“I would want to pay rent, Miki.”
“Listen, you work here for food. Let’s just add the room too, that way I won’t feel so bad taking advantage of you. Besides, options are kind of limited.”
Thea sighed and then nodded. “All right, thank you, Miki.”
The other woman actually squealed a little before moving away to tell all the patrons Thea’s new living situations. Everyone congratulated her and Miki treated them all to a round of scotch. Thea silently thought it was a good thing there were only six people left in the restaurant.
She waited for Paden to show, but he never came.
She tried to hide her disappointment, but she didn’t know if she fooled Miki’s sharp gaze. The next day she packed up and moved out of the hotel, just in time to avoid the storm. The warm weather disappeared as a cold front moved in. Hank’s room was small but comfortable. Miki changed the sheets and cleaned it up for her arrival. The bed was a twin with a wooden headboard that had one shelf built into it. The retro brown shag carpet had gold weaving throughout. Wood paneling rounded out the seventies vibe.
Thea didn’t mind the décor and it didn’t take long to unpack her suitcase. She took out only the essentials and left much of it behind. She hated that she’d have to lug all this stuff back to Malibu. In fact she hated that she’d have to go back to Malibu at all, but she didn’t have an excuse to stay.
She waited that night, but again, Paden failed to arrive.
By the third day, the storm had fizzed away, leaving another heaping of snow in River Ice. Patrons still came in, piling their show shoes on top of each other. She absolutely loved the chatter of the room, making sure each cup remained full or bringing out plates of food when asked.
That night, after Miki closed the restaurant and Paden still hadn’t shown up, Thea decided to go to him.
“Miki,” she called.
Miki came from the back, washing up the rest of the dishes. “Yes?”
“Where can I rent a snowmobile?”
“Why do you need one?”
Thea bit her lower lip. “Because I, um, want to visit Paden. I’m worried about him.”
Miki sighed. “Honey, it’s probably not a good idea to set your heart on Paden Winters.”
“Set my heart?” Thea scoffed. “No way. I’m just, you know, he, uh, cut his arm and I was worried about, you know, healing.”
Miki gave her a sad smile. “You are such a terrible liar. Do you even know how to drive a snowmobile?”
“I know how to use a jet ski.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“I wouldn’t drive a snowmobile if I wasn’t confident I could do it,” Thea said softly.
Miki studied her for a long moment. Then she reached behind her into the kitchen doorway to grab some keys. “Here,” she said, tossing them to Thea. “Around back is the garage, use Hank’s snowmobile for now. It’s the grey one, goggles are on the handlebars.”
“Thanks! And how-”
“Down the street,” Miki said, answering the question before Thea even finished asking it. “As it curves back to the right to come into town, make a left and follow that street about two miles. His house is at the end on the left.”
Thea smiled widely and hurried over to bundle up.
“Thanks, Miki.”
“No worries.”
Thea quickly hugged the other woman and then hurried out the door. It only took a few false starts and one nose dive into a snowbank before she caught onto driving the machine, but as she turned onto Paden’s road a sense of adventure overtook her. It had been so long since she’d felt the need to be intrepid that the thrill literally caused a little high-pitch giggle to escape.
The road wasn’t exactly straight; it weaved its way over the land, up hills and around trees. The path was pretty much marked by the indented snow, indicating where a vehicle had traveled over and over on it. The generator lights of the town were behind her, keeping her navigation on target as she headed for the National Forest line. The sign had ice hanging sideways on the pole, indicating which way the wind had blown it, but at least she knew where to look for Paden’s house.
It wasn’t hard to miss, however, not only because of the shear massiveness of the structure but also because the two stories of windows lighted from within. She pulled the snowmobile over and headed for the front door, holding carefully on the railing as she traversed the stairs.
At first her knocks went unheeded, so she banged harder. The door was abruptly opened by a disheveled Paden, hair sticking up and unshaved, who only blinked at her a few times, as if testing if she was a figment of his imagination.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, trying hard to keep her jaw from shivering, “it’s cold out here.”
He didn’t say anything as he stepped back, closing the door with a solid thump behind her.
The room she was in was empty, except for a blazing fireplace. Overhead was a loft area with stairs off the left behind a glass door. She couldn’t see what was up there but lights blazed blindingly. The empty front room extended into a large modern kitchen, with a huge island and open floor plan that segued into the dining room. A hallway extended past that, with several closed doors beyond that.
“This house is beautiful. Did you design this home yourself?” she asked.
“I picked out the design and it was built for me. I’m not much of a decorator, as you can see,” he replied, waving his hand toward the great room.
“You work upstairs?”
He nodded.
As the warmth of the fire and the house seeped into her, she slowly took off her coat, gloves, scarf and goggles.
“What are you doing here, Thea? And whose snowmobile is that?”
“Miki let me borrow Hank’s. I wanted to check on you, since you’ve not been around in three days. I was, um, a little worried.”
He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. His shirt sleeve was rolled up and she noticed the bandage on his arm was gone. There was a long red line on his forearm scabbed over. It matched other very faint lines a little higher up.
“I’m fine. I’ve just been working on a deadline.”
She blinked and brought her eyes up to meet his gaze. “Oh! I didn’t realize. Well, I guess I should, um, go?”
He raised an eyebrow to her question. “You shouldn’t have come here. I built this place for solitude.”
That confused her. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want solitude? It’s awful. It sucks all the happiness from your soul. It eats your sunshine.” She shivered, and not from the cold. “I hate being completely alone.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come to Alaska. This is the loneliest place on Earth.”
He turned away, leaving her in the foyer. Tension radiated from his body. Thea wondered what had driven him to want the prison she, herself, was clawing to get out of.
“But this isn’t the loneliest place on Earth,” she said. He paused, but kept his back to her. “There may not be a sprawling metropolis, but you can be alone in a room full of people. In LA, I would’ve never sat in a diner all day talking with people, and now I know Toothless Jim and Miki, and all the rest. This community is stronger together than anything I’ve ever known. Surely you recognize that. If you wanted loneliness, then you should’ve moved to LA.”
He finally turned around. Confusion blanketed his face. “Don’t.”
Thea took a step closer. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t make me feel anything, Thea”
She took another step closer. She was a moth and he was the flame. “I don’t understand. I lost everything, and the solitude was killing me, so tell me why you would willingly choose to keep everyone at bay.”
He came closer, until she had to look up into his eyes. Darkness lurked in the pale orbs. Then all of a sudden, he pulled her into his arms to lean his cheek against the top of her head. Thea’s heart jumped into overdrive as she lifted her arms to hug him back. She closed her eye
s.
“You shouldn’t worry about me, Thea.”
“Don’t you like someone worrying about you?”
He was silent for a moment. “No.”
“I don’t believe that,” she whispered. “I can’t believe any person would willingly isolate themself.”
He pulled away to stare at her. His fingers swept away some stray hair from her cheek, his fingertips brushing lightly in soft caresses. She leaned into his touch, wanting more. Wanting so much more of him than mere featherlike strokes. But the moment was lost as he dropped his hand and turned away to go into the kitchen. Thea took a deep breath to calm herself before following him and sitting on one of the barstools at the island. He pulled a beer from the refrigerator and held another out to her with an eyebrow raised. She shook her head. He put it back then popped the top on his and leaned a hip against the counter.
“You want to know why I’m here?”
“Yes.”
“First you should know, I’m from Miami.”
She blinked, confused by the randomness of the answer to a question she had forgotten she asked. “Oh, okay. I hadn’t pictured you from Florida.”
“People can’t help where they’re born,” he replied in a cryptic, cutting tone. He gave her a bitter slant of a smile. “You grew up in LA?”
“In Malibu.”
“And what did you do in Malibu?”
“I was an elementary substitute teacher, waiting until I could get hired in the school district.”
“You didn’t want to stay for that?”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t continue after…well, after.”
“After your family died? Tell me about that. Tell me why their death made you come here.”
Thea opened her mouth to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out. What could she say that didn’t involve her breaking down? She wanted to block out any remembrance of that night, to stick her head in the sand. Yet, here she was, asking the same from him, and she got it. She understood his reluctance. They both had something traumatic in their lives that had shredded their souls, and they had both run to this remote part of the world to hide and forget.
Perhaps that wasn’t the answer. Her therapist had told her that true healing wouldn’t be possible until the grief settled. Thea didn’t want to hold onto the grief. Her family would never be able to rest in peace if they knew she wished she had died that night too.
“They died in a car accident,” she finally said, letting the sorrow flow through her. “I was the only survivor, and…I don’t know why I was spared. You know? Why couldn’t I die with them instead of being forced to figure out how to go on without them?”
The tears threatened to rise up, but she took a deep breath and rapidly blinked a few times to keep them at bay. Paden sat the can of beer to the side and walked around the island to her. When he reached her he hooked his hands under her arms and urged her to sit on the counter top before he maneuvered himself between her thighs.
“Those are the questions, aren’t they?” he murmured. “Why me? Why did this have to happen? It sucks.”
“You too?”
He nodded. He settled against her and Thea tentatively reached to hold onto his shoulders. Paden didn’t pull back or flinch away, like before. Sexual excitement grew, the air between them changing. Her heart thudded in expectation, and she bit her lower lip. His gaze lowered, and she gasped as his hands sank into her hair to tilt her upward so her mouth met his.
His lips crushed hers, his tongue sweeping in to capture hers. It wasn’t a sweet kiss, or even a nice kiss. It was raw. It was deep and wet and filled with need.
A tad too hot; a bit too intense.
Like a shot of dark spiced rum.
She kissed him back.
Putting a little push into it, she attacked his lips, giving back what he gave to her. The sudden flare of her enthusiasm seemed to surprise him. Paden pulled back to look at her once more, his eyes now dark with passion.
She licked her lips and he gave a strangled groan before pulling her close, bending her slightly backward until her breasts pushed into his chest. He ran one hand over her shirt buttons, quickly slipping them open. The flannel material parted, showing her thermal under top. Tugging it free from her pants, he ran his fingertips over her skin. Her belly quivered from his skimming touch, lifting the material as his fingers searched for her breasts. And when they finally found them, tweaking the nipples into hard pebbles, his mouth quickly followed, sucking first the right one and then the left, leaving her panting for more.
By this point she was laying on the counter with her legs wrapped around his waist. She could feel him throbbing in the juncture of her thighs, rubbing against the rough material. Even through layers his heat drew her in. It was nothing short of exquisite torture, wanting him closer yet being restricted by the clothing. She started tugging at the bottom of his shirt, needing to feel his skin against hers. Yet as soon as her knuckle grazed his stomach, Paden tore himself away from her. Dazed, she lay there for a moment uncomprehending as he panted, his eyes wide with panic.
“Get out of here!” he yelled at her. “Go!”
That woke her up enough from her sexual euphoria to sit up, tugging her clothes back down as heat engulfed her face.
“Paden? What’s wrong?”
“Didn’t you hear me? Get out of here!” he snarled. The tone frightened her. She scampered off the counter and started backing away from him.
But he apparently had no desire to touch her again. Instead he pushed past her into the front room to grab her coat, flinging it at her.
“Go on!” he repeated. “Go, Panthea.”
He stormed away from her, heading down the hallway, past the kitchen and into one of the back rooms where he slammed the door shut. Left alone, the abruptness of his temper left her a bit shell shocked and wondering what the hell just happened.
She redressed, her hands trembling. She bundled up for the cold night air and took one last look at Paden’s beautiful home, then closed the door behind her. As she drove back to Miki’s place, the tears finally fell, turning to ice upon her face.
Chapter Twelve
He didn’t show the next night again but this time Thea didn’t care. She couldn’t understand him, one minute running hot the next minute cold as ice. She was tired of thinking about him and wished there was a magic switch she could turn in her brain to flip it off. She didn’t want to care for him either.
And it was obvious that he was hurting from something. A man didn’t become all hot and bothered then turn it off abruptly, not when a sure thing slapped him in the face.
“Miki,” she asked that evening as they were closing up the restaurant. “Is there internet here?”
“In the Suinnak?”
Thea nodded. “Or anywhere in River Ice.”
“Of course. I have it in the apartment. You can borrow mine.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Thea, I really don’t think it’s wise thinking about him. He’s not…stable.”
“Yeah,” Thea muttered. “I figured that out. This is just curiosity. Nothing more.”
That evening she planted herself in front of Miki’s old PC and waited as the computer booted up. She nibbled on her nail, wondering if she would find anything, and then half fearing what it was she would discover. She wasn’t dumb. Sometimes it was best to let the past lay.
She pulled up a search engine and typed Paden’s name. His graphic novels came up, beautiful covers depicting half dressed women and a hero who was not only super hot but also disfigured, making him forever alone.
She lingered over that detail, mesmerized by the concept of disfigured. Was it a metaphor? Or something more on the nose? Was a part of his body disfigured, or was it strictly emotional? She knew, without any doubt that if she asked him to describe himself, he would specifically say that word. As she shut down the computer, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever get a chance to figure it all out.
*****
*
Paden walked into Suinnak’s the next night, making her stop in mid-step. It was near closing time and the usual den of patrons had slowly started to trickle out, leaving only two customers behind. Instead of taking his customary seat at his table, he walked right up to Thea and planted himself in front of her.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he stated in a very low tone.
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” she replied. “If you want your dinner then sit down and Miki can get it for you.”
She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm. She hated that as soon as he touched her, tingling sensations shot up her arm. As he leaned into her, causing his breath to fan across her face, his nearness caused her heart to thump in her chest.
“Please, Thea,” he said.
She met his gaze. Within the green depths something dark flitted through his eyes and it took Thea a few minutes to realize he was nervous.
“Miki,” she called out. “Do you mind if I leave early?”
“Are you sure?” Miki asked, looking back and forth.
Thea nodded.
“All right. You two okay?”
“Just ducky,” Thea mumbled, taking off her apron. She frowned, as if remembering something. “Hang on, I have to get something.”
She disappeared for a few minutes, rushing out the kitchen door to the back that led to the stairs to the apartment above. When she came back down a moment later, Paden waited with her coat. She slipped on her goggles as he led her to his snowmobile and held tightly as he sped through the night toward his home.
The fire was banked inside the house and it only took a few strokes to have it blazing with warmth. She took off her gear and laid it on the floor since there was no place to hang anything and warmed her hands in front of the fire.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked her, and she could hear the slight nervousness in his tone.
She shook her head no. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair and went into the kitchen. A few minutes later he brought out two chairs for them to sit on.
“Thank you,” he said to her as he watched her sit down.
“For what?”
Love Story for a Snow Princess Page 6
