"Up you go now." He handed her into the saddle. "We'll get you warmed up in two shakes."
"Is she gonna be okay?"
Joe glanced over to find Luke Mitchell still looking white and scared.
"I think she will be as soon as she gets warmed up. I'm going to take her up to the line shack so I can get her out of the wind. Take her horse and ride on back to the house and let them know what's happened. Then send Manny or Luis out here on one of the sleds with some dry clothes."
Luke nodded and mounted up, then turned back to Annie. "I'm real sorry this happened, Miz Redhawk."
"It's not your fault," she answered through chattering teeth. "You tried to talk me out of going out."
But he still looked guilty, almost ashamed. "I didn't want something like this to happen. I could've roped her if you'd given me one more chance."
Joe didn't give her time to respond, just spurred Qui up the mountainside toward the line shack.
"How's my heifer?" she asked fretfully.
Leave it to Annie to worry more about a cow than she did about herself. If not for the stupid animal, she wouldn't have been in this mess in the first place. "She'll be fine. On her way to a warm bed back at the barn, I imagine."
She turned her head to look behind them and offered a weak smile at the sight of the cow and her calf hurrying to keep up with Luke.
"Good," she said softly. "That's good." And then she resumed her silent shaking.
Chapter 10
She never knew it was possible to be so cold.
Living through thirty-two Montana winters had given Annie plenty of experience in bitter temperatures—early mornings when she had to chop through six inches of ice in the water troughs so the stock could drink, when her gloves would stick to any surface they touched, when the air was so clear and so frigid that every sound seemed to carry for miles.
But she had never been as bone-deep cold as she was right now. Every breath was torture, as if her lungs were caught in a vice lined with razor blades that sliced tighter with each inhalation.
Her wet hair had frozen solid now they were out of the water and she could hear it crackle when she turned her head, which she didn't do much since even the slightest movement sent stinging pain cutting through every nerve ending.
She clung to the saddle with fingers that had long ago lost sensation, afraid that if she let go she would fall to the ground and shatter into a million tiny, jagged shards of ice.
Just when she wasn't sure she could make it another step, the small line shack appeared through the trees. Its simple log walls matched the weathered gray of the tree trunks all around but was more glorious to her than any grand cathedral.
"Here we are," Joe said behind her.
She was mortally terrified she wouldn't have the strength to dismount by herself but he took the dilemma out of her hands by lifting her down, just as if she weighed nothing and wasn't encumbered by another thirty pounds of ice-crusted clothing.
The door to the line shack wasn't locked and the interior was even more humble than the outside. The air smelled dank with disuse and the one-room shack had few furnishings—just an iron bedstead, an old plank table with a couple of rickety chairs and a few crates nailed to the wall for storage.
She thought it looked wonderful, especially after Joe went to one of the crates and pulled out a pile of blankets.
"Remind me to buy Colt a beer," he said. "Dry firewood already laid out in the woodstove, warm blankets to bundle up in, even a kerosene lantern. All the comforts of home."
He handed her two fatigue green army surplus blankets and a brightly colored wool one with a slit in the middle to be worn like a poncho. A ruana, Manny and Ruben called them. "Here, take off those wet clothes and wrap up in these while I try to start a fire."
She tried to do as he said. She really did. But in the short time it took him to light the lantern and coax a merry little blaze to life in the potbellied stove, she had only been able to take off her coat and pull her sweater over her head.
The buttons on her soaking wet cotton work shirt and on her blue jeans completely defeated her stiff, unwieldy fingers.
He added a medium-sized log to the stove, then turned back to her, his hands on the buttons of his own wet shirt. When he saw she hadn't made much progress, he frowned.
"Why are you just standing there? You need to get out of your clothes. All of them."
"I can't," she murmured, and the words tasted as bitter as willow bark.
"Why not?"
She bit her tongue, loathe to tell him the truth. She was so pitiful. Any lingering sense of accomplishment she had felt in throwing the rope around that heifer out on the ice completely disappeared.
All she had succeeded in proving was once again how totally inept she was. And she had nearly killed them both in the bargain.
Now she couldn't even get undressed without help.
Before she could swallow her pride enough to ask for help, Joe figured out her dilemma on his own, his eyes widening as realization dawned. "You stubborn woman," he muttered. "You should have said something."
He came to stand in front of her, so close she could feel heat emanating from him even through his own wet clothes. As gently and dispassionately as if she were a child—as if he hadn't explored her mouth with his just the week before—he worked the buttons of her shirt free.
Maybe it was because she had just escaped death but everything suddenly seemed much more intense to her—the black of his eyes, the glide of his skin against hers, the smell of him, of leather and sage and Joe.
She couldn't seem to look away from the movements of his hands, at the contrast between his dark fingers and the lighter fabric of her shirt. They moved so elegantly, so beautifully, and by the time he worked free the button-fly of her jeans, she felt much, much warmer.
He reached to pull her jeans off her hips and a flush crawled over her cheeks, of embarrassment and of awareness.
She stepped away quickly and cleared sudden hoarseness from her throat. "I think I can manage from here. Thanks."
"Are you sure?"
She nodded and turned her back to him, feeling extremely foolish as she carefully eased off the wet shirt and her long underwear top. Hot needles of sensation began to return to her fingers as she pulled the ruana over her head then shimmied out of her soaked jeans and wrapped another blanket around her hips.
She was completely covered, but she still felt exposed, vulnerable, alone here with him in this small cabin.
The sides of the poncholike ruana would have gaped open but she kept them tightly tucked under her arms as she carried her wet clothing toward the glorious warmth beginning to emanate from the woodstove.
Taking great care to keep her face averted from the corner where he was shrugging out of his own wet clothes, she hung her jeans and shirt over one of the chairs then set her socks and boots on the stone hearth to dry.
Joe had spread another blanket from the dwindling supply on the ground to take the chill from the bare wood floor and Annie sank down gratefully and began to dry her hair with a corner of the ruana.
"How are you doing?"
She glanced up. Joe was dressed the same way she was, with one blanket around his hips and another wrapped around his shoulders.
The sight only seemed to reinforce the intimacy of their situation. They were completely alone here in this little cabin—sheltered from the winter winds, dressed in only a few layers of cloth and with the room bathed in just a dim circle of light from the kerosene lantern on the table.
She swallowed. "Better. Still cold but at least I know I still have fingers and toes."
"Are you hungry? I could heat some soup. That might help warm you up from the inside out."
She shook her head. "I'm afraid my stomach is still too twitchy to hold anything down. Maybe in a little while."
He hung his clothes on the other chair. Then, because there was nowhere else to sit, he folded his long length beside her on the blanket, bring
ing his heat to add to the fire's glow.
They sat next to each other for a few moments, not touching. Even without physical contact between them, she had never been more painfully aware of him. No matter how hard she tried to wrench her mind away from it, she was lost in the memory of their kiss the week before, of the heat and magic of his mouth dancing on hers.
She pulled the ruana more closely around her. "How long do you think it will be before help gets here?"
"An hour, hour and a half, maybe. With the sun down, whoever comes up will have to move slowly."
"The kids are probably worried sick."
"Patch will take care of them. He was just heading over to the house when I saddled Qui for the ride up."
"I hate not being there when they get home from school."
Anger suddenly kindled in his dark eyes. "Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to risk your stubborn little neck taking a dip in a frozen lake. A few more moments out there and you might have missed being there after school permanently."
She stiffened, disliking the guilt sparked by his words. She had been reckless and stupid, but she didn't need him rubbing it in. "I did think about them."
"Not long, I imagine. If you had given your children more than two seconds of thought, I doubt you ever would have gone out on that ice."
"I thought it would hold."
"You thought wrong, didn't you?"
She glared at him. "What would you have me do? Let that heifer drown? You would have done exactly the same thing. I know darn well you would have."
He was silent for a moment while the fire crackled and hummed, then finally he shrugged. "Maybe. That doesn't mean you made the right choice. Dammit, Annie, you should have known better."
Despite his scolding tone, some of the triumph that had soared through her out on the ice returned.
Suddenly she wanted desperately to share that thrill of accomplishment. "I had her, Joe. You should have seen it, the way that rope sailed right around her neck, just like I was calf-roping in the rodeo."
"Don't sound so proud of yourself," he muttered darkly. "You nearly got yourself killed."
"I was proud of myself. For once, I felt like I finally did something right. Until the ice cracked, anyway."
He sent her a puzzled sidelong glance. "You do plenty of things right on the Double C."
"Not enough," she muttered.
He frowned. "What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
"Tell me."
"I hate always feeling so lost. So afraid." The words rushed out of her before she could call them back.
He stared at her. "What are you talking about?"
She closed her eyes, mortified at herself. Whatever had possessed her to say such a thing?
If they had been under any other circumstances, she wouldn't have dreamed of sharing her most secret fears. But here, alone in this cabin bathed only by low lantern light, the protective layer she always tried to keep around herself cracked apart just as the ice had done earlier.
"Nothing," she said again, wanting to pull the wool ruana over her head and hide away from him. "Forget I said anything."
"Annie, I won't forget it. Tell me what you meant by that. What are you afraid of?"
She peered through her lashes and saw astonishment and consternation in his dark eyes and she knew with conviction that he wouldn't let the matter drop until she answered him.
She debated lying to him but there were too many lies, too many secrets, between them already.
"Everything," she finally said quietly, starkly. "I'm afraid of everything. That I'm fooling myself thinking I can run the Double C. That everyone will discover how completely, totally inept I am at everything. And that someday Leah and C.J. will hate me for the choices I've made."
Joe stared at her, stunned by the raw self-doubt in her voice. What had happened to his fearless little Annie who used to charge into every situation with fists raised and that stubborn, "watch-out" tilt to her chin?
Pain gnawed at his stomach. He knew exactly what had happened to her. His brother. Charlie had told her she was worthless so often that she had finally begun to believe him. Even her father hadn't been able to accomplish that.
Familiar, impotent fury at his brother warred with the need to comfort her, to take her pain away. "Annie—"
She shook her head and he saw tears spilling onto her lashes before she blinked them back. "Don't say a word. Not one word. I shouldn't have opened my big mouth. Just forget I said anything."
How could he forget? She had just exposed her soul to him, the first time she had been so brutally honest with him since before she married Charlie. He couldn't just pretend nothing had happened.
He reached out and folded one of her still-icy hands into his. He would have kissed it if he wasn't afraid the gesture would look totally ridiculous—he would never be a hand-kissing kind of guy—so he gave it a squeeze instead. "You amaze me, Annie," he murmured.
The confused wariness in her eyes broke his heart into tiny little pieces and made him realize he had slipped up badly. He had been so busy trying to help her put her ranch back together that he hadn't paid much attention to ensuring she did the same to herself.
He, of all people, should have been aware of the tumult she must have been going through.
That word she'd used—lost. That was exactly how he had felt after he got out of the state pen in Deer Lodge, as if he were wandering alone in a dark and frightening place full of unfamiliar landmarks and bizarre emotions.
He had always thought that no one else could begin to understand it, that bitter shame. The irrational fear that everywhere he went, people could smell the bleak stench of prison on him and would know where he had come from, what he had been.
He had floundered for months, years even. Hell, he still felt lingering traces of that inadequacy, that disgrace. Why else was he so dead-set on taking this job in Wyoming?
Both of them had chosen their prisons, he when he pleaded guilty to killing his father and Annie when she married Charlie. But they had each served their sentences, had regained their freedom, and now they needed to make the most of what they had left.
Neither of them could do that when their minds were still locked in those dark, miserable cells.
He blew out a breath, wishing he was better with words and could know the right ones to somehow make everything better.
"If anyone can handle running the Double C, it's you, Annie," he finally said. "You just need to have a little faith in yourself."
"Easier said than done," she mumbled.
"Take it from your foreman, you're a damn fine rancher. You work harder than any of your hands, so hard it worries me sometimes—I'm afraid you're going to wear yourself right out."
She shook her head in denial but he could see color had climbed her face at his words.
He squeezed her hands again. "I mean it, Annie. You have nothing to feel inadequate about. You have great instincts when it comes to your stock, you care about every animal and person in your operation—which is more than I can say about most ranchers—and in the eighteen months I've been here, I've agreed with every single decision you've made about the Double C."
He gave a rueful smile. "Except for today, when you headed out onto that ice."
She made a face, then smiled back at him and for a moment she looked exactly like the beautiful, vibrant girl he had kissed on the shores of Butterfly Lake so many years before.
He wanted to kiss her again. The need punched him in the chest, in the gut. He wanted to tug her toward him and consume that mouth, to taste her sweetness and feel her come to life in his arms.
He could do none of those things. Kissing her the morning after Dolly's poisoning had been a disastrous mistake, a mistake he had just spent one week regret-ting—at least when he wasn't reliving every moment of it in bittersweet detail.
He needed to let go of her fingers. Now.
He knew it perfectly well.
But knowing it and doing it were two vastly different things. He couldn't seem to make his muscles cooperate, couldn't seem to do anything but sit there and stare at her while her fingers fluttered in his.
It didn't help his self-control any knowing both of them were just a couple of layers away from being bare, that there was tantalizing skin somewhere underneath that brightly colored wool.
He cleared his throat, fully intending to retreat. Before he could move, though, his gaze met hers and the awareness blooming there in those soft green depths was more than he could withstand.
He thought of how close she had come to death out there on the ice, how this brave, foolish woman would have perished for a cow, and he knew he couldn't fight it anymore.
Just a quick kiss, he promised himself. That's all he wanted. Just enough to get it out of his system so he could once more regain his balance and remember all the reasons they shouldn't be doing this.
But the instant his lips met hers, everything changed.
Her mouth was warm and willing beneath his and she made a soft, erotic little sound of welcome. Red-hot desire scorched through him at the sound, at the sweet taste of her, and he groaned and deepened the kiss.
Their mouths tangled in an explosion of need, hers soft and yielding, his hard and demanding.
They knelt chest to chest, hip to hip, and he was vaguely aware of the blanket slipping from his shoulders when her trembling fingers wandered up to splay against his bare chest. He had to close his eyes as sensation after sensation poured over him.
She was alive—they were both alive—and his body cried out with the need to celebrate that in the most elemental of ways.
Between the loose folds of the poncho he easily found the soft curve of her breast. She inhaled sharply when his fingers caressed her bare skin.
She went rigid in his arms and for one brief, terrible moment he thought she was going to pull away from him. But then her body seemed to sigh in surrender, to melt against him.
With their mouths entwined, with the fire popping and hissing beside them, he pushed her back to the blanket on the floor. She went willingly, sliding her arms around him to hold him close. His chest rubbed against the wool covering her and even that friction was too much. He wanted—needed—to feel skin on skin.
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