Sugar And Spice (14 page)

Holding the phone up near the window, in the twilight of early evening, she turned it on. She had deliberately turned it off when she left home a few hours ago. She hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, hadn’t wanted her mother or her sister trying to persuade her to return home. As soon as her cell phone came on, she started to hit the emergency number, then stopped. What if she didn’t phone for help?

What if she stayed right here? How long did it take a person to freeze to death?

Damn it, Katie, you can’t think that way. Darrell would be so disappointed in you for even considering suicide. That knowledge was the single reason she hadn’t done anything foolish in the weeks and months following Darrell’s death.

Katie hit the preprogrammed emergency number and waited for a response. Nothing! She checked to see if she had coverage this high up in the mountains. She did. Why hadn’t the call gone through?

A repetitive beep alerted her that her battery was low. Great. Just great. She couldn’t call for help, so that left her with only one alternative. She had to get out of the car, climb up the embankment, and try to find help.

Think. Had she seen any cabins in the past few miles? She wasn’t sure. By the time she had left downtown Gatlinburg, it was already snowing to beat the band. The cabin she’d rented, for a two-week stay that would save her from her well-meaning family during the holidays, was a mountaintop retreat.

She was about three-fourths of the way there, or she had been before the wreck. If she had driven by any cabins in the past few miles, it was unlikely she could have seen them because of the heavy snowfall. If she hadn’t been so damned and determined to escape at all costs, she might have realized the narrow, hazardous mountain road was becoming icy and therefore dangerous.

She had one escape route from inside the Mustang—her driver’s side door. The other door was totally smashed in against the tree. After unlocking the door, she grasped the handle. To her amazement, the door opened, but only partially. When she pushed on the door, a scraping sound alerted her that the door was hung on something. Glancing outside, she saw nothing but white, as if the world was covered in an enormous frosted blanket. Realizing the door was caught on a slanted section of the ground, she used her shoulder, shoving as hard as she could. The door gave way only a few inches, but maybe it was enough for her to squeeze through, if she held her breath.

After she yanked her purse off the floorboard and stuck her cell phone back inside, she tossed the purse out the door, then slipped through the tight opening. Her breasts raked against the door’s edge, not painfully but uncomfortably. Once free from the car, Katie lost her balance immediately, fell into the snow, and started tumbling down the embankment. Grasping at thin air, she kept rolling but finally caught hold of what she assumed was either a very low tree limb or a bush of some sort. Breaking her free fall, she held on tightly and gasped for air. She lay there shivering, drenched through and through by the fresh, wet snow.

How could she have been stupid enough to get out of the car and leave behind her coat, cap, and gloves? Thank goodness she’d worn a heavy sweater over her blouse. But her hands were already like ice.

Turning onto her back, Katie stared straight up at the grayish white sky. Snowflakes fell in glistening abundance. Knowing she had no other choice, Katie tried to stand, but she kept slipping because of the ice beneath the snow. Finally she gave up and began climbing up the hill, grasping anything in her path she could use as leverage.

Crack. Snap. Chink.

Katie stopped and listened. What was that odd sound? Without warning, a small, bare tree limb, laden with ice, broke off a nearby tree and, like a sharp spear, pierced through the snow and into the ice-covered ground. Dear Lord, she was surrounded by trees, each bearing deadly branches that might break and stab their icy tips into her.

Crawling faster in an effort to escape the killer trees, Katie passed by her car, stopping only long enough to grab the strap of her shoulder bag and drag it along behind her on her climb up the ravine. Before she reached the road above, two more small limbs broke off a nearby tree and pierced the frozen ground, one missing her by a few feet, another by mere inches.

Finally, she made her way to the road, but not before she fell backward at least three times, slipping and sliding because of the ice. Once she reached the roadside, she struggled to stand, wishing she could brace herself against a tree, but thought better of that idea. Damp, shivering cold, and more than a little frightened, Katie staggered out into the middle of the road.

Mack MacKinnon’s SUV crawled slowly up the mountain road. If he hadn’t been almost out of supplies, he wouldn’t have risked the trip into Gatlinburg, but he’d had no choice. It had been stupid of him to let his supplies run so low, but he hated like the devil to go into town, to have to interact with other people, so he put off trips to the grocery store as long as possible. He had thought he could make it there and back before the worst of the storm hit, but the predicted storm had moved in a lot quicker than the weathermen thought, the freezing ice a forerunner of the heavy snow. The ice had hit while he’d been in the supermarket, so he’d come outside to discover that the weather had turned deadly. After packing away a two-week supply of groceries in the back of his nondescript black Jeep, he’d headed home. What usually took him less than twenty minutes was going to take a good hour at the rate he was going. But better to be safe than sorry. Within minutes of pulling out of the supermarket parking lot, he’d turned on his headlights. The farther he went up the mountain, the more obscured the visibility through the windshield became.

It was a good thing he’d made Destry come inside before he left; otherwise the old Lab/collie mix-breed dog would be frozen solid by now. When he’d first bought a cabin up in the mountains eighteen months ago, he’d wanted to be alone, thought he needed complete solitude. Then after six months, this mongrel mutt, looking like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, had shown up on his doorstep. Mack had fed him, and that had been that for both of them. Within a few days, the dog was his. He’d named the flea-bitten pooch Destry, after the old western movie Destry Rides Again, one of his favorites.

Except for his dog, Mack still preferred being alone, liking the solitude and serenity of the mountains.

That’s why he had paid a small fortune to buy several acres that surrounded his cabin. Luckily, he’d been saving his money for the past fifteen years, which now allowed him the luxury of not working. At least not at a regular nine-to-five job. He hadn’t planned on retiring from the army quite so soon, but when his last Ranger assignment had ended in the deaths of half his men and his being critically wounded, he’d opted for early retirement after he recovered.

If he ever really recovered.

Physically, he’d never be 100 percent, but he could deal with a slight limp and ugly battle scars. What he didn’t want, didn’t need, and couldn’t endure was pity from well-meaning people. He was no damn hero. He’d been doing his job. Beginning and end of story.

Suddenly, a hazy figure appeared directly in front of Mack’s Jeep. In that first startling moment, he thought he was seeing things, but he eased down on the brakes all the same and brought the Jeep to a standstill in the middle of the road. Then he glared through the windshield, thinking surely that what he’d seen had been an illusion. But no, she was still standing there in the road, waving her hands frantically. Good God, what was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere?

Mack grabbed his fur-lined gloves off the passenger seat, put them on, and opened the door. Once outside, he slid his parka hood up over his head and marched toward the woman, who, though slipping and sliding, was apparently trying to make her way to him. He stopped and waited for her to come to him. No point in both of them skating around on the slick, snow-covered ice.

“Please, help me,” the woman called to him.

As she came nearer, he noticed she wasn’t wearing a coat, hat, or gloves. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and fresh snow glistened in her long, blond hair.

He glared at her, thinking she must be out of her mind. “What the hell are you doing—”

“I wrecked my car,” she told him as she approached. “It skidded off the side of the road. Over there.”

She indicated with a toss of her hand.

“Are you hurt?” He stared into a pair of panicked brown eyes.

“No, I don’t think so, but my car…I need to call a wrecker. My cell phone battery is dead and—”

“Lady, forget about your car for now. It’ll still be down there when this storm passes and the roads clear.”

“But you don’t understand about my car.” She stumbled when she reached him, either unsteady on her feet or slipping again on the ice.

When he grabbed her shoulders, intending only to steady her, she crumpled like a limp rag, falling against him. Damn! He eased her off his chest and shoved her backward. Noting her eyes were closed and she was unnaturally still, he gave her a gentle shake.

“Lady?”

No response.

He shook her a little harder. She moaned.

Shit! She’d passed out, either from injuries she suffered during the wreck or from exhaustion and exposure. Either way, he couldn’t leave her here, as much as he might have wished he could.

Sizing her up, he figured she was a lightweight, about five-four and maybe 125 tops, including her jeans, sweater, boots, and oversized shoulder bag. Doing what had to be done, he lifted her into his arms and carried her to his Jeep. The extra weight, light as it was, bared down on his bad leg, making his usual limp more severe. After managing to open the passenger door, he tumbled her inside and strapped her in, then shut the door and went around to get in on the other side.

Was she nuts, driving up the mountain in the middle of a snowstorm? Mack chuckled silently to himself.

He’d gotten caught in that same storm, hadn’t he? Maybe she’d thought she could beat the storm, just as he’d thought he could. But at least he knew how to man these treacherous mountain lanes, even with an inch of ice coating the asphalt. Apparently this woman had been driving too fast or simply hadn’t been able to control the slippery effects of driving on ice.

When Mack tossed the hood off his head, melting snow from the hood and parka scattered over him and into the backseat. He removed his gloves, restarted the engine, and eased the Jeep forward. Slowly.

Carefully.

What the hell was he going to do with this woman? He hadn’t had an overnight visitor, male or female, since he’d moved here, and if he had his way, he never would. He couldn’t leave her, and there was no way anybody could make it up the mountain now to retrieve her. So it looked like he was stuck with her, at least until the storm passed and the cleanup crew made it up to his cabin. That could be tomorrow or several days from now, depending on just how much snow fell overnight.

Every now and then, while he maneuvered his Jeep up the winding mountain path, which would soon turn from asphalt to gravel as he neared his place, Mack stole a quick glimpse of Sleeping Beauty. And she was a beauty. Her features were small, delicate, and feminine. Something basically male within him stirred to life just looking at her. No big deal, he told himself. Nothing to worry about. After all, he was a man and it wouldn’t be normal if he didn’t react to a pretty woman. Besides, it had been a long time since he’d had sex.

Cursing under his breath, Mack forced himself to concentrate solely on the task of getting home.

Just as he turned off on the gravel drive that led to his cabin, the woman stirred. She moaned. Her eyelids flickered.

“Are you awake?” he asked, his voice gruffer than he’d intended.

Her eyes popped wide open; she lurched forward, her body stopped from hitting the dashboard only by the tug of her seatbelt. “Where am I? What—” She gasped. “Oh God, I wrecked Darrell’s car. Did you call a wrecker to come get it?”

“Sit back and relax,” Mack told her.

“Did you call a wrecker? I have to make sure Darrell’s car is all right.”

“Lady, did you hit your head? You’re talking crazy worrying about a car when—”

“But it’s Darrell’s car,” she told him, a catch in her voice, almost a whimper.

“Who the hell is this Darrell and why is his car so damn important?” Mack didn’t have much patience when it came to pacifying other people’s nutty whims. He wasn’t the type of guy who found silliness cute in a woman.

Silence.

Had she passed out again?

He caught a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision, enough to make him take his eyes off the road for a split second. Oh great, she was crying. Not out-loud boo-hooing, but quiet, restrained tears that glistened on her eyelashes.

“Our first concern is making it to my cabin,” he said, ignoring her emotional state. “If you’re hurt, I’ll do my best to patch you up. You’ll need some rest, then later food.”

When he paused and she said nothing, he felt a sense of relief. He wasn’t good at small talk either.

The Jeep crawled along the icy, gravel lane leading to the overlook where his cabin nestled on the edge, giving him a spectacular view. The snow was coming down heavier; bigger flakes and occasionally an ice crystal battered the windshield.

“Here we are,” he told her when he pulled the Jeep to a stop in front of his cabin. “Let’s get you inside by the fire, then I’ll come back out and unload my supplies.”

When he turned to open his door, she reached across the console and grabbed his arm. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

“Yeah, sure.”

She squeezed his arm. “Darrell is my husband…was my husband.”

Mack stared at her. “Divorced?”

She shook her head. “He died.”

“Sorry.”

“He’d just bought the Mustang new a few months before…”

“Look, when the weather clears, I’ll get a wrecker up here to haul your husband’s car out of the ravine.”

“Thank you.” She squeezed his arm again.

“Come on, let’s get you inside.” Once again his voice was gruffer than he’d intended, but damn it all, her gentle touch had stirred something inside him, something he didn’t like. Sympathy for another human being? Attraction to a lovely woman?