Stranded: A Winter Romance Duet

by Samantha Chase

  This extended time away from the office was meant to crunch all the numbers. He already owned the land that he was going to use but that was just one tiny aspect of the entire project. The land would have to be cleared, there were construction estimates to consider, trails to set, lifts to install and then came the more intricate details of the resort itself. Decorating, staffing, marketing and advertising…it was endless.

  And his numbers man had sneaked off.

  Dammit.

  Whatever Ted was thinking, he was wrong. There would be no coming back from this. Beckett didn’t mess around with things like this. Ted’s position with James Enterprises was officially terminated. Even if he had left his sister here as some sort of…collateral, that did little to help the situation.

  Hope wasn’t one of his employees, and she certainly wasn’t an accountant. She was a distraction; that’s what she was. Even right now, as angry and frustrated as he was and anxious to get to work, all Beckett could think about was where she was and what she was doing. If he was being honest, he hadn’t wanted to leave her all alone downstairs. That was simply a way of making sure that he kept himself in control. Knowing that she was upset over finding out who he really was and then having her brother take off with her car, Beckett had wanted to comfort her and, oddly enough, beg for her forgiveness.

  And that was something that he’d never done.

  Ever.

  Beckett had learned a long time ago if you show any weakness to anyone, people will take advantage of it. Maybe after today Hope would see that too. She had come here with the simple plan to help her brother out and what had he done? He stole her car and left her with the one man that he knew she hated.

  How could he possibly turn this situation around? He needed Hope to be a little less…hostile toward him. That would last all of three seconds if she realized that he was going to follow through on his threat to fire her brother. Maybe he should just help her leave and take her to a hotel himself.

  That thought stuck with him and Beckett couldn’t help but mull it over. Maybe that would be for the best. That way he’d show Hope that he respected her feelings about him, even if he didn’t like it, and remove all temptation from having her close. Even if it was just for one night, Beckett knew it would be too much. He had far too much work to do and as long as Hope was in the house, he wasn’t going to get any of it done.

  Raking a hand through his hair, he cursed and moved toward the door. He was known for his control, in every aspect of his life, and somehow the Cooper siblings had managed to royally screw up his day and quite possibly the next several weeks of his life. Another curse escaped as he jogged down the winding stairs to the entryway.

  The hairs on the back of his neck tingled and Beckett immediately knew that something was wrong. Hope’s suitcase was gone and there wasn’t a sound in the house. True, there were ten bedrooms and there was the possibility that she had chosen one and decided to hunker down and hide out, but he had a feeling that wasn’t it.

  A quick glance around the entryway and the surrounding rooms, Beckett found no sign of her and turned to look out the front window. Furious with himself and the situation, he saw the footprints in the snow along with what would be tracks from her suitcase being dragged behind her. “Stubborn woman,” he growled and pulled his coat from the closet and dug out a pair of snow boots.

  Beckett had no way of knowing how long Hope had been gone, but the footprints still looked fresh so hopefully she wasn’t far. Stepping out onto the front porch, he knew he had two options: car or snowmobile. The car was readily accessible but with the snow and the unpaved driveway, it could be treacherous. Making his way down the stairs and around to the equipment shed, he opted for the snowmobile. It would take a few extra minutes to get out, but he’d feel safer getting to Hope and getting her back to the house safely.

  The entire time he worked, he muttered about unfaithful employees and how if he had his way, he’d make sure that Ted Cooper never worked again. Not that it would help anything right now, but it sure made Beckett feel better.

  Ten minutes later, he sat astride the Yamaha Venture and made his way slowly out of the shed and into the snow. It was still falling at a steady rate and Beckett couldn’t help but feel responsible for Hope wandering around out here all by herself. Granted, she didn’t have to leave. That was her own decision, but if she didn’t despise him quite so much, she would be sitting safely in the house in front of a fire.

  With him.

  No time for this! He chided himself and made his way down the winding driveway following her trail of prints. The sky was getting darker, his visibility wasn’t great and Beckett was starting to panic that he hadn’t come upon her yet. How far could she have walked?

  He kept an eye on the prints when they suddenly stopped. He came to a halt and looked around and noticed that they didn’t just stop, they had slid off to the side and down into the drop off that went down about a dozen feet and led deeper into the forest. Scrambling off the snowmobile, he called out to her. “Hope! Hope, where are you?”

  Silence.

  Stepping closer to the edge, he looked down and saw her. She was moving around and if his ears weren’t deceiving him, she was cursing like a sailor. A chuckle escaped before he could stop it. “Are you all right?” he called down to her.

  “Does it look like I’m all right?” she yelled back.

  Beckett James was many things, but a rescue-ranger sort, he was not. He was more of a computer geek than an athlete, but seeing Hope slipping around had him stepping up to the challenge. “Okay, okay, I get it. Let me go back up to the house and get some rope so I can pull you up! I’ll be back as fast as I can!” As he turned away he was able to make out a few choice words she was using to refer to him but he chose to ignore them and get back to the supply shed. As soon as he turned the snowmobile around, Beckett knew it had been the right choice. The truck would have hampered him in these conditions and he needed to act quickly and get Hope back to the house and out of this cold.

  Along with being a computer geek, he was also super organized. Borderline OCD. When he arrived back at the shed, he knew exactly where to get the rope that he needed and also an extra pair of gloves and a hat since he noticed that Hope was wearing neither. Five minutes later he had everything he needed and carefully drove back to her.

  “I’m going to toss this end of the rope down to you along with a bag that has a hat and gloves to help you out. I want you to tie the end of the rope around your luggage handle and then I’m going to wrap my end around…”

  “I get it, Beckett!” she called up to him. “Stop explaining it and toss me the rope! I’m freezing!”

  He had a sudden urge to argue back but knew now wasn’t the time. Getting Hope up out of the snow was his number one priority. He tossed the rope down and watched as she frantically tied it around her middle and then around the luggage before pulling on the hat and gloves. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes!”

  That made one of them, Beckett thought. He had wrapped his end around the nearest tree to help; he wasn’t sure why he did that, but he knew that’s what people did in these situations. Once he got his footing, he began to pull. “I need you to try to walk up the hill, Hope!” he called out. “I know it’s slick, but I need you to work with me!”

  “I’m trying!”

  Snow was falling harder now and Beckett was having a hard time on his end. Between Hope and her luggage and the weather, this wasn’t an easy task.

  “Beckett!” she called out.

  “What? Are you okay?” There was no way for him to see her without letting go of the rope and losing any ground they may have gained.

  “I can’t do it!” she cried. “My boots…they’re not really boots. They’ve got no traction and my hands and feet are numb. I...I can’t make it.”

  Her voice was getting weaker the longer she spoke and fear began to set in. Beckett was a pro at on-the-spot thinking and one look over his shoulder had the answer
. “I’m going to hook up my end to the snowmobile and I think that will help to pull you up without you having to put in too much of an effort. Is that okay with you?”

  No answer.

  “Hope!” he called out again and when she still didn’t answer, his grip loosened on the rope as he tried to step forward and ripped his glove open as well as the palm of his hand. He cursed and quickly went into action. “Stay with me! I’m securing the rope to the snowmobile. Just give me one more minute and I’ll have you up here, okay? Hope!”

  No answer.

  He started the engine and began to move forward slowly while looking over to where Hope would be appearing. It didn’t take long for him to spot the blue knit hat peering out over the snow. He called her name and kept talking to her until he got her all the way up on level ground and then cut the engine and ran over to her, dropping to his knees when he reached her side.

  “Hope? Hope, come on, sweetheart. Open your eyes. Talk to me,” he coaxed as he quickly got the rope off of her and her suitcase. His hand was bleeding and he was starting to get numb from the cold but he needed her to wake up so that he could get her on the snowmobile and get them back to the house. He felt for her pulse and almost cried with relief when he found it. Patting her cheek, he gently called her name again.

  Long eyelashes fluttered open as she seemed to blink him into focus. “Beckett?” she whispered. “What…? How…?”

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re soaked to the skin and we need to get you warmed up. Can you stand for me?”

  “No, I can’t stand you,” she muttered as she gingerly came to her feet.

  Beckett couldn’t help but laugh. The snarky comeback meant that she was going to be all right. He helped her climb onto the back of the vehicle and then secured her luggage. His mind was racing with a million questions about why she thought walking around in a blizzard was a good idea, but he held his tongue.

  Climbing on, he turned and looked over his shoulder. “You need to wrap your arms around me and hold on. I can’t go too fast but you need to hold on to me. Okay?”

  Hope nodded slowly, her eyes drifting closed.

  “Hope! I need you to stay awake.” Reaching behind him, he pulled her arms around him and secured her hands against his middle. With one hand, he started the snowmobile up, carefully turned them around and slowly made their way up the winding drive. Five minutes later, they pulled up to the front steps of the house. He’d put the snowmobile away later. Right now the only thing that mattered was getting Hope warmed up. A little shaky on his feet, Beckett scooped her up into his arms and carefully climbed the stairs to the porch and opened the front door.

  “Norma!” he called out. “Norma, we need a hand!”

  “Norma?” Hope mumbled. “Who the heck is Norma?”

  “The housekeeper,” he replied and gave a tight smile when an elderly woman entered the entryway from the kitchen.

  “Oh, my goodness!” she cried. “What happened? I didn’t know you had gone out!”

  Beckett gave a quick rundown of the situation. “Miss Cooper is going to need a hot bath drawn immediately. Put her in one of the suites on the second floor and she’s going to need some dry clothes. All of hers are still in her suitcase outside and are most likely frozen.”

  “Maybe they’re not,” Hope said as she wiggled to get out of his arms.

  “We’ll be inside by the fire,” Beckett said to the housekeeper. “Please go get that tub running and we’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said and quickly made her way up the stairs.

  “Poor woman,” Hope mumbled.

  Beckett ignored her and walked over to the study that was off the entryway. There was a fire blazing in there and he sat them down in front of it before peeling the hat and gloves off of her. Next came her boots as she slowly removed her coat.

  “Oh! What happened to your hand?”

  Beckett looked down and remembered that he had sliced it open on the rope. He had been so consumed with worry for Hope that he had completely forgotten about it. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. We need to get you warm.” He yelled out for Norma to see if the bath was ready but the woman didn’t respond.

  “It’s not nothing,” Hope said, her voice laced with concern. She pulled his hand into hers and looked at it. “It’s pretty deep.” She gingerly touched it and winced right along with him. “Norma! Bring a first-aid kit with you, please!”

  “Hey!” Beckett snapped, pulling his hand back. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of this myself. You’re the one who needs to be tended to. You probably have hypothermia by now. What the hell were you thinking walking around in the snow like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe that I wanted to get away from you?” Hope pulled back to put some space between them. “I told you that I wanted to leave. You could have called me a cab, or better yet, driven me to a hotel, but no. You demanded that I stay here. I’m not one of your employees, Beckett. You can’t tell me what to do.” She crossed her arms across her chest and prayed that Norma would arrive and tell her that the bath was ready.

  “What are you? Twelve?”

  Hope glared at him. “Whatever. And you need to do something about that cut. Don’t expect me to play nurse and fix your hand.”

  Now there was an image that was going to stick in his mind: Hope dressed up as a nurse…a sexy nurse. Hell, he had almost been able to push aside the mental images of her dressed up as Princess Leia in the gold bikini and now he had the nurse one to contend with. Before he could comment on it, Norma walked hurriedly back into the room with a first aid kit in one hand and a towel in the other.

  “If you’ll come with me, Miss…?”

  “Cooper. Hope Cooper,” Hope said as she stood up.

  “Your bath is ready and I’ve put a robe in the bathroom for you to put on when you’re done until your clothes are warm and dry again.”

  “Thank you.”

  The women exited the room and Beckett watched them leave before sitting back in his chair and letting out a ragged breath. The day had gotten completely out of control and he had no idea how to make it right again. Work was out of the question. His hand was throbbing and he needed to make sure that the rest of Hope’s things got into the house and dried.

  Putting the first-aid kit aside, he rose and walked out the front door, gathered the luggage and brought it back inside. Then he turned right back around and drove the snowmobile to the shed and put it away along with the rope. Looking around, Beckett couldn’t help but wipe down the snowmobile and make sure that the rags he used were put in the laundry bin. Everything looked to be in its place, until he saw that the rope wasn’t coiled as tightly as he preferred.

  Thirty minutes later, the shed was completely back in order and he walked through the snow back into the house. Norma was walking toward the study with a tray containing a couple of steaming mugs.

  “Miss Cooper’s clothes are all in the dryer and she just finished her bath. I made you both mugs of hot chocolate. It feels like the perfect day for it.” She placed the tray down on a table facing the fireplace. “I was going to put out some of the cookies I baked, but Miss Cooper said that she had an entire insulated bag full of them. She told me she’d take some out when she comes down. How is your hand?”

  Crap. He had forgotten about it again. Instinctively, he flexed it several times and winced with each movement. Not only that, he felt it bleeding again. “It’s fine,” he lied. “I’m going to clean it up and get a bandage on it.”

  “Do you need any help? I’ve done my fair share of bandaging up all kinds of scrapes and cuts between my kids and grandkids.”

  It wasn’t that Beckett didn’t trust Norma; he completely did. He just didn’t like anyone fussing over him. He was a grown man and he could handle cleaning his own injuries and putting on a bandage. “Thanks but I think I’ve got it.”

  Norma nodded and left the room.

  When Beckett was alone, he sat down in one
of the chairs and put the towel Norma had brought in earlier across his lap. The cut was on his left hand and right now that was the good news. The cut was deep and probably could have used a couple of stitches, but there was no way he was going to get to an ER in this storm.

  Opening the first-aid kit, he fished out the peroxide and antiseptic wipes along with a couple of gauze pads and tape. The cut was too big and in too awkward of a position for a regular bandage so he resigned himself to wrapping the palm of his hand all the way around to keep it clean.

  He was just pouring the peroxide onto his hand when Hope walked in. A loud breath hissed out at the stinging sensation. Before Beckett knew it, Hope was in front of him with his injured hand in hers and blowing on the wound. He stared at her, completely stupefied by her gesture. Her hair was damp and curling wildly and she didn’t have on a stitch of makeup. She was completely engulfed in one of the spa-style robes he had stocked when this house was used as a ski lodge.

  It shouldn’t have looked sexy, but it did.

  “Are you seriously just cleaning this now?” she asked, effectively snapping him out of his reverie.

  “I needed to bring the luggage in and get the snowmobile and rope put away.”

  “That should have taken all of five minutes, Beckett. I know I was easily upstairs for almost forty-five minutes.” She blew on the spot again before gently wiping his hand with the edge of the towel that was in his lap. Without asking, she then picked up a pack of the antiseptic wipes and finished cleaning his hand before examining it a little more closely. “You probably need stitches.”

  “Not gonna happen,” he said, his throat feeling a little tight.

  Hope looked up at him, her eyes huge. “Why?”

  A chuckle escaped before he could stop it. “The snow? The storm? Any of this ringing a bell?”

  “Right. Of course,” she said as a blush colored her cheeks. “Sorry.” Her focus went back to his hand and she found some butterfly bandages to pull it together, then wrapped it in gauze and taped it. “There. That should do for now.” Her voice was slightly breathless as she looked back up at him.