Stranded in the Snow

by Noelle Adams

  “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Penny added.

  “Okay. Be careful.” Olivia was frowning, wondering if she should insist her sister stay home. It was one thing to drive around their own property in this weather. It was another to drive three towns away, especially for someone as scatterbrained as Penny.

  “She shouldn’t be driving out in weather like this,” Scott said beside her.

  Olivia stiffened. Maybe she’d been having the exact same thought, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hear it from Scott. “She’s an adult. She can make her own decisions.”

  “If you say so. You better ride with me though since your car isn’t going to be able to handle the snow on the roads.”

  Olivia’s car was a pretty little red sedan, and she knew very well Scott was right about it. She tightened her lips.

  “You’re not going to want to run off the road because you don’t want to be in the same car as me. Even you aren’t so silly.” Scott’s tone was lofty and amused, and it made Olivia want to hit something.

  Or someone.

  She’d been called silly and shallow all her life because she liked pretty things and she spent a lot of effort on her appearance. Her father had always patted her on the head and treated her like an attractive face was all she had to offer to the world.

  She’d hated it then, and she hated it now.

  “You’re implying I’m silly about other things?” she demanded.

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m cold and wet from standing out here in the snow, and as much as I like arguing with you, I’d rather get into the car.”

  “Fine.” She felt huffy and impatient, and she took too big a step. Her foot slid on the slick snow on the pavement, and she almost went down.

  Once again, Scott caught her, this time by putting both arms around her.

  She fell against his chest and lost her breath at the feel of his lean body against hers.

  Without thinking, she looked up at him and lost her breath again at the look in his eyes.

  For a moment—just a moment—she thought she saw something warm and deep and soft there. She wanted it. Needed it. Leaned into it as her gloved hands tightened in his coat.

  Then his lip curled up in his smug half smile. “If you want to hug me, you can do that too.”

  She sucked in an indignant breath and pulled away from him. “I wasn’t hugging you. I slipped.”

  “I see.”

  “You were the one who hugged me.”

  “I get it.”

  “If you’re going to be obnoxious like this, then you can forget about getting into the cottage. I make a point of spending as little time as possible with arrogant assholes.”

  His smirk softened into a smile of genuine amusement. “That I know. I’ll be as unobnoxious as possible.”

  “Good. So let’s get going and make this quick. Because I suspect you can only make it a short time until your obnoxiousness rears its head again.”

  Scott laughed. “I suspect you might be right.”

  Two

  AS SOON AS SCOTT GOT behind the wheel of his SUV, he started to worry.

  The snow was still coming down hard. Harder than he’d realized. The roads were going to be bad, and people in this area weren’t prepared for weather like this.

  “Maybe we should wait,” he said when Olivia settled herself in the passenger seat. “It looks pretty bad out here.”

  She shot him an impatient look, but he was used to that and knew it wasn’t prompted by what he’d said. “You think so?”

  “I don’t know. Look at the roads. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s going to get worse if we wait. You want to spend the night here tonight?”

  Scott always tried to keep his mind and body under control when it came to Olivia, but he was hit with a visual of himself in bed with Olivia—her lush, naked body beneath his, her long legs wrapped around him, her face twisting in pleasure.

  The visual wasn’t good for his state of mind. He tightened his hands on the steering wheel as his body reacted.

  “I promise the floor of the barn isn’t all that comfortable,” Olivia added tartly. “But if you want to stay, you’re welcome.”

  He took a deep breath and controlled himself. “All right. Let’s do this then.”

  The parking lot was covered with snow, but it had been driven on and was mostly slush. And the private road that ran from the buildings and through the tree farm was straight and perfectly flat so he had no trouble driving it, despite the amount of snow piling up.

  “I thought this snow was supposed to be only a few inches,” Olivia said after a minute. She was sitting very stiffly in the passenger seat, and Scott didn’t know if it was because she was nervous about the snow or because she disliked him so much. “This is way more than that.”

  “And you believed the weather forecast?” He didn’t actually feel like banter at the moment since he was focused on the snow-covered road, but Olivia would expect it from him, so he tried.

  “Not always.” She obviously wasn’t in a particularly argumentative mood right now either. Her tone was subdued. A bit tense. “But it seems like they should have known a snow like this was coming. It would have been nice to be prepared.”

  “Yeah. I’ll only be a few minutes in the cottage. Then I’ll get you back.”

  “You might be sleeping on the floor of the barn after all if the snow keeps up like this.”

  Scott should have disliked that idea, but he didn’t.

  Anything that kept him in the vicinity of Olivia excited him.

  It always had. Ever since he’d been a shy, skinny kid with no social skills, and she’d been the prettiest, most popular girl in his class.

  He’d never been foolish enough to hope in that direction, however. Not back then and not today.

  He might believe Olivia was the best thing God had ever created, but she’d never believe the same about him.

  When he realized she was still waiting for a response to her comment, he said, “I’ve slept in worse places.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve slept in all kinds of places.”

  He slanted her a quick look and saw a faint scowl on her face. “You interested in all the places I’ve slept in?”

  “No. Definitely not. I’m sure I don’t have room in my mind for the enormous number of beds that would entail.”

  Scott chuckled at that, although his eyes were once again focused on the road in front of him. “I’m not sure it’s as many as you think.”

  “It’s a lot more than I have any desire to think about. You think girls don’t talk about you afterward?”

  Scott knew they did. And he knew they sometimes exaggerated—exactly as men would sometimes do. He’d had a lot of sex in his life—usually one- or two-night stands—but he wasn’t the horndog the small town had painted him as for the past several years. A good number of the women he went out with he’d never had sex with. He only slept with women he genuinely liked and with whom he believed the good time would be reciprocal. He also didn’t have sex with women who had marriage in their eyes. That limited his options considerably.

  “You can’t believe everything you hear,” he murmured. “And that doesn’t just apply to weather forecasters.”

  Olivia didn’t answer, which was rather unnerving. After a few seconds, he slanted her a quick look to discover she was peering at him thoughtfully.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Who’s made up stories about you?”

  He didn’t answer the question because he wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear, and the truth would make him too vulnerable.

  “Kelly Parsons?” Olivia asked.

  Scott had to hide a cringe at the name. He’d gone out with Kelly once last year, and she’d come on to him very strong. He hadn’t been into her, so he’d rejected her advances. They’d never had sex, and she hadn’t taken it well.

  The next week, stories were going around about how he’d made a lot of promi
ses to her, screwed her senseless, and then left her high and dry.

  It had bothered him a lot, but people would always believe what they wanted. There was nothing he could do about it.

  He did like the idea that Olivia had immediately guessed one of the made-up stories, which seemed to prove she hadn’t found the story believable to begin with.

  “Scott?” Olivia prompted. “Was Kelly one who made up stories about you?”

  “I’m not going to answer that.”

  When he shot a glance over, he saw she was looking annoyed, frustrated. He smiled, which made her scowl even more.

  “Do you always have to be so infuriating?” she demanded.

  “I do my best for you. I’m always trying to live up to expectations.”

  Her expression flickered briefly, which was worrying. Maybe she’d read an undercurrent in his words he never would have wanted her to hear.

  He added, “After all, if you don’t find me infuriating, no one will.”

  The question in her eyes disappeared in a familiar annoyance. “I know that can’t be true. Most of the world must find you as infuriating as I do. How could they help it?”

  Scott laughed, keeping his eyes on the road rather than letting them linger on her face. Her skin was clear, her eyes were blue, and her cheeks held a delectable flush at the moment. It wasn’t just that she was pretty. It was that she’d always seemed to shine from within, as if something warm and vibrant inside her was peeking out around the edges of her features.

  It was far too irresistible for a man to ignore, and it wasn’t entirely fair that Scott was constantly slammed by the need to touch, to feel, to drown in that shining, when he’d never had even the slightest chance with her.

  When they were twelve, she’d come into his garage where he was working on the model cars that he loved. He’d been so excited about her unexpected presence, especially when she’d asked a question about the cars like she might be interested in them.

  But she’d just laughed at him and left, and he’d been crushed and mortified.

  A fitting reflection of their entire relationship.

  “You might be surprised,” he managed to say, pleased his voice was as cool and dry as he always tried to keep it around her.

  “I doubt it. I don’t think anything about you could surprise me. Not since...”

  Scott raised his eyebrows. “Not since what?”

  “Not since you turned from a nice boy into an asshole that summer.”

  He knew immediately what summer she was talking about. The summer after they’d graduated from high school. Before they started college. They’d both been seventeen, going on eighteen. He hadn’t seen her at all that summer, but they’d both started UVA in the fall, and they’d run into each other occasionally there.

  He had changed that summer. In more ways than one.

  He’d been an insecure loser all through high school. Then he’d changed. He’d become who he was now.

  Whatever that was.

  “You thought I was a nice guy at one time?” he asked, genuinely surprised by the idea.

  “Of course I did. In high school you were always nice.”

  “You didn’t even know I was alive in high school.”

  “Yes, I did. You sat near me in algebra and helped me sometimes. I thought you were nice back then. I’m not sure what happened to you, but you turning from that boy into an asshole was the only time you’ve ever surprised me. I liked you a lot better back then.”

  She appeared to be speaking the truth, and it made a knot of tension roil in his gut. He clenched his jaw and tightened his fingers around the steering wheel. “A lot has happened since then.”

  “I know it has. You think I don’t know it?”

  He darted her a quick look and saw from her face that she was talking about the feud between their families. That was something. It had changed him. But it wasn’t everything.

  Human lives were never shaped by only one thing that hurt them.

  He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. The snow was coming down even harder now, and he was having trouble seeing in front of him. When he turned off the road through the tree farm and onto the one that ran through the woods to the cottages, his wheels slipped. His heart jumped as he straightened out the car, finding enough traction to keep going.

  Olivia had gripped the door handle as the vehicle slipped, and she was quiet now as he drove.

  “This is terrible,” she said softly after a minute or two of tense driving. “How did it get so bad so fast?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re in the middle of the woods right now, so we have to keep going.”

  “I know it. We’re not far from the cottage. It’s not the next driveway but the following one.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  Scott held the car on the road as they plowed through the accumulating snow. If anything appeared in front of them, he’d never be able to see it through the snow, even with his wipers going full blast.

  It might have been nice if he could pick up his speed a bit and impress Olivia with his driving skills, but ego always had its limits, and one of his limits was putting someone in danger.

  He wasn’t sure anyone else would be able to go any faster than he was going right now anyway.

  When they finally reached the drive that led up to the cabin, he slowed down enough to make the turn without applying the brakes, hoping to avoid any more slips.

  It didn’t do any good. The driveway hadn’t been driven on since the snow started, and it was thick and high and very wet. His tires pushed through it, landing on a layer of what felt like ice beneath it. With no traction at all, his SUV rolled right off the road, ending in the piled snow of a ditch.

  The car jerked to an abrupt stop.

  “You okay?” he asked, turning to Olivia quickly.

  “Yeah. Fine. Fine.” She rubbed her face with her hands, like she was trying to wake herself up. “No damage done. Not even to your car, I don’t think.”

  “No. I don’t think so.” He put the car in reverse and tried to pull out of the ditch, but it was hopeless. His wheels spun and kept spinning. He put it in drive and then reverse again and tried to rock back and forth to find some traction, but it didn’t do any good.

  “Oh, just forget it,” Olivia said after a minute. “This car isn’t going anywhere for a while, and I’m not about to get out there and push it. We can just walk up the driveway to the cottage.” She was already unbuckling her seat belt and securing her knit cap on her head.

  “It’s nasty out there.”

  “I can see that. But I’m not going to sit for several hours in this car with you when there’s a perfectly good cottage a short walk away.”

  He couldn’t argue anymore because she was already getting out of the car, and he knew she was right anyway. Walking in the snow wouldn’t be any fun, but it would be foolish to let themselves get stranded in this vehicle for who knew how long when they had a better option.

  He buttoned his coat all the way and put on his gloves before he pushed open his door and got out. The snow came halfway up his shins. He wore hiking boots, but they weren’t nearly high enough to protect his jeans. They were soaked almost immediately.

  He made his way around the car through the snow and wind to find that Olivia had stumbled her way up to the driveway. When he reached her, he asked, speaking loudly to be heard through the weather, “You ready?”

  “Yes, I’m ready. I’m capable of walking through a little snow, you know.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  It was slow going. Very wet and cold and uncomfortable, on top of the effort it took to walk through so much snow. Olivia was doing well, but after a few minutes she was falling behind, so he slowed down and put an arm on her back to help her.

  She jerked away from him, as he should have known she would. The jerk was a mistake. Her feet slipped out from beneath her, and she ended up falling backward into the snow.

  It happened t
oo quickly for him catch her, although he reached out for her instinctively as she fell.

  “Damn it!” she burst out. She’d caught herself with her hands behind her, so she’d mostly landed on her butt.

  “You okay?” He leaned over her, his heart racing from effort and surprise and tense anxiety and something else that always happened to him when he was close to Olivia.

  “Yes, I’m okay. If you hadn’t grabbed for me, I wouldn’t have fallen.”

  He frowned. “I didn’t grab for you. I was trying to help. If you hadn’t jerked away from me, you wouldn’t have fallen.”

  “You surprised me.” Her cheeks were bright red, and snow kept landing on her damp skin and loose hair. She looked beautiful and angry and utterly delectable. “I wasn’t expecting you to touch me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t making a move on you if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “I know you’re not making a move on me. I’m not that stupid.”

  She evidently thought he’d never dream of making a move on her, which meant she had no idea how much he struggled to contain his attraction for her.

  That was good.

  That was better.

  That was safer.

  He would hate it if she knew.

  “I’m going to help you up now, so I’m going to touch you again.” His tone was sharp and edged with disdain, and he knew it would make her angry. “But I’m not making a move on you, so don’t jerk away from me again unless you want to land on your ass again.”

  He reached out both his arms to help her up, and she accepted the support, although she was so angry she was practically gnashing her teeth at him. As soon as she was back on her feet, she pulled her hands away from him.

  “You’re an asshole,” she snapped, straightening up and turning to face the cabin again.

  “I know that. But this asshole is all you have at the moment, so you’re stuck with me.”

  “I might be stuck with you, but I don’t have to like it.’

  “I never expected you would.”

  There was something unexpectedly poignant about the last words as they left his lips. Something he hadn’t expected to hear in his voice.

  He was briefly afraid it might reveal something he’d never want Olivia to know, but she was already marching toward the house again, and the words were lost in the snow and wind, blowing away in the frigid air with a flurry of flakes until it was like he’d never spoken them at all.