White Christmas - A 6 Book BWWM & BBW Holiday Romance Collection Of Billionaires, Alpha Males, SEALs, Tycoons & More!

by Cherry Kay

  The man's head jerked upright.

  “Have you seen my son?” the man asked. “He used to live in this cabin, have you seen him?”

  “Your son?” Tina asked. “What does he look like?”

  Ted gave her a look that said, 'Don't play around with this guy.' Tina wished she could tell him I told you so across the table in front of the man, but didn't want to be rude.

  “My son,” the man said. “He ran away, you see. Me and his mother, well, we tried our best with him. But it's hard out here in the mountain towns sometimes. People can't find work. Kids can't find friends. And no one cares what happens to us as long as the God damn ski resorts stay open and everyone can keep getting high.”

  The man's voice shook with anger at the end, his hands trembled, almost upsetting the coffee.

  “He ran away because we couldn't give him what he wanted. Because the world, you see, the world, sometimes it tries to take and then it don't give nothin' back.”

  The man's head whipped around to look at Tina.

  “So one day he disappeared,” the man said. “And my wife, she went out looking for him in a storm, but she hasn't come back yet.”

  “How long ago did all this take place?” Ted asked.

  Ted didn't sound so confident about their new guest anymore. It was obvious that something was very wrong with him, and it wasn't just the cold. Tina wasn't an expert on people, she couldn't remember taking a single sociology or psychology class in college, but there was definitely something not right about the man. What was he talking about? This was the first snow of the year, so whatever incidents his story included had to have taken place a year ago at the very least.

  “Time.” The man said. Then again. “Time.”

  He looked back at Ted.

  “Ain't got no recollection of time,” the man said. “I used to try to keep track of it, but what's the use of that? It don't matter none. Time is here one second, gone the next, but right as ts leaving its coming right back. Like some kind of metaphysical revolving door.”

  “Did you just say metaphysical?” Ted asked, as he squinted at the man.

  Ted's body language was getting less and less friendly. Tina could tell he was starting to think the stranger was putting them on; that the man wasn't crazy, or dumb, or any of those things. What kind of hillbilly went from using words like “nothin” and “ain't” to using the word “metaphysical?” Tina knew what kind of redneck did that—the kind that wasn't really a redneck at all.

  “I'm not feeling so well,” the man said.

  Tina was about to call him a liar when his head violently rolled to the side so it faced her and his eyes lolled back in his head.

  Tina screamed.

  “Ted! Ted!”

  “Don't panic, I've got him!” Ted said as he laid the man back by the fire.

  Ted held Tina close before continuing.

  “That's probably why he was acting so funny,” Ted said. “His brain kick started way before his body was ready.”

  “What do you mean?” Tina asked.

  “As soon as we moved him away from the fire he shut back down,” Ted said. “He was probably much closer to death out there than either of us realize.”

  Tina nodded, but not because she felt bad for the man, but because she now had little doubt the man was close with death, probably very acquainted. And that wasn't good for either of them since they now had this man in their charge. They couldn't just throw him out in the snow to die, and Ted would never allow that anyway.

  “How do you think he'll act when he wakes up next time?” Tina asked Ted.

  “I have no idea,” Ted said. “But don't ask him about anything that he talked about, and don't call him out when he slips up.”

  “You mean if?” Tina said with a raised eyebrow.

  “If, right,” Ted said.

  Ted gave the man a hard look to make sure he was sleeping. Then, satisfied, he turned back to Tina.

  “I'm sorry things have gotten a little weird,” Ted said. “I just want you to know that coming out here with you has meant more than anything to me.”

  “I love you, Ted,” Tina said.

  Ted kissed her and carried her back to bed. She lay with her head on his lap while he sat with his back against the headboard keeping an eye on the man. Before Tina knew it she'd fallen back asleep.

  When Tina woke up, she lay for a long time wondering what parts of the day before had been real and what had been a dream. She lay very still and listened to Ted breathe as she tried parsing out reality from her vivid dreams. In her dream there had been a hurricane that had turned into a blizzard. A tidal wave of frost and ice had washed over the mountain. Ted and Tina had been lucky in her dream to be in the cabin when all of it had happened, even though the structure had rocked like a ship in at sea in a storm. Now that she was awake, she tried to think about the things that had been real. Had there really been a man that had stumbled in from the cold, acting crazy? She glanced down, over her toes, and saw the man in the chair, his body lying at an odd angle, the head lolling to the side.

  Ted was asleep, but it seemed by his breathing and pulse that he was starting to wake up. Or at least Tina hoped he was starting to wake up. She didn't want to be by herself with the crazy man, if he really was crazy. He might have just been raving from the cold and exposure to the elements. It was really hard to tell sometimes when someone had actual mental problems and when someone's body was just reacting to extreme circumstances. Ted tossed and turned a little bit and Tina was relieved that he was coming alive, finally.

  “Ted, are you awake yet?” Tina whispered. “There is a man in the cabin with us.”

  Ted jerked awake in bed, sitting halfway up.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “You mean the guy wasn't a dream!? I thought for fucking sure I'd wake up and the dude would just be disappeared somehow.”

  “I kind of thought that too,” Tina said. “But it looks like we're stuck with him. What do you think we should do? Do you think we should try talking to him and see if he's crazy or do you think that he was acting strange enough yesterday that we should just throw him out and have him figure it out?”

  “We can't just toss him without at least trying to talk to him,” Ted said. “I know that you are really scared right now, and so am I, but we have to try to do the right thing. If we try talking to him and he ends up being a nut job we'll give him the boot and be able to feel good about the decision later. I don't feel right about just kicking him out, though. The way the snow piled up and how cold it must be, I just don't think that he would make it.”

  “You really think he wouldn't be able to make it back to Denver from here?” Tina asked. “I mean, he made it up here somehow.”

  “Yeah, but something tells me he was out here being homeless or something,” Ted said. “Sleeping in his car. And then the storm hi,t and he woke up, and his car wouldn't start or something like that. With the temperature plunging, the guy knew that he had to try to make it to somewhere safe and warm.”

  Tina nodded. Maybe Ted was right. Maybe the guy had just been caught up in a really bad snow fall and now needed them to give him a chance so that he wouldn't freeze out there in the mountains. But what about them? What about their safety? There was no telling what this guy was capable of, they didn't even know his name much less anything about him. The guy could be an escaped serial killer or something like that. Maybe he was a bandit of some kind, a robber that hid in the mountains and waylaid people. He could be any of those things, hell, he might just be all of those things. They didn't know.

  “I don't know, Ted,” Tina said in a low voice. “I know that you really care about people and I love that about you, but at the same time I wonder if we aren't taking too big a risk by letting this guy stay with us. I mean, what if he freaks out and kills you and then does God only knows what with me? What about that? Have you thought about that?”

  Ted looked anxiously from the man, to the door, then back to Tina.

  �
��Of course I have,” Ted said. “You know that I have to think about us as much as possible in situations like that. Please don't think I'm shirking my duty as a protector. I'm just trying to think about the bigger picture, about duty to my fellow man. You have the same duty as well. We need to give people the benefit of the doubt even when we know they don't deserve it. I genuinely believe that.”

  Tina nodded and pulled herself close to Ted.

  “I'm sorry I'm scared, baby,” Tina said. “Please don't think I'm trying to make things hard, I'm just trying to figure things out, is all. This guy really scares me, as I'm sure you can tell. I just worry about things like this and now there is a strange dude in our place that was acting really weird yesterday. And who the hell knows what this guy could actually be out here doing. We'll never really know. You can talk to the man all you want but that doesn't mean you're going to badger the truth out of him. If anything. I'd think that he's probably awake and planning on what he's going to say when you ask.”

  When she mentioned that the stranger in their cabin might be feigning sleep his eyes snapped to the form of the man sprawled out on the chair and held steady.

  “You might be right,” Ted said. “Maybe this guy is trouble. Hell, maybe we've let the fox in the hen house for as far as we know. I guess we better wake him and find out.”

  They both got up and got dressed as quickly and quietly as possible. Ted approached the man like he was a crocodile lying docile in the water. Tina appreciated that he was being careful. She knew that the man was dangerous somehow, just knew it. She had never been surer of anything in her life. What kind of person is found just stumbling around a white out in the middle of nowhere?

  “Hello?” Ted said as he gently shook the man from behind. “Hello? Sir? Are you awake? You stumbled on our cabin last night in the middle of a blizzard. We let you in and set you by the fire. Are you all right.”

  The man slowly woke to the world and rubbed his eyes.

  “I . . . I don't remember anything,” the man said as he woke up and looked around the cabin. “The last thing I remember is that I was running. Away from them. And then I found myself coming up the road that leads to this place.”

  “Uhhh,” Ted said. “Who is them?”

  “Who?” the man said.

  “The ‘them’ you just referred to,” Ted said, his eyes narrowing.

  “Oh, some boys that were chasing me through the pass,” he said. “Hooligans on motorcycles.”

  “On bikes?” Ted said. “They must have been freezing, riding those this late in the season.”

  “It was warm yesterday, if I'm remembering correctly,” the man said. “Much warmer than it should have been. That's why I decided to go for a drive.”

  “So you were in your car,” Ted said. “Then what happened?”

  “Well I had to get away from those kids, you see,” the man spoke unsteadily, his voice shaking like his nerves were shot. “There were two of them, the bigger one meaner and ornerier than the smaller. They chased me down the pass, getting up against the back corner of my car and kicking it. I guess I could have swiped them off the road but I didn't. You never know how the law is going to see things and I wasn't sure it was legal to hit them off the road because they would probably die, you see. That isn't something that I think I could live with.”

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Ted said.

  “So I took off real fast to get away from them,” the man continued. “But by God, the bikes those two were on could move. I lost control at the T intersection further down the hill and slammed into a guard rail. When I came to, the world was white and I was freezing, so I got out and started walking up the road. Boy, am I lucky that I found this cabin or I wouldn't have made it. And I'm even luckier that a man of morals like you was here. If another man more likely to scare had been here he'd probably not answered the door and left me outside to freeze to death.”

  Tina felt a twinge in her heart. Maybe the stranger was lucky Ted had been here. But then again, maybe he hadn't been asleep when they'd woken and spoke. Maybe he'd been lying there listening, trying to figure out how he would pull the wool over the eyes of the people that he found in the cabin that had been nice enough to put him in a chair by the fire instead of cowering in bed and letting him freeze outside. And why did they owe him anything? Tina thought about it as she watched the man and Ted talk. Sure, they had saved his life, but that didn't make them responsible for him in the long run. It would be warm again outside, the snow already melting. That was how it went in the mountains around Denver in the high desert. So it stood to figure that the man could hit the road and take care of himself now. Maybe if they fed him, he would take the hint. After feeding him what the hell else would he expect from them? She didn't know, but she decided to act on the idea, hoping that Ted would figure out what she planned on his own.

  “I know you must be hungry, so I'll heat up some bread and soup,” she said.

  “Thank you, dear,” Ted said before going back to conversation with the man.

  Ted kept asking the man questions about where he was from and what had brought him to drive his car in the first place. The man kept being vague and not giving any real details about anything. The more the man avoided Ted's question the more it became obvious that he wasn't being entirely truthful about his account. Soon Ted tired of the inquisition and left the man alone for a moment.

  “Are you hearing his story,” Ted said in a voice that she would barely hear after he'd walked over to stand close to her. “I mean, the guy might have well as dropped from space. He doesn't know anything about Denver and it's likely he's never been there. He doesn't know anything about current events either, nothing about ISIS or Ebola in the US. He doesn't know shit about what's going on in sports. It's like--”

  “Like he's full of shit,” Tina said. “Or there is something we don't know that makes everything make sense.”

  “Why are you feeding him?” Ted asked.

  “Because after the food and a cup of coffee I'm telling him to hit the road,” she said. “It's not even cold out right now. Look at the thermometer outside the window. It's above freezing by more than eight degrees. He can hoof it out of here and be just fine. It isn't on us to harbor him forever.”

  Ted let out a long sigh that the stranger at the table glanced over his shoulder when he heard it, but then went back to staring at the fire. Ted watched the man closely for a few seconds before turning back to speak with Tina.

  “You've got a really good point there,” Ted said. “One that I didn't think of. It's not even that cold out right now and he can for sure hit the road after we feed him something. Whatever is going on with him, I'm sure, he can figure out on his own.”

  Ted watched the man closely for a second before resuming his talk with Tina.

  “How long until you've got everything made?”

  “Not long,” Tina said. “Shouldn't be more than a few minutes.”

  When the food was ready they served it to the man and watched him eat expectantly. Tina was sure it was kind of creepy how they stood looking at the man while he ate, especially since he kept glancing up at them like they were a couple of wolves about to snatch his food and run. After he had finished the soup, the bread, and the coffee, Tina spoke.

  “I think you should go now,” Tina said. “Maybe it's cold hearted to be so blunt about it, but I've had a bad feeling about you since you came in here yesterday, raving like a lunatic. And I don't believe your story for a second. Now you should go. We've kept you and fed you and the only thing to do now is for you to be on your way. I wish you God speed on your journeys.”

  The man looked in shock at her for a moment, then turned to Ted. Before the man could start begging, Ted cut him off.

  “Look, mister,” he said. “I've asked you about a hundred questions and you haven't even so much as told me your name. Now, I know some folk around these mountain parts like to keep to themselves, and that's fine, but I also know that some people on the lam li
ke to hide and sometimes get driven to civilization by the elements. So like she said, we've done everything we are obliged to do. I'm not so keen on you just sitting around in the cabin that my wife and I were using as a romantic retreat. I know that you probably have a hundred gripes about the world, but if we end up being one of them, well, that's horseshit. Now please, hit the road.”

  The man's hands curled like claws around the bowl and empty cup. He looked for a moment like he was going to throw it at them and Ted and Tina tensed up in case she needed to jump out of the way. But instead of throwing things, the man spoke.

  “You ungrateful swine. You come to our mountains and all you do is take. All you do is want to see what you can see with your greedy eyes before you gallivant back to whatever place you fucking came from. But you leave a little bit of your bad vibrations behind like a slime trail. I've always known about you two, long before you came here I knew about you. And frankly I'm not sure who the fuck you think you are talking to me like that, a poor creature down on his luck trying to make it in a hard world. And yes, I might have gripes, but you two filthy animals won't ever cross my lips again.”