed his rope lasso and began to give it length even as he drove the horse forward with his knees. As he got closer, he saw that the pregnant cow had stopped in the shelter of a nearby tree and was cornered by Jim and Bandit. She’d be easy to rope, now that she was done with running. He managed to loop her and tie her back to the saddle within minutes, all the fight gone out of her. “That’s right, Houdini,” he encouraged her. “You and me both’ll go back to the barn and we’ll have a nice dinner and forget all about adventurin’ for a few days.”
The cow just bleated a protest and jerked against the rope, but when the dogs nipped at her heels, she turned obediently toward the ranch.
Eli pulled his hat down and scanned the area. Sure enough, the cow had gone to the main road. There wasn’t much of one up the mountain, and what was there was more of a winding, twisting gravel path that tourists ripped around a lot faster than was sane during the summer, and no one came up during the winter.
Which, he supposed, was why he looked twice when he thought he saw a hint of beige amid the whiteout conditions. Wasn’t a lot that was beige out here in December. Things were either white, white snow, yellow snow, brown mud, and the occasional black cow. Beige didn’t happen. He peered harder but the wind picked up, whipping an icy blast against his face. He tipped his hat low and closed his eyes, waiting for the frost to melt away from his lashes, and when he looked up again, that beige was still there. There was just a hint of it between gusts of snow, but it was still there.
Well, now he had to check it out.
He dismounted, tied his horse to the tree, checked the rope on the cow, and then began to wade through the foot-deep snow toward that spot of color. The dogs began to bark again, dashing off in that direction, and his skin prickled with alarm. This was not good.
A few steps more, and he saw a bumper.
Definitely not good.
“Jim! Bandit! Over here,” he called as the dogs’ barks grew more shrill with excitement. He put a glove on his hat as the wind picked up, threatening to rip it from his head, and leaned into the gusting breeze as he approached the car. It was half buried in the snow, which meant that it had been here for a while. At least an hour, if the way the storm was filling up his footprints was any indication. He circled the car slowly. It was off, the front end crumpled against a big tree at the split in the road. Someone hadn’t been paying attention, it seemed, and had gone straight when they should have gone left. Right would have taken them straight to Price Ranch, and Eli sure wasn’t expecting visitors. Left it was. Likely the owner of the car had gotten out and headed in that direction, but when Eli looked at the ground, he didn’t see footprints.
His gut clenched as he ran his glove over the windshield and saw that it was cracked. There was a dark spot inside. Blood, probably. Maybe the person inside this car didn’t get out after all. If it was a dead body, it was likely going to have to stay for weeks, until a tow truck or the ambulance could make its way up the mountain. This place was near impassable after a blizzard. Eli swallowed hard and pressed his face against the glass, trying to see inside. With the shattered spiderweb of cracks, it was hard to tell. He grabbed the door handle and pulled, expecting it to be iced over. Instead, it fell open easily—a sign the interior was warm—and he saw the woman sprawled inside.
Dark brown hair spilled over the steering wheel. Her figure was slight, and she was wearing a black sweater over jeans. Her purse had erupted all over the passenger seat, and in the back of the car, he saw a few Christmas decorations and what looked like boxes of food.
What kind of fool drove up here in a sedan during a blizzard? Now she was dead. With an angry growl, he pushed her body backward so he could get a good look at her face.
Even as he tipped her back, she groaned.
Still alive.
Shocked, Eli stared down at the woman. She was in her late twenties, maybe about his age. Her face was covered in blood and there was a massive bruise right smack-dab on the center of her forehead where she’d hit it against the windshield—or the steering wheel. Or both. He didn’t know.
All he knew was that he couldn’t leave her out here. She’d die for sure.
Eli knelt beside the car and gently shook her shoulder. “Ma’am?”
Her head lolled and she didn’t respond.
After a few gentle attempts to rouse her, it was obvious that he’d have to take her back to the ranch with him. Just like a wounded calf, she’d be safer someplace sheltered and warm. “We’re gonna get you to safety, ma’am,” he told her politely, even though he was pretty sure she couldn’t hear a word he said. Talkin
g to her made him feel a little better, though, and less like she was going to up and die on him.
He dug through the back seat of the sedan and found a bag of clothing, but everything he pulled out was not nearly warm enough for a Wyoming blizzard. He didn’t have time to dither, though. He had to get himself and the dogs back to the ranch, and get his horse and cow out of this mess. And his woman, he added to the mental list. Well, not his woman. Whatever. He was just flustered at finding a pretty brunette near dead.
He was supposed to be alone for the holiday, damn it. Now he had a problem. A pretty brunette problem, but still a problem. Eli pushed a couple of her thin little sweaters over her head and tugged them down over her body, hoping she didn’t have bruised ribs or anything. It still didn’t seem warm enough, so he grabbed the Christmas tree skirt in the back seat and wrapped it around her, then eased her out of the car.
“Sorry about the cold,” he murmured to her as he cradled her against his chest. “But I can’t leave you here, and I can’t call you a car. Ain’t nobody heading in this direction for the next while, so it’s just you and me. Hang tight and I’ll get you somewhere safe.”
She didn’t answer. The dogs barked, but the girl against his chest was limp and lifeless.
Eli just hoped he wasn’t too late.
CHAPTER FOUR
It wasn’t easy getting an unconscious woman, a pregnant cow, two dogs, and a horse through a blizzard, but somehow he managed to get them all back to the ranch without losing anyone. He cradled the unconscious woman on the saddle in front of him against his chest. She didn’t stir, which worried Eli. There wasn’t anyone around that could make the pass through the mountains in this weather. They’d have to wait until it cleared, and if her injuries were bad enough, it might be too late.
All I Want for Christmas Is a Cowboy Page 2