Signs of Life

by Sloane Reynard

  He couldn’t do it. Not again, not after the last time had resulted in a thousand people without jobs, short on money, a mere month before Christmas. The knowledge that he’d effectively destroyed the holiday for those families had gnawed at him until he came to despise his job and, by connection, even his family. Tyler was the only one of them who remotely understood why he was so agitated by it, and he only understood from an intellectual viewpoint, not an emotional one.

  “It was needed,” he’d told Wyatt, shrugging, sympathetic to his brother’s plight but unmoved by it at the same time. As far as he— and the rest of the Lindstroms— were concerned, that was how business worked. How the world worked. Nothing mattered but wracking up those zeros at the end of the profit line.

  He couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t call together a staff meeting of division heads and reveal the fates of half their staffs, pretending to be so cool butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth but all the while wanting to flee to a place where people weren’t treated as commodities and sacrificed for the prosperity of a select group of others.

  Once the idea of fleeing entered his head, he couldn’t let it go. The idea of it appealed so strongly that he left work early, going home to his sleek, professionally-decorated co-op on the Upper East Side. It felt particularly sterile, that day, and he found he hated every inch of it, the hard bare surfaces and grim shades of gray. Not even soft and cozy gray, either— no dove or cloud or pearl there. No, it was all steel and pewter and stone, hard and dark and unyielding, like his father and Uncle Kevin and Kaylee and Tyler.

  Even his mother ruled with an iron fist, though it was gloved in silk and velvet: her directives to find an appropriate wife came weekly and, of late, had begun coming daily. Actual affinity with said wife was unnecessary, only that she was from a good family (in other words, rich and powerful, so as to create a strong bond between corporations) and pretty. Had to make sure the children were attractive, after all.

  Wyatt had reached out to the woman he’d been dating at the time, a beautiful and soulless redhead named Alisa, to share his conflict.

  I don’t know how much longer I can stand this, he’d texted her.

  LOL get over it, had been her response.

  And that had been it, the final nail in the coffin of his fidelity to his family, to his job, to all of it. He’d sold the co-op in New York, traded the sports car for a four-wheel-drive SUV, switched the bespoke suits for sturdy lumberjack-type jeans and flannel shirts. With the proceeds of everything, he’d invested in high-yield stocks, intending to live a modest and quiet life in solitude, and fucked directly off to Vermont, hoping to never see another human being again.

  That was impossible, of course, but he did his best and met with a pleasing amount of success. He descended to the stupidly-named village of Widow’s Vale once a month to stock up on groceries and supplies and fetch his mail. He had a satellite phone, the internet, and a reliable generator to keep the lights and heat going. Failing that, he learned to chop firewood and work oil lamps and pretend he was a pioneer man.

  Before that day, when Leo ran off for his daily constitutional and led him to finding a woman lying in the snow, he hadn’t seen a soul since his last grocery run a week earlier. It had been glorious. He felt resentful of her presence, that she’d broken his happy streak of solitude, but at the same time… he wondered. How hard might she be to seduce? He hadn’t had sex in a few years, and if the state of his dick were any indication, it was long past time to remedy that situation.

  Maybe he wasn’t really attracted to her at all, maybe it was just that he was incredibly horny, and she was a woman, with the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen and satiny-looking skin and well-toned arms that would grip him like a vice and plush red lips that he thought would be a dream to kiss and oh, God, would look so good wrapped around his cock and—

  “Wyatt?” she said, her voice soft and husky, and it took everything he had not to groan. He liked how she said his name, liked it a lot.

  Turning, he saw she’d taken his words to heart and helped herself to his clothing. Soft gray sweatpants covered long, long, long legs and she’d pulled on his favorite sweater, a baggy thing in cobalt blue that made her eyes nearly glow. Her dark hair stuck up in cowlicks from the vigorous rubbing she’d given it. Her cheeks were still that intriguing pink, in what he was coming to think was her natural coloring.

  Adorable, he thought, and then wanted to kick himself. No, you idiot. She’s wearing dry clothes, you’ll throw a sandwich at her, then shove her in your car and drive her down the mountain and never clap eyes on her again.

  “Yeah,” he made himself say, and his voice sounded soft and husky, too.

  “I was thinking,” she continued, and began to twist and roll the hem of his sweater in agitation.

  Why was she so nervous? Had all his staring made her think he’d try to attack her or something? Granted, he wanted to attack her— in the most pleasurable of ways— but he was pretty certain he hadn’t been so blatant that she’d be frightened of him.

  “About what?” he prompted.

  “Well… the track I followed to get as far as I did… is there another way from here to Mountain Road, and down to Widow's Vale?”

  Wyatt frowned. “No, that’s it. Why?”

  “Because my car is stuck in that track. Really stuck. Like, wedged between the trees. And even if we can get it un-wedged, and put gas in the tank, I doubt we can maneuver it backward the mile between where it is and where it widens again enough to turn around. The snow was almost too deep to drive through when I managed to get here, and it’s been at least an hour since then, and—”

  She gestured toward the nearest window, where it looked to be snowing even harder, the wind having picked up so the flakes were blowing almost horizontally, a steady cloud of white and little else.

  “So… unless there’s another way off the mountain, I think I’m… I’m stuck here,” she concluded miserably, fingers torturing the sweater hem. “At least until— is there another way down?”

  Wyatt waited for the displeasure he was certain would follow that pronouncement. Where was it? Instead, there was a sense of… satisfaction? Definitely pleasure. He was pleased she’d have to remain. He hadn’t imagined the attraction on her face for him. If it were even a fraction of how much he wanted her, there was a fair chance they could make excellent use of their time together.

  But she seemed so jittery. Timid, even. Wyatt was a lot of unpleasant things, but he didn’t target or pressure women. The idea of making her feel uncomfortable with his attentions had his flesh crawling. He needed to at least attempt to behave normally, not like he was trying to seduce her, or he’d not be able to live with himself. And since he was all he had for company, these days— not counting Leo— that mattered.

  “Well, damn,” he said, trying to sound convincingly displeased. “We’ll just have to do the best we can, then.”

  She surveyed him with clear, calm eyes. Wyatt tried to be both still and relaxed, not wanting to seem wound-up or fidgety or otherwise weird to her, and apparently he nailed it, because after a moment she nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her posture very straight and face tense, obviously uncomfortable. “I can see you prefer to be alone, and weren’t looking to have a guest, especially a stranger. I hope I don’t have to abuse your hospitality for too long.”

  Oh, she was a sweetheart. If he could like her as well as want her… if they ended up fucking, it could be nice, really… nice. Not just a physical release, but something for the mind and soul as well as for the body. It was how Wyatt preferred sex, and what he’d not enjoyed for a long time. A very long time. Too long. He felt another aspect of wanting her click into place and gave a mental sigh. Even he, with his steadfast and ironclad sense of denial, was not blind to his own shortcomings— he was blind only to those of the people he cared for— and he knew that he was not exactly… circumspect when it came to his heart.

  He could not form a crush
on this woman. Instant attraction aside, the very idea was ludicrous, it was inconvenient, it was unwanted. She was unwanted. In the long-term, at least. For the day or two she’d be his reluctant house-mate… yes. Wanted, and quite a lot. But more than that? No. She would go. She had to go.

  “So…” Corinne was back to looking down at where the hem of his sweater was now hopelessly stretched out of shape. “Thank you for your help.”

  He smiled, hoping it didn’t look too predatory. She had to go, but… not quite yet. While she was here, there was a world of possibilities.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “I don’t mind at all.”

  Chapter 4

  Wyatt didn’t know what he expected to happen next, but standing there and staring at each other definitely wasn’t it. She clearly was no sparkling conversationalist, and after a few years with only Leo to talk to, neither was Wyatt, anymore. Without words to distract him, he was able to see that, even more than he’d realized, Corinne was profoundly uncomfortable— embarrassed, even.

  There was a charm to it, he found; his siblings, for example, would have had reactions running the gamut from Tyler’s cheerful acceptance (and inquiries about where he kept the good wine) to Kaylee’s haughty resignation (and inquiries about where he kept any wine). And his father wouldn’t have rested until he’d exhausted all avenues of rescue, up to and including chartering a helicopter to come fetch him, blithely paying quadruple if that’s what it took to get the pilot to ignore the weather warnings.

  Corinne, however… she was curled in upon herself, shoulders drawn inward and head down, as if trying to shrink to a less substantial size. Wyatt decided to make it his life’s— no, the day’s— work to make her look less like she was standing in front of a firing squad. He offered her that sandwich again, and a drink (both alcoholic and not), and various snacks; she refused them all.

  She also mulishly refused a shower, his offer to launder her sodden clothing (“It will dry on its own”), and a blow dryer for her hair (”It’s practically dry already”).

  At last, Wyatt leaned a shoulder against the fireplace mantel and folded his arms over his chest.

  “So what do you want to do, then?” he asked. “I suppose we can just sit here and stare at each other until it’s time for bed, but even my face gets boring after the fourth or fifth hour.” He grinned as he scanned her features; they were fascinating in how poorly they fit together; there wasn’t a smooth flow from any one of them to another, everything sort of crammed together in the worst possible ways.

  And yet… there was softness there, and grace. If you were looking. Which he was. And which she had noticed, and disliked, because she turned a fearsome frown upon him and folded her own arms militantly over the breasts that, despite their modest dimensions, still caused Wyatt a worrying amount of distraction. They were the size of cupcakes. Perhaps more like fluffy pancakes. But he liked their neat smallness, liked that they’d fit right into the cup of his palm, liked that their nipples were dark enough to have shown through the material of her shirt, earlier.

  What he did not like, however, was how his body was starting to react to that train of thought.

  “I’m going to go put on some dry things, myself,” he said abruptly, his voice a bit more gruff than he’d like.

  He stalked past her to the bedroom, where he found she had spread out her damp things over the back of the armchair in the corner. He would put them in the dryer in spite of her refusal, he decided, and couldn’t resist walking over for a closer look. In a fit of curiosity, he took her jeans by the waistband and held them to his own hips, unable to stop a tiny grin when the cuffs hit the floor, precisely the same length as what he wore. The woman was a giantess. He replaced her clothes on the chair and went to his dresser, coming out with sweatpants and a plaid flannel shirt for himself.

  Once changed, he gathered up her clothes and marched out, through the main room to the utility room off the back of the house, where the washer and dryer were located. He tossed her snow-wet things in with his own, dumping in some detergent and setting the cycle. When the machine started whirring and sloshing, he turned to find her immediately behind him, eyes narrow.

  “Yeeeesssssss?” he drawled.

  “I didn’t want my clothes washed.”

  “I heard you the first time. Why not? Do you like wearing mildewy, funky-smelling things?”

  She blinked. “No, of course not. I just— didn’t want to— give you—”

  “Extra work?” Wyatt guessed, but she shook her head.

  “Anything to hold over me,” she muttered, and hobbled back to the main room.

  Slowly he followed, watching the tension in her shoulders as she stared out the window at the swirling white world beyond the glass. He couldn’t really object, after all. It was how he himself had been raised: expect nothing for free. But there was something… tender about Corinne, something naive and pure, and the idea that someone had hurt her did not sit well with Wyatt. She should be protected, not taken advantage of.

  “Corinne,” he said quietly, and waited until she turned to face him. “I don’t do anything for some hidden… compensation. If I offer something, it’s because I want to give it, and don’t expect anything in return.”

  She stared at him for what felt like a long time, but was probably only a few seconds, face set and still but eyes blazing with some unknown emotion. Then she gave a quick, jerky nod and turned back to the window.

  Touchy, he thought, put in mind of a stray who needed to be gentled and coaxed in order to trust. But he understood. Life could be hard on a person. That was why he’d fled the real world to live by himself on a mountaintop, after all.

  Wyatt plunked himself on his favored side of the battered brown leather sofa, set his laptop on his knees, and booted up, only occasionally looking toward where she continued to do a fair imitation of a statue by the window. Could the snow really be that fascinating? He admitted to himself that he was a little irked that she’d rather stare outside at nothing than talk to him, unused to people ignoring him even when he wanted them to.

  He was surprised that his internet was still working, having thought the satellite dish would have been full of snow and rendered useless hours ago, but pleased that it wasn’t. He checked his stocks, then his email, then opened a chat window to his brother.

  Wyatt: my birthday has come early

  Tyler: huh?

  Wyatt: another person took the wrong mountain road and ended up here.

  Wyatt: no way down to widows vale with this storm. looks like i have a huge female guest for the next while.

  Tyler: what? huge? what?

  Wyatt: she’s as tall as i am

  Tyler: really :D :D :D

  Wyatt: oh god not that size fetish of yours again

  Tyler: i’ve been telling you for years how hot tall girls are

  Tyler: now YOU can learn to find it hot.

  Wyatt flicked another glance her way; she’d crossed her arms, which dragged his sweater more snugly around her torso, and higher so it hid less of her ass, which, he was very interested to see, was extremely well-toned and looked as if he could bounce a quarter off of it. And her thighs; his sweatpants clung to quads that he had a sudden, powerful urge to trace along with his fingertips. Or his teeth.

  Wyatt: could be i don’t have to learn to find it sexy

  Tyler: reeeeeeeeeeeeally. tell me more. pretty, i assume? blonde, or are you trying something new?

  Wyatt: brunette and pretty plain, actually.

  Tyler: plain, and you still want her?

  Wyatt: yes. she must work out, her body is fantastic. bet she could lift my truck with one hand.

  Tyler: that’s more terrifying than arousing, i hope you realize.

  Wyatt: and she has blue eyes like

  Tyler: like what?

  Wyatt: i don’t even know how to describe them. think of the bluest thing ever. they’re more blue than that.

  Tyler:

  Tyler:

 
; Wyatt: you still there?

  Tyler: yes. was just checking how much it would cost to hire a rescue team to come save you.

  Wyatt: don’t you mean save HER?

  Tyler: no, i mean save YOU. you’ve clearly been alone on that mountain too long, if you’re waxing poetic about an ugly stranger’s eyes

  Wyatt: would you think someone needed rescuing if they were really attracted to YOU right from the start?

  Tyler: yes, i would.

  Wyatt: liar. you’d do whatever you could to get in her pants.

  Tyler: of course. and then, afterward, i’d hope someone would come and rescue the poor thing from her mad delusions.

  Wyatt: i’m not delusional. aren’t you always saying ‘for every old sock, there’s an old shoe’? maybe i’m the old shoe to her old sock.

  Tyler: you have only known her a few hours, haven’t you?

  Wyatt: it’s been about 40 minutes, actually

  Tyler: you’re making my point for me, you madman. you’re a danger to yourself and others.

  Wyatt: you’re a pain in the ass

  “Um…” came a soft voice, and Wyatt snapped his head up from where he’d been frowning down at the laptop.

  “Are you okay?” Corinne gazed at him with a puzzled and concerned frown.

  He blinked. “What?”

  Her hands went to the sweater hem again. Twist. “It’s just… you’ve been typing on that like you’re trying to pound your fingers through it.” Pleat. “If I’m inconveniencing you, or making it hard for you to work—” Wring.

  He slammed the laptop closed. “Sorry. No. It—” had nothing to do with you, he meant to say, but it had had everything to do with her, so he switched to “—was just my brother being annoying.”

  “Oh, you have a brother.” It was said with a faint smile and a trace of nostalgia. “They’re… good to have, even when they’re driving you crazy.”