Her Forever Hero (Unexpected Heroes)

by Melody Anne

  “Dammit!” Hitting her hands on the steering wheel in frustration, she pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed Cam.

  “I hope you slept as poorly as I did last night” was how he answered.

  “You tampered with my car? Really, Cam? Was that necessary?” There was no time for pleasantries.

  “I didn’t touch your car, Grace. Maybe it’s just old and the battery died.”

  “I don’t believe you. For some reason, you’re trying to keep me trapped at your place.” With that, she hung up, knowing it wasn’t going to do her any good to argue with the man.

  But she wouldn’t be held captive. Stepping from the car, she looked again at the sky. Yes, it looked ominous, but she’d been born and raised in Montana, and a little rain wasn’t going to kill her.

  Sage’s property couldn’t be that far away. They’d driven from her house the week before and it hadn’t taken them long to arrive at Cam’s. She looked in each direction, smiling when she spotted the road she was sure they’d come in on.

  She began her walk, too stubborn to wait for a mechanic to come and fix her car. She noted the trees were starting to change from ugly brown to new green, buds reaching for the sun, wanting to open, and animals peeking out from the burrows that had kept them safe during the snowy months.

  Montana winters could be harsh and cruel, but the spring, summer, and fall were full of wonder and activity, and out of all the places she’d lived over the past ten years, no place had felt like home as much as this sleepy country town did.

  Looking around at the scenery as she walked, her body fighting off the cold suddenly ripping through the air, she enjoyed the sight of a flowing stream, a source that ran year-round and kept the cows hydrated while also nourishing the plant life.

  The farther she moved from Cam’s house, the more she was able to focus on the sounds of the woods. She kept going, listening for the chirping of the birds and the scratching of chipmunks in search of food.

  A chill ran through her, and Grace looked around as another layer of clouds covered the sun, making the shadows deepen and sending a streak of fear through her. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea she’d ever come up with.

  No, it was fine. As long as she followed the road, she would reach Grace’s house. And by doing this she was letting Cam know that he couldn’t control her, couldn’t tell her how to live her life or where she was supposed to be.

  When the first touch of cold settled upon her nose, Grace looked up, and a new shiver of fear raced through her. It was spring, a time for birth, for new beginnings, for the ice of winter to melt away. But as she stood there in amazement, snow soon dotted her shoulders, and Grace knew she needed to hurry this up.

  How long had she been walking? She wasn’t sure. It had to have been an hour, maybe a little more. She’d been so lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t paid attention. Her only goal had been to reach Sage’s welcoming house, where she could go inside, warm up, and have a nice hot cup of coffee.

  That plan had failed. Grace turned around and began following the road back, fear a constant as the path that had been laid out before her quickly filled with new snow. Within fifteen minutes, she stopped.

  The road was covered, as was the forest floor around her. She could no longer tell where the road ended and the forest began. If she stepped off the pavement, she’d be lost in the woods. But if she didn’t keep moving, she had no idea how long it would take someone to figure out that she’d gone walking toward Sage’s house.

  She knew it didn’t take long for frostbite to set in. She had to forge ahead. The road was a winding one, though, and without being able to see it, she might go straight instead of making a necessary turn. She might wander farther inside the woods and end up making them her eternal home.

  How foolish she’d been in her anger. No wonder the birds hadn’t been singing, the forest had been so quiet. The animals had been smart enough to keep hidden from the encroaching storm. They knew not to get caught in the unforgiving torrent of snow that weighed heavier and heavier upon her shoulders, making each step so much harder to take.

  Uncontrollable shivers racked her body as she bent her head and moved forward with as much momentum as she could, but when she turned back around to see how far she’d come, she wasn’t able to tell. Her footsteps were quickly erased by the layers of fresh snow on top of them.

  Her fingers shaking, she reached into her pocket. It was time to admit defeat and call Cam, to let him know she was wandering in the woods. Even if she was lost, he would know how to find her. He knew this area far better than she did.

  Nothing in the first pocket. When she reached in the other, her fingers came up empty. Had she really left her phone behind? What the hell was she thinking?

  Grace didn’t give up, didn’t call defeat, not ever. But as the piercing cold took a new turn—her body was not even able to shiver anymore, it was so exhausted—she knew she was going to lose this battle.

  Wanting nothing more than to sink to the ground and let the snow bury her the same way it was burying her path home, she still trudged along, moving slower than she’d ever moved before but knowing there was no way she would give up without one hell of a fight. Her clothes were heavy, the cotton feeling permanently plastered to her skin. When a strange warmth spread through her, Grace was too tired to panic.

  She’d taken survival classes. She knew it wasn’t a good thing that she wasn’t as cold as she’d been a few moments before, or that all she wanted to do was close her eyes. She moved ahead, her eyelids feeling as if weights were dragging them down. Closing them for just a moment, she took another step, and another.

  And then Grace smiled, because the sun broke through the sky and shined down on her, warming her from the outside all the way in. It was only a small break in the sky as she glanced around at the falling snow all around her, but in her one special place, it was warm.

  And she was no longer hurting. She was no longer moving . . .

  “I need both of you to quit fighting long enough to try to let me mediate here,” Cam said with a heavy sigh.

  “Listen to me, Camden Whitman, you were a stubborn, pigheaded pain in my butt not too long ago, so don’t you dare use that tone of voice with me.”

  Cam had to fight hard not to smile as the retired city librarian, Darcie Stuller, who had to be somewhere in her nineties, and her equally opinionated neighbor, who was in the same age bracket, squabbled over dog poop.

  “Don’t you listen to her, Camden. She lets little Toby come into my yard and poop on purpose. Do you hear me? On purpose!” Linda Reedy shouted as she shook her arthritic fingers in the air.

  “I would never do such a thing. Toby is good to Linda. He wouldn’t do such a tasteless thing as . . . do his duty . . . in a yard,” Darcie said with a vicious glare.

  “It’s not the dog who has a problem; it’s you!” Linda shouted. “Ever since my rose beat your rose ten years ago in the county fair, you’ve had it in for me.”

  “Ladies, this is getting us nowhere. Do you realize the cost to go to litigation over this matter?” Cam said as calmly as he could manage.

  There were times he loved living in Sterling, because it was a small town where crime was virtually unheard-of. But at times like this, he didn’t exactly enjoy his job.

  “I heard there’s a place that can swab the dog’s mouth and then test the poop and prove beyond a doubt who the culprit is,” Linda said with triumph.

  Cam had to really fight a smile. “Yes, Ms. Reedy, there are labs that will do this, but it’s very expensive. It would be much better for both of you if we could simply solve this matter right here, right now,” Cam told them, looking each of the women in the eye.

  “If I don’t take a stand now, she won’t stop terrorizing me,” Linda insisted.

  “What if we can agree right now that Ms. Stuller won’t let Toby come into your yard and that she’ll make sure to have the dog walker pick up all feces from here on out?” Cam asked, praying this woul
d end.

  “I want an apology, as well,” Linda insisted.

  “I’m not apologizing to that old bat! I did nothing wrong,” Darcie snapped.

  “Listen!” Cam interrupted before this got heated again. “You two were best friends for most of your lives. Now you’re letting minor disputes harm that friendship. I know that you both love each other, though it’s buried very deep down right now, so if you don’t do something to fix this before it’s too late, you’re going to have severe regrets. Neither of you is getting any younger.”

  “Did you just call us old?” Darcie gasped, her wrinkled cheeks flushing.

  “Don’t you speak to us that way, young man. You’re never too old to get your ears boxed, you know,” Linda added.

  “Let’s get out of here, Linda. I don’t want to listen to this nonsense anymore. Young men thinking they’re so smart just because they hang a piece of paper on the wall.” Darcie got slowly to her feet.

  “I agree, Darcie. I’m sorry. It was probably that snotty little kid’s dog from down the block. We’ll sit out there all day if we need to, so we can catch him and call the sheriff,” Linda said.

  Cam sat there motionless as the two women left his conference room. When he was sure they were gone, he tossed down his pen, and finally let out the laughter that had been bubbling up for the past hour as he listened to the women bicker.

  Had he known all it would take was to allude to their age, he would have done it ten minutes in. At least he wasn’t going to have to stand before the judge explaining DNA evidence of dog poop anytime soon. There were some things to be grateful for.

  Finally, he stood and moved to his office, where he looked out the window with a frown. When had it begun snowing? He should have been paying better attention to the news. At least he didn’t have to worry about Grace out there driving in it, not after her strange call a couple of hours ago about her car not working.

  “Cam, you have a call on line one.” His assistant popped in and back out again.

  Maybe he should just head home for the day. His mind certainly wasn’t on work. No, it was on a certain brunette who had his heart racing and his blood boiling. Her staying in his house might not have been the smartest decision he’d made in a while. If he didn’t make love to her soon, he was afraid certain parts of his body might well fall off.

  “Camden Whitman here. How can I help you?”

  “Cam, I’m sorry to bug you at work, but little Gracie took off over an hour ago on foot, and then the snow started. It’s really coming down now and I’m worried about her. I sent some men out, but I thought you’d want to know.” When Shawn, his foreman, stopped speaking, Cam felt his heart stop altogether.

  “Damn stubborn woman!” Cam shouted. “I’m on my way now. Get my horse ready.”

  Cam hung up, then walked from his office, told his assistant to cancel the rest of his appointments, and rushed to his vehicle.

  Since Grace’s return, his neighbors, father, brothers, and just about everyone else in the entire town of Sterling had been poking and prodding into his business, asking if he and Grace were going to renew their epic romance, if he was going to finally make an honest woman out of her and settle down, have a few kids . . . The questions went on and on.

  At first, Cam hadn’t known what to think. Grace was the one to get away. But they were young and dumb, teenagers who thought they held the world in the palm of their hands. When the real world kicked in, they weren’t able to hold on to each other. They went eight years without speaking, and they didn’t do a hell of a lot of talking in the last two years—it was mainly just fighting, actually.

  Cam had told himself many times that he was over Grace Sinclair, that their time together hadn’t been anything like “epic.” The problem with that, though, was that every time he was with her, he couldn’t seem to keep his hands or his mouth to himself.

  As he drove home much faster than he should with the roads covered in a layer of fresh snow, Cam knew their story wasn’t finished. But he just didn’t know how to begin anymore. So much had happened.

  Sliding to a stop in front of his barn, Cam leapt from the truck, thankful to see Shawn on his own horse, with Cam’s horse saddled and waiting. “Which direction did she go?”

  “She headed down Watkins Creek Road. I figured she was just going for a quick stroll. Then the guys and I got busy buckling things up for the unexpected storm. By the time we figured out she wasn’t back yet, I got real worried,” Shawn replied.

  “We’ll find her,” Cam insisted, and they took off down the road.

  They went down about a mile, the snow falling thicker and thicker, and Cam felt real panic grow within him. If she hadn’t stayed on the road, she could be anywhere. If she’d stopped walking, holed up beside a tree, anything, she could be buried in snow by now.

  “Have you called the sheriff?”

  “Yes. There have been four auto accidents already in town. There are a lot of people visiting for spring break or something, and people who have no business driving in snow are out driving. But he said if we didn’t find her in the next hour, he’d get a search and rescue going.”

  “Dammit!” Cam was panicking more by the second.

  That’s how he almost missed it. Something off to his right. It wasn’t much, just a slight flash that caught his eye. “This way!” he shouted, and raced through the trees toward it.

  “That’s her.”

  Leaping from his horse, he jumped down in the snow and ran up to Grace, who was curled up in a ball, the snow nearly covering her. The flash from her bright blue coat, a small piece of it still showing, was all that had caught his attention.

  If he had missed that . . . No! He couldn’t even think that way.

  “Grace! Wake up! Grace!” He shook her shoulders before lifting her into his arms and pressing his ear to her mouth. “She’s breathing, but barely. We need to get her back now. Call the men, have them get my room ready. I want heated blankets, the fire going—that room has to be a freaking toaster oven.”

  “Shouldn’t we take her to the hospital?” Shawn asked while still pulling out his phone right after helping Cam get Grace on the front of his own horse.

  “It’s too far, and the roads are too bad now. I need to warm her up.”

  The ride took only ten minutes on the way back, but it felt like hours as he cradled Grace inside his coat, holding her tight, hoping like hell he could get some heat back into her system. Stopping his horse right in front of his back door, he pulled her off the saddle and rushed into the house with her in his arms, knowing Shawn would take care of the animals.

  He didn’t care what it took. He wasn’t letting her go.

  Grace felt as if she were falling into a cloud of pillows. She was warm, and so very tired. Someone was talking, but she didn’t care. Her body wouldn’t move, and she had no desire to do anything so difficult as to open her eyes.

  Her lips felt parched, but she didn’t care about that, either. All she cared about was the fact that she felt warmth, and softness, and the voice sounded too far away to bother her, so she snuggled back down and felt the voice fade farther away.

  Then something jolted her. She groaned, wishing she had the energy to push whoever was bothering her away. Why was it such a difficult concept for people to understand when someone just wanted to sleep?

  “Open your lips, Grace.”

  “No.” Was that her voice? She could have sworn she’d spoken, but that most certainly wasn’t her voice.

  Something hard and hot was now behind her. It felt good, so she nestled into it and took a deep breath, the scent raw and spicy—absolutely delicious. But something was pressing against her lips. She tried shaking her head, but even that movement was too difficult, so she gave up.

  When the offending thing against her lips wouldn’t go away, she parted them just slightly, and then wished she hadn’t. Fire shot down her throat, making her eyes fly open as she began to cough.

  “More. Drink this, Grace.�
��

  The cup pressed to her lips was tilted up again, and more fire ran down her throat. She coughed and complained, and finally it stopped, but only for a moment. The glass was back and she tried to refuse, but she didn’t have the strength.

  This time, though, it was cool and refreshing and she gulped it down.

  “The whiskey will warm your insides. The water will hydrate you.”

  “Cam?”

  “Yes, it’s me.” It took a moment for her to process his words, but he sounded angry—furious, in fact. Why was he so upset? She was too tired to try to figure it out.

  Then she noticed that Cam was sitting behind her—in his bed—and she was stark naked.

  “Wh . . . what is going on?” she croaked out.

  “I barely managed to find you—do you realize that? You were lying on the ground damn well covered in snow. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for two hours, and you nearly gave me a freaking heart attack.”

  It took several moments for his words to sink in, and then she remembered her walk—her bright idea of making it to Sage’s house after he’d disabled her car.

  “I wouldn’t have been outside walking if you hadn’t messed up my car,” she mumbled, leaning back into the warmth of his bare skin. She wasn’t even concerned at the moment that they were both pretty much naked.

  “Once again, I didn’t tamper with your car!” he growled. “You’re from here, Grace. You know better than to walk around when there’s a storm brewing.”

  “I didn’t know a storm was coming,” she said, turning just a little so she could snuggle more deeply into his warmth.

  “The clouds were as black as they come, Grace. You know better!” he thundered.

  “Stop yelling,” she said, but her voice was so weak, it didn’t hold much authority. “I thought it was just going to rain. I’ve gotten wet before.”

  “Even if it had been rain, you could have gotten pneumonia at the very least.”