Snowbound with a Stranger (3 page)

In Dannie’s case pretty didn’t really cut it.

His eyes had found her as soon as he’d stepped out of his car this morning. He saw her see him, and then look away.

She’d been wrapped up like a mummy and three hundred yards away, but even so, when he’d looked at her it felt—immediately—like a swift kick in the chest.

It was disconcerting, to say the least. He hadn’t felt such a strong reaction to a woman since…well, not for a long time. A long damn time.

Beside him Dannie trudged forward through the snow. “Were you a Boy Scout when you were a kid?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He tried not to react to the husky lilt of her voice. She had a voice like a smoker. Like a truck driver. Like a stripper. He cleared his throat. “How’d you know?”

“Wild guess.”

Up ahead a thick log lay across their path. It was too long to walk around and too large to simply step over. Lee braced his boot against the top of the trunk and scaled it. Standing above her, he extended his hand to help her up.

Dannie hesitated.

It was obvious that she needed assistance to scramble over the log, and equally clear that she didn’t like it.

Okay. A damsel in distress she was not. Lee narrowed his eyes against the snow and buried a small smile. He gazed up ahead at some indiscernible point on the trail, and then back at her.

“Ten minutes from here, tops. Come on.” He reached out his hand to her again.

She might not be a wilting flower, but she wasn’t an idiot either. She let him take her hand.

Once she was safely atop the log, Lee jumped down. Before she could hop off herself, he closed his gloved hands around her waist and lifted her down to the ground.

For half an instant, his hands lingered on her hips and her eyes met his. They seemed to soften, gazing at him. And then he let her go. He began walking again, up the path.

“This way.” He could hear the sudden gruffness in his voice.

He’d have to get that under control.

He was single now, it was true. Single for nine years, although he couldn’t quite make himself believe it had been that long.

He’d had girlfriends. One or two had even tried to make it stick.

But nice as they were—and they had been decent women—he hadn’t wanted any part of what they offered. Loneliness was better, sometimes, than pretending you felt something you didn’t.

Which was why Dannie disturbed him.

Because from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d wanted to put his hands on her. With the kind of urgency a starving man feels. With a viciousness that worried the hell out of him.

They were bound to be stuck together at the cabin for the weekend, at a minimum. The best thing he could so, for both of their sakes, was keep a six-foot distance between himself and her at all times.

He walked on, the memory of her unspeakably sexy shape alive against the palms of his hands.

As promised, ten difficult minutes later, they turned on to the path to the cabin.

* * *

Dannie had never been happier to see a porch in her entire life.

All she wanted was one moment alone in a safe place to pull herself together. Suppressing a groan, she stepped up the stairs to the front door.

The cabin was dark, rustic and draped in a thick layer of white. Red curtains covered the windows, which were too frosted with ice to see through anyway. A sturdy overhang offered Dannie her first relief from the unrelenting wind in hours. She sagged against the frame of a snow-covered Adirondack chair while Lee fumbled through his pockets.

“Dr. Stevens gave you the keys?”

“Yeah. Electricity’s probably out, though.” Lee pulled off his hat and pushed through the heavy door. He shook the snow from his boots, yanked out the laces and kicked them off, and tried the light switch. Nothing. “Yeah. Thought so. Better get a fire going.” He shrugged off his parka.

Dannie stepped in and closed the door behind her.

After the swirling confusion of the storm, the inside of the cabin was an oasis of quiet. It was dry, clean and very cold.

She unzipped her coat and lowered her aching body to the floor to remove her boots. Across the room, Lee was already kneeling before the fireplace, loading kindling into the grate.

Stripped of his outer layers, he was a compact man. A few inches taller than she was, and muscular. Like a boxer. But for all that, he moved with a kind of gentleness, building the fire bed with quick efficiency. He was up and brushing himself off before she’d even removed her coat.

“You’re quick.”

“Yeah.” He bent to check the flue of the chimney and light a match to the wood. Rising, he looked her over. “You must be frozen stiff after all that time outside. You need to get by the fire.”

Dannie shook the snow off her hat and coat. “The hike warmed me up a little. You?”

“I’m fine. Listen. Come sit down. I’ll make us some coffee.”

“You can make coffee when there’s no electricity?”

“He’s got a battery-powered coffeepot. Power goes out a lot up here. Sit.”

“I need to wash up, actually. Is that possible? I feel filthy.”

“Well…” Lee hesitated. “Let me check something.” He ducked down the hall, and then doubled back and ran up the stairs.

Dannie removed her outer layers and hung them over the back of a chair near the entryway. She kept on a pair of black thermal leggings and an almost knee-length red wool sweater, pulled her hair back into a ponytail and moved toward the fire.

Wood beams crossed the cabin’s high ceilings. Opposite the front door lay a large kitchen facing out into an open dining and living area. The furnishings were simple and spare—worn leather couches, pine tables, a few landscape paintings. Beside the kitchen a staircase led to another level.

Lee bounded down the steps, pausing momentarily when he reached the bottom. His eyes swept over her body.

Dannie took one self-conscious step back. Was her sweater too tight? She tugged it down lower over her hips.

Lee blew out a breath. “We got lucky. Stevens hedged his bets and filled both of the bathtubs. It’s well water here, with an electrical pump, so no running water when the power’s out. Plenty of bottled water in the kitchen for drinking. And the bathwater means we’ll be able to flush toilets, which is a plus.”

“Uh, yeah. True.”

Lee grinned. “You can take a bowlful here and there to wash your face and hands. We should have enough for a couple of days.”

“Days?”

Lee stood with his heel on the bottom step. His face was flushed, his green eyes lit with the growing flames in the fireplace. Dannie sat down on a sofa before her knees could buckle again.

“It’s a bad storm, Dannie. No good roads up here.”

“Yes, but…days? I have to work on Monday.”

“Yeah. Me too. But unless you can fly, we’re here until the storm decides to move out and they can get the roads cleared.”

“Damn.”

“Hey now. Don’t hurt my feelings.”

“What?” Dannie ran a hand over her face, and then remembered how dirty she was. She stood up and headed toward the stairs. “Sorry. It’s not you. It’s just—”

Lee angled his shoulder so she could pass him. It was probably her imagination, but the breath of air between their bodies seemed to crackle. “Think of it like a little vacation.”

Dannie made it halfway up the stairs, and then turned. “A…vacation? From what?”

“From everything. From life.” Lee went to the fire and fed a dry log into the heat.

When he turned and smiled at her, her stomach dropped down to her knees.

“I’m gonna go wash up.”

Rounding the top of the stairs, Dannie tiptoed across the floor as though expecting to disturb someone up there. It was strange to walk into Dr. Stevens’s house like this and poke around in his stuff. She reminded herself that he had sent them there, that she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Still, she opened the bathroom door carefully.

Gusts of wind whined through the cracks around the window above the tub, releasing a cold draft across the room. Dannie stripped out of her clothes and cleaned up as well as she could in the sink, splashing plastic cups of freezing water against as much of her body as she could reach. She brushed her teeth with a spare toothbrush from a package and what looked to be a hundred-year-old tube of toothpaste. She caught her own eye in the mirror. Her cheeks were a vivid red.

Chapter Four

In the kitchen, Lee dug out the old battery-operated coffeepot and water heater. He was starving and so, probably, was Dannie. Nothing in the world made a person hungrier than a good hard hike in the open air. Well, almost nothing.

Lee purposefully shifted his mind away from that thought. He came back to rescue Dannie, not to jump her bones as soon as the cabin door closed. As hot as that would be.

Make some oatmeal. Brew coffee.

Mundane tasks would take his brain off what he shouldn’t be contemplating, off the image of Dannie at the bottom of the stairs, her hair messy and damp, in tight pants and the kind of sweater worn by 1950s pinup models.

He fixed the pot of hot coffee and waited for her by the fireplace, a bowl of salted peanuts in his lap.

Against his will, he thought again of Caroline. How would she feel if she could see him now? She’d tell him to behave himself, that was for sure. Be a gentleman.

The one thing he knew for sure was that she wouldn’t judge him. He’d come to terms with that a long time ago. She wouldn’t begrudge him the desire for intimacy with another woman. For—let’s be honest—sex. She’d made sure to tell him so, in the last months. He hadn’t wanted to hear it, but she’d made him listen.

“Don’t be alone, Lee. Don’t spend the rest of your life alone.”

Well, he hadn’t. Not physically anyway.

Other kinds of closeness were a different story.

The sound of Dannie at the top of the stairs interrupted his thoughts. She descended the steps slowly.

Deliciously slowly.

It did something to his breathing, watching her come down. Something he wanted more of, and also wanted to go away.

He pulled in a long breath. “Hey.”

“Hi.” She smiled, a little uncertainly. Her faced was flushed and clean, and her hair pulled back. No makeup. An incongruously sweet scent drifted toward him as she reached for a handful of nuts. She looked up, directly into his eyes, and a bolt of heat shot through his chest. “I could eat a horse.”

Lee cleared his throat. “There’s some warm oatmeal for you in the kitchen. I had mine already.”

“Seriously?” She turned to the kitchen island behind her and found it waiting for her there. “Thanks, Lee. But you have to stop this now.”

Oh shit.
“Stop what?”
Stop thinking about how much I’d like to knock boots with you?

Dannie leaned against the counter and lifted a hot spoonful of apple cinnamon oatmeal into her mouth.
Good God.

“Stop waiting on me and taking care of me. I’m okay now. You can stop being a hero.” She moved over to the living room and sat down on a soft couch.

“Sorry, ma’am.” He tipped an imaginary hat to her and breathed a sigh of relief. “Cain’t rightly help myself.”

Dannie snorted. Tucking her legs underneath her, she spooned up another bite of oatmeal. “How do you know Dr. Stevens?”

“High school, believe it or not.” Lee leaned back against the couch and lifted his bare feet onto the coffee table.

“I’m impressed.” Dannie nodded. “It’s not easy keeping a friend that long. So you’re not a doctor?”

“Social worker. Oncology.”

She blew out a breath. “Tough job.”

“So is nursing.” He watched her pause midbite.

“Did I say I was a nurse?”

“Stevens did.”

“What, over the walkie-talkie?”

And again, shit.

“No, when I asked him about you on the trail, back before you got lost.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t—wait. Why were you—?” Dannie’s guard visibly went up. “You know what? Never mind.” She sat back heavily against the couch. “Do you stay here a lot?”

“Sort of, yeah.” Lee spoke slowly. Maybe if he kept his mouth moving at a gradual pace, he could keep from shoving his foot in it. “Camping trips with Stevens. Sometimes on my own, when I need time to think.” Which was a lot, actually. Once a month at least, for nine years. Sometimes it was the only place where he could make his head stop churning.

Dannie softened. “It’s a hard life, what you do.”

“Yeah.” He sat still and watched her.

“You ever get overwhelmed? Like you were talking about with Zoe?”

So she’d been listening.
“I thought you were ignoring me.”

Dannie’s face colored in an absurdly attractive blush. “Do you?”

“Overwhelmed? Yeah. About every other day.”

She smiled. “Why do you stay with it?”

“Why do you stay with nursing?” Lee leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and stared into the fire. “I’m good at it.”

“You could be good at other things, I’m sure.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You trying to talk me out of it?”

“No. Just wondering why you stay. Sometimes it’s good to remind yourself.” God knew he had to do it, every fucking day.

“I don’t know why I stay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Right this second I really don’t.”

“You do need a vacation then.” He rose and nudged at the fire with the poker, releasing a spray of sparks. He used the moment, facing away from her, to find his bearings. Why every word that passed between them seemed weighted with existential significance, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that when she spoke, his whole body listened. It woke up.

He hadn’t even realized it had been sleeping.

Dannie stood. “Why don’t I check this place out before all the light is gone?”

“Good idea. There’s a flashlight in the kitchen if you need one.”

“Great.” Dannie swept past, avoiding his eyes, and set her oatmeal dish in the sink. She grabbed the flashlight and headed back up the stairs, leaving Lee to drink his coffee by the fire.

* * *

He had been asking Dr. Stevens about her. Why? Did he have a thing for burnt-out nurses? She snorted. Friendly interest; that must have been it. There was no reason for her pulse to start jumping.