He sobered. “But it’s not going to.”
“We could die.”
“But we’re not going to.”
“I’ve always thought of rough weather as…a nuisance. A serious nuisance sometimes, but nothing more than that. It never occurred to me to be afraid before. But that storm, Rick. That blizzard. It’s alive.”
CHAPTER FOUR
EMILIE COULDN’T GET OVER IT—how fast the storm had come back. How completely blinded they’d been by snow and wind; how they’d been laughing at the impossible job of shoveling the roof—and yeah, it had been physically taxing and freezing, but they’d still had fun. She’d been laughing, the way she hadn’t laughed in weeks. Then…
That sudden paralyzing cold.
The wind screaming in her ears.
The fear so huge that she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“It was like a demon, that wind. It sounded as if it were alive, personally attacking us….” Abruptly Emilie realized that she was the only one talking. She still didn’t have the strength of a pansy. When Rick started peeling off her wet, heavy outer clothes, she’d just let him.
It really hurt when he first pulled off boots and socks, and her bare feet suddenly started to get sensation back. Her nose, cheeks and chin were all stingingly coming back to life again, too. As Rick yanked off her dad’s old snow pants, then unzipped her ice-crusted parka…she couldn’t have stopped him, didn’t want to.
He was shedding her clothes.
She was still shedding her fear.
Nothing suddenly changed, exactly. She just seemed to notice a tiny detail. All her outer layers had now been peeled off, and yet he was still shedding her clothes.
Although she’d been looking at Rick the whole time they’d been talking…now she quietly, carefully, really looked at him. The firelight crackled beside them, shimmery, warm, golden. His eyes had that same golden warmth, focused intensely on her face.
Maybe he wasn’t talking, but his hands were masterfully communicating. His fingers unfastened the last button on her cardigan, then peeled off the sweater as carefully and competently as he’d gotten rid of her jacket and scarf. Only this wasn’t an outer layer. This was a lot closer to her bare skin. To her bare heartbeat.
Her lips parted. She thought she was going to say something else about the weather, but somehow disasters like blizzards and near dying of cold now seemed insignificant.
His hands reaching for the snap of her corduroy pants…now that was significant.
She felt danger of an entirely new kind.
So much for the silly blizzard. So much for the life-altering decisions facing her. So much for everything else.
Her heart stopped, then started again, beating wildly fast, worried fast. It was the look in his eyes. The slow, steady, intense look. She could stop him; she knew it absolutely.
But he wasn’t going to stop unless she pulled the halt card.
A log fell in the grate, shooting stars and sparks against the screen. The constant growl of the generator echoed in the distance. Yet nothing seemed to distract her from the look in his eyes, the expression on his face.
Moments later, her shirt seemed to have disappeared. Her pants seemed to have formed a heap under the coffee table, another magical impossibility. It was perfectly obvious to Emilie that this wasn’t really happening. In real life, she never slept around casually, never slept with strangers, couldn’t be doing it now. She barely knew this man…but she knew enough to believe there was about zero chance they’d ever meet again once the blizzard was over.
She thought, maybe he was bored.
She looked in those deep, intense eyes, and shivered. Nope, he wasn’t bored.
She thought, who knew he’d even been attracted to her?
But she looked again, at the hard-boned hunger in his expression, and swallowed. She’d known. She’d felt it. It just never occurred to her that either of them would conceivably do anything about it.
When he finished stripping her down, he stretched next to her, balancing on an elbow, and lifted a hand to her face. A fingertip whisked a strand of hair from her forehead, then whispered across her chin. His hands were rough, yet somehow his touch and tenderness made her feel softer than satin.
“Still afraid of the blizzard?” he asked.
“No.”
“Still cold?”
Seconds before, she had been. Now, she felt as if a furnace of heat was licking up her veins, igniting crazy thoughts in her head.
She knew what he was inviting. Didn’t care. The more she looked in those eyes, the more she felt the sneaky intoxication of temptation. Chopping thoughts kept zooming through her mind. The stupid man, alone up here in this wilderness. Wounded from the inside out. Letting one woman’s betrayal isolate him from all life’s choices.
And he wasn’t the only stupid one.
She’d strived to meet everyone’s expectations for as long as she could remember, always done what she had to do, let others define what was right and wrong, define who she was.
But right now, this second, held all the promise of possibilities. This second…this could be for her. This man could be for her. This moment could be totally for her.
And without her even knowing it, without ever saying a word aloud, a decision was suddenly made. She leaned over, closed her eyes and kissed him.
His lips were firm, thin, yielding. She tasted recklessness, the silk of risk, and went back for more.
He didn’t need any further invitation. His fingers sieved through her hair, anchoring her for a second kiss, a deeper, darker kiss involving tongues and teeth. She sank back. Her hands chased up his arms, careful of his shoulder, but needing to touch, to stroke, to experience the feel of him.
He responded like lightning to dry tinder. He’d seemed so patient before, so clearly willing to let her make the decision, no push, no pressure. Now…it seemed as if he were a powder keg of pressure, had been storing up an arsenal of emotion and need and hunger for months.
He tugged off her long-sleeved silk tee and found her mouth again before the shirt was even over her head. Fingers fumbled at her cinnamon-colored lace bra, seeking the hooks in back…finding the hooks in front. There was a moment’s laughter…and then another chuckle, when his bare foot brushed hers and she let out a short shriek—his toes were still cold. Ice cold.
Those cold feet of his inspired her to warm him up, the way he’d warmed her. She rubbed, tugged, smoothed. Used the heels of her hands. Her mouth. Her breasts and abdomen. And while she explored sensations on him, with him, she stealthily went after his clothes.
He’d started out with more layers on than she had—sweater, shirt, then a tech top beneath that. And his pants didn’t want to come off those long, lean legs. He was such an alien species, so different from the manicured city men she knew. He was all calluses and hard edges, all muscle and brawn. In so many ways he struck her as a pirate, a stealer of virtue and senses, a man who pillaged a woman’s common sense, who took and took and gave her back…
Everything.
At one point, they both seemed to rear back, gasping for breath. He stared at her as if trying to comprehend where all the fire was coming from…. Her? Him? Whatever the source, they seemed to be compounding it with every touch, every sound, every taste. By the time she had him completely naked, his skin had been sheened by the fire, gold and damp.
And she wasn’t waiting any longer. Her heart seemed to think she’d waited her whole life for this, for the chance to experience making love with no pretenses, no agenda, no worrisome expectations. She knew him somehow. He wasn’t a friend or a neighbor or a medical community person or any of the other people she saw every day of her life.
But she knew Rick in some unexpected basic, primal way. His heart—she sensed how to reach it. His emotions—she sensed how to touch them. His naked vulnerability—and yeah, they were both naked by then. It was more than bare skin against bare skin. It was her mouth, confessing loneliness and need.
It was his hands, expressing tenderness and wonder. It was both of them, coming together in fear and fire, not alone for the first time in so, so long….
Emilie realized, for herself, that it was the first time in forever.
RICK FELT AS SAPPED AS a beached whale. He’d yanked a cover over her. Got up, because he had to, couldn’t let the fire go down…but after feeding the monster fresh logs, he sank back against her as if he couldn’t hold himself up a second longer.
Her eyes were closed. He thought she was napping. She should need a week of solid rest after all the energy she’d just vented, luxuriously, on him. His gaze roamed her face, the tangle of hair, the golden shoulder in the firelight. Where had all that passion come from? Who’d have guessed so much explosive power could be contained in such a compact little body?
Abruptly he realized she was awake. Her eyes were sleepily looking right back at him. “Pretty serious look on your face, fella,” she murmured.
“Just trying to figure it. How the two of us could have moved heaven and earth, yet if we had that kind of power, how come we haven’t been able to shut down the blizzard?”
A shy smile turned into a chuckle and made her face softly radiant. “I was hoping I wasn’t the only one who heard the earth move.”
“Oh, no. You weren’t alone.” He wanted to see that radiant smile again, couldn’t believe how it transformed her from a damned pretty woman into…breathtaking. It seemed a measure of how unhappy she’d been, how long since she’d just let loose a natural, simple, easy smile. “I told you I tended to be suspicious of women, didn’t I?”
“You did,” she affirmed.
“And I told you I’d kind of turned into a…well, basically a misogynist.”
“You definitely implied you were allergic to women these days, yes.” She lifted a hand, knuckled his scrubby cheek. “Listen. If you go around hating women like this, I’m surprised you haven’t collected a harem over at your place.”
Darn woman warmed his heart. Nobody warmed his heart. His heart had atrophied into stone a long time ago. Or so he’d thought. “Hey.”
“Uh-oh. That sounded like a serious ‘hey.’”
“It was.” He clutched in a breath. “I didn’t plan this, I swear, Emilie.”
“I doubt either of us dreamed there was any possibility of this happening,” she agreed.
“The point is—I didn’t use anything. I didn’t have anything on me.”
Her expression turned pensive. “I’m on the pill. Not because I’ve been sexually active or because there’s anyone in my life right now. But because I was raised to be the Ultra Girl Scout.”
“Always prepared.”
“That’s the theory. But I can’t say I was remotely prepared…for you.”
Silence seemed to fall. The fire, the generator, the storm—the same sources of background din were just as prevalent…yet somehow all he heard at that moment was the intense, intimate silence between them.
“Are you going to regret this?” he asked her.
“Never. I will never regret this,” she said fiercely. “You? Are you regretting we did this?”
“Are you kidding? Not in this life.” He lifted a gruff hand, pushed a tangled curl from her brow, aware she was still touching him…aware he couldn’t seem to stop touching her. “But…”
She froze the minute she heard that “but,” jumped in before he could possibly finish the comment. “But, of course, this was all just a moment’s craziness. No one has to know. Neither of us are going to make too much of it. Why would we?”
“Why would we,” he echoed, and couldn’t fathom why his pulse suddenly clunked. “It’s not as if you had any interest in staying in Alaska.”
“Or as if you had any interest in moving back to the lower forty-eight. Good grief. I don’t even know where your home used to be.”
“Used to be Denver.”
“Whew. A long way from Boston.”
She was still smiling, but his pulse kept skidding down a long, dark luge run. She seemed in a major hurry to shut down the possibilities for them. He should have been in an even bigger hurry.
Pretty damned ridiculous to imagine how they could be a couple when this was all over.
God knew how the idea had even popped in his mind.
“Is your back okay?” she asked suddenly.
“My back?”
“The burns. I think I should look at it again—”
“I think you caretake more than enough people without adding me to the list.” Damned if he wanted to be another responsibility in her life. “I’ve got an idea.”
“What?”
“Steak. Cooked on the fire—”
“We still have stew left over from yesterday.”
Yeah, they did. He’d tasted her stew. “Doesn’t steak sound good? Smothered in onions and mushrooms? Maybe see what else we can conjure up from that huge pantry? Make a real feast?”
FOR A WOMAN WHO’D NEVER HAD a silly side, Emilie couldn’t remember laughing so much. The steaks were juicy and sizzling and fabulous, slathered with onions and mushrooms and some kind of sauce he’d concocted. Dessert was some kind of bread pudding he threw together—took a lot of rum—that he served with a flourish and a candle on top.
The lodge had a major liquor stash, but usually no wine. He’d scrounged around, though, found a bottle for her in the back of a cupboard, and after wiping off a couple inches of dust, opened it. She took one sip and sputtered it all over the floor. Apparently it had turned into vinegar.
She could drink some of her father’s whiskey—aged thirty years, the good stuff—but only by holding her nose.
He made Irish coffee to top off the meal, although by then, he was lying on the carpet, with his feet up on a log, watching—as he put it—her eating bird bites.
“I’ll bet you’ll be done by midnight,” he said with awe.
“Would you quit teasing? I was starving. I practically ate like a wolf, shoveling it in.”
“Ah, yeah. That’s you. Uncouth. No manners. Just a pig at the table.”
“Thanks.” She lifted a napkin and delicately dabbed a corner of her mouth. “People have always teased me for being fastidious.”
“You?”
“That’s the thing. I’m free to let out my closet pig with you.”
She thought he’d be ill. He started choking, and then laughing, and couldn’t seem to stop.
She sank back against a couch cushion, delighted. Beyond delighted. Laughter lit up his face, his eyes, took away the shadows. He was wearing bulky layers, as she was. Double wool socks, as she was. Their picnic feast was on the gnarled coffee table, as casual as she’d eaten since she could remember. And she’d made him laugh.
She couldn’t get over how…smug she felt.
She didn’t make men laugh. Most men she knew liked her. Respected her. A few had been scared off by her IQ, but no guy, since she could remember, thought she was funny. Or just…had fun with her.
“What are you looking at?” he demanded.
“I can’t believe how hard you’re laughing at me.”
“Of course I’m laughing at you. At your letting out your closet pig. Sounding so happy about it. Honey, I don’t think you’ve got a messy bone in your entire body. I hate to be the one to tell you, but you’d flunk the pig course.”
“I certainly would not. I…” Her voice dropped off. She frowned, without having a clue why.
Something was different. Completely different. Startlingly different.
His head shot up at the same time hers did. “The storm,” he said, and leaped to his feet.
She got it then, too. The wind had stopped. Except for the short lull when they’d worked on the roof, there hadn’t been a moment without that incessant, screaming wind in days now.
The sudden crash of silence was the most peaceful thing she’d ever heard.
She scrambled to her feet as quickly as Rick, beat him to the closest window, fumbled with the catch on the shutter. The g
enerator and fire were still making background noises, but outside…
Her breath caught. After all that awful wind, all that sharp, mean snow and slashing, bitter, killer-cold…outside, there was a sea of diamonds. The white landscape rolled and tucked in waves and more waves, all lit by a full silver moon and sky full of stars. The reflections were so brilliant that the snow glittered brighter than jewels.
She looked at Rick.
He looked back. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Simultaneously they scrambled to their feet. Although their outside clothes were still damp from before, it didn’t matter. The lodge had a closet full of serious parkas and boots—although most of them were sized for the men of the family. But getting suited up in fresh, warm gear was easy enough.
They tussled like puppies at the door, Rick chuckling as he let her go first—although he also stopped her long enough to retie a long woolen scarf around her nose and mouth. The moment they stepped out, he tugged her in front of him, pulling her back against the warmth of his body.
It was beyond cold. So cold her lungs felt as if they were trying to breathe ice, even tucked against Rick, with his arms wrapped around the front of her for extra warmth. But the cold didn’t matter anyway. She didn’t need to breathe, didn’t want to breathe.
She’d never seen anything more magical, never imagined it. The whole landscape was diamonds and crystals and sky. It was like music, a world so soft and pure that it hummed wonder in her heart. As fearsome and frightening as the blizzard had been, now she felt engulfed by an extraordinary feeling of peace.
She felt Rick’s chin tuck on top of her head. “I just realized what day it is.”
She hadn’t. But his mentioning it made her swallow fast. “Christmas,” she said.
“Might just be the most special Christmas I can remember.”
She lifted her face. “For me, too.”
“We can’t stay out, Doc. It really is too cold to breathe.”
“Just a couple more minutes,” she pleaded.
He catered to her. By the time they’d both turned into icicles, she caved and admitted it was time to head inside. Realizing it was Christmas turned her quiet for a while. She puttered around, cleaning up, straightening up. Rick did the same, checking the generator for fuel, stacking enough firewood for another day.
Baby, It's Cold Outside Page 5
