Lantern Lake Winter Collection: Books 1-3

by Gretchen S. B.

  Chapter 2

  "Miss, are you okay? Miss?" Jared asked the woman slumped against her airbag and steering wheel. She had a large bump on her head and blood coming from her nose. Her car had slammed headfirst into a large tree. The tree seemed to be fine; she on the other hand, he wasn't so sure about.

  When she didn't respond, he cursed. He'd been driving home from his brother’s place when he saw this car on the side of the road. From the looks of the tracks on the roadway, she had narrowly missed another vehicle. He could see a circle pattern in the roadway but whoever it was hadn’t stopped to check on the damage they caused. He couldn't believe anyone would do that.

  But the whole scene made Jared flash to when he lost his wife six years ago, six years ago this week. Lilianna had died in a car crash; a drunk driver had hit her on this very roadway coming from the holiday festivities. It was why he stopped at first. He'd thought it was his memory playing tricks on him before realizing the car he was seeing was not Lilianna's. He pulled his truck over to check on whoever had been driving the car.

  The woman in the vehicle had long black hair that fell around her and from what he could see of her face she was pretty, though this didn’t mean much to him anymore.

  "Miss… Miss, I need you to wake up and tell me how you feel." He looked around as he spoke.

  They were close enough to Bunny Ridge that he’d be able to get her to the hospital if the roadways weren't so bad. These side roadways and the ones that led to the ranches and farms always got snowed in first. It would be a couple of days before the plows made it out this far. Each of the three cities had their own plows but the city streets got precedent. It was why he’d left his brother’s place when he had. The snow was getting high enough he didn't want to be stranded and have to spend more time with people than he really wanted to. He wasn’t sure he could head back into town and take this woman to a doctor.

  "What the―?" came out in a long moan as the woman in the car woke up. Her hand moved to her head.

  Jared was sure she had a whopper of a headache. He watched as she leaned back slightly.

  "What did I hit?" Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  "A large pine tree, I’m afraid. And your car isn’t getting around anytime soon."

  "No, that doesn't work. I'm supposed to be in Lantern Lake. I’m meeting someone," she pleaded even though she still hadn't opened her eyes yet.

  Lifting an eyebrow, Jared leaned back from the crunched-up driver side window to the hood of the car. All it did was confirm his original assessment, the hood of the car had been pushed in by the tree, causing the outside sections to curl around it a little more than an inch. She wasn't going anywhere. He leaned back in and gave her his full attention. She really needed to seek medical attention.

  "Your car isn't going anywhere. I can try to take you into town, the hospital is between Bunny Ridge and Lakeside, on the Lakeside side. It'll take twenty to twenty-five minutes in this weather. But I don't know if we will make it; I just left there, and roads are pretty bad. I'm guessing they’ll shut them down soon."

  She opened her eyes and the cornflower blue looked at him, not quite focusing like they should and there was a deep frown on her face. "I don't need a hospital; I need to get to the Lantern Lake Inn where I'm staying with my boyfriend. I need to get there, and I'll be fine."

  Jared fought not to match her frown, what sort of man would be letting his significant other drive alone in conditions this bad, in the late evening.

  "Look, here are your options. Cell reception is crap out here. Either let me drive you to the hospital or I'll take you back to my cabin where you are more than welcome to stay until the roads clear up and we can call a tow truck for your vehicle. I am not driving you to a hotel when you hit a tree this hard."

  Her eyes narrowed and from the expression on her face, despite the slight blurriness to her eyes, he could tell she was normally someone to contend with. Someone people probably didn't mess with on a daily basis, but in this particular instance he knew better than to let her have her way. Out here they were closer to Bunny Ridge and those streets were more likely to be clear than the ones that would lead into Lantern Lake.

  "Or I can stay here and wait for a tow truck. I'll call Roland and let him know I’m running late."

  Jared watched as she fumbled on the seat beside her, grabbing for her phone. Then she looked away from him and he watched her scowl as she noticed that in the accident her phone had tumbled to the passenger side floor. She unbuckled her seatbelt and moved very slowly, indicating she would probably have bruises from the seatbelt. It made him wonder exactly how fast she was going in the snow, she was not driving a car that was known for doing well in adverse weather.

  She picked up the cell and scowled at it. "No signal? Great! I'm somewhere with absolutely no signal."

  "I do believe I just said that." Jared rubbed the tension building in his jaw as he clenched it. This woman was being difficult and part of him really wanted to leave her where she was, but he knew both of his parents would slap him silly for even considering it.

  She didn't even seem to register his comeback but instead hit several buttons on her phone before she sighed. "I suppose you don't have reception out here either?" She swung her attention slowly back toward him to watch him shake his head.

  "Sorry, plus I left my phone in the car. I have reception at my cabin and in town. That's about it. If it makes you feel better, we’re about five minutes that way," he pointed in front of her in the direction she had been headed, "from reception. You can get in my truck and I will drive you. Once we get there you can plug-in Lakeside Hospital."

  She eyed him warily, and he couldn't say he blamed her. Getting into a car with a stranger in an unfamiliar area wasn’t the best idea. He watched as she decided she didn’t have a lot of options.

  "Fine, but I need to get my overnight bag from the backseat as well as my laptop case."

  Jared took a few steps back so he was standing closer to the back of the car; that way she could open up her driver's door without worry of running into him. "If you unlock all the doors, I can grab those for you. I'm not comfortable with you lifting anything until we know how badly you are hurt."

  She opened the door and turned to frown at him. "I said I'm fine." She swung her legs out of the car.

  It looked like an automatic gesture, but when her low-heeled boots hit the ground he watched as she paused to collect herself. Clearly, she wasn't as fine as she wanted him to believe.

  He heard a click and she sighed. "There are only two bags I need from the backseat. The laptop bag, which should be on the floor behind my seat and then my overnight bag which is a small lavender wheeled bag. You can ignore the black one. That's got all my work stuff in it." There was a long pause as she sat there. "Thank you." She used a different tone when she said the last two words. As if she was aware she was dictating to him and suddenly remembered her manners.

  Figuring it was wiser not to respond, Jared opened the back door, which required more yanking than normal, and grabbed the two bags she described. By the time he got back out of the car she was standing, leaning heavily on the doorframe. Jared cursed. "Stay there, I’ll put your stuff in the truck and come back and help you walk over. The roadway isn't evenly covered, and I would feel better if you let me help you."

  He didn’t wait to see if she responded. He knew his work boots would get better traction in the snow than she did, so he bolted straight to his truck a few yards away. Worst case scenario she tried to start walking and he could run back to her before she slid. He tossed her overnight bag onto the middle seat then wedged her computer bag behind it to keep it from sloshing around. Then he turned and jogged back. Much to his relief, she hadn't moved from where he left her. It was a good thing her stubborn streak seemed to have ended.

  Walking her to the car went as smoothly as could be expected. She seemed just out of it enough that he wouldn't be surprised if she had a concussion from banging her head on the s
teering wheel or the side of the car.

  These country roads weren't well lit. People had cabins out here, there was a small farmer or two that kept bees. Then there were the rows and rows of cabins out where he lived five minutes away. Nobody out here was a big fan of the streetlights when talk about putting them in had started, so the roadways were pitch black. That meant he couldn't give her a once over to see if there were any definite injuries. The fact that she was walking without wincing told him at least her legs were okay superficially, though she’d probably need to keep them elevated.

  Once he got her in the truck, he buckled her seatbelt for her, even though she started to protest, then shut the door and ran around the other side of his car. He slowly maneuvered the old Ford to head away from his cabin, making sure to move around as slowly and steadily as possible so if he lost traction there weren’t a lot of places for him to go. The last thing they needed was him going off the roadway as well. He'd be damned if after living out here this long the roadways would take him out now.

  They rode in silence for the first minute or two then the snow, which was falling harder than it had been when he stopped, really started to cause problems. It was definitely almost impossible to see the road through the snow now. It accumulated enough on the roadway that he could hear his wheels crunching over it. He was going only five miles an hour to be safe. He knew this roadway had been relatively clear earlier so chances of them coming up on ice were slim, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

  After another minute or two, Jared knew chances of them getting to the hospital were slim. The snow on the roadway was falling and sticking so fast there was now almost half a foot. If it got much colder out here it would turn less fluffy and closer to ice. He also knew the plows didn't run this late at night. They would come out at 5:00 a.m. to clear out the cities, and maybe out here the next day if they were lucky. Before that everyone would stay off the roads. It was nine-thirty at night now and chances that any of the streets had been plowed since it started to snow at eight-thirty were slim.

  A minute more and Jared was cursing enough that the woman sitting next to him was looking at him, frowning. "What, what is it?"

  "I can't see the road anymore. And while I will say I know this roadway like the back of my hand, I'm not willing to risk our lives on it. I'm sorry but we’re going to turn around and try this again when there is daylight. Going this speed my place is about ten to fifteen minutes away. I think we’re safer heading in that direction than trying to make it into the city which is going to be twice that."

  He could hear the frown in her voice but didn't dare look at her as she spoke. It was so dark now and his headlights, even with his high beams on, were seeing so little he was genuinely concerned something like a deer could cross the road and he would not be able to swerve in time.

  "You said we were going to the hospital." Her tone was angry, almost as if she believed he’d duped her.

  He ignored her at first as he began slowly maneuvering to turn the car back around. He knew he couldn't move slower or they’d get stuck and he wasn't sure she'd be any help if they had to get the car out of some packed snow.

  It took him much longer than he would've liked to turn around. He followed his own tracks in the direction they came from. Seeing his tracks made him feel more comfortable because he knew the way they'd come was at least safe. He also knew the farther they got the less of his tracks they were going to see, something they could tackle when they got there.

  "I know. And I'm sorry to go back on my word, but we’re not going to make it into town if we keep going. With the rate the snow is falling the plows don't come out here as often as they come in the city so the chances of someone stumbling upon us are slim to none. Those of us who live this far out accept this and don't worry about it so much. When we get to my place your cell phone should work. You have to hook it up to the Wi-Fi, but I’ve got the password posted on the wall near the door. You can call your boyfriend and let him know what's happening. This isn't up for debate. I have to take our safety into account, and I know these roads well enough to know we should not try them. We have a couple miles still into the city of pitch-black road and it starts to curve as you move around the lake into the city itself. I don't want to chance that." He tried to use the sternest tone he could muster as he finished.

  Even though people believed the city streets were safer than the country roads in the snow storms, Jared could never bring himself to believe that. The country roads were less plowed, but they were also less populated. People would compact the snow on the city streets and you would get piles of ice at some of the lights. Not to mention if you swerved there you could swerve into a building. So, he ignored her protests and concentrated on the road. After they finally reached and passed her car, she grew quiet. Part of him had been concerned that she would try to yank the wheel, but she hadn’t. Nothing good would come of that. Her concern was valid; some guy in a beat-up Ford truck was picking her up off the road and taking her home with him to a cabin in the woods. Everything about that screamed horror movie so he could understand her apprehension but there wasn't any other place to leave her. Once they got to his cabin, she'd see his neighbors weren't as few and far between as she was probably thinking they were now.

  There were two dozen cabins varying in size from a studio to a four bedroom on about twenty acres of land where he lived. Each plot had an individual owner, except for ten of them which were used as a sort of timeshare. Jared had never taken the time to understand how it worked.

  Even going only five miles an hour Jared didn't breathe normally or unclench his hands from around the steering wheel until he saw the light in the distance that led to the driveway to the group of cabins that were used as rentals. That road looped the entire group with individual smaller roads leading out to the rest of the cabins. The outfit that bought those cabins put in a fancy heated roadway making it so at least their section of the shared road, which happened to be at the front, stayed warm enough not to ice over or get more than a dusting of snow. It meant that once they started to skid into the turn, just at the point where they would've turned out and began spiral, his wheels hit the solid heated driveway and Jared let out a sigh of relief.

  If he wasn't mistaken, his passenger did the same.

  He refrained from speeding up, though. He didn't want to get in the routine of going faster and then hit the snowy roads again only to skid. So instead they went the ten miles an hour on the fifteen-mile-an-hour road until they hit the four-acre mark and the road switched. Gradually the heat from the heated pavement melted some of the snow on the regular pavement but there was a definite traction difference Jared could feel. He turned left with the roadway as it wound around the last few acres. He reached the option where it was either turn right or left because straight ahead was a wooded area and he headed right. An acre later they were on his land and he breathed easier. His cabin sat on the front third of his acre; they could walk to his house if his truck got stuck.

  It was tempting to speed up until they came to his garage, but he didn't. Jared kept watching the small lit area and plugging along slowly through the snow, now hitting fairly high on his tires. It was well above a foot now and was falling fairly freely. He was willing to bet they’d have two feet by morning. Because while it was still falling fairly strongly it wasn't as strong as it had been even ten minutes earlier.

  A moment later he hit the garage opener, for the garage he’d added once he bought the place five years ago. The door began to lift, and he felt his shoulders slump in relieve that the door wasn’t frozen shut.

  As they pulled into the garage, he hit the button for the garage to close behind them. The regular overhead light turned off while the light at the back of the garage, where his makeshift shop light stayed on. He had set it on a timer so it would stay on for ten minutes after the garage closed, giving enough time to grab whatever he had in the truck before it would turn itself off.

  "All right, here we are,” J
ared announced as he popped open his truck door and slid out.

  Chapter 3

  Claire slid out of the truck on the passenger side as she watched the man who either saved her or kidnapped her. He grabbed her bags on his way out of the truck and carried them to the door to the main house. He turned on another light then propped the door open with a small black wedge and dropped her bags off right inside the house. He then came back to help her walk around the back of the truck. For someone who was kidnapping her, and was incredibly gruff about it, he went out of his way to make sure she was getting jarred as little as possible. That alone and the fact that he was so gentle and touched her so gingerly and only when necessary made her think maybe he wasn't trying to kidnap her after all.

  Over the years Claire worked with men who would touch women and claim it was an accident. She prided herself on being a decent judge of character and from how hesitantly and sparingly this man touched her, she was fairly certain he wasn't going out of his way to do so. As he was helping her from the vehicle, she realized she didn't know his name.

  "My name is Claire by the way, what's yours?" She tried to keep her voice soft and not make it sound like an interrogation.

  That gruff gravel voice responded so quickly and so quietly she didn't catch it. "You're going to have to say it a little slower than that."

  As he shut the door behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist so he could carry most of her weight he sighed. "Jared. My name is Jared McAllister." The voice was still gruff and full of gravel, but he slowed down to a more discernible pace.

  It was obvious Jared McAllister was a man of few words. If they were stuck here overnight, the strong silent type was going to drive Claire crazy. Interestingly, her fear seemed to evaporate once they pulled into the garage. Noticing the other cabins seemed to be within screaming distance, and the chance of them all being crazy people was slim, she felt better.