A Cowboy in Disguise (6 page)

“Dinner is served,” he announced with a sweeping gesture across the little table.

Alexandra limped over to her chair. Scott had managed to pull together a meal of hot cream of chicken soup, crackers, beef jerky and semi-burnt baked potatoes. She suspected he didn’t often visit his own kitchen, so this was a valiant effort.

They went over presentation strategies again until reading by firelight started to strain their eyes, and then Alexandra retired to her room. She was glad for the retreat to solitude. With every turn of the page, she had watched Scott’s arm muscles play underneath the very masculine long underwear top he had on. More than once she’d had to look away in hopes he hadn’t noticed her intense awareness of him.

She heard Scott stoke the fire once more and then walk back toward his own room. He stopped outside her bedroom door and panicked anticipation rushed through her. At last he turned away, but the situation was no better. He slept just on the other side of a single, thin wall. She ran her hand along the paneling and on a whim, knocked on it lightly with her knuckles. Her hand flew to her mouth in absolute horror.

Scott reappeared in the faint glow of the firelight coming in through her open door. “Everything okay?”

“Yes. Just hit the wall by accident,” she called out, pulling the blankets up tighter under her chin. He looked amazing silhouetted in the doorway, tall and rugged as if he belonged in a cabin more than he ever could in an office. She wondered what he slept in at night and then pushed that thought quickly out of her head along with all the rest.

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” he asked with a deep, quiet voice that carried to her through the near darkness. He hadn’t moved from the doorway.

“Not if you keep standing there talking to me,” she answered. Heaven help her, even his voice was sexy.

Scott’s hand lingered on the doorframe. “If you object so much to me standing here, I can change that.”

Was his voice huskier than usual? Could he actually be thinking of coming into her bedroom? Her emotions spun, but all that came out of her mouth was, “I was objecting to the talking part.”

Now Alexandra could have slapped herself. She knew her phrasing had opened her up wide for a lowbrow innuendo something to the effect of, “Well, baby, who said we needed to talk.”

But Scott didn’t sink to the occasion. “Good night, Alex.”

His silhouette left the doorway and Alexandra soon heard him snuggle under his own down comforter as the bed frame creaked under his weight. She felt a pang of regret even though she convinced herself she had no real reason to. Someday. Yes, maybe someday she could come back to a cabin like this with a husband and children. Someday when there was more to life than work. Down comforters just weren’t meant to snuggle up in alone. Once again, she was tired all the way to the core.

•

Alexandra hobbled into the living room the next morning to find Scott already up and digging around the cabinets, already thinking of breakfast. She noticed he’d showered, but had apparently decided not to shave—and it suited him. There wasn’t much that didn’t suit him—even stubble and long underwear.

“
Mornin
’,” he called out. “I’ve got tea, canned peaches and oatmeal. Think you can choke that down?”

“Sounds great,” she said as she eased herself onto a kitchen chair. “I’m going to get spoiled if I don’t watch out.”

“How’s the ankle?”

“Better. Maybe a little more purple, but I’ll definitely live through it.”

He finished putting food in front of her. “I radioed down to the hotel earlier this morning. We’re stuck up here at least another day. They’re not plowing until tomorrow at the soonest.”

“I think we can dig out the front door today. Most of the snow is along the side of cabin and the blizzard stopped, so I’ll bet we can get it open.”

“It would be great to get outside into the fresh air again.” He flashed her a dazzling smile, teeth looking whiter than usual against his dark new stubble.

Alexandra had been right—they could dig out. After breakfast, they put on their gloves and were slowly able to shove away the snow blocking the door until they could push it open just wide enough to slip through. To one side of the cabin and down the road, a bank of snow several feet high stood as testimony to the avalanche from the day before. But on the other side, the snow was shallow enough that they could trudge through it.

“What if
Zellez
is using this time to seal the deal?” she asked once they were outside.

“It’s beyond our control.”

The sun was bright in a clear blue sky and the trees on the mountains stood still without a breeze when Alexandra and Scott finally squeezed through the door. The day was glorious with the sunlight bouncing off flawless hills of snow, lighting them up like a million tiny diamonds.

“Just think,” he said, “there’s no one around for miles and all of this is ours for a day.” Scott stood with his hands on his hips looking up at the mountains. He wore a thick black ski jacket with blue piping and a heavy pair of boots coordinated to match the jacket. He had definitely packed for the location better than Alexandra had thought to.

“It may be all ours, but what do we do with it?” Alexandra peered out from inside the fur-lined hood of her white coat. A snowflake or two settled onto her long lashes and melted. She breathed in deeply of the clean air and started to say something else to Scott.

From out of nowhere, a lump of snow hit her on the side of the head. “Hey!” she yelled, “no fair.” She bent down to pack a snowball of her own when another struck her on the backside. “This is war,” she declared. Alexandra hurled a well-packed ball at Scott, hitting him squarely in the chest.

“You throw like a girl,” he taunted as he threw another snowball at her and missed.

“Oh yeah? At least I have the excuse of actually being a girl—unlike some people I know.” She let two more snowballs sail and watched with great satisfaction as one struck Scott on top of his head and disintegrated into powder, some of which slid down into the neck of his coat.

Scott jumped around trying to shake the freezing snow out of his coat before it melted down his back. “Time out,” he pleaded as another snowball pelted him the face.

Alexandra put her hand over her mouth and hobbled quickly over to him. “Are you all right?”

As she examined him, he swung around with a hidden handful of the white stuff and smeared it solidly in Alexandra’s face.

“Rat,” she started to say and pushed him playfully in the chest with one hand as she wiped the snow away with the other. But her push didn’t move Scott—it only served to propel her own body backward on the slick surface, and with her already injured ankle, she began to lose balance.

As if in slow motion, her feet started to go out from under her. Scott reached out to steady her, but his own feet slid away from him as she grabbed onto his arm and pulled him down with her into the snow.

Alexandra’s hood had fallen back from her face and her skin was rosy from the cold. Her auburn hair flowed freely, framing her face in damp waves. Her pants were miserably soaked through with melting snow, and when Scott sat up in the snow beside her, she noticed his were, too.

“I win,” Alexandra said.

“What do you mean? I got the last point.”

“Point?” she countered. “If we’re talking points here, I got more of them. You missed most of the time.”

“You’re a smaller target,” he argued.

“You used sneak attacks.”

Alexandra’s voice trailed off as she suddenly realized how closely they were sitting together and how intensely Scott was watching her.

His gaze met hers and held it as he removed his gloves and gently brushed a lump of snow out of her damp hair. Slowly he leaned toward her, his lips perilously close to hers. Anticipation glittered in his eyes and Alex knew she must look the same as him.

Her lips, red from the cold, parted as her breath caught. He pressed his lips tentatively against hers in a sweet, soft kiss full of restraint as he waited for some sign of how she might react. Would she slap him? Yell at him? Sue him? She didn’t even know.

This was truly forbidden. If anyone suspected two executives were fooling around, the rumors would tear their careers apart. She hadn’t been able to concentrate on the presentation as it was—her thoughts had been saturated with Scott. If only she could push him away, tell him no, talk to him in that excessively polite way of hers.

Alexandra’s breath caught as Scott’s lips found hers. She felt a current pass between them, erasing all other sensations. She immediately missed the taste of his breath, sweet and warm, as his lips left hers.

Scott rested his forehead against hers. “This is a bad idea.” He breathed. His lips brushed against hers as he spoke. “We shouldn’t even start this.”

Somewhere, his words reached her. This was no game. This was her career, her reputation, her livelihood on the line. Inspired by self-preservation, a fleeting memory of Duncan and her last bit of self-restraint, Alexandra quickly pulled away.

“You’re right. I can’t get involved with you. And you can’t get involved with me.” She stood and limped as fast as she could back inside the cabin.

They each retreated awkwardly to their rooms without another word. It had only been a kiss, Alexandra rationalized. That was all it was. Nothing for two adults to panic over. No damage done. Alexandra’s senses slowly began to come back to her as the memory of his kiss faded from her lips.

She closed her eyes and relived his lips caressing hers so very briefly. She imagined each of strong features from his straight nose to his heavy eyebrows and back down to his square chin. She couldn’t think of a single thing she would change about his handsome face.

Still wrapped in a bubble of emotion, Alexandra slowly began to change clothes. Her legs were frozen and she’d worn wet clothes for too long in the snow. Her legs looked mottled and pink as she tried to warm herself by jogging in place. She thought she could see her breath in the air inside her bedroom. The blue skies only meant clearer weather, and without a warming cloud cover, the freeze would set in harder. Already the temperature was dropping.

She wrapped her comforter around herself and walked into the living room. Scott was already in front of the fireplace.

“Think we can recover?” he asked as she sat down beside him.

“We’re grownups, right?” She smiled. “I mean, we both know it’s career suicide getting involved with someone on the job.”

“Right. And we just got caught up in the moment. It’s a very romantic place, after all.”

Alexandra let out a breath of relief and they fell silent for several moments. “Are you going to sleep out here tonight?” she asked.

“The bedrooms are freezing. I think we ought to set up camp out here where it’s warm, don’t you?”

“Makes sense. Look, Scott. I worked hard to get where I am. And I haven’t had very good luck in the trust department with men.”

“I know what you mean about relationships and trust. Boy do I ever.” Scott laughed again and the tension between them broke. “Why don’t we just try to make the best out of the time we have here? We’ll pretend it’s a paid holiday or something.”

They spent a quiet evening reading while there was light enough. Alexandra knew Scott was acutely aware of her. She certainly knew every move
he
made in the small cabin. Just when she thought she’d buried her attraction to the most inaccessible corners of her mind, all it took was a single movement from him to bring it all rushing back.

It was the way the muscles in his shoulders worked when he threw a piece of wood on the fire. It was that intriguing slant at the corners of those amazing blue eyes. It was his body heat, which she swore she could feel even through her blanket. In a normal situation, she would have gone for a long walk, done anything to avoid thinking of him. But this wasn’t exactly a normal situation.

He looked up at her from his book. She felt his gaze before she saw it.

“What?”

“When did your parents die?” he asked.

“Kind of personal, isn’t that?”

He waited as she put the book down and tapped the cover with a long glossy fingernail for a moment.

“I was in the second grade. I remember them—at least I have that.”

“Siblings?”

“No one. I have friends, mostly Mary. But I’m the one she falls back on when the chips are down, not the other way around.”