by Jennie Adams
Snow was falling.
Unseasonably early, unexpectedly thick and getting heavier by the moment. White, pure flakes of snow that would obscure the trail she’d taken if it continued.
She had to get back to her car. Fiona packed her photography equipment into her backpack, gave thanks she hadn’t tried to bring a tripod with her and began to retrace her steps.
Walking through that flurry of innocent-looking white flakes, Fiona told herself she would be back in the car park safe and sound in no time. And, if anything happened, the office knew her location. She didn’t have her mobile with her. It was in the car in her bag. She hadn’t wanted to carry any extra weight. Well, that had been a poor choice to make, but there was no point worrying about it now.
A bush parrot appeared briefly out of the flurrying snowfall and disappeared again. And Fiona hurried along and thought of Brent. Even now, she couldn’t push the thoughts away.
For a short frame of time she had felt she’d held Brent’s attention and focus and maybe even…his heart. That he had given all of himself to her, was trusting her with all of him. She had let her own guards down, all the way down, had believed, foolishly, that he could find as much fulfilment in her as she had found in him.
Obviously, that hadn’t been the case and she understood his need to protect himself. She did! Within her family she had felt the same way. Not loved for all of herself, not understood. But the whole world wouldn’t be like Brent’s father to him. Fiona would never be that way to him.
The snow thickened and Fiona realised she could be in real trouble for other reasons. She had to get out of here before she lost the ability to see the trail. She put her head down and walked as fast as she was able and prayed she wouldn’t end up lost in the bush…
‘Fiona? Fiona!’ Brent shouted Fiona’s name again, and again received no response. He walked the trail in jerky strides while snow coated his back and shoulders and brushed against his face.
It was cold. The snow had been falling for over an hour. And Fiona was out in it. He had to find her. Already he was struggling to be certain he was still on the trail. If he hadn’t walked it before…
Fiona had left her plans at work but Brent had stayed out of the office until well after lunch. He’d dodged making contact with Fiona, and this was the result.
All because he hadn’t known how to address the concerns at war inside himself, but now he’d worked that out and he needed to speak to her.
He needed first of all to be certain she was safe!
Brent pushed on and tried not to imagine Fiona lost in this.
Please stay on the path until I find you, Fiona.
When the snow covered the path completely he started to call her name again in earnest. He should have called in a search and rescue team, not tried to find her by himself.
He shouldn’t have walked away this morning and left her to find her way out of his home by herself, left things unresolved between them.
And do you know what you want now, MacKay? And, more importantly, whether you have the right to try to have it?
Brent didn’t know. Not entirely. He wanted Fiona as more than an employee. That much he now fully understood and admitted. He wanted her…as a lover. For however long they could make that work. If they could make that work…
For now, he needed to make sure she was safe.
Brent hadn’t imagined this snowfall. Who heard of this kind of snow at this time of year here? It just didn’t happen.
But today it was happening.
‘Fiona!’ His voice echoed. There was no response.
Brent pushed on, decided he would give himself another ten minutes and then get on the phone to Linc, ask him to organise help.
When Fiona hiked out of the snow straight at him, her face pale and anxious, all Brent’s well-considered thoughts about the future, about speaking carefully and working things out in some way to buy them some time together and avoid hurting either of them when that time inevitably came to an end fell away.
He simply snatched her into his arms. ‘You’re all right? I thought you might have gone off the path. It’s completely obscured now.’
His arms shook as he held her at arm’s length so he could examine her. Brent registered that knowledge and couldn’t do a thing about it.
She had a coat on, no hat. Her backpack and hair were covered in snow and, as she stared into his eyes, her mouth trembled for a moment before she pressed her lips together and tried to smile all at the same time. ‘I’m okay. I was hoping I wasn’t too far from the car park, but I’ve lost track of where I am.’
‘It took me over an hour to get this far.’
‘I thought I heard you calling me once, but I thought I must have imagined it because I wanted—’ She broke off and shivered.
Brent pulled her in close again to his body. ‘You’re half frozen. I have to get you out of here.’ His head twitched but he managed to hold on to her through it, and then he covered her in the second coat he’d worn for that purpose and started back along the trail the way he’d come.
He had her hand. He wasn’t letting go.
He never, ever wanted to let her go.
The thought washed over him right there, closed in with swirling white, and his fingers squeezed hers as he faced what was behind the desperation and concern that had driven him to rush here to find her when he’d heard the weather report for the region. More than the same concern he would feel for just anyone.
Because this wasn’t just anyone. This was Fiona. And Brent had fallen in love with her. Fallen totally and utterly all the way in love with her, in the way people would do who wanted now and forever and a picket fence. The way people would who wanted normal and believed they could have it.
Brent had never been normal.
How could he have done this? How could he even know how to love her in such a way? How could he make a success of loving her like that? How could he ever be someone she would be able to love like that?
‘I didn’t notice what was happening with the weather.’ Her teeth chattered as she tried to speak.
‘It doesn’t matter. I found you. That’s all that matters.’ He drew her alongside him and chafed her hand with his, trying to warm her while the knowledge of what was in his heart for her spread through him.
He couldn’t live without her. Her safety and security meant more to him than anything else in the world. The feelings were more intense than the…love he felt for Alex and Linc, the only two people in the world he had ever connected with.
He’d bonded with Fiona on some deep level. He…loved her. But not even just in the way he loved Linc and Alex, which was more than he had ever loved any person.
He loved her man to woman. Wanted her at his side for ever—
Later, that knowledge would burn him as he faced the impossibility of it. For now, he had to get her safe from this storm. He had to focus on that! ‘Save your energy for getting out of here, okay?’
She nodded and wrapped her arms around herself.
Brent couldn’t have Fiona that way, should never have made love to her in the first place when he knew there was no way things could work between them.
How could he ever expect her to accept all of him? His own father hadn’t been able to do that. His father had rejected him so deeply and thoroughly that there’d never been any going back. Going forward, for Brent, had been something he had to do alone when it came to relationships, other than with the two men who’d been through the same rejection Brent had been through.
Brent promised himself he would get her out of here, into safety, make sure she was well, and then he would step carefully back into the role of employer. He’d been tempted. He’d allowed himself to dream some big dreams, but those dreams were not realistic.
The snow got heavier and he was thankful when they reached the part of the track where the trail was hewn out of rock face. Tracking it with their hands slowed them down even more, but it kept them on the path and that was vital.
Finally they climbed the last steps into the tiny car park. Her car was there but he put her into his utility truck with the engine running and the heater on and a blanket wrapped around her. It only took a minute to stick a note inside the windscreen of her car with his phone number and the message that the car’s owner was with him at his home. He grabbed her handbag and took it to her, laid it on the floor of the truck at her feet.
‘I’ve caused a lot of trouble.’ She glanced at the bag and away again. ‘I should drive the car out of here.’ But she could barely get the words out, let alone carry out such a task.
‘I left a note. We’ll get your car later.’ There was no way Brent would allow her to try to drive in these conditions. On top of that, his arms ached to hold her; his whole system ached with that need. He felt out of control and words wanted to push up from inside him and burst out, telling her again how worried he’d been and how relieved when he’d found her and so much more. The so much more was the biggest worry of all.
Instead, he strapped her into her seat belt and tucked the blanket around her. ‘Hold tight. We need to get out of here.’
The drive that should have taken ten minutes took thirty, but they reached the mountain house and he turned the heating up high and brought out towels from the bathroom and warmed them before the heater outlet.
‘I can take the wet things off.’ But her fingers wouldn’t work.
He brushed them aside and stripped her to her underwear and wrapped her in one of the towels. He took care only to let her feel efficiency in his touch, though he hated the knowledge of her chilled skin beneath his fingers as he helped her.
Brent took her into the bathroom and set her in the shower and adjusted it to slowly get her thawed out. She gritted her teeth against even the lukewarm water at first, but slowly she warmed up.
‘Your hands are cold. You must be frozen yourself.’ She clasped his hands to stop his movements where he’d been guiding the shower spray over her back and arms. ‘Let me get out and you can get in.’
He searched her face for long moments. She had colour in her skin again, a soft flush in her cheeks that may have been from the warm shower or from the intimacy of what they were doing. Brent didn’t know which, but the thought lodged in his mind and he became aware then of exactly how intimate this was.
To be bathing her, even if he’d left her in her underwear. Her beautiful body was still revealed.
‘I don’t need a shower. I dressed for the conditions.’ Yes, his hands and feet were chilled but a few minutes in front of the heater would fix that. ‘Come out and I’ll dry you off.’
She submitted meekly enough to being towelled mostly dry and then she took the towel out of his hands and tucked it around herself and said, ‘I hope you have some pyjamas here or something because I’m not staying in this wet underwear.’
And she said it firmly enough that some of his tension and worry about her eased. Some of it.
‘Right.’ He wheeled about and went to his room, ransacked it for something suitable, brought her a pair of drawstring sweat pants, boxers and a flannelette shirt and a thick cable-knit jumper and two pairs of socks. ‘Do you need help to dress?’
‘No, Brent. Really, I’m fine.’ She half pushed him out of the bathroom and closed the door in his face.
Tension built in the base of Brent’s neck then. He didn’t have the capacity to control it right now. He submitted to the twitchiness and the obsessiveness as he changed into dry clothes himself and then paced the living room floor and told himself that now was the time to back off. To pull this back somehow.
The problem was he had a snowball’s chance in hell of doing that. To quote the weather and the drive of absolute need inside him right now…
Fiona emerged from the bathroom just as he turned to pace the length of the floor again.
Instead, he froze in the centre of the room. She looked so beautiful in the borrowed clothes with her face shiny from the shower. She looked healthy, strong enough to fight off any after-effects of being thoroughly chilled.
She also looked embarrassed and there was something in the backs of her eyes…‘I’m sorry you needed to rescue me, but I’m glad you did. I don’t know if I’d have been able to make it out on my own. I admit I was starting to get really scared, and I’d left my mobile in the car. That was a huge mistake.’
‘You couldn’t have known the weather would turn.’ He explained why he hadn’t known of her plans sooner. Almost, he could tell himself that discussion led them back to a more work-related basis.
Except it didn’t feel work-like to want to pull her into his arms and never let her go. ‘I shouldn’t have walked away this morning, and I didn’t do much rescuing just now. I just got in the truck and got on that trail and prayed you’d stay safe until I found you.’
‘And put me through the shower when we got back here.’ This time she dropped her gaze, didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I should have done that myself. You didn’t need to see me. I know my body is larger—’
‘I’ve seen you.’ Every beautiful part of her. ‘Fiona, you shouldn’t ever feel—’
‘We should focus on what happened today. I’m so sorry, Brent.’ She tipped up her chin as though a brave smile was as necessary as a change of subject.
He wasn’t sure which topic concerned her the most. Getting caught in such dangerous weather or the topic of her appeal. Maybe he should let that issue go, but how could he when he needed her to understand how beautiful he found her? ‘Don’t ever think you’re less than completely—’
‘I’ve caused you a lot of trouble.’ She’d heard him. Her gaze admitted that, but it equally told him she didn’t want to revisit how he might have formed his opinions. ‘And all because I didn’t stop to think I should get a weather report before I headed onto that trail. I wondered why it was completely deserted, but the solitude suited me and I didn’t think…’
‘How could you have known?’ Brent left the other topic for the time being and focused on reassuring her.
He drew a deep breath and realised he was running his fingers repeatedly over the cable pattern on the shoulder of the jumper he’d loaned her. How long had he been doing that without so much as a by your leave?
Brent dropped his hand away.
And Fiona moved towards the door of the house. ‘You have chains and four-wheel drive. The snow has stopped falling. It can’t be more than six inches deep. We should get back to Sydney. I’ve caused enough trouble and I want to get back to my work.’
To forget all about them? Wasn’t that the conclusion he’d come to eventually too? So why did his chest ache as though something sharp had been driven through it?
‘We’ll go.’ There was no reason to stay on.
Brent turned off the heater and led the way to the door. ‘Your car will have to stay where it is. It can be collected for you.’
‘I appreciate that.’ Fiona didn’t argue with Brent. Her car didn’t have four-wheel drive or chains on it. And she wanted to get back to the city.
So they went.
Fiona settled into her seat and pretended to sleep.
Brent might want to reassure her, but that made no difference to the fact that she loved him and he didn’t return those feelings.
Well, she had survived today. She would regroup and survive whatever else was ahead of her, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘DO YOU WANT to tell me what’s wrong with you, or are you going to just keep snarling at everyone who moves until you get it out of your system that way?’ Linc tossed the question Brent’s way while Alex turned his back at the barbecue and focused on cooking the bacon and eggs.
Brent rammed his hand through his hair and started to compulsively straighten everything on the table. It was Saturday morning. They were outdoors in the courtyard area of their warehouse home preparing a cooked breakfast to share.
Yes, it was somewhat cold this crisp morning. Yes, his brothers hadn’t entirely expected him to bang
on their doors and demand they come out and eat breakfast with him.
Brent hadn’t cared. He’d wanted to eat out here where he didn’t feel stifled and unable to breathe, and…he’d wanted Alex and Linc’s company while he did it.
His brothers had looked at his face, donned jackets and said very little one way or the other.
Until now.
And Brent had deserved Linc’s rebuke.
‘I’m sorry, Alex.’ When Alex turned his head, Brent met his brother’s gaze and went on. ‘Your company business is yours to run as you please. I’ve got no right to shove my opinions down your throat or say you don’t know what you’re doing. Obviously you do. I don’t know why I ever got started on that.’
‘If I thought your attitude was about me just now we’d have a problem, but I don’t think that outburst had anything to do with me.’ Alex put the cooked eggs and bacon onto the platter and carried them to the table. His gaze was shrewd, too knowing. ‘I’d just like to know what it was about. Are you well? If your condition is causing problems—’
‘Yes. We both want to know the answer to that, Brent.’ Linc joined them there at the same time.
Both brothers stared at the plates, condiments and cutlery lined up like soldiers right along the centre length of the table.
‘You haven’t done that with the table stuff since that time in the orphanage when we were about eight years old.’ Linc shook his head. ‘What’s going on, Brent? Do we need to be worried about you?’
Both older brothers had borne the strap over that performance at the orphanage because Linc hadn’t let Brent take responsibility for it, had said they’d done it together, that they’d made up a game to entertain themselves.
Alex had been too young then. They’d all been too young, damn it. To be abandoned the way they had been, in Brent’s case by a man who was no man at all, because what kind of man dumped his child that way and never looked back?
