Heart of Winter

by Diana Palmer

“At least it hasn’t gone over,” Gerald sighed. He held his stomach and groaned. “Damn. I wish I’d stopped long enough to take that medicine.”

  She stared at him, snow sticking to her face. She felt bitterly cold. “Can you make it?” she asked, frightened.

  “I think so,” he sighed. “My ulcer isn’t sure, but I am,” he said with a wan smile.

  “So am I.” She smiled back. “Well, shall we start out?”

  “We’re closer to the ranch than the Todd’s place,” he said when they were standing in the road. But the snow was coming harder and thicker, and it was blinding, stinging their eyes. “We can follow the road back…”

  We hope, she added silently, because the blizzard wasn’t letting up. If anything, it was getting worse. The brilliance of the snow was as blinding as the flakes whipped up by the biting cold wind.

  She leaned into that wind, pulled the cap down and her collar up to cover as much of her face as possible, and started walking. Beside her, Gerald kept up the pace. But when they’d gone a few hundred yards, the going got harder and harder. Incredibly, she started to feel hot in all the freezing cold and snow. She wanted to throw off her coat and walk in her sweater, but Gerald shook his head sharply when she started to do it. He mouthed something that looked like “frostbite,” but she wasn’t sure.

  She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, watching her boot sink into the deep snow. It came over the boot top and down into her warm socks, wetting them, chilling them. She’d left her gloves in the Jeep, like an idiot, so she had to keep her hands in her pockets, but they were freezing cold, too.

  They rounded a bend, and found the road suddenly buried under a huge drift of snow. Nicole stopped, her eyes on the blanket of white around them, but there was no alternative route. They had to get through that drift or die.

  Gerald moved close to her, panting. “Oh, God,” he muttered, clenching his hand over his stomach. “It’s hurting, Nicky. How in hell are we going to dig through that?”

  She looked at it dubiously. She didn’t have gloves and Gerald was in no condition to do it alone. There were no tools. A ranch hat like Winthrop’s Stetson would have helped or even a shoe, but if she took off her boot, her foot would freeze. She stared at the huge mound of snow with helpless frustration.

  “Oh, damn,” she wailed, hating the hot sting of tears in her eyes. She wasn’t beaten. Oh, God, she couldn’t be beaten! She had to do something, but what?

  “I’m so tired,” Gerald sighed. He sank down with his back to the snowdrift. “So tired…stomach hurts…”

  “You can’t go to sleep,” she burst out. “It’s fatal! Gerald, we have to go on.”

  “How? The snow’s too deep. We can’t get through, Nicky.” He closed his eyes, leaning back against the bank that angled against the snowdrift. “Nice…”

  Nicky shook him, but he was too weary to try anymore. She looked around at the white forest, its tall trees rising over them like shrouds while the wind blew and the snow fell and the world was as hushed as a cathedral.

  She sank down beside Gerald and sat there, looking around at the deadly white beauty of it. A hundred years before, men must have seen such sights and been killed by them, she thought. The Lewis and Clark expedition probably had its share of snowstorms, and they’d survived. But they were strong, well-equipped woodsmen. Nicky was a city woman with no woodcraft skills. She didn’t even know how to build a fire, if she could have made her hands do the work.

  Her green eyes went up to the sky. Well, it wasn’t such a very bad place to die, she mused as drowsiness swept over her. She was near Winthrop, even though he didn’t care anymore. Maybe he’d bury her here, and she’d be near him forever…

  She closed her eyes. Somewhere she heard an organ. It was making beautiful music in the distance, and there was singing. It was an old hymn of some kind, exquisite in the stillness…

  “Amazing Grace.”

  Her grandfather used to sing it when he worked with the horses. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…” she began to hum.

  Voices…coming close. The organ stopped, but a cat was purring. Something touched her. Shook her. That voice—it was deep and urgent and somehow familiar—but she didn’t understand what it was asking. She was warm and safe and she protested when someone tried to move her. She fought, but she was subdued. Then she was rising, floating. White clouds. Snow. Cold. The organ drifted in and out. She tried to open her eyes, but it was just too much work. She slept.

  Her head ached. She sneezed and the sound echoed around her. Was she dead?

  She opened her eyes slowly. A ceiling. Very white. A canopy, pink, overhead. She turned her head and there was Winthrop. He was unshaven, his hair needed combing. He was sprawled beside the bed in a chair half his size, his booted feet splayed, his mouth open. He was snoring.

  She stared at him for a long moment, memorizing him. He looked good, even without a shave. His shirt was open, and his hair-roughened chest looked like leather. She wanted to touch it, smooth her hands over its masculine contours, feel his heart beating under that rough skin. His hands were clasped over his lean waist, darkly beautiful masculine hands, their strength evident even in rest. She remembered their delicate touch on her soft flesh, and trembled a little with pleasure.

  “Winthrop.” His name sounded rusty. She frowned, because it had hurt her throat to call him. Her hand went to it. Her fingers were cold, but they didn’t hurt. Had she escaped frostbite? She held out her hands, palms down, and looked at them.

  “You were damned lucky,” Winthrop said, opening his eyelids without moving a muscle. He glared at her out of eyes as black as night. “You didn’t even get frostbite, although you’ll have a hell of a cold.”

  “Gerald?” she rasped.

  “He’s fine, thank God. What possessed you two greenhorns to scale the Rockies in a blizzard?”

  “He was worried about Sadie,” she defended.

  “Sadie had the good sense to stay inside,” he said coldly. “I sent Mike up to take supplies to her and her mother. They’re fine. More than I can say for you and Sir Galahad.”

  “We can’t all be brilliant mountain men,” she said sweetly.

  “Do you want something to drink?” he asked.

  “Not until I can have it analyzed for poison,” she threw back at him.

  “I’ll send Mary with it,” he replied. “I might not be able to resist the temptation, at that.”

  She watched him get up and tears gathered behind her eyes. Such an ordeal, only to find him still unforgiving and hateful at the end of it. He might have said he was glad she was alive or smile at her, or something.

  “Sorry to put you to the bother,” she muttered.

  He bent over her, his eyes dangerous. “Don’t bait me,” he threatened softly. “I’ve had a hell of a night watching you fade in and out. You little fool, people have died in snowdrifts out here!”

  “Sorry, but I do seem to be alive. I hope you aren’t too disappointed…oh!”

  The exclamation was in response to the sudden, unexpected descent of his mouth, square over hers.

  “Disappointed—” he bit off, and kissed harder. His hand at her throat tilted her face at a more inviting angle and he caught his breath as his lips became gentle and began to play with hers. His breath was as ragged as her own now, but he didn’t even care. She could have died. Knowing it made him wild.

  Her hands went to his hard cheeks, trembling and cold as they pressed there, holding him to her mouth. Her brows knitted in exquisite anguish. Dreams came true like this, she thought achingly. Dreams. She’d lived on them for so long.

  “Oh,” she whispered softly, a tiny whimper of sound that echoed in his mind.

  His mouth opened against hers, lifting, teasing, his breath mingling wildly with hers while his hands caught hers and pulled them down to the bed beside her head, his fingers interlocking with hers.

  “I could ravish you,” he ground out huskily, and the eyes that glanc
ed at her were blazing.

  “I thought…you hated me,” she breathed unsteadily.

  “I did. I do. I hate what I feel when I touch you.” He bent again, tormenting her mouth with his lips, brushing, lifting, teasing until she began to writhe on the sheets. “Yes, that’s exciting, isn’t it?” he whispered roughly, watching her face. “I’m going to make you wild, Nicky, and then I’m going to walk off and leave you with it….”

  She arched softly, her eyes wide and quiet, her body trembling. “No, you won’t,” she whispered. “Because you’ll be just as wild as I will.”

  His jaw tautened as he looked down at her, his pride aching, his body aching. She was killing him. His eyes went to her bodice, where her breasts were outlined under the gossamer-thin white cotton of her gown. The arousal she couldn’t help was blatant.

  His fingers, linked with hers, contrasted roughly. His eyes adored her breasts, caressed them. “That,” he whispered slowly, “is beautiful.”

  “Everything is beautiful with you,” she said, her heart in her eyes as she looked up at him, too much in love with him to even be embarrassed at his bold stare.

  “Nicky!” He groaned her name as he bent, his mouth so tender, so exquisitely gentle with hers that tears ran hotly down her cheeks. He was the world, and everything in it. She loved him so.

  Even as she thought the words, she whispered them under his warm mouth, breathed the truth against him, echoed her feelings like a prayer.

  “No.” He drew back suddenly, sharply. His fingers pressed hard against her lips while he sat over her, trying to breathe, with eyes as black as the night outside the window. “No. Don’t say it.”

  “But I do love you,” she said, her face like a child’s, full of pleading and hope.

  His thumb rubbed against her lips roughly in a reluctant caress. “I don’t want that,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. But I…can’t, Nicky.”

  “I can’t help it,” she whispered softly. “I’m sorry, too, but I do. I do, I do!”

  His thumb pressed harder and he caught his breath. “Listen, I’ve been alone a long time. I’ve gotten used to my own company. I don’t want anyone with me. I don’t want ties, commitment. For God’s sake, Nicky, I’m not a marrying man!”

  Her face flamed when she realized where the conversation was leading. She stared at him, horror-struck. She hadn’t meant that, but he’d assumed she was begging him to marry her.

  “I…I didn’t mean…” she faltered.

  “I can’t saddle myself with a wife,” he said flatly. “And you’re too frail for this country, even if I went crazy and invited you to live with me. You’re too used to the city. This is a man’s country, Nicky, not a woman’s. You’d never survive it.”

  She bit her lower lip. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” He took her hand in his and smoothed over its softness, wondering at the delicious sensation that washed over him as he savored it. “Just as I’m sure that I don’t want a woman here,” he added deliberately, holding her gaze.

  She searched his dark eyes quietly. “All right. I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you.”

  “I think you’re more embarrassed than I am,” he mused, smiling gently at her red cheeks. He frowned a little as he studied her. “Are you sure this isn’t reaction? You’ve had a rough time of it lately.”

  She took the out he was offering her, grateful for a little salvaged pride. “Probably it is. Being rescued, and all,” she explained. “You don’t hate me anymore, do you?” she added weakly, the expression in her eyes so eloquent that he felt himself choking to death on pride.

  “No, I don’t hate you,” he said shortly. “I never did. I hated being lied to, that’s all.” And she had lied, he recalled. Numbly, he laid her hand down on the covers, wondering why he felt so empty. It had warmed him when she’d whispered that she loved him, God knew why. Love wasn’t something he coveted these days. His eyes drifted up to hers, but she was concealing them under her lids. Could she love him?

  He bent toward her, watching her face lift for him, her mouth part. Yes, she wanted his mouth, that was sweetly evident. He looked into her eyes while he kissed her, seeing the pupils dilate, the lids close drowsily. That excited him more, and he drew back before he got in over his head. He scowled down at her curiously. She disturbed him all too much. He didn’t need this. She’d already betrayed him once, he wasn’t giving her a second shot at him. It might be an act, even this talk of loving. Just an act. He couldn’t trust her.

  “I’ll see about some orange juice,” he said with a faint smile. “Want some soup?”

  “I guess I could eat something, if it won’t put Mary to too much trouble,” she added quietly.

  “I can’t remember the last time any woman guest considered Mary,” he mused, his gaze quietly possessive. “Get some rest. I’ll be back after a while.”

  She watched him get up, trying to hide her feelings. But he limped suddenly and she sat up, her breath catching. “Winthrop, you’re hurt!” she burst out.

  The caring note in her voice cut him to the quick. He didn’t want it, or what he was feeling for her. He glared at her. “I don’t need a nurse,” he bit off. “Get yourself well. I can take care of myself. I’ve had years of practice.”

  He went out and slammed the door, leaving her stunned and hurt. She wished she knew what she’d done to make him so angry. She felt like she’d made an utter fool of herself by telling him she loved him. Tears stung her eyes as she lay back. Well, maybe he’d believe she’d lied, or, as he’d said, that it was reaction. He’d made it all too obvious that her love was the last thing on earth he wanted. So she’d just have to learn to hide it from him.

  Chapter Eight

  Soon after Winthrop left the room, Nicky had an unexpected visitor. Her father, neatly dressed in a gray suit, came in and took the chair Winthrop had vacated.

  “Feeling any better?” he asked, and seemed to be genuinely concerned. Nicky could remember being sick as a child and having neither of her parents come near her.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “I just feel a little tired.”

  “I guess so,” he said with a smile. “Your nose is red.”

  “It feels red, too.” She returned the smile. “Did anybody shoot anything?”

  “I got a deer,” he said. “Six-point buck. Nobody else had any luck.” He pursed his lips. “I offered Carol a jacket made from the skin and she stormed off in a snit. I shot Bambi, you see.”

  Nicole laughed in spite of herself. “You cold-blooded killer, you.”

  “I love venison,” he sighed. “Mary’s fixing us a big stew out of the hindquarter, but you won’t get any until lunch tomorrow. She says it has to simmer a long time to get done right.”

  “She’s a good cook.”

  He leaned back in the chair to study her. “What possessed you and your dim-witted boss to go driving in a snowstorm?” he asked pleasantly.

  “He was worried about Sadie Todd,” she explained. “And I just wanted to get some fresh air.”

  “In a snowstorm?” he asked.

  “Well, we were kind of getting tired of watching science-fiction movies…”

  “That’s no reason to commit suicide. Snow is deadly, as you damned near found out. If Winthrop hadn’t decided to call it quits early, the two of you would have frozen to death.”

  “I guess Winthrop was pretty angry.”

  “Angry.” He pursed his lips. “That’s an interesting choice of words. Mild, considering his reaction when he found you. I thought I had a good command of four-letter words, but he taught me some new ones. He carried you over that drift all by himself, weak leg and all. I guess he’s hurting like hell, from the way he limps, but he was determined.”

  She felt her heart leap with the pleasure that knowledge gave her. She toyed with the sheet. “He’s quite a man.”

  “I think so,” he agreed. “I told him the truth, by the way. I think you’ve paid enough for the past.”

 
“Thanks. But it won’t do much good. Winthrop isn’t a marrying man,” she added when he didn’t seem to understand. “And I’m not a liberated woman.”

  Dominic sighed heavily. “Well, different people, different attitudes.” His green eyes twinkled. “I’m very liberated, myself. But I’m kind of glad you aren’t. And do you think I’m ever going to get any grandkids?” he added thoughtfully.

  She flushed, averting her eyes. “Not anytime soon. I’m barely twenty-two.”

  “Kids are nice. I wish I’d enjoyed you more, while I had the chance.” He frowned. “Say, would you like to go to a carnival or something? I could buy you cotton candy and ride the rides with you. Or we could go fishing….”

  “This sounds serious,” she said with mock fear. “Are you suffering from an attack of fatheritis?”

  “Feels like it.” He grinned. “We could at least speak. Maybe we could exchange Christmas cards. Then, as time goes by, you might come to Kentucky to see me.”

  “Or you might come to Chicago to see me.” She sighed. “You and Carol,” she amended.

  “Carol won’t last,” he shrugged. “She’s temporary. They all are. You see…in some crazy way, I loved your mother, even if we couldn’t quite get our act together. She’s pretty irreplaceable.” His eyes fell. “God, it hurt when she died. I couldn’t even tell you how it hurt.”

  “I don’t think I would have listened if you’d told me then.” She sat up straighter. “I think I understand a little better now. And maybe we could exchange Christmas cards.”

  He grinned at that dry remark. “Maybe we could.” He got up. “Well, I’d better go rescue Mary. Carol is trying to teach her how to walk like a model.”

  “Carol models?”

  “Doesn’t it show? She’s got style, all right. And Mary was just eating it up.” He scowled. “She mentioned something about the Rockettes….”

  “That’s kind of a family joke,” Nicole said, enlightening him. “Thanks for coming up to see me.”

  “You look a little peaked to me,” he said. “Mary was fixing chicken soup in between parading around with a book on her head. I guess she’s going to bring you some.”