“Just a little further,” she coaxed. “Move it.”
He fell twice more, and they ended up discovering the drift heavy porch the same way she found the fire pit. She tripped over it.
“I l-lost m-my b-belt,” Vance said again, when she wedged herself up under his arm again.
“Up,” she ordered. Unable to find the steps, she shoved him up onto the porch. “Don’t go towards the light.”
“I th-think it’s g-g-getting w-warmer,” he panted, his face pinched with pain.
She wasn’t sure what scared her more: what he was saying, or the color of his blue-gray skin. “Seriously, don’t go towards the light.”
“H-help m-me take m-my coat off.”
“As if anyone’s going to believe this was an accident as it is.”
“I l-like y-your hair.”
“Shut up,” she puffed, straining to keep him moving. “Keep walking.”
By the time she reached the door, she could barely get her hands to flex and bend enough to shove away enough snow to clear a way in. Please, dear God, she prayed, don’t let it be locked.
It wasn’t. Stuck, yes, but it was an old cabin with an old door and a sliding latch handle that seemed to predate doorknobs. Made of wood, it had warped within the dual brackets that kept the door shut tight. Her hands stung like an icy fury, but she got the latch pushed back. Putting her shoulder into it, she muscled the door open and she, along with Vance and a healthy pile of snow, fell in on the floor.
She hadn’t realized how incredibly tired she was until she had to pick herself back up again. The urge to lie there, maybe just close her eyes for a little while, it was horrifically appealing. Dragging herself up on hands and knees, Ettie forced herself to get up instead. Already Vance was trying to take his clothes off. She hooked her arms under his and dragged him deeper into the cabin. Had there been so much as a single step, she never could have managed it. As it was, by the time she got the door muscled shut again, she was panting, aching, tired as hell and shaking every bit as badly as Vance was. Or rather, almost as badly as he had been.
Vance wasn’t shaking any more. He wasn’t moving at all, in fact. He simply lay where she had dropped him, breathing, his chest rising and falling, and the shallowness of each uneven exhale steaming the air.
Legs giving out, Ettie flopped down beside him and looked around. The cabin was small, no more than a single room. Although it was clear the season for renting this particular cabin had ended, there was still furniture. Dual bunk beds against the far wall, though neither mattresses nor blankets. A table sported four plain wooden chairs. A single shelf above it held only the sparsest of tin dishes: plates, a campfire coffee percolator, and cups. A few wood scraps were stacked up in the woodbin by an old potbelly stove. Animal heads looked down on them from high on the walls. Twin black bear skins faced one another, open-mouthed and forever snarling, on the wall to either side of the stove. A bright yellow first-aid box was affixed between them.
Ettie staggered for that first. Her hands really weren’t working right anymore. When she tried to take it off the wall, she ended up opening it instead, sending the entire contents scattering across the floor. Dropping to her knees, she fumbled through sutures and scissors, bandages and burn gel packets until she found a tiny plastic box. Strike on anything matches. The wood scraps in the bin weren’t much, but they were enough to get a fire started. Using up every scrap of wood left by some previous hunter would only be enough to feed the flames for maybe an hour. After that, they were going to be in trouble again, but she wasn’t going to worry about that now.
One problem at a time…
She dug through the scattered first aid supplies again, finding two rain ponchos but only an empty box where the thermal blanket should have been.
“I…loss-s my…bel-l…” Vance slurred, sounding drunk.
Crawling her way up the wall, Ettie yanked down first one bear skin and then the other. She didn’t have the strength or the energy to try dragging him as far as the bunk bed, so she stripped him where he was. She’d never seen a human being so darkly purplish-blue before.
“Hot…” he slurred. She refused to let that scare her any worse than she already was.
His clothes were frozen. Ice fell out of the fabric in slivers, but she managed to pry him out of his coat and both layers of shirt—the flannel and the thermal underneath. Grabbing the scissors from the first aid kit, she cut him out of his boots. The laces were frozen and her fingers were throbbing, but she finally got the stiff leather pried off his feet. His socks were solid and stuck to his skin. When she stripped them off, his toes looked black.
For the first time, he cracked open his eyes when she unfastened his pants. “This better not make it into your paper either,” he managed hoarsely. His teeth weren’t chattering anymore either. That took her to a whole new level of scared.
“Are you kidding?” She worked his pants down his long, muscular legs. “I’m putting this on the front page with a big ol’ picture of your non-existent junk. ‘Local Paddle-Maker Unmasked—Eunuch In Disguise’.”
A eunuch would have been easier to strip out of his underwear. Vance was no eunuch, but after being dunked in an icy river, there was some serious shrinkage going on. Still, she tried not to look.
She spread the first bearskin out on the floor beside him and rolled him onto it. Shaking wildly, Ettie stripped out of her own icy clothes next. Lying down beside him, she spread the second bearskin over the top of them both. She tried for repugnance when she cuddled up beside him but only managed to maintain that lie until he started shivering again. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him as tight and as close as any two people in half-frozen skin could come to one another.
It was like hugging an ice cube.
She really, really hoped he didn’t die.
She really hoped she didn’t, either.
Chapter 8
There wasn’t a single light anywhere in the cabin, only the flickering amber glow of the fire seeping through the front stove grate. That made things hard to see, but Ettie still fumbled around the cabin, repositioning the table chairs until they circled the stove. She hung their wet clothes over the back to drip dry, but they weren’t even close to that when the fire began to dwindle and she ran out of wood scraps to feed it. So, she climbed back into her clothes—soaked as they were—and braved the blizzard outside to search for more wood.
In a rickety lean-to around back, blanketed under a layer of snow so thick to her half-blind eyes it looked like a cave, she found a few precious stacks of split logs and branches. Some of it was rotten and beyond use, but some appeared solid enough and dry enough to burn. She said a silent thank you to whomever had left this here and brought in as many armloads as she could before she just couldn’t bear to make another trip out into this wind. Her clothes were frozen and stiff, and so was she by the time she, her hands shaking and uncooperative, stripped back down and crawled in between the rugs to lie next to Vance.
“It’s like cuddling with a frozen chicken,” he said, without opening his eyes. “Except with better breasts.”
“Don’t look at my breasts,” she grumbled and cuddled closer, desperate for warmth.
“I’m not looking at them, but don’t tell me not to feel them. You’re the one pressing them against me.”
“Pervert.”
“Says the woman so eager to get my clothes off, she cut them off with scissors.”
If she weren’t so damned cold, she’d have elbowed him in the ribs, stolen the entire upper bearskin and burritoed herself selfishly within it. Conditions being what they were, she had to settle for curling even closer and gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Come’re, darling.” The cabin was too dark for her to make out his grin, but she could hear it in his voice when he slipped his arm around her. It was a hideous trick of fate to make her this cold and him like a furnace. “I’ll keep you warm.”
“If it weren’t for you, I woul
dn’t need you to keep me warm,” she grumped. “You’re the genius who drove us onto the i—” She jerked her head back, startled into silence when he took his hand off her shoulder and caught her lips between two fingers. He held her mouth shut, without applying enough pressure to even call it pinching.
“Shh,” he rumbled, trying not to laugh. “Let’s not ruin the magic of this moment.”
She not only slapped his hand, she shrugged completely out from under his arm. “Magic?! You almost killed us, you jack-ass! Look at where we are? What are we supposed to do now?”
“Someone will come looking for us,” Vance said, unconcerned.
“But everyone they send will be looking for us on the road, not in the stream! We could be here for—” She stopped, her gaze darting to the ceiling when the whole cabin shook under the force of the howling wind outside. She shuddered.
“It’s okay.” All mockery aside, he put his arm around her shoulder again, drawing her back down to lie against him. He pulled the rug in tighter around them both. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” she quavered. “Who the hell said I was afraid?”
“My mistake, honey.”
“Don’t call me honey.” She wedged herself into the heat between his arm and chest, eying the flickering shadows on the wall as if she could see straight through it to the storm on the other side.
“My mistake again.”
She felt it when he tipped his head to look at her, but she steadfastly refused to look back at him. They were both quiet, surrounded by nothing but the sound of the wind hitting the side of the cabin.
“Hey, um…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose I could get you to do me a favor?”
If she could have huddled in tighter without actually touching him, she would have. “I swear if you ask me to rub one out for you, I’m going to find those scissors and then I’m going to neuter you.”
“Never mind,” he said tersely. “Sorry I asked.”
He didn’t take his arm from around her though, and after a moment, she gave in to unwilling curiosity. “What?”
“No, that’s okay. Heaven forbid I do anything to make your opinion of me even worse.” He glared straight up at the ceiling, a tick of muscle leaping along his jaw as he clenched his teeth. It might have been a trick of the darkness, but she thought she saw him ever so slightly shake his head.
Great. Now she was starting to feel bad. She tried to stifle that, but already the insidious fingers of guilt were creeping in around the edges of her.
“All right,” she muttered. “What’s your favor?”
“Forget it.”
“Fine.” She lay in the crook of his arm, every breath she took lodging the All Spice scent of him deeper into her nose. She liked that smell. It wasn’t too heavy. It wasn’t over powering. She liked the feel of him too, but she’d rather cut out her own tongue than admit that.
She shouldn’t have threatened to neuter him. He hadn’t deserved that. She shouldn’t have told him it was all his fault. He hadn’t deserved that either. She squirmed, not liking him, but not liking herself any better right now.
“All right,” she exploded. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have snapped.” She was still snapping. Sighing, she gentled her tone. “I’m serious. What’s your favor?”
His mouth flattened, only this time his frown didn’t seem to be because of her. Reluctantly, he said, “Would you check my toes?”
“Your toes?” She lifted her head off his shoulder far enough to glance down the rug-covered length of them toward the lumps of their feet.
“My fingers have stopped burning, but my toes feel like they’re being sliced open with hot razors.” Now it was his turn to make a face. “I can’t make myself look.”
Ettie wasn’t expecting vulnerability. That actually startled her. So much so, that she rose up on her arms, just high enough to study his shadowed profile in the darkness. Judging by the glitter which was all she could see of his eyes, he was still staring at the ceiling. She frowned. She also sat up. Doing so required a lot of careful rug adjusting while she tried to keep all the right parts of her covered. “Don’t look.”
He closed his eyes.
She wasn’t about to trust that. “No peeking.”
He covered the upper part of his face with his hand. “No peeking,” he obediently echoed. “I promise.”
She wasn’t about to trust that, either. Frowning, she waded through limited cover the dual rugs provided, careful to keep herself covered the whole time it took her to reach his feet. He winced when she picked his right one up. She immediately gentled her touch. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” But his voice sounded strained. “Can you see anything?”
No matter how she turned, her rug-swaddled body was sandwiched between his foot and the faint the light the fire provided. There was no help for it. Half sure she was going to regret this, Ettie abandoned the rug entirely and shifted out of the way in order to better see his feet. She looked carefully, checking each of his toes and even in between. “Well, they may never play piano again, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be walking by morning.”
“No black spots?”
“They were earlier, but not anymore.” Tucking the rug back in around his feet, taking care not to bump them any more than she had to, she crawled back up to tuck herself into bed beside him again. When he lifted his arm, without even thinking she cuddled up against his chest, shivering at the instant temperature difference between being out there and in this rug with him.
“Thanks for looking,” Vance said.
“No problem.” Snuggling in, she hugged herself tight against him. Outside, the wind buffeted the cabin. Trees were creaking. So was the roof above their heads. Ettie didn’t like storms. Weather was a scary thing. Unstoppable. Violent. She’d once spent a summer visiting her grandparents in Tornado Alley. What was currently happening outside sounded just like what Ettie heard the night the tornado sirens chased them all the way down into her grandfather’s storm cellar. That had been the scariest night of her life. She shuddered. She hated storms.
“Are you all right?”
She jumped a little when Vance’s hand found her shoulder. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re shaking,” he pointed out.
“It’s cold.” She didn’t even have to lie, at least not about that.
“Yes, it is,” Vance agreed, his fingers lazily circling the ball of her shoulder. He paused to tug the rug a little further up and tucked it in around her chin. His fingers went back to playing with her shoulder. “Hey, here’s a bit of trivia for you. Do you know why they call that stream outside Potato Creek?”
Trying not to like the way his fingers kept playing upon her arm, as if they were lovers lying comfortably together, Ettie shook her head. “No.”
“It dates back to Prohibition. Whiskey peddlers used to live all up and down these roads. One, being an immigrant newly arrived to our fair shores, decided he was going to try his hand at introducing all his liquor-poor American neighbors to juice from the motherland. His preference being vodka, he had a truck of potatoes shipped in. Unfortunately for him, the roads weren’t any better back then than they are today and, whether due to bad weather conditions or profit-driven competitors, the truck overturned, filling the creek with potatoes. People were picking spuds out of the water for miles, and for years afterward, you’d find potato plants growing along the banks. True story.”
Her eyes narrowing, Ettie lifted her head off his shoulder. “You’re pulling my leg.”
He held up three fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “On my honor.”
“Potatoes don’t grow this high in the mountains. It’s too cold!”
“Potatoes like cool growing conditions.”
She threw out one arm, gesturing to the weather. “Not this cool, I guarantee it.”
“Well, but that just goes to show the difference between then and now. Spuds were much tougher back then. These days, they’ve g
ot it too easy. Myself, I blame fast food and the rampant availability of internet porn.”
Ettie couldn’t help it. She laughed, snorted, covered her mouth and laughed even harder. “You are so full of shit.”
“Has anyone ever told you you have the mouth of a sailor?” he asked, but he was smiling when he said it and his fingers were still tracing those lazy circles around and around the crown of her bare shoulder.
“Once or twice,” she admitted, then joked, “Is that a spanking offense?”
“Only if you want it to be,” he countered, effectively stopping her laughter.
The atmosphere in that little cabin went from relaxed to tensely somber in the space of a breath.
“Don’t be silly.” She made herself laugh, but even to her it sounded forced. Too high. Strained, rather than natural. “Why would I want that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes people do funny things when they want or need to get spanked.”
“Who said I needed to get spanked?” She laughed again. She also squirmed, and afterward, she could have kicked herself for not making it look more like a shiver from the cold. She had to be careful. Regardless of their current circumstance, even though he was being particularly charming and vulnerable, and even somewhat likeable, none of this changed anything. He was still a horn dog and she still didn’t like him.
“I’m just making conversation. Nobody said you needed anything.”
“That’s because I don’t.” She cleared her throat. “Nobody needs that sort of thing. Why would they? It’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t think it’s ridiculous.” His fingers ceased their circling and began instead to trace light lines up and down from her shoulder to her elbow. “I don’t think for a woman to know she needs the occasional or even regular spanking is ridiculous at all.”
“That’s because you’re Have Paddle, Will Travel,” she muttered, struggling to pull her old, familiar shroud of disgruntlement in around her. For some reason, it didn’t fit anywhere near as comfortably as it used to. That’s what lying naked with a man could do to a girl. Despite the circumstances, it was hard to separate years of carefully maintained dislike from the physical closeness. And the smell. God, he smelled good. She just wanted to press her nose to his skin and inhale.
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