Snowflakes and Silver Linings

by Cara Colter

  Then he flipped Casey over, sat up, wrapped his legs around her torso and crab-walked backward, dragging her with him.

  And somehow she knew this was what he did.

  And he did it well. He dealt in life-and-death crises. She suspected he did it all the time. How else could he do it as naturally as breathing?

  “Don’t even try it,” he warned when she attempted, groggily, to get her feet under her. Her mind was not working correctly. Everything was in slow motion.

  The dog got on shore, shook herself weakly. Casey took her eyes from his only for a second to watch Harper find solid ground on the embankment and lie down, unmoving.

  Turner pulled her backward until they were at the last rung of the ladder. And then he stood up.

  The ice groaned.

  Panic tried to rear up in her, but he was straddling the ladder, still distributing his weight.

  He lifted her, slung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and ran. The ice snapped and cracked behind them.

  And then they, too, were on the shore.

  It occurred to her it was not over. She was wet and frozen. How far had they walked? As much as a mile?

  “C-could I f-f-freeze to d-death still?” The words took effort, way too much effort.

  “Not on my watch,” he said, and again his confidence and his competence transferred directly to her. But would that be enough to keep her going until he got them back to the inn?

  He was not going back to the inn. He hit the embankment running, not deterred by her extra weight at all. He ran to the cabin, shifted her limp form on his shoulder, and booted the door. With the second kick the wood splintered, and with the third the door crashed open.

  She lifted her head. The dog was still lying as if dead, by the shore of the lake.

  “H-Harper,” she called weakly.

  “Forget the damned dog. You nearly died for her.”

  They were in the cabin’s main room. Turner went down on one knee, slid her off his shoulder onto a worn couch. He moved quickly away from her, went through another door, came back with blankets ripped from a bed.

  If she had hoped for warmth in the cabin, she was dead wrong. It seemed colder than outside. She had never been so cold. Her body was so numb it was beyond pain.

  Wordlessly, working precisely, he began to strip her sopping clothes from her. First her jacket, then her boots.

  He grabbed the hem of her sweater, pulled it off her wooden, uncooperative limbs and over her head. It tangled briefly in her hair, and when he tugged it free with urgency, she felt almost thankful to feel the pain of her hair being pulled. To feel anything.

  His hands went to her blouse.

  “Oh, no,” she managed to whisper, mortified. “Don’t.”

  “Get real. Death or modesty. Guess which one is out the window?”

  He didn’t undo the buttons on her shirt, just yanked, hard, and they all popped free and rattled across the wooden floor.

  He tried to peel the sleeves off, but her limbs were not working now, like funny floppy things in no way connected to her. He had to manipulate them, struggling to get the sopping clothes off her pebbled, frozen flesh.

  At another time, she might have been more self-conscious, but her brain was feeling sluggish, still moving in slow motion.

  This was not the time to be wondering what she had put on for underwear this morning, but wonder she did.

  Still, when his hands found the clasp at the back of her bra—and very expertly at that—nothing changed in the professional, cool cast of his face. His expression showed nothing except determination as he pulled apart the clasp and dropped her bra to the floor.

  He shoved her down, unsnapped her jeans, peeled them over her hips, down her thighs and off.

  He reached for her panties.

  “Don’t,” she rasped. She didn’t have the strength to push his hands away.

  “Sorry,” he said, not very sincerely. The panties were gone.

  She barely had time to contemplate her nakedness before Turner had her wrapped in coarse blankets, tight as a sausage in a roll.

  “P-p-please. The d-d-dog.”

  He gave her an exasperated look. She began to cry.

  Without another word he went out the door and came back with Harper, dumped her unceremoniously in front of a cold hearth. Casey noticed the front of Turner’s coat was soaked, too.

  “Th-thank you.” She meant for getting the dog, but she was too exhausted to elaborate. It didn’t matter. Turner didn’t acknowledge her.

  Working quickly, his manner methodical and thorough, he crumpled paper and reached for kindling, both from a wood box next to the fireplace. He set them carefully, played around with the damper and then lit a match, also taken from the box. He got down on his knees, blowing gently, reminding her of the time he had blown on her cold hands.

  Turner. Turner Kennedy. Bringing warmth to a world gone cold. In so many, many different ways.

  He watched carefully for the first lick of flames, and only when fire crackled along the kindling did he start adding wood. And then more.

  When that was done, he went and hauled a mattress out of the bedroom, laid it right in front of the fire. And then he disappeared and came back with a towel from somewhere. He sat her up in her blanket strait jacket and rubbed her hair hard with the towel.

  “Ouch.”

  “Hey, suck it up. Compared to what I’d like to do to you, you’re getting off easy.” He continued toweling her hair, squeezing the extra water out of it, toweling some more.

  “What?”

  “I told you not to go out after the dog,” he said sternly. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  “What would you like to do to me?” she whispered.

  “Strangulation comes to mind.” But his eyes moved to her lips, and then away. It seemed to her he was extra rough with the towel then.

  “Don’t be mad.” Her chattering teeth made the words sound strangled.

  “Yeah, why be mad? You could have got yourself killed over a stupid dog—”

  “She’s worth it,” Casey said stubbornly.

  He groaned. “And I’ve been dying to get my hands in your hair and here we are. Of course, it’s not exactly what I expected, but then is anything ever, around you? And it wasn’t worth it. No dog is worth a human life.”

  “I put you in danger, too,” she said mournfully. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not sorry about putting yourself in danger, but sorry about putting me in danger.” He snorted with disgust. “You’re the one who is going to cure cancer. You’re worth ten of me, Casey.”

  “I am not,” she said softly.

  “Yeah, well, we’ll open the debate later.” He tossed down the towel, lifted her easily into his arms, strode across the room with her and set her down on the mattress with a gentleness that belied the sternness in his tone.

  “I-I’m not w-w-warming up.”

  His tone changed completely. “I know, sweetheart. Hang in there.”

  Sweetheart.

  If only all these circumstances were different. To be in a cabin with him, in nothing more than a blanket, and to have him call her sweetheart.

  Not like that, though. Not like a person speaking to a child who needed to be comforted.

  In the same methodical way that he had rid her of her clothing, Turner began to strip off his own clothes. He tossed off his jacket, wet from the rescue and her hair. His hands f
lew down the buttons of his shirt, and he yanked it open, revealing the utter perfection of his chest, painted in the golden glow of the strengthening fire.

  “Is it normal to feel drunk?” she whispered.

  “Yeah, all the girls feel that way when I take off my shirt,” he said sardonically.

  And he didn’t stop at just his shirt, either!

  Casey could feel her eyes going round with wonder as his hands went to the snap on his jeans, opened it, and then the zipper. He shrugged out of the pants, stepped from the puddle of denim on the floor.

  His fingers found the waistband of his underwear, and through her chattering teeth she gasped.

  He hesitated then, for the first time since this whole debacle had started. He stared at her, disconcerted, as if so far he had managed to think of her just as an exercise in survival. After a second, his hands moved away from the band, and the underwear stayed.

  Her mind slowed from the cold, Casey couldn’t figure out if she was very, very relieved or very, very disappointed.

  And then he crouched beside her, tugged up the corner of the blanket and slipped onto the mattress beside her.

  “Sorry, babe, it’s the best way I know to get some warmth into you. Transfer my body heat. Slow enough not to do harm. Quick enough to prevent hypothermia.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close.

  Her mind processed the information.

  Turner Kennedy and I are wrapped in a blanket together. All that is preventing us from total nakedness is the thin fabric of his shorts.

  The sad part? The surface of her skin was so cold it was without sensation. He might as well have been a frozen fish.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TURNER TUCKED THE blankets around them as tightly as he could, and then put his arms around her again, pulling her more closely to him.

  The dog whined, and came and lay against his back.

  The fire crackled on the other side of him.

  “I like your shorts,” she decided, and then realized she had said it out loud. “I mean, they’re not Jockeys and not boxers. What are they?”

  He swore softly and was silent.

  “There’s got to be a name for that.” She giggled. “Not tighty whities, but—”

  “Would you stop it?”

  “I would, honestly, but I don’t think I can. Tighty mighties?”

  “Casey, I’m begging you. Stop.”

  “Just tell me the name.”

  “If I tell you, you’ll never mention it again, ever?”

  “I promise.”

  “Boxer briefs.”

  “Oh,” she said, and then sighed. “I really like them. Were mine okay?”

  “Your what?” he asked in a strangled tone.

  “My undies. I really wasn’t expecting anyone to see them today.”

  “I didn’t really notice.”

  “Please tell me I was not wearing the full coverage ones that have the days of the week on them.”

  “You’re killing me here.”

  “Sunday is pink,” she prompted.

  “Okay. It was not Sunday. Or full coverage.”

  “So, you did look!”

  “Casey, I’m a man. I looked. Not the red lacy ones. White. Bikini.”

  She felt inordinately pleased that for some reason she had not chosen her practical underwear this morning. Her new leaf was really going all to hell when she thought about it.

  But she didn’t feel like thinking about it right now!

  “You said you didn’t notice.”

  “You caught me then. I was lying. It was one of those self-preserving kinds of lies a man tells when he can’t possibly win. Because if I looked—and worse, noticed—I’d be some kind of pervert. And if I didn’t notice, then you might think you didn’t measure up.”

  “Did I? Measure up?”

  “I’m trying to be professional here.”

  She pondered that. “Professional what? What kind of government contracts did you say you do?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “Sensitive work,” she remembered. “You save people, don’t you?”

  He snorted. “I’m no hero, Casey. Don’t even think it. You have started down the road of disillusionment.”

  “How can I not think it, when you saved me?” she whispered, suddenly feeling very sober. “Turner, you saved my life. How did you know? How do you know how to do all these things?”

  “It’s no big deal,” he said, and he meant it. “That’s what I get paid for. To keep a clear head when all hell is breaking loose.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  “If I was that amazing, I wouldn’t have left home without a cell phone,” he said ruefully.

  “No,” she said. “Turner, you are the most amazing man I’ve ever met. And that was before I saw you in your boxer shorts. Boxer briefs.”

  “Yeah, well, survivor’s euphoria.”

  “Is that why I feel like giggling?”

  “Unless that’s me in my boxer briefs again, yeah, probably.”

  “Euphoria,” she whispered, contemplating it, liking the way the word rolled through her mind like warm mist. And that was exactly what she felt lying there, thawing out, wrapped tightly in a blanket, his naked body sharing his warmth with her. Absolute and utter euphoria, as if she had never had a better moment in her entire life.

  “I should be mortified,” she said out loud. Were her words slurring slightly, as if she was drunk? “But I’m not. I’m euphoric. And at least I’m not wearing the pink ones that say Sunday on them. Are you euphoric, too, Turner?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said gruffly, “I’m naked with a beautiful woman under the worst possible circumstances. You have pried personal information from me about my underwear and yours. But as I said before, I have a feeling nothing with you ever goes as expected, does it?”

  “Why? Were you expecting this? Were you expecting us to be naked together? Sometime?”

  He groaned. “My only defense is a weak one, and I’m falling back on it, even though I’ve already used it. I’m a man. Men think like that.”

  “Wow,” she said, feeling as if he had announced the discovery of a new planet. “Men think naked thoughts. All the time?”

  “Just about,” he said.

  “With everybody?” She giggled. “Every body—get it?”

  “No,” he said gruffly, “not with every body.”

  “So, if you had to get naked with someone to keep them from dying, would you be pretty glad it was me?”

  “Casey?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Quit talking now. I’m begging you.”

  “If you just answer that one question, I promise I will.”

  But he didn’t answer. He tucked her in even closer, put his chin on top of her head and let her bury her face in his chest.

  And it felt like an answer, even if it didn’t have words.

  The exhaustion had caught up to her. She was sleeping. Cuddled to him as she was, Casey’s shivering was beginning to become less violent, her body beginning, just beginning, to feel less like a block of ice. Turner knew that meant they were coming out of the danger zone.

  He was keeping his body between her and the fire now. His body heat would warm her up at a good rate; the fire might do it too quickly.

  Out of the danger zone? They were lying naked in each other arms, and they had just had a rather intimate discussion about underthings.

  So, possibly they were entering a danger zone of a whole other kind, not that he would ever take advantage of what she was feeling.

  Gratitude. Relief. Euphoria.

  It was proba
bly as close as she had ever come to a near-death experience. He had brushes with them all the time.

  But there was a difference here, and he pondered that.

  In all those other situations, it had been a mission. Everything rehearsed and controlled, as much as it was humanly possible to do. He knew what he was getting into, what tools and skills he would use, what he could control and what he could not.

  He left nothing to that most precarious of things, chance.

  Turner believed in himself, and the people he was surrounded with. He believed in carefully calculated odds, even though those odds were not always in his favor.

  What he did not believe in was miracles.

  And yet, when he looked at what had happened tonight out there on the broken ice, it had the markings of the miraculous. What were the chances that a ladder would be leaning up against the cabin? What were the chances that there would be a cabin? Full of every single thing he needed to keep her alive?

  What if she’d been out here walking by herself?

  A miracle, he thought, and pondered that. Maybe he was experiencing a bit of euphoria, after all.

  Turner waited another hour, and then two, feeling warmth sliding back into her body before he finally released her and moved away. The dog protested and Casey mewed in her sleep, but he tucked the blankets tight around her.

  Harper, still very wet, was going to try and snuggle into Casey, so he found more towels and dried the dog off.

  “Stupid mutt,” he said.

  Harper kissed him lavishly. Turner went and found an extra blanket, wrapped it around the dog.

  Then he got Casey’s frozen clothes from the floor by the couch. He took them outside, barely noticing the cold, and wrung them out.

  They were not going to be ready for her to put back on in the morning.

  Next he rummaged through the cupboards, coming up with broth and crackers. He found a pot. The propane for the stove had been turned off, so he stepped outside, found the tank valve and turned it on.