by Maisey Yates
For years it had been like this, and over the past few months it had been even worse. A damned tortuous slog. Like the buildup of a dam about full to bursting.
Being in an enclosed truck cab with her for the next couple of hours did not sound good. It sounded like it might put a crack in the dam, and that was something he couldn’t afford.
The last thing he needed to do was breathe the same air that Chloe was breathing, before he had gotten his libido under control. That was the real issue with why it had been getting so bad lately, he was sure.
He had not had any sex recently. It was tough. He was busy running the ranch, and he wasn’t particularly open to the idea of a long-term relationship. Hookups were what he thrived on, but with his brothers happily settled into marriage, arranging times when he could go out and fool around and they would hold down the fort for him had gotten fewer and farther between. That was the issue. Not so much Chloe herself, but the fact that he hadn’t been near enough to a willing woman in longer than he could remember.
Well, he could remember. It was just that it didn’t do anything for him. He had tried. He had tried in the dead of night to imagine his last partner, a woman named Alex who worked at the tattoo parlor down in Tolowa.
She had a lot of ink, and piercings in interesting places.
She was so different from Chloe. And as much as it pained him to admit it, that had been the primary attraction to most women he’d been with over the past few years.
Not Chloe.
Alex fit that bill, and nicely. And he’d had a good time with her when they’d been together. But now?
The memory did absolutely nothing for him. For some reason, imagining her thick eyeliner and pouty lips didn’t fire his blood at all. No, it was fresh-faced Chloe that kept imprinting herself on his mind. And he didn’t like it at all.
A man’s life had cornerstones. And his had a few. This ranch. His brothers.
Chloe.
Chloe had been the key to him deciding that the ranch mattered. Seeing it through her eyes had been a revelation, and it had stirred something in him he hadn’t imagined was there. Teaching her to ride, and how to perform chores around the property, had breathed new life into all of it.
Chloe wasn’t a sister to him, but she was something. Something definitive.
Something essential.
He’d never wanted to risk that. Ever. An attraction to her had seemed like the worst thing possible, though he’d figure out how to tamp it down.
He could never risk disrupting a cornerstone. Not just in his life, but in his family’s. All it would take was a crack, and all that he was, all they were, could come tumbling down.
Because Tanner couldn’t keep it in his pants.
And no, that wasn’t going to happen.
As if she had been conjured up from his imagination, Chloe came riding toward the barn, her hair flying behind her in the wind, her live, strong body guiding her horse exactly where she wanted her to go.
She pulled to a stop when she saw him, a slight frown on her lips.
“You’re still here,” she said.
“So are you.”
She frowned. “Yeah, I wanted to get in one last ride and make sure that all the instructions for Jacob Dalton were in place.”
“Well, now it’s too late for you to drive yourself. Calder called. The road is not going to be passible in your little two-wheel drive, so if you have anything packed up in that Civic of yours you better throw it in the back of my pickup truck.”
* * *
“OH I JUST... I thought it would be more convenient if I had a car...”
“Hey, no argument from me on convenience,” he said. “But it’s not going to be very convenient if you get stuck in a ditch.”
“I have chains,” she said.
“Calder said that wouldn’t cut it.”
“Right,” she said.
“It’ll be fine. It’ll be fun. We’ll sing,” he said, because if he couldn’t feel normal he’d try to trick himself into thinking it was normal.
She shot him a look. “We will not sing.”
He followed her into the barn while she untacked her horse.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t sing. Actually, you’re pretty terrible at it.”
“You’re no Miranda Lambert.”
“Lucky for you,” she said. “I might get a little crazy and light something of yours on fire.”
He chuckled, ignoring the way that her hair moved when she brushed it back off her face. Ignoring the tightening low in his gut that accompanied it.
“I guess I’ll get ready then.”
She moved, and he caught her scent, and then she stopped dead, her luminous brown eyes connecting with his. It was like a band of tension had stretched tight between them, drawing them together.
“You better do that,” he said, taking a step back, breaking the tension. Because, oh, hell no. He did not need this. Not now. Not ever.
Most of all, Chloe didn’t need him lusting after her.
He couldn’t offer her anything. He had watched his own father go through marriage after marriage, making a hash of it.
The only real reason his marriage to Chloe’s mother had lasted was her sheer grit and stubbornness.
And...
Chloe’s mother was about the best thing that had ever happened to his family. He couldn’t imagine taking a risk like that. Detonating a bomb in the middle of what they had.
No.
Just about every way of getting laid was a hell of a lot cheaper. He was not going to go there.
No matter how beautiful his stepsister was, he was never going to touch her. No matter that he’d spent seven years wanting her.
If he had to spend the next seven wanting her, he’d do just that. But he wasn’t going to have her.
And that was his final word on that to himself.
CHAPTER TWO
BY THE TIME they were on the road, Chloe was feeling antsy. And by the time the stretch of road in front of them began to grow thick with snow, she was feeling even more antsy. And it wasn’t even the proximity to Tanner.
“This is looking ugly,” she commented as they went around the corner and the tires on Tanner’s four-wheel-drive clung fast to the ground. Much to her relief.
“Yeah, but we should be fine.” Tanner said. Normally she found his confidence...well, pretty sexy, sadly for her. Right about now she was dubious about it.
“I’m glad that you have so much confidence,” she said. “I’m not sure that I do.”
“I know how to drive in all weather,” he said. “Need I remind you, I’m a very experienced driver.”
“Is that a euphemism for old?”
He looked over at her. “Maybe.”
“Well, you are certainly old.”
She didn’t know why she was jabbing him like that. Maybe to put a bigger gap between the two of them. Maybe for her own benefit, because she was being maudlin and a little bit silly about him.
But then, she often was. No matter how hard she tried not to be.
The drive had been fine so far. Punctuated by such in-depth observations as Oh, an elk crossing sign. And The trees are so tall.
They’d stopped for gas and Fritos. The Fritos had been a mere excuse for Chloe to get out of the car for a while.
Tanner seemed tense, too, and Chloe couldn’t figure out why. Maybe he wasn’t as confident about driving on these roads as he said he was.
Up ahead, there was a tunnel carved deep into the mountain, the snow building up steadily around it, making Chloe feel vaguely nauseous as they went through it.
“That’s sketchy,” she said, gripping the door handle as they drove through, the car passing underneath the earth for one second.
Two. Three.
She held her breath going through the tunnel, it was a habit of hers from childhood, and now a sort of superstition she wasn’t about to break when the snow looked like it might tumble down avalanche-style at any moment.
“It’ll be fine,” he said.
They came out the other side, and when they did, a massive bank of packed snow dropped down over the exit to the tunnel.
“Well, fuck,” he said, pressing down on the brakes and looking back behind them. More snow tumbled down off the mountain, covering the tunnel completely.
“We could have been stuck in there,” she said.
“No,” he said, he shook his head. “I would’ve dug us out.”
“Right,” she scoffed. “With your bare hands?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I have a shovel in the back.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem very safe.”
As soon as the words exited her mouth, a tree came unrooted from its spot on the hill, pushed down by the wet snow, and it tumbled down the mountain, falling down over the tunnel exit, on all the packed snow.
“Shit!”
“No kidding,” she said. “You wouldn’t have been digging that out of the way with your shovel.”
The look he gave her was searing enough to melt the snow, and she ignored the little flip in her stomach. “Let’s just hope we make it the rest of the way without incident. I bet you’re really glad that you’re not driving your Civic.”
“Pretty glad,” she said.
They drove on, yellow caution lights flashing over the top of a sign that warned of slick road conditions, and then farther ahead was a temporary road sign with orange lights on it. It proclaimed the mountain pass closed.
“Well, hell,” he said. “We’re supposed to go up the mountain pass.”
“Now what are we going to do? The path back is blocked, and apparently the way forward is closed.”
“We’d better stop,” he said, looking up ahead, squinting through the falling snow. A sign that was mostly covered in thick white powder came into view, and Chloe could see part of the lettering and filled it in for herself.
Granite Ridge.
The town was tiny, more wooded than brick, unlike Golden Valley, with small cabin-like structures. A diner, an ice cream shop, and the larger general store.
“I wonder if we should stop at the general store,” she said. If nothing else there would be warmth, food and a bathroom. So basically all the essentials should the world continue turning into an icy hell.
Tanner whipped his truck into the parking lot and the two of them got out. Chloe stepped gingerly into the snow, the powder covering her boots up to the top of her laces.
“This is just insane,” she said. “I had no idea that it was going to come down like this.”
“Because it never does,” he said. “They always say this, and then we get a few wet flakes.”
“No kidding.” The snow was pelting her face like frozen crystals being dumped from a sugar shaker, leaving little pinpricks of ice on her cheeks.
She followed Tanner into the store, banging her shoe against the side of the door frame to knock off the snow before the two of them walked inside.
The interior of the place was a patchwork of merchandise. From a swivel rack of dog-eared novels being offered up for trade or inexpensive purchase, to power bait, fishing line and live night crawlers in a cooler not far away.
There was a mounted bobcat on top of a shelf holding picnic essentials like mayonnaise, pickles and breadcrumbs for fried trout. On the rough-hewn walls were several sets of antlers from different sorts of animals, and there was a small jackal open mount sitting on the counter by the register.
There was a woman standing behind that register, dressed in a plaid shirt, her long black hair tied back away from her face.
“Hi, there,” Tanner said. “I’m just wondering if you have any idea what the situation is with the pass.”
The woman, whose name tag said Elena, regarded them with dark eyes. “The pass is not going to open,” she said. “At least, not for a couple of days. I haven’t seen snow like this in...fifteen years?”
Judging from the woman’s youthful face, she would have been maybe twelve at the time of the last snow. At least, that was Chloe’s estimate.
“Anyway, any snow tends to make the pass a complete mess. But with the rest of the roads getting all of this, and I hear the tunnel is closed back out of town... They’re going to be working overtime to clear up the main roads.”
“Well, dammit,” Tanner said. “What are we supposed to do? Because we can’t turn around and get back at this point.”
“You should go up behind the store here. There’s a lodge. But you better hurry. The rooms are going to fill up fast. If people are stuck on this side, this is going to be the best place for them to get a bed. Otherwise, they have to drive all the way to Maverick River. That’s the next place with lodging, and it’s going to be harrowing getting over there.”
“I have four-wheel-drive,” he said.
Elena chuckled. “I don’t know that four-wheel-drive is going to help you in this, cowboy.”
* * *
“GREAT. THANKS.”
The two of them walked back out of the store and Tanner cursed. “Just great.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Chloe said, a knot of strange dread tightening in her stomach as soon as she said it.
“It’s not bad,” Tanner said. “It’s just... Let’s go. The last thing we need is to be out of a room at this point.”
“True.”
They followed Elena’s directions and drove down a winding road that pushed back off of the highway, toward a large building with a sign over the top proclaiming it to be the Granite Ridge Lodge.
“Here’s hoping there’s room,” Chloe said drily.
The parking lot was surprisingly full, especially given the barren-looking state of the town.
The lodge had a wide wooden porch with rocking chairs on it, and there was a stack of wood right next to a red door that had a cheerful wreath wishing the world a Merry Christmas.
The two of them walked in and saw a harried-looking older woman with gray-streaked dark hair. She bore a striking resemblance to Elena, with a few more years lining her face. “Can I help you?” the woman asked.
She didn’t have a name tag.
“We were just at the general store, and were told we might come see you about a room.”
“Oh, yes,” the woman said. “My daughter must have sent you. She’s sent through fifteen people in the last hour. And now I hear that the tunnel is closed.”
“Definitely,” Tanner responded.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “I have one room left.”
Chloe’s stomach twisted tight. “One room?”
“Yes,” the woman said slowly. “Is that okay?”
Tanner looked at her sideways. “We were hoping for two. She’s my sister,” he said, by way of explanation.
And that made Chloe’s stomach get even tighter. Because she was not his sister. And step was a one-syllable word. Stepsister was not much harder to say.
It was so strange and twisted and utterly messed up, because if the circumstances were any different she would probably like that he didn’t take pains to make it clear the two of them weren’t related. That he seemed to accept her with such ease.
Except she didn’t think of him as a brother, and she never had. And so it made her feel distant, because it didn’t allow her the kind of closeness that she wanted.
“Sorry,” the woman said. “It’s all I have. We are slammed, and this place isn’t that big.”
“Yeah,” Tanner said, looking around. “I get that.”
It was rustic, with a big living area, a massive fireplace that was currently roaring, and rocking chairs placed all around. There was a statio
n for coffee and hot chocolate, and for all that it was rustic, it was also incredibly homey.
“We’ll take the room,” Chloe said.
Tanner looked over at her. “It’s not like you’re going to go out and sleep in your truck,” she said.
“Fair enough.”
He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet, offering the woman his credit card.
“You don’t have to pay,” Chloe said.
“I’ll tell you what,” Tanner said. “You can buy me a coffee.”
She rolled her eyes. “A coffee is not going to cover the cost of the hotel room.”
“Don’t worry about it, Chloe,” he said. “I know where you live. I’m going to go grab our bags.” He left his credit card on the counter and walked back outside. Chloe watched him go, her body jangling with nerves.
“He’s your brother?” the woman questioned.
“Stepbrother,” she said absently.
“Oh,” she said, as if that made much more sense. Chloe truly didn’t want to inquire as to why.
Tanner returned a few moments later, and at that point they were checked in and ready to go. The woman handed them a metal key with a big round piece of wood attached to it. It had etching on it, identifying it as a key for room 15 at Granite Ridge Lodge.
Chloe swallowed hard, and determined that she wasn’t going to allow the weirdness in her to be spread around.
“Which way do we go?” Chloe asked.
“Up the stairs,” the woman said. “First door on the left.”
Chloe nodded affirmatively, and she and Tanner walked toward the sweeping wooden staircase that would take them to their room.
When they reached the top of the stairs, they headed down the hall, pausing at the door, and Chloe stopped, her eyes lingering on the view of the Lodge over the top of the railing, and the coyote hide that was draped over the log posts.
She heard the lock click, and something in her body went tight. She didn’t know why she was reacting like this. Like it was anything other than normal.
