by Zoe Chant
It took her a long minute to realize what she was seeing.
She wasn’t out in the cold anymore. She still felt chilled to the bone, and her feet were disturbingly numb, but she was inside a building, with firelight dancing over the walls. Standing in front of her was a man.
He’d frozen in place with Emily dangling from his hands, slumped with sleep. Leah grabbed for her. He handed the baby over immediately, keeping his hands on her until she was safely parked on Leah’s chest.
Leah clutched Emily tight and stared up at the man. He was tall and broad, swathed in layers of winter clothes, wearing a hat and a scarf.
All she could really see of him were his eyes, which were a clear gray.
Something looked familiar about those eyes. Had she met this man before? No, wait, she couldn’t have, she’d been driving in the mountains...walking in the snow...
She cuddled Emily to her chest. “Who are you? What were you doing with my baby?”
He held up his hands. “Ma’am, I apologize, I didn’t mean any harm. My name is Jeff Hart, and I’m a ranger at Glacier National Park. I found you out in the snow, and I was just checking you and the baby over to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh,” she said, and it came out more as a breath of air than a sound. She looked down at Emily, who had miraculously slept through the whole handoff.
It was all starting to come back. She’d been sure that she and Emily were going to die in the snow. She’d collapsed in the road. She’d hallucinated a snow leopard.
And Jeff Hart the park ranger had come just in time to save them.
“Thank you,” Leah breathed. She kissed Emily’s head, feeling the baby-softness of her hair against her lips. “Thank you so much for saving us.”
“Just doing my job,” he demurred. Then, as if he’d only just realized that he was basically invisible under his layers, he tugged off his scarf and hat and unzipped his jacket.
Only the fact that her chin was resting on Emily’s head kept Leah’s mouth from dropping open. Under the winter clothes was by far the most attractive man she’d ever seen. He looked like he should be shooting commercials for some rugged, outdoor sportswear, with his classically handsome features and tousled blond hair.
Wow. She hadn’t expected to be rescued by such a beautiful example of the male gender.
Leah made herself focus. She didn’t need to be distracted by how good-looking this man was. He’d said he was a ranger. “Was I in the park? I thought the road was south of the park. I didn’t see any signs.” And she’d wandered forever on foot without seeing anything that would suggest she’d been anywhere near civilization.
“You were south, ma’am, but I happened to be out on that road, and I consider it to be my job to take care of anyone in trouble because of the weather or terrain in this area, whether they’re inside the park or not.”
He sounded very official. It made her feel self-conscious. She’d woken up on a couch in front of this man, and she still felt fuzzy and unsure, while he stood there looking like a recruitment ad for heroic park rangers who had to rescue idiots stranded in the snow.
“Well,” Leah said awkwardly. “Well, thank you. Again. I’m sorry to have been so much trouble, I just...my car...”
Her car. She had no idea what was wrong with it, and they’d run into a tree. The window was broken, and probably there was some other damage in the rear, besides whatever was wrong with the engine.
She was going to have to get it fixed, but she had no money, and no way of getting any money anytime soon. And even if she were willing to ask, she knew her mom wouldn’t have several hundred dollars on hand to just give Leah for car repair.
What was she going to do?
That’s not your problem right now, she told herself firmly. That was a problem for tomorrow, or the next day. Focus on the positive. Right now, she was alive, Emily was alive, and they were in a cabin with a warm fire going and a park ranger to help them stay alive until they could get to a town and figure out their next move.
“I saw your car,” the ranger—Jeff—was saying. “Looks like it skidded down that hill and ran into a tree?”
Leah nodded, shying away from the memory. “It’s a miracle Emily wasn’t hurt. If that branch had come in the other window...” She shuddered at the thought.
It looked like Jeff shuddered too, although it was hard to tell under his bulky clothes. “Thank God it didn’t. She looks just fine. You did a great job of keeping her warm.”
“Thank you.” Leah looked down at her sleeping baby. “I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep going, and then she’d just...” She blinked hard.
“Hey, hey.” Jeff’s voice was gentle, and Leah looked up to see him leaning over her, watching with concern in those strangely familiar gray eyes. “You did the absolute best you could, and it turned out fine. Here we are.”
“Where is here, exactly?” Leah looked around the cabin. “Is this a...ranger station?”
Jeff winced. “Actually, it isn’t. We aren’t in the park, so there aren’t any stations nearby. No, this is just some poor folks’ vacation cabin that I broke into to get us out of the cold.”
Leah stared at him. “You broke in?”
“There’s no way to get back to town until the storm stops,” Jeff explained. “You were too cold to go far, and with the baby to consider...it was the only option. I’ll call the owners once we’re back and explain the situation, and pay for the lock. They’ll understand. Everyone out here knows what can happen in the wintertime.”
“I suppose so,” Leah said dubiously. “But...I should pay for the lock, since I was the one who needed help.”
Jeff shook his head firmly. “Nope. You didn’t make any decisions to break and enter. Besides, it’s possible that the rangers will pay for it, since it was a rescue. We’ll have to see.”
Well, if the rangers might take care of it...that was probably all right. And it wasn’t like she had the money to follow through on any payments, so stepping forward to take responsibility wasn’t even meaningful.
Not your problem right now, she reminded herself. There were other problems to deal with first.
If there was one thing you learned as a single mom, after all, it was that you had to tackle problems as they showed up. Future problems needed to wait their turn.
So: they had shelter. There was a fire. For now, anyway. “How much wood is there for that? Are we going to be able to stay warm overnight?” Leah craned her neck to try and see if there was a big stack. She only saw a couple of logs.
Jeff followed her gaze. “I’m going to go chop some more as soon as I’m sure you’re okay. How are you feeling? Are you still cold?”
He looked back at her, his gray eyes assessing, and she was suddenly intensely self-conscious. She wanted to say I’m just fine and be done, but it would’ve been a lie. She was still frigid. The fire must not have been going very long, because the air in the cabin was freezing. But at least there wasn’t any wind or snow. “Pretty cold. It’s mostly my hands and feet.”
Her feet were bare, she realized all of a sudden. Her boots and socks had been set neatly to one side. Her toes were still numb, not even tingling with the heat of the fire, and although her feet were red, her toes were bone-white.
She could remember reading something about skin turning white...“Is that frostbite?” she asked, a chill running through her.
“The very earliest stages of it.” Jeff’s voice was professionally reassuring. “Sometimes it’s called frostnip. It’s not serious, especially if you know how to treat it. We’re in plenty of time, so don’t worry.”
“How do you treat it? Emily doesn’t have any, does she?” Leah looked down at Emily’s face, but she was pink-cheeked and content in sleep. Her fingers were a little chilly, but not freezing cold or stiff, and they were a healthy color. When Leah tugged off her little booties and socks, her toes seemed normal.
“Emily looks completely fine.” Jeff reached down and tugged
at her toes, almost playfully. “See? Plenty of bloodflow here. The best way to treat frostnip is to immerse the body part—your feet, in this case—in warm water. Not too hot.”
“Do we have warm water?” Leah looked around. Craning her neck, she could see a sink and a stovetop behind her, on the opposite side of the big room they were in.
“We have water,” Jeff said. “I doubt it’s warm, but we have a fire. Let me get that for you—no, you stay sitting down, you should keep off those feet—and once you’re all settled, I’ll go get us some more firewood.”
Leah settled back to the couch from where she’d been about to stand up. It felt weird to sit still while someone else waited on her. Being a single mom of a ten-month-old, she pretty much never got to do that.
But Jeff was being so businesslike, and was so clearly just doing his job. This once, it was probably fine to let someone else take care of her, since he was the expert.
Jeff paused as he was walking away, though, and turned back. “Actually, before I do that...would you tell me your name?”
“Oh!” Leah couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to introduce herself to the man who’d saved her life. “Leah. Leah Sanders. And this is Emily.”
“Nice to meet you, Leah and Emily.” Jeff smiled for the first time, and it lit up his whole face, transforming him from handsome to truly stunning. “I’m going to go get your water, just sit tight for a few minutes.”
He turned back to the kitchen. Leah settled back into the couch, resisting the urge to fan herself. That smile. She felt like she needed sunglasses.
Leah couldn’t be interested in a man right now, because taking care of Emily took up all her attention, and deserved all her attention. It wouldn’t be fair to the man, to Emily, or to herself. But there was nothing wrong with looking, right?
To distract herself, she pulled Emily close and kissed her on the forehead. The baby was starting to stir, making discontented noises and scrunching up her face.
She couldn’t believe that they were safe. She’d been so, so sure that they were going to die, especially near the end. Thank God for Jeff Hart.
It had been stupid to keep driving once night had fallen, she realized now. She’d never gone through the pass in a snowstorm before, and she hadn’t truly understood how dangerous it could be. Especially in a beat-up old car like hers, which was more likely to have trouble in bad weather.
Well, she’d learned a lesson. “That’s right,” she said to Emily, whose eyes were blinking open. “We’ll be smarter about driving in the snow from now on.”
Although it was hard to imagine what she could’ve done differently.
No, that wasn’t true. She knew what she could’ve done. Left town earlier. If Leah had given up a month ago, or two months ago, she would still have had some money left, and it wouldn’t have been so late in the year. She could’ve made it through the mountains no problem and gone to her mom with at least a few dollars in her pocket to help out with.
She’d just been so determined to make it work, so sure that she could find some other source of income if she just stuck it out longer, tried harder.
She knew better now. “We’ll also be smarter about what we can do with the things we have now,” she told Emily, who met her eyes with a serious baby gaze. “Not what we might get in the future.”
“What was that?” Jeff appeared with an old-fashioned kettle, made of what looked like cast iron.
“Nothing,” Leah said quickly. “Just talking to the baby.”
“She’s awake!” Jeff crouched down so that he was on eye level with her. “Hello, Emily. I’m Jeff.”
Emily regarded him solemnly. Leah couldn’t help but notice the powerful muscles in his thighs, as he crouched so close. He was smiling a little at Emily, and he was just so good-looking it seemed almost unfair.
“She’s always a little out of it when she gets up from a nap,” Leah told him.
“Well, Emily, I’m just the same,” Jeff said. “So I can’t blame you at all.”
Then he reached out and took one of her tiny hands between his thumb and forefinger, and shook it. “It’s very nice to meet you, Emily.”
Leah felt the hint of a laugh in her chest. “Tell him how happy you are to meet him, Emily!” she said to the baby. “He saved us from the snow.”
Emily kept her wide eyes fixed on Jeff’s face.
“Believe me, Emily, it was my pleasure.” Jeff stood up in one easy, graceful motion and held up the kettle. “Time to heat up some water.”
It turned out that the fireplace had one of those hooks on it that you could hang a kettle from. Jeff got the kettle situated and came back to the couch.
“That’ll take a few minutes. How’s she doing? She seem okay?”
“She’s fine.” Thanks to you. “She slept the whole time we were out in the snow. You were tired from crying in the car for four hours, weren’t you?” she asked Emily.
“That does sound tiring,” Jeff said. “For her and for you.”
Leah shrugged, a little uncomfortable. “She just doesn’t like the car very much. My mom keeps telling me that all babies like the car, but not her, not even when she was a newborn.”
“That’s a long drive you were making, with a baby who hates the car.” Jeff was looking at her, now, not at Emily, and his tone was sympathetic.
Leah nodded. “It was,” she said briefly.
She kept her own voice soft, but it probably still sounded abrupt. But the absolute last thing she wanted was to explain her whole sad situation to this handsome, capable, heroic ranger.
Jeff took a step closer to her, a questioning expression on his face. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me anything about your situation. It’s your business, not mine. But if you need any help, if there’s anything I can do...?”
Leah just shook her head, not trusting her voice.
He seemed so warm and kind. She almost wished there was something he could do. But she already owed him her life. She couldn’t imagine being even more obligated to him than she was already.
And anyway, there wasn’t anything for him to do. What she needed most was money, and she wasn’t going to ask a man she’d just met to pay for her car to be fixed.
Maybe he’d know somewhere in town that had a temporary job opening, so that she could make a few hundred dollars to pay for a mechanic.
And maybe he’d also know somewhere cheap, clean, and safe she could stay while she worked, and somewhere else that had free, trustworthy childcare for Emily, and maybe unicorns were real and she could just ride one the rest of the way across the state to her mom’s house, and when they got there, they’d find a pot of gold.
“No,” she said, and cleared her throat around the lump inside it. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”
He nodded, although he didn’t look satisfied.
But he let it go, and turned to Emily. “What about you, kiddo?” he asked. “Do you need anything right now?”
“A diaper change, I bet.” Leah seized on the one thing guaranteed to make a man run the other way.
But it didn’t work the way she’d expected. Instead of instantly making excuses and finding something else to do, Jeff turned aside and picked up her backpack, which had been sitting next to the couch. “The diapers are in here?”
Leah blinked. She’d been assuming just the mention of diapers would send him heading for the hills, or at least for some less messy chore.
Rob, her fiancé, had always disappeared the moment a diaper change was needed, especially after she’d made the mistake of standing over him and making him do it once. She’d had to redo it herself, and he’d complained for a solid day afterward.
Jeff, meanwhile, was digging through the backpack, and came up with diapers, wipes, ointment, and the folded changing pad tucked into the very bottom. “Is this everything?”
“That’s everything, thanks.” Leah held out a hand for the supplies, trying to negotiate the logistics of how she was going to do this when her feet
were less than functional. She guessed she’d just put the changing pad on the couch next to her and hope nothing got too messy.
But Jeff didn’t hand the fresh diaper over to her. Instead, he said tentatively, “I can do it, if you don’t mind. That way you don’t have to move too much.”
Leah stared at him. “Do you know how to change a diaper?” She glanced at his left hand. No ring.
But she didn’t have one either, after all. Maybe he had a child.
“Sure.” He sounded completely nonchalant. “I come from a big family—lots of nieces and nephews. I’ve changed a few diapers.”
Leah looked down at Emily, who was still silently watching everything that was happening. She wasn’t actively happy, but she didn’t look like she was going to freak out just yet.
“Okay,” Leah said finally, even though she was having a hard time believing that this man was volunteering to change a diaper. “Thank you.” She lifted Emily up to stand on her lap and asked her, “Are you ready to go to Jeff?”
Emily was used to strangers, what with all of the makeshift babysitters Leah had had to get for when she was working, and she didn’t protest when Jeff picked her up. He held her on his hip like a pro while he spread the changing pad out on the floor, and then he laid her down on it in a natural, easy motion.
This was nothing like Rob had been. Not only had he avoided diapers, he’d never volunteered to take care of Emily at all. When she’d been crying for too long, he’d head out in his truck to meet the guys for some beers. He didn’t get excited about her little outfits or even her first smile, and he definitely never got up with her in the night.
Leah had thought that that was just typical man behavior. Most guys didn’t want to deal with diapers or crying babies, right?
When she’d called her mom to ask about it, that’s just what her mom had said. Men don’t like any of that. It’s not natural for them like it is for us.
But Jeff was changing the diaper as though it was totally and completely natural for him.
Leah watched him with a critical eye, but he managed it without any problems at all. He knew enough to have the fresh diaper at the ready before the old one was taken away, and he clearly knew what he was doing with the wipes and the baby ointment. He taped Emily up just as she was starting to squirm and fuss.
