She’d grown up in this house—ten miles outside of the nearest small town in a rural mountain county of southwest Virginia—and they’d been trapped by winter weather before.
It just didn’t put her in the holiday spirit.
“Oh, and I’m sorry to add to your annoyances, but…” Brad trailed off unexpectedly.
“But what?”
“David’s on his way to the house.”
Rachel’s spine stiffened almost painfully. “What?”
“I borrowed his circular saw to work on Mom’s deck and kept forgetting to return it, so he’s stopping by to pick it up.”
“Why is he coming to get a saw in the middle of a storm?”
“It wasn’t so bad when he started out. He was working a job in Gilman, so the house was on his way home. Anyway, he called a few minutes ago, and he’s not far away.”
“Damn it, Brad. I don’t want to see him.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, unless you want to hide in your room and pretend he’s not there.”
Brad didn’t sound remotely apologetic. In fact, he sounded like he might be mocking her.
“This is serious to me,” she said, tightening one hand into a fist.
“I know he’s not your favorite person, but it can’t be that big a deal. We didn’t expect you until the evening, so he should have been gone by the time you arrived.”
“Not my favorite person?” she repeated. “I can’t stand him. I can’t stand to even be around him.”
Brad was silent for longer than she’d expected. Finally, he said, “I didn’t realize you were still so hung up on this. You see him around almost every time you visit.”
“That’s different. That’s not being stranded with him in a storm this way. You know what he did to me.”
“But you’ve always acted like it was no big deal, and that was years and years ago. Normal teenage drama. I always thought you’d gotten over it.”
She swallowed hard, a familiar ache tightening in her chest as she thought about what she tried to never think about. “It wasn’t teenage drama. It just wasn’t.”
David Harris had been her brother’s best friend since elementary school. Two years younger than them, Rachel had had a foolish crush on David for as far back as she could remember. Finally, the summer she was seventeen, he had started showing her attention.
It had been the best summer of her life—hanging out with David for hours every day, sharing with him dreams and fears she’d never told anyone else. The summer had climaxed—literally—on a blanket beneath the old willow tree on her family’s property. She’d been a virgin, but she’d trusted him completely. He’d been so sweet, gentle, and passionate, and it had been better than she could have imagined.
Until a couple of days later, when he’d dropped her completely.
He hadn’t even broken up with her—just avoided her until she got the message. He never called, never came by, and acted like she didn’t exist when they happened to encounter each other around town.
Rachel had been heartbroken, but she’d understood exactly what happened.
She’d never meant anything to David, no matter how much her teenaged stupidity had allowed her to believe he really cared for her. She’d been a way to pass the time for him during a slow summer. Once he’d gotten what he wanted from her, he’d moved on without hesitation.
The memory of that summer—his laughter, the weight of his arm around her shoulders, the feel of him moving inside her with so much care, the look in his eyes when he’d come—still had the power to make her eyes ache, her chest ache.
Even eight years later.
“I know he hurt you,” Brad said, the laughter vanished from his voice. “And it sounds like it hurt you more than I realized. But it’s been over for years. He’s a really good guy.”
“A really good guy wouldn’t have done that to me. I don’t understand how you expect me to forgive him.”
“You don’t understand, Rach. You don’t know—” He broke off abruptly, mid-sentence.
“Exactly what don’t I know?”
“Nothing. This isn’t the time to talk about it. The point is that David is on his way there, so keep a lookout for him. Hopefully, the storm will break soon, and Mom and I can get out there by this evening.”
“Fine.”
Rachel said goodbye and hung up, glancing out through the wide bay window of her mother’s living room.
The sleet was coming down hard now, freezing on whatever surface it touched—the trees, the grass, the beautifully landscaped stone patio, the long driveway.
David was definitely going to be stuck here, she realized. He shouldn’t be on the roads at all. Not in this kind of ice. It wouldn’t be safe for him to return to town until the weather improved.
She swallowed hard.
As if she’d summoned him by her thoughts, she saw his familiar red pickup—the same one he’d been driving since high school—approaching slowly on the county road that ran along the far side of the large front yard.
She’d sat in the passenger seat of that pickup more times then she could remember, listening to David talk about his plans for beginning a carpentry business, singing uninhibitedly to the radio, kissing him for way too long before he dropped her off in the evenings.
David was now one of the most successful contractors in the county, even as young as he was, but he hadn’t yet given up his old truck.
As she watched, the truck started to slip, threatening to spin before David stabilized it.
That road had been bad enough when Rachel arrived a half-hour ago. It must be a sheet of ice now.
David was going slowly, and he made it without further incident until he started to turn into the long driveway leading up to the house.
With virtually no traction, he couldn’t hold the turn, and the truck spun out of control, ending up nose-first in the ditch.
Rachel’s breath had caught in her throat as she watched, but she let it out in a whoosh when she saw that the damage didn’t look too severe.
She waited, expecting to see David try to back the truck out of the ditch, although she couldn’t imagine he could do so effectively until the ice was gone.
The truck didn’t move. The tires didn’t seem to be spinning, although she was too far away to know for sure.
She kept watching, assuming David would now climb out of the truck and walk up to the house.
He didn’t get out, though. For way too long.
Maybe he was hurt.
Without thinking, she grabbed her new red cashmere coat and threw it on as she hurried out the side door.
The wind was biting cold, and the sleet hit the bare skin of her face like bullets. She ducked her head and tried to hurry, irrationally scared that David might be hurt.
It hadn’t seemed like a dangerous accident, but then why wasn’t he getting out of the truck?
The driveway was so slick she skated more than walked as she wobbled her way down the drive.
She was moving too fast as she finally approached, and she skidded toward the passenger side of the truck.
She stopped herself abruptly by slamming into it, jarring her body uncomfortably.
She slid over to the passenger door and tried to open it, but her hands were almost numb, since she’d been too distracted to put on gloves, and this door had always had a tendency to stick anyway.
She shivered and pulled and huffed in frustration, trying to pull the door open. Ice had mostly covered the window, so she couldn’t even see inside very well to ensure that David was okay.
Suddenly, the door was opening, pushed out from inside. She almost toppled over from the unexpected momentum of the door.
“What the hell are you doing?” a male voice demanded from inside. David had leaned over to open the passenger door, and he was now glaring at her. “You’re going to break your ankle or freeze to death out here.”
Rachel gasped in indignation as she tried to catch herse
lf from falling by clinging to the seat of the truck. She managed to pull herself back to a stable position. “I thought you were hurt. You didn’t come in. What are you just sitting out here for?”
The sight of David’s familiar face—well-sculpted features, dark eyes, five-o’clock shadow, short brown hair—made her stomach twist in pain. Every time she saw him, he looked more mature and even more handsome. Her instinctive attraction compounded her annoyance with his tone, when she’d gone way out of her way to help him.
“I was talking to your brother. I didn’t even know you were at the house until he told me.” David showed her his smartphone, with which he’d obviously just hung up with Brad. “Get in the truck before you catch pneumonia.”
“I’m not going to get in the truck,” she snapped back. “You’re never going to get it out of the ditch in this weather, and if you do, you’ll just end up back in the ditch farther down the driveway. You’ll have to leave your precious truck and walk back to the house like a sane person.” Her voice was loud by necessity, to be heard over the wind whipping through her loose blond hair and damp clothes.
Her voice might have been a little louder than it needed to be.
He rolled his eyes, impatient either at her tone or at the situation, but he dug into the pockets of his coat and pulled out wool-lined, leather gloves. “Here,” he said, thrusting them at her. “Wear these. Why the hell did you leave the house without gloves?”
Rachel’s fingers were a scary red color now and so cold she could barely feel them. But she wasn’t going to put up with that kind of treatment.
Especially not from him.
David had fucked her and dumped her when she was seventeen, and she hadn’t been smart or mature enough to keep it from happening. But she was an adult now, and he wasn’t going to lecture her like a foolish little girl.
She’d actually come out here in the ice to help the asshole.
Instead of giving him the rude retort that sprang to her lips, she said coolly, “Since you obviously don’t need my help, you can get back to the house on your own or freeze to death with your truck, whichever you’d prefer.”
Then she slammed the passenger door, a motion that jarred her hands painfully, and started walking—slipping—back to the house.
To her horror, she was almost in tears. Because it was such a small town and he was still her brother’s best friend, she still ran into David frequently—whenever she came to visit her family, which averaged about once a month. She was usually able to act as though he didn’t exist or else respond to him with disinterested civility.
This direct confrontation, however—on top of the effort and discomfort of the trek through the sleet—brought all of her old hurt and anger to the surface.
Her brother was right. She should be over this by now. David shouldn’t still mean so much to her. She shouldn’t react like this for no reason.
She hated him even more for making her feel so young, so helpless.
Her grandfather had been the most influential man in the county before he died last year. He’d owned three lucrative car dealerships and had his hands in every aspect of local politics. Their family had founded this town generations ago. All her life, people had assumed she was a spoiled princess, no matter how hard she’d tried to prove herself otherwise.
She hated feeling that way—like no one thought she was capable of holding her own in the world.
Her walk down the drive was unstable and clumsy, since her little ankle boots had absolutely no traction on the ice.
She didn’t look back to see if David followed her, although she desperately wanted to do so.
She’d gotten more than halfway to the house when one of her feet slipped on the sheet of ice covering the pavement, and she completely lost her balance.
She fell down in an ungainly sprawl, the ice burning the skin of her freezing palms as she caught herself. One of her ankles twisted beneath her.
The only thing she could process—as irrational as she knew it to be—was that this whole horrible mess was David’s fault.
Without warning, strong hands started hauling her up.
Startled and disoriented, she fought them instinctively.
“Damn it, Rachel,” David gritted out, leaning over again and getting a better grip on her waist so he could help her to her feet. “Why are you so ungodly stubborn?”
He was a lot stronger than she was, so she didn’t have a choice about standing up. Naturally, she wouldn’t have wanted to stay on the icy ground, but her teeth were chattering with cold and fury both as she straightened up. She was about to tell him very clearly that he was the stubborn one of the two of them when her weight landed on her left foot.
It hurt so much her knees buckled, and she had to grab David’s arms to keep from falling again.
“What is it?” he demanded, sounding more bossy than concerned. “Your ankle?”
“I’m fine. I just twisted it.” She let go of him and forced herself to take a step. It hurt. A lot. She ignored it, though.
When boys in her class at school had laughed at her insistence that girls could climb trees as well as boys, her pride had compelled her to prove herself by climbing the same tall tree all of the boys were, even though she’d been shaking with fear when she’d reached the highest branches.
When David had dumped her that summer eight years ago, her pride had compelled her to keep anyone from knowing how much he’d crushed her.
She certainly had enough pride to make it back to the house on a twisted ankle now.
“You’re being absolutely ridiculous,” David said, falling in step with her and catching her with one arm when she slipped again. “You can be invincible once we get back to the house, but you’re going to have to put up with my help until then.”
She gasped in outrage and then regretted it, since the intake of frigid air hurt her throat. “I wouldn’t be out here at all if you hadn’t been stupid enough to run your truck into a ditch, so don’t talk to me about being ridiculous.”
He ignored her, too preoccupied with grabbing each of her wrists in turn and putting his big leather gloves on her hands.
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me, but I’m not going to be blamed for your getting frostbite.”
She didn’t have a chance to let him know how utterly absurd the idea was of her getting frostbite in the time it took to walk from the truck to the house because he was starting to move again.
Since his arm was around her waist, bracing her weight, she had no choice but to walk with him.
“Why are you wearing such ridiculous shoes?” he muttered, glaring down at her high-heeled leather boots. “No wonder you sprained an ankle.”
“I wasn’t planning to hike in the ice, remember?” She had to fight the urge to pull away from him. She hated the feel of his strong, lean body against hers, the feel of his arm around her waist, even through several layers of thick fabric. It would be petty and counter-productive to pull away, however, since it would only prolong the torturous trek to the house. “I got on the road right from work, and I hadn’t had time to change when you ended up in the ditch.”
He made a grumble of sound, but it didn’t take the form of any words. She ignored it.
They finally limped their way to the side door of the house, and Rachel was so cold and wet and angry that she just sat down on the bench in the mudroom, trying to remember the last time she’d been so miserable.
The warm air of the house surrounded her like an embrace, but her skin was chapped, her ankle throbbed, her teeth chattered, and her hands were still numb, despite David’s gloves.
David shook himself off like a dog and then got rid of his coat by the simple expedient of dropping it on the tile floor.
He wore hiking books, worn jeans, and a gray flannel shirt layered over a thermal t-shirt. He looked rugged, masculine, and so attractive that Rachel could hardly stand to look at him.
That fact made her even madder.
She glared up at him. He’d always been a little bossy—she remembered that very well from when they’d both been kids—but this behavior was just outrageous.
“I don’t think I asked for your advice.” She was pleased her tone sounded cool and lofty rather than petulant.
“Brad would never forgive me if I let you take pneumonia. Not to mention your mom. Can you imagine how she’d lecture me?”
“I’m not going to take pneumonia. Don’t be melodramatic.” She did shoulder off her coat, though, and leaned down to unzip her pretty, impractical boots.
“How’s your ankle?” he asked, watching as she pressed into it, trying to check its condition.
“Fine. Just twisted it.” It felt more like a sprain, but she wasn’t going to make a fuss. Especially in front of David.
“Come on,” he said, stretching a hand toward her. “You need to warm up.”
She didn’t object, since her teeth were still chattering. She let him put an arm around her again so she could lean against him as they walked.
It was worse this time, now that they weren’t wearing thick coats. She could feel his warmth, smell his familiar scent, and feel the solid substance of his body beneath his clothes.
He led her to the radiator in the kitchen, conveniently located near the kitchen table. She sat on a chair in front of the pleasantly wafting heat, finally having the courage to take off the gloves.
Her hands hurt like hell.
She’d been wearing David’s gloves, though, which meant he hadn’t been wearing any. So she wasn’t about to complain that her hands were raw and numb.
She held her hands closer to the radiator and tried not to wince as the heat hit them.
He sat down on a chair next to her and, without speaking, took one of her hands in both of his, gently rubbing it to restore the circulation.
He worked with his hands every day—he had all his life—so they were rough, strong, and calloused. But he was gentle as he massaged her frozen fingers, and he didn’t say a word.
He wasn’t even looking at her, his eyes focused down on their hands.
Stranded: A Winter Romance Duet Page 19