by Melody Anne
“I’m a Montana girl. I’m tough. It just started snowing so hard, and I lost the road, and then I couldn’t find my way forward or back. It was so cold, and then it wasn’t cold anymore, and then . . . I just remember something warm, and that’s all I remember.”
“You remember warmth because you were suffering from hypothermia, you stubborn little fool.”
At least he’d stopped yelling.
“I made a mistake. You don’t need to be such a jerk,” she told him, a flash of anger whipping through her.
He was quiet for a moment. She guessed he didn’t like being on the receiving end of a sharp tongue. Well, too dang bad for him. She might be craving his warmth at the moment, but she certainly wasn’t going to be berated for making a small mistake. Okay, a big mistake, but it was over and she was now safe.
“Dammit, Grace, I was scared to death.”
“Do I still have all my fingers and toes?” she asked in an attempt to make a joke. She wiggled all of her digits to make sure she did, in fact, have them.
“I don’t find you amusing,” he said, but he was much calmer as he ran his fingers slowly up and down her arms. “And, yes, you have all your body parts.”
“I’m sorry, Cam. I knew I was in trouble when it began coming down so quickly, but I couldn’t find my phone and I couldn’t get out of it.” Her voice was now choked with tears that she didn’t want to give in to. She was afraid that if she did, she might never stop.
“I shouldn’t have yelled, Grace. I was just so damn terrified,” he said as he pulled her more tightly to him and kissed the side of her forehead.
The soothing action was making her eyes drift shut again. She was still so very tired.
“I just want to sleep,” she told him, turning slightly, laying her head against his warm chest as he caressed the side of her face.
“That’s because your body was working so hard to keep you alive. It’s probably the equivalent of running a marathon,” he whispered.
“I’ve always thought people who run marathons are fools. Why in the world would you punish yourself like that? I find it much more enjoyable to sit with a glass of wine and watch an episode of Scandal.” She couldn’t quite get out a laugh.
“I’ll stick with the whiskey. My gut is still tied in knots.”
“I’m naked,” she pointed out. Should she be mortified that she wasn’t more embarrassed about it?
“Yes, you are,” he said with a laugh.
“Don’t you think it’s pretty bad to take advantage of a sick, knocked-out girl?”
“I needed to get you warm, Grace,” he said with a sigh. “So I stripped us both—your clothes were soaked anyway—and held you for a good hour under about a dozen blankets. I think I sweated off ten pounds, but you eventually stopped shivering. Then I changed the bedding around you and washed off before coming back in here.”
“That’s kinda nasty,” she said with an attempt at a giggle. It sounded more like a dying frog.
“I kept you alive,” he reminded her.
“Thank you, Cam,” she said, her laughter gone. “I mean it—thank you. I don’t want to imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t shown up.”
“I could never let anything happen to you, Grace. You realize that, right?”
He moved from behind her, and she wanted to moan her displeasure, but he pulled her so she was lying back down, then crawled in with her, holding her tightly.
“You’ve always been a hero,” she told him, curled up against his chest, enjoying the warmth of his arm across her back.
“I’m certainly no hero, and I will be the first to tell you that I’m not having heroic thoughts with you lying here naked in my arms,” he said with a strained voice. “But right now I need you to close your eyes and get more rest.”
Grace did exactly as he asked and shut her eyes, his scent and warmth carrying her off into a blissful slumber.
Out of bed at last.
Grace dressed in her warmest pajamas, threw a blanket around her shoulders, and slowly made her way down the staircase. Cam was nowhere to be found, so she wandered out to his sunroom, where she was entranced by the winter wonderland before her.
Snow covered the land, the buildings, the trees, and mountains. It made everything look so fresh, so clean. In the heated sunporch, she could gaze at the beauty while staying nice and warm in her small cocoon. Why didn’t the sight of snow make her afraid now? The human mind was sure hard to figure out.
“Is it safe to come sit with you, or are you still grouchy because I woke you and made you drink that tomato soup?” Cam asked as he joined her.
“Yes, I’m still a little steamed about that. You’ll have to take your chances.”
“Okay, but only if you share that blanket.” He pulled the blanket open, making her grumble, then sat next to her, stretching his legs out and throwing his arm along the back of the sofa as he got comfortable.
“Brave man,” she groused, unwilling to admit that the sofa had just become a heck of a lot more comfortable with him sitting there next to her.
“Yes, I’m quite the stud,” he said. “I’ve been known to save lives.”
Grace couldn’t help but laugh. “Your ego is certainly in check,” she told him, then swatted his hand away from her thigh. “And you can keep your hands to yourself.”
“I like touching you. You used to like it just as much as I did,” he reminded her, his fingers running along the top of her thigh, causing a shiver to rush through her.
“I can’t say I remember liking that,” she lied.
“You liked more than my touch, Grace. You loved my kisses, too.”
“They were okay,” she said, now completely lying. They were always fantastic.
“Ha!” he chuckled, bringing his arm around her and twining his fingers in her damp hair. “I remember when you used to chase me.”
“I most certainly did not,” she informed him huffily. “You were the one chasing me.”
“That’s not how I remember it, Grace. I seem to recall you hanging out at the ranch a lot during roundup season. I think you just wanted to take a look at me after work, when I was shirtless and sweaty.”
This time an almost girlish giggle escaped her. She just couldn’t pretend that wasn’t true. She and Sage had loved hanging around the Whitman ranch, where the boys would be working, half the time without shirts, and, man, had the view been perfect! If only she could go back to those days of innocence.
“I was only here to look at your brothers. They filled out much quicker than you.”
“Well, it’s true that Sage’s eyes never strayed far from Spence,” Cam said. “But, Gracie, yours were all over me. Right from the beginning.”
“You were scrawny, as I recall.” She wasn’t admitting defeat.
“The secret is that I put a little more effort out when you were around. I had to make sure to show off, because watching you waltz around in your tiny tank tops and short shorts had my mouth watering. Damn, it still makes my heart thud to remember those days.”
Her own heart began pounding just thinking about that time, the time before the first kiss, when flirting was second nature, and she’d felt so feminine and powerful in her young womanhood. She’d watched him gazing at her, and she’d loved the power of knowing she was turning this handsome guy on.
“Do you remember our first kiss?” he asked as his fingers slid against her neck. She stopped trying to brush him away.
Revisiting the past like this was a terrible idea, but she couldn’t stop herself from enjoying the journey while Cam was at her side.
“There were so many, I don’t know if I can remember the first.” Of course she did. What she really was fishing for was to see whether he remembered.
“It was just before you turned eighteen, and if I recall, that was the summer you decided to wear clothing that showed all your curves,” he said, looking at her and giving a salacious wink.
“Yes, before that, I was horrified by my curv
es,” she said. She could feel herself blush even after so many years.
“Believe me, I was enjoying the more confident you,” he told her. “You and Sage, always inseparable, came walking up to us with a couple other girls—I can’t remember their names—and you were carrying a bottle of Sage’s grandma’s lemonade. That stuff was to die for. I think you were practicing a new way of sashaying, ’cause your hips were swiveling and shaking the entire time, and I could barely tear my eyes away.”
“I was not doing that!” she said with another laugh.
“Anyway,” he went on, “you said you wanted to talk to me about something, and I was more than willing to break away from the group. We walked to the other side of the barn, and you asked me if I was going to the barn dance that Friday.”
“Oh, my gosh, I forgot about that part,” Grace said. How much more forward could a young girl get?
“I said that I was going if I could take you as my date,” he said. “And then you handed me the bottle of lemonade and told me I looked hot. I was burning up at that point. You looked up at me, licked your lips, and I was your slave from that moment on. I leaned down and stole the kiss I’d been dreaming about for the past month straight.”
His fingers continued caressing her neck the entire time he told the story, and the way he said the words made her stomach quiver and her heart race. He hadn’t forgotten a single detail of a moment that had meant so much to her.
“I can’t believe you remember all that,” she sighed, leaning into him without even realizing it.
“That was the day you became my girl. I asked you out again that night at the dance, and then we had many more barn kisses . . . not to mention other things later on.”
“I must say, you were quite patient, Cam. I moved pretty slowly.”
“It was enough to just hold you in my arms and taste your sweet lips,” he whispered, leaning down and kissing her cheek, causing another shudder to pass through her.
“Some days I wish we could turn back time and live in those moments forever, the moments when young love was so powerful, and summer nights were something to treasure.”
“You don’t have to let go of those moments,” he told her. “You can hold on to them forever.”
“But you have to grow up, Cam. You have to become an adult. The real world demands that we don’t live on love and dreams alone,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “We have wins and losses, and sometimes the losses are too much to bear . . .”
“Who says that?”
“Everyone. I can’t name a specific person.”
“Well, they’re all stupid. Because I think you can live on love and dreams alone. Sure, you have to work, and you have to be responsible, but then you get these moments, these perfect moments in the day, when the rest of the world falls away, and you close your eyes, and you remember the past, and look ahead to the future. To lose your dreams is to lose a piece of your soul, and no one should give that up.”
Grace was quiet for several moments as she tried to process his words. How she wanted to believe what he said. But hadn’t her life shown her that dreams had never been enough? Once she’d wanted nothing more than to be Cam’s wife and to live the fairy tale forever. But her dreams had been shattered, forever changing her.
“If we all lived in a dream world, then nothing would ever get done,” she said sadly.
“I came to see you once when you were in New York.”
His words stopped her from what she’d been about to say. She repeated them back to be sure he’d said what she thought.
“When?” she finally asked.
“You’d been there for about a year. You were going to school, and I stopped by your campus. I was going to surprise you. I’d just finished my law degree and it had been years since we’d spoken, and I was in New York for a conference. I was too close not to see you.” His voice faded away.
“Why didn’t you follow through? Sometimes New York was pretty rough. I think I would have really loved seeing anyone from back home.” She didn’t want to give too much of herself away—didn’t want to tell him that he was the person from home she would have most liked to see.
“I found you on the campus, but you were with a group of people and you were laughing. I thought you looked really happy. I didn’t want to risk interrupting that. I’d heard you’d had a rough go of things for a while.”
“Yes. Even without me saying a word, I’m sure the gossip stretched all the way back to Sterling,” she said with bitterness.
“It’s not that people like to gossip. It’s that they care about their own when you’re from a small town, Grace.”
“I didn’t need them to worry about me, Cam. I was doing just fine.”
“In two seconds flat, you go from open and trusting to instantly closed off again. I was once your friend and your lover. You don’t need to shut me out,” he told her, turning her head and forcing her to look at him.
Grace had to fight the sudden urge not to cry.
“Well, Cam, I think our ‘stroll down memory lane’ is over,” she said, untangling herself from him and standing.
“Why do you always run the second you start feeling something?” he asked, not chasing her but sitting there and holding her gaze.
“Because I learned a long time ago that to open myself up only hurts me. I learned that dreams are for fools, and the past is best left where it belongs.”
She had no more strength to talk about this. Walking quietly away, she went back to the guest room she’d stayed in before her ordeal in the snow.
Grace knew she wouldn’t get much sleep after that talk—not when she knew how close Cam was, and especially when she knew that his arms would be open for her if only she were brave enough to step into them.
Grace sipped her tea and enjoyed the warmth of the rays of sunlight beaming through the large living room windows as she worked on her laptop. She was changing the dinner menu for the fourth time, since the bride now seemed to have a vendetta against seafood. Instead of getting upset, she decided to just continue working, reminding herself the paycheck was a good one.
At least the snowstorm had come and gone, and this would be her last night in Cam’s house. So she certainly had that to look forward to.
She should have gone over to Sage’s place—Sage and Spence had rushed home as soon as they heard about what had happened—but she was using the pretense that she had to do some more work with Cam and it would be easier to just stay there. Her new house would receive its final inspection tomorrow, and her furniture was being delivered as well.
She could finally leave the apartment and have beautiful views of the Montana countryside once again. Not that she didn’t have spectacular views at Cam’s place.
When the front door opened and she heard footsteps across the floors, she thought nothing of it. Maybe one of the hands needed something, or possibly it was Sage coming to visit. She could have gotten off work early. It was doubtful, but miracles did happen.
Turning around, she instead found Martin Whitman walking into the room, and she couldn’t help but smile. It had been months since she’d seen him, and usually she was so busy fighting with Cam, she didn’t get to enjoy one-on-one chats.
“Mr. Whitman, what a pleasure to see you,” Grace said as she stood up and went to him. “Cam isn’t back yet. He’s running late with a client.”
Martin was truly a kind man and one of the most giving people she’d ever known. He was the first to jump in and help a neighbor, and the last to leave when something needed doing. His laughter was infectious, and so many times during her childhood she’d envied the Whitman boys for having such a father. She’d always wondered what it would be like to grow up in a house so filled with love.
“I came to see you, Gracie,” he said, stopping in front of her and then pulling her in for a bear hug. “You’ve been running around so much, I keep missing you. When I found out about your scare in the snow, I told Cam I must come over and see for myself that y
ou were all right.”
After Martin held Grace long enough that she was afraid he’d squeezed all the oxygen out of her lungs, he drew back and looked at her. “You have circles beneath your eyes, young lady. You’re not getting enough rest. Did Spence give you a full checkup?”
The love and worry was evident in his eyes and tone of voice. It choked her up for a moment and she was unable to answer him. Blinking rapidly so she wouldn’t show him how much his parental concern meant to her, she turned her head and took a deep breath before looking him in the eyes again.
“I have to admit, I was pretty scared out there in the snow, but it all worked out. Cam found me, got me warm, and force-fed me for two days. I’m still a bit worn-out, but I’m tough. I’ll be back to a hundred percent by tomorrow.”
“You’ve always been a fighter, Gracie. I remember your determination to lift those hay bales every summer. If the boys could do it, then you were darn well gonna do it, too. That first summer, you sure had some sore muscles, but you also earned the respect of every one of my ranch hands,” Martin said as he led her to the couch and the two of them sat down.
She laughed. “I’ve never liked being one of those girls who just sits on the sidelines while someone else does all the fun stuff.”
“Sitting on the sidelines isn’t all that bad. You get to watch all the chaos that is sure to happen if you wait long enough.”
“You’ve always enjoyed a bit of disaster,” Grace said, a big smile lighting up her eyes. “But you’re always the first one in to help clean it up.”
“I sure missed you all those years you were gone. I hope you’re planning on staying for good now,” Martin told her with a stern look. “I understand the need to go out there and find yourself, but this is your home. Once you live in a place like Sterling, there’s no leaving. The town gets into your blood and it will always call you home.”
“That’s because wonderful people like you live here, Mr. Whitman. I’ve been to a lot of places, and I’ve never felt as happy as I do here.”
“I can’t believe no one managed to snatch you up in the years you were away,” he said with a laugh. “You’ve always been such a kind and beautiful girl. You know, I always hoped that you and Cam would marry so I could call you my daughter.”
