by Cindy Dees
“Gonna have to see that with my own eyes. Sorry.”
She had to give him credit for sounding sincerely worried about her. That was hard to argue with. But she did, anyway. “Look. I doubt the roads are any safer for you than they’d be for me.”
“I’ve got a truck,” he reminded her. “And chains. And I grew up driving around in these mountains.”
She tried one last time. “It’ll warm up in a day or two and the snow will melt off. I promise I won’t try to drive out until I can see dirt. Does that make you happy?”
“Just don’t go anywhere. Got it?”
Chapter 8
She started to tell him she was from the Midwest, which didn’t have the world’s most gentle climate, thank you very much, but the line went dead. In her ear. Omigod. Did he just hang up on her? Or maybe the phone line cut off due to the snow continuing to pile up outside.
She looked out the front window dubiously. It really was snowing hard, even by Chicago standards. Surely, he wouldn’t try to make it all the way up here in that mess.
She hunkered down in front of the fireplace once more and picked up her journal, pouring out her hurt, anger, frustration, and confusion. She had no idea what to do about him. She didn’t trust him any further than she could throw him, but her unfulfilled lust seemed to think it was still okay to sleep with him. Did that make her no better than him if she succumbed to those urges? Her rational brain shouted that it totally did. But the beast gnawing at her belly still hungered for what Archer could give her.
Maybe if she got drunk, then she couldn’t be held responsible for what happened between them. She doodled in her journal and decided that using alcohol as an excuse was no excuse at all. Rats. Like it or not, she couldn’t have her cake and eat it, too. She either had to take the moral high ground and stay away from Archer or be no better than him. Reluctantly, she jotted down “No booze. And no fun. Dang it.”
She could always take the direct route and tell Archer outright that she wanted sex with no strings attached and without any more of his seductive lies to sugarcoat what they were doing. She noticed with a start that she had written down, “Tell Archer I want sex.” She crossed out the words hastily. “Bad idea. Very bad idea.” Moral high ground, dammit.
If only she were Marilyn Monroe. She would use her sex appeal to snare the guy in her web, take what she wanted and walk away. She looked down at her page and laughed. She’d written down “Channel Marilyn Monroe.” It wasn’t a half-bad idea. Not that she could even dream of pulling that one off.
The hour grew late, and the quiet hissing of the fire lulled her nearly into unconsciousness. She headed for the bedroom whose door she’d prudently left open all evening. The room was cool, but habitable. She pulled on a big, sloppy T-shirt and slipped under the fluffy down comforter. Flannel sheets. Give the owner of this place a gold star. The bed warmed up quickly, and she hunkered down blissfully, well satisfied with her getaway so far. It was actually fun being snowed in like this, given that all of her survival and comfort needs were met.
Soon. If not with Archer, she would get rid of her virginity one way or another soon and get on with a normal social life. And then she would make an effort to go on dates and have interesting social interactions. Maybe even a boyfriend.
She couldn’t wait. She ignored the little voice in the back of her head whispering insidiously that she’d already found the perfect guy for her. Hah. Lie. Archer was Trouble. Capital T.
* * *
Archer squinted through the driving snow as his truck crawled forward at barely ten miles per hour. His GPS said the turnoff to Marley’s cabin should be somewhere along this stretch of road. Although the pine forest blocked the worst of the howling winds, it also made the falling snow swirl in his headlights in badly disorienting patterns. His four-wheel-drive truck and chains were barely managing to forge through the huge drifts of snow. When he’d left the valley where the movie was shooting, this had been a downpour of rain, which had been blinding enough. But in the form of snow, visibility was almost zero.
There. An opening in the trees that might be a driveway.
He stopped the truck and got out. The cold and snow slammed into him and he yanked his mountaineering shell up around his ears. He slogged over to what he thought might be the driveway and kicked his boots through the snow. Yup, there was gravel beneath. Firm ground. A road bed. He shook off the worst of the snow as he climbed back into the truck.
Downshifting, he eased the vehicle onto the narrow track. He had to stop twice to peer ahead in the beams of his headlights and find the driveway again. But finally, a tidy log cabin came into view. A mound of snow that might once have been a car stood beside the structure, and a faint, orange glow came through the front window.
He stomped through knee-deep snow to the front porch and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He moved over to the window to peer inside. That was definitely the glow of a fireplace. But there was no sign of Marley. Dammit, he’d told her to sleep in front of it!
Alarm erupted in his gut. She hadn’t gone outside, had she? Or maybe succumbed to the insidious onset of hypothermia. Or gotten injured. Or worse...
She’d better at least have left the door unlocked as he’d told her to or there’d be hell to pay—and a broken door to fix. He reached for the doorknob and tried it. The thing turned, which was good given that he was absolutely prepared to kick it down. He stepped inside and quickly shut it behind him.
“Marley?” he called.
Nothing. Dammit! He’d told her at all costs not to leave. Where the hell was she? He spied an open door across the room and stormed toward it, panic clawing at him as it hadn’t since his disastrous last mission.
He barged into the darkness, which turned out to be a bedroom, and spotted a long lump in the bed. God, he prayed that was Marley. He sagged in relief as he recognized the blond curls peeking out from under the top of the down comforter. Thank goodness. He didn’t know what he would’ve done if something bad had happened to her...
The thought stopped him cold. Jeez. How far gone was he over this woman?
He stared down at her sleeping form. Nothing but her nose and the top of her head were visible on the pillow. The rest of her was snuggled down deep under a puffy down comforter. She must be sleeping hard not to have heard him pounding on the door or calling her name. He ought to wake her up, bundle her in the truck and get the hell out of here before the roads got any worse.
But he wasn’t at all sure his truck would make it back down the driveway with the snow piling up as fast as it was and the winds picking up enough to push it into giant drifts. He’d barely made it up the drive, and by the time he packed up Marley and her things, he suspected they would get stuck, and then they would really be in a pickle. He probably shouldn’t attempt the miserable roads at this late hour, anyway. It was nearly 2:00 a.m., and he’d had a long day with that rough drive up here. Better to ride out the storm here in relative warmth and safety.
And damned if the other side of the bed didn’t look incredibly inviting.
The sensible side of his brain, the one that was determined to be honorable and not take advantage of Marley, warned him that this was a lousy idea. There appeared to be another bedroom next door. He should go in there to sleep.
But Lord, she looked all warm and soft and cozy. He could crawl in beside her, wrap his arms around her, lose himself in her sweet scent and fall asleep relishing the curves of her body against his. The exhausted warrior within him ached for rest beside her so bad he could hardly stand it.
Except the way his male parts had just leaped to attention, he sure as hell wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon. Silently swearing up a blue storm, he whirled and fled the bedroom before he had sex with Marley while she was unconscious this time.
He went back out to his truck to grab the bag of emergency supplies he’d h
astily thrown together before heading up here. Although he had to give Marley credit. She did appear to have things well in hand. He hauled in several big armloads of wood and stacked them on the stone hearth, and added a bunch of wood to the mostly burned-down embers of the fire.
As it flared up, he spotted an open journal lying in the big chair in front of the fire. He glanced at it before he’d really registered what it was. He didn’t mean to pry. But the word leaped up off the page at him. He couldn’t help it that he’d spotted his own name like that. He picked up the journal to read what he’d seen again.
“Tell Archer I want sex.”
What the heck?
He dropped down in the chair, propped his hiking boots on the hearth to dry and read through Marley’s doodles with growing amazement. Apparently, she was really mad at him for lying to her about something. Although what, exactly, wasn’t spelled out. But she still wanted to have sex with him and was conflicted about what to do.
He got to the part where she wondered if she would have become as low as him if she just used his body for sex. Ouch. Was that what she thought of him?
He had no illusions that most of the women he went to bed with used him purely for sex. Hell, he used them for sex, too. But he’d thought Marley was different. No, she was different. She was at least having an internal debate with herself over the rightness or wrongness of using him.
He supposed he shouldn’t be too offended. It was what all women did: they took one look at him and saw an uncomplicated lay with a hot guy. And he had let them be correct over the years. But realizing that Marley wanted the exact same thing from him hurt a little. Correction. It hurt like hell.
Which shocked him to his core. What in the hell had she done to him?
She was absolutely not the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am type. And he had just a few weeks left to build something that would withstand thousands of miles of separation and months apart. Yeah, right. Like that was possible. Not to mention, Marley needed wooing. Seduction. Emotional involvement, dammit. All the things he didn’t even know how to do with a woman. It wasn’t like any woman in his past had ever shown him how...
And it wasn’t like he’d ever wanted to learn.
Until Marley.
Her sweetness and goodness—which were real no matter what Steve said, dammit—challenged him to be...more. To man up and engage with her intellectually and emotionally. Not just physically.
But he really shouldn’t be looking for anything serious with any woman.
Shouldn’t.
Wow. Did he just think that? He wasn’t looking for anything serious!
His career made long-distance relationships necessary, and he knew from watching his buddies that they were flipping hard to sustain. They took a ton of work and commitment from both ends of the relationship. He wasn’t up for anything like that.
And yet, here he was high in the mountains, in the middle of the night, to rescue Marley from a damned snowstorm. Contemplating the unthinkable. Giving her the real relationship she craved. That he craved.
He stared into the fire a long time. Hell, he didn’t even know if she would consider having one with him.
One thing he did know. He wasn’t going to hook up with her, have a cheap one-night stand, and then dump her. She damn well deserved better than that.
Bleakly, he headed for the spare bedroom. It was freezing. That door hadn’t been open to the living room through the evening apparently. He stripped off his damp clothes, hung them up to dry and crawled under the down comforter. It didn’t take long for his thoughts to turn to the woman sleeping next door, and suddenly, staying warm was not an issue. Cooling off was going to be the problem tonight.
He woke abruptly to the piercing sound of woman screaming a few feet away, and he lurched upright. Must protect Marley...
“Archer! You scared me half to death!”
The woman in question stood over him, a fire poker raised high over her shoulder. And she looked jumpy as hell.
Join the club. Disorientation swirled around him. “Um, could you lower the poker, please? I’m in fear for my life here.”
“Oh. Sure.” She did so, then demanded, “When did you get here?”
“After midnight. You were asleep and I didn’t want to disturb you.” He glanced at the frosted-over window. Daylight came through it, but gray and dim. “The roads sucked. It took me hours to get here. Is it still snowing?”
“Yup. Still coming down thick and—” her voice stumbled “—uh, hard.”
His gaze snapped to hers. The way she’d reacted to those words...and the way she was staring at his bare chest... Damn.
His arousal took up where it had left off last night. If anything, it was even more insistent than before. Gritting his teeth against the pounding lust, he swore under his breath. It didn’t help that, beneath that sexy T-shirt, her legs were bare, all smooth and slender. He could already feel them wrapped around his hips, urging him deeper inside her...
He broke off the train of thought sharply, kicking himself mentally. Marley deserved a gentleman, not a jerk like him. That girl messed with his head.
“Could I have a minute to get dressed?” he asked carefully. “I’m a little bit, uh, naked.”
Darned if her eyes didn’t light up with unholy interest at that. Her gaze slid down to the fluffy comforter, which thankfully hid his epic erection. He was going to explode, though, if she looked at his lap much longer with that much heat in her eyes.
She turned and strolled out of the bedroom, her rear end twitching so pertly he groaned aloud at the pain watching it caused him. He pulled on jeans and a sweater and joined her in the main room. She’d already stoked up the fire and was rummaging in the cupboards.
“How do you feel about fruit pies over the fire for breakfast?” she asked in a muffled voice from inside a cupboard.
“Is that a Girl Scout thing?” he responded.
She emerged with a can of what looked like pie filling in hand and a loaf of bread. “I found one of those iron things where you open it up, put in two pieces of bread and filling, close it and toast it in the fire. We need something like butter to grease it up, though.”
He’d love to grease her up and... Stop that, dammit!
“There’s a freezer in the mudroom in the back. Could you check and see if there’s butter in it?” she asked. “I found some frozen orange-juice concentrate earlier and will mix that up for us.”
He passed by her, his hands itching to reach out and pull her into his arms. To cup her breasts and run his palms down her belly, to make her hot and needy for him, to have her writhing on his fingers and crying out her release...
Butter. Must. Get. Butter.
When he returned, she was bent over by the fire, her tush cupped in tight jeans and sticking up in the air as proud as you please. He could slip those jeans down, grab her hips and drive into her tight...
Butter. Must. Give. Her. Butter.
“I found some,” he mumbled.
“Great! I’ve got everything we’ll need right here. Is cherry okay?”
He mentally swore and narrowly avoided burying his head in his hands.
She buttered up the fire toaster, lined it with bread that she smashed flat and then she stopped, looking flummoxed.
“Need help?” he ground out from behind his clenched teeth and his raging lust.
“Can you open the cherries? I don’t have the right tool.”
He did groan aloud then. He actually had to turn away from her to hide his bulging flesh as he fished out his pocket knife and unfolded the can opener attachment. He passed the opened can over his shoulder to her and saw out of the corner of his eye when she stuck the toaster into the coals.
“Are you okay?” she asked. And, oh, God, she laid her hand on his back.
He wan
ted her hands all over him so bad he could hardly stand it. In desperation, he sank into the armchair beside the fire and propped up one knee to disguise his arousal at least a little.
“Yeah,” he managed to choke out. “I’m fine. You?”
“Well, I think we’re snowed in. It looks like another six or eight inches fell overnight. When do you suppose it’ll stop?”
If it didn’t stop snowing soon, he wasn’t going to make it out of here alive. His lust was going to kill him.
He shrugged, blatantly faking casualness. “Weather forecast said it should taper off sometime today and start to warm up. Could be a day or two for this much snow to melt. Could be another day or two after that for the snowmelt to run off and finish flooding the local gullies.
“You really didn’t have to come up here to rescue me. As you can see, I have things well in hand.”
He could think of something he wanted in her hand...
Stop. That.
He forced out, “The good news is Adrian’s going to have to wait for the valley to dry out enough to continue shooting. He can’t drive tanks and Jeeps through too much mud, or equipment will get stuck and make filming impossible.”
“Whew. I really can’t afford to mess up this job. I don’t have a backup gig like you do.”
His backup gig wasn’t looking all that appealing these days. The idea of leaving her behind and never looking back physically hurt to contemplate. Lord, what had she done to his head? Suddenly the cabin felt like a tiny, confining box, the walls collapsing in on him. Cursing, he grabbed his coat, threw it on and barged outside into the storm.
Chapter 9
Marley still didn’t forgive him for suspecting her and not telling her he was leaving in a few weeks, but it had been nice of him to make a difficult journey up here to rescue her. Even if she didn’t need rescuing.
She looked up with a smile as the front door blew open on a gust of wind and snow, but her smile died the moment she saw Archer. He was soaking wet, his hair plastered to his head, his clothes clinging to him, dripping rivulets of water.