by Suzanne Cass
“Oh…um…I know,” she lied. “It’s just that…”
But it was too late, his lips thinned, and his gaze went back to the task at hand. There was no time to offer the excuse that she didn’t even know what a butterfly bandage was. Zut, what was he so touchy about? He was as bad as Armand, with his sulking and false affront. Men. They were so exasperating. She let him finish the rest of his ministrations in silence.
“There, that looks a little better than my first job.” Wyatt sat back to admire his nursing enterprise.
“Thank you,” she said, as he handed her two pills and the bottle of water.
“Our socks are sort of dry.” He picked up her two pink ones and felt them. They were fairly thick, made of wool, but no real match for the snow; she’d only intended on wearing them inside, either in the kitchen or in the car. “Probably dry enough for us.” He handed them back to her, while he took his from the other air vent. “Put them on, because I’m going to turn the truck off now.” It was a simple statement, offered to her as a simple fact. But there were many connotations in that announcement.
How were they going to stay warm? Wyatt's turning off the vehicle heralded a long, frosty night ahead. Full of fear and uncertainty. Stella liked to think there was a reason for everything in her life. Fate handed her hardships to teach her something. But what in hell she was supposed to learn from being caught in a blizzard with a man she hardly knew was beyond her, right now. There was always a bright side to every situation, she just needed to find this one.
Slowly, she pulled a sock over each foot. They were still damp, but warm enough from the heater.
He tidied up the first aid kit, put on his own socks and then flicked off the overhead light. The inside of the pickup was plunged into darkness.
A powerful gust of wind buffeted them, rattling the windows.
She was suddenly afraid. What if no one found them out here? What if they were stranded for days? Her heart pounded, and she was scared she was having palpitations.
Almost as if he could hear the thudding inside her chest, Wyatt said, “Scoot over this way.” It was hard to see in the near-dark, but he was beckoning her over to his side of the cab. “Bring your blanket,” he added.
She shuffled across the leather bench seat until she was right next to him.
“There’s only one way to stay truly warm in this kind of situation,” he stated in a matter of face voice. “And that’s to share body heat. Are you okay with that?”
She hesitated. If it was the only way to stop from freezing to death, then of course, she was game. Stella tried to ignore the small spark of attraction that lit in her belly at the thought of snuggling up close to Wyatt.
“I promise I won’t try anything.” He was a man of few words. He didn’t plead his case, or try and convince her, just let her make up her own mind. It was getting harder and harder to see his face in the growing darkness, but she caught the flash of his dark eyes as he stared at her. He might be hiding something behind that steely gaze of his, but Stella didn’t think it was the fact that he was a rapist, or a murderer, or that he would ever harm a woman. In fact, he’d seemed protective of her. Whatever secret he was keeping, she decided she could trust him on this. If he was an evil man, with wicked intent, she would’ve felt something by now.
Finally, she said, “I believe you.”
He lifted his arm, and she wriggled under his shoulder. Their thighs and knees were touching, as were the length of their torsos. It was odd, getting this close and personal to a man she hardly knew. Wyatt fidgeted around with the two blankets, putting them together and covering them up, making sure that their feet were tucked in at the bottom. It was like they were in a two-man cocoon. It was definitely warmer, snuggled up to Wyatt, than it had been over on her side of the truck.
An awkward silence fell around them.
Stella asked the first thing that popped into her head. “So, I know your brother, Levi, he’s the local ranger. Right?”
Wyatt just grunted in reply. A man of few words indeed. Obviously, he needed a direct question to get him talking. She nestled in a little closer, letting her gaze rest on the snowy windshield. The temperature was already dropping inside the cab; the tip of her nose was feeling cold.
“What about you? What do you do for a living?” Stella didn’t know a lot about Wyatt, only that he’d suddenly appeared around six months ago. Staff at Stargazers said that he’d moved in with Levi and Cat, but no one knew where he’d been before that, or what he’d been up to. Now was as good a time as any to get some answers.
Wyatt looked down at her and then lifted his eyes back to the dashboard. “Ah… I flip burgers at CJ’s.”
She waited for more, but there was silence. God, it was like pulling teeth with this guy. Stella wracked her brain to figure out what CJ’s was. She thought she’d heard Levi and Cat mention it once or twice as the best burger place in Stevensville. She’d only been into town a few times since she started at the ranch, and finding a burger joint wasn’t high on her priority list. She was a little surprised he worked in the food industry. At least now they had something in common. She’d been thinking he was going to tell her he was a carpenter or a plumber, someone who did hard physical labor. She chided herself for stereotyping him so quickly.
“That’s good,” she said, as she tucked her hands between her knees to keep them warm. “We’ve got similar jobs, you and I.”
Wyatt snorted. “My job is nothing like what you do. You work with one of Montana’s best chefs.” He adjusted his body a little as he spoke, so Stella could lean back against him. “I enjoy cooking. I like to experiment with food, but that’s not nearly the same thing.”
It was true, Joseph had an excellent reputation. It was one of the reasons she’d applied for the job at the ranch. If only he could be more of a people person and keep his temper under control, then she’d be truly happy there.
“Besides, I know you trained in a proper French patisserie. I’ve tasted some of your pastries, they’re even better than my momma’s homemade cookies,” he added.
His compliment took her aback. And by the fact he knew more about her than she did about him. He’d also strung more than three words together and they were actually having a conversation, at last.
“Thank you. I love what I do, that is high praise, indeed.”
“Why did you leave France? To come here, I mean?” His chest rumbled, deep and gravelly as he spoke, and Stella became momentarily distracted. Then his question brought her back to reality.
“Lots of reasons,” she said blithely. Which was true. There had been many motivations for her to leave France and come to Montana. The reason she most often gave was that she wanted to experience life on another continent, another culture. Didn’t want to get tied down to one place too soon. She was twenty-five, her training and then apprenticeships had taken over five years to complete. She was already a lot older than most young people who decided to travel.
“What I did in France, working the patisserie was…very rewarding. But also demanding. It was hard work.” That wasn’t the half of it. So many long hours had been spent perfecting her craft, sometimes she felt like she’d sold her soul to get where she wanted to be. But when she finally got there, something had been missing.
“You mean you got burnt out?”
“Yes, maybe. I wanted…as you say…a change of scenery.”
She felt him shrug his shoulder behind her neck. “I can sympathize with that.”
“I love cooking, and I enjoy making my sweet morsels, don’t misunderstand me. It was just…” It was her turn to shrug. “I needed to get away.”
“I understand. Sometimes the life we’re living is not the life we want.”
Again, he surprised her. This man was deeper than she first gave him credit for.
“What about you? Where did you get your love of cooking? Where did you learn to experiment with food? Are you chef trained, too?”
He snorted. “Nope. Exactly the opposite. I le
arned to cook while I was in prison.”
What had he just said?
He’d been in jail?
Stella reared away from him. It was too dark to see anything clearly, but she felt him stiffen beside her. So much for her gut feeling about this guy, she’d been completely wrong.
CHAPTER SIX
Wyatt
SHIT, SHIT, SHIT. How had that information just slipped through his lips? Wyatt wanted to take those words and stuff them right back down his throat, where they belonged. Stella had flinched and moved away. Now he’d done it. Why couldn’t he learn to keep his big mouth shut?
“Sorry, I thought you knew.” Now he’d opened pandora’s box, it was better to come clean, get it all out. Like cauterizing an open wound. “I spent two years in prison.” He kept his voice even, tone blank, as if it was an everyday thing for someone to spend time in lockup.
“Merde.” Her quiet exclamation didn’t hide her shock.
She really must not have known. He assumed that most—if not all—of the staff at Stargazers were aware. It was one reason he kept a low profile whenever he visited the ranch, because he knew people would look at him, judge him behind his back. Levi and Cat both said they had told no one. Perhaps he’d misjudged them, after all. That didn’t make any difference to his current predicament, however. This ex-con sitting next to her horrified and alarmed Stella, he could feel it in the way she was staring at him through the darkness.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. If you want to move away—” He’d already begun to unravel the blankets from around them, expecting her to recoil. This night was about to get very cold and lonely.
“No, no. It’s okay.” She grabbed his hand to still his movement. “You just surprised me, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oui. I mean, yes.” She leaned back against him, but there was none of the pliant ease like there’d been before. It was like sitting next to a statue made of stone, now.
“Do you mind if I ask why you were there? In prison, I mean?”
Yes, he minded. It was the one thing he didn’t talk about. Not even to Levi, although his brother had gently tried to pry it out of him a few times in the past six months. Levi had always said that Wyatt was entitled to his privacy, and he knew he’d tell him when he was ready. Which didn’t help now, because Stella probably deserved some kind of answer.
“They accused me of killing a woman. My next-door-neighbor.” He didn’t think Stella could get any stiffer beside him, but the tension ramped up inside the cab yet again. “But I didn’t do it,” he added hurriedly. “And I was finally acquitted of the crime when they caught the guy who was actually guilty.” Her husband. Wyatt had known all along it’d been Tyrone, but no one believed him.
Stella let out a gust of air. “Ah, okay. That is good… Well, not good, but I’m happy you didn’t murder someone.”
He gave a loud bark of laughter. Glad that she was willing to take him at face value. To believe his words. That took a certain amount of courage. But it was hard not to be cynical and bitter about the whole thing. He was trying to forget it ever happened. Up till now, that hadn’t been working so well for him. His gran used to say that keeping things bottled up inside would kill you, eventually. But no one else seemed to give a damn he’d been unjustly incarcerated. Certainly not the corrupt justice system that’d put him there. So, bottling it all up had been the safest way to go.
As if reading his emotions, Stella breathed, “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
God, that accent was sublime. It made him all gooey inside.
“Yeah, well. It’s over now and I just want to put it all behind me.” She twitched beside him, as if she didn’t quite believe his words. But she said nothing, even relaxing a little into his shoulder again.
“So that’s where you learned to cook?” Her seamless change of topic was welcome. “It sounds like you got one good thing out of it, then.”
He grunted. “I’ve never thought about it like that. But I guess you could put it that way.”
“Tell me what it’s like to cook for criminals. I’ve always wanted to know.” A mischievous tone entered her voice. Was she teasing him? He’d play along. They had a long night ahead of them and they’d need something to fill up the time. At least if she had a concussion, it seemed to be a mild case, as she was awake and lucid, talking easily. She didn’t need to know he was monitoring her, however, so he answered her question.
“It’s actually not that bad. Tank—he was the head chef—used to cook for one of those steak joints in Tucson, when he lived in Arizona. Before they nicked him for shooting his boss in the back when he tried to stiff him on his pay.”
“Sounds like you know some standup guys,” Stella said dryly.
He laughed. “Yeah, well, Tank was a good cook. He taught me a lot. And we liked to experiment, when we could. Of course, most prison food is pretty bland. Cheap and nutritious, that’s about it. But we were lucky, because Missoula is a small prison and they make meals on the premises. We had this one cookbook we got from the library, and we liked to try a new dish every few weeks. Once we even made this spicy yogurt chicken. The other guys loved it.”
He went on to tell her about how the inmates would often let them know if they didn’t like a certain meal by putting a chunk under his pillow at night, or in the end of his shoe, so that when he put it on in the morning, he’d squish his toes into something disgusting. Stella laughed at his stories and they fell into an easy conversation. Wyatt couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked this much. It was nice. Took him back to his days before he was locked up. Before he had to harden his heart just to survive.
“What’s your favorite food?”
Her question came out of the blue and he answered too quickly. “That’s easy. My mom’s pignoli cookies.”
“I’m not sure I’ve heard of those…wait, are they Italian? With the pine nuts in them? You had an Italian mom?” Her questions came rapid fire, as if her mouth was having trouble keeping up with her brain.
“Yes, you know your stuff. My mom used to make them as a special Christmas treat for me and Levi. I still remember the taste of them, they used to melt on my tongue.” He licked his lips as the memories of those cookies, still warm from the oven, overtook him.
“Doesn’t she make them for you anymore?”
“What?” Wyatt snapped back from his daydreaming. Shit. She seemed to have a knack of touching on all the topics he didn’t want to talk about. His mother was normally another no-go zone with Wyatt. And yet, here he was, talking about her.
“No. My mother left us when I was thirteen. She moved back to Italy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, more abruptly than he intended. It wasn’t a problem, it was seventeen years ago, he’d gotten over it. He hardly ever thought about his mother now. They never heard from her; she could be dead for all he knew. “Tell me about your life as a pastry chef. You’ve heard all about my culinary skills. It’s time I found out your story.”
Stella hesitated. “Why not?” She told him in great depth how much she both despised and respected the first chef she trained under as an apprentice, because he was so particular that she got her technique for rolling croissant pastry exactly right. He made her do it over, and over, and over again, until she became perfect.
On the surface, Wyatt slipped into the easy repartee they’d been enjoying previously. But underneath, images of his mother haunted his thoughts. Jet black hair drawn back in a severe bun at the nape of her neck, her wide smile as she handed him one of his favorite cookies. He could understand why she’d left their drunkard father. But he’d never been able to fathom why she left him and Levi. Sahale was a bitter, resentful man who beat her. No woman should have to put up with that. But they were her sons. Why had she left them to deal with their father alone?
Wyatt shook his head, determined to concentrate on what Stella was telling him, about how thin you had to get
the croissant dough to make it just flakey and melt in your mouth.
Later on, he noticed the buffeting wind seemed to have died down. It’d been howling around the truck like a banshee, but now it’d dropped to more of a soft wail. Hopefully, the storm was blowing itself out. There would be no way to know how much snow had fallen, or how deep the truck was covered until they dug their way out in the morning. For now, they were safe and dry and relatively warm in their hideaway.
Checking his phone, he saw it was nearly midnight. It was hard to believe they’d been talking for hours.
“How’s your head,” he asked, when she took a swig of water.
“It’s not too bad,” she admitted. “The medicine must be working.”
“That’s good. Shall we try to get some sleep?” Wyatt had already worked out that if they stretched lengthways across the bench seat, it was just wide enough for them both to lie on. As long as Stella didn’t mind sleeping in Wyatt’s arms, that was. It should be safe for her to sleep now; it’d been hours since her concussion.
“Oui.” He couldn’t see her in the dark, but he could feel as she tilted her head up to look at him. He wished he could meet those leaf-green eyes, know what was going through her mind.
They arranged themselves as best they could, draping the blankets around them and tucking in the corners to keep out the cold. It was like an icebox in here, and they were both shivering by the time they got settled again.
He had his back pressed hard up against the rear of the seat and Stella lay against him, with her spine tucked into his chest, her head pillowed on his outstretched arm. And her butt pushed into his groin. Soft and round and sexy as anything. Wyatt willed his cock into submission. She’d be able to feel an erection immediately, and that would not do. He thought about coming face to face with his nemesis, Tyrone. Yep, that worked. For now.
This wasn’t such a good idea, after all. How in hell had he thought he was going to get any sleep, with Stella in his arms all night?
* * *
