Cabin Fever (13 page)

Jaws walks over and sits near my feet. I look down at him and try to smile. Unfortunately, the only thing I’m capable of right now is tears. “I think he’s gone, Jaws. What do you think about that?”

Jaws tilts his head and then stares at the cabinet in front of him. He looks about as sad as I feel.

I bend down and pick him up, telling myself I can move on with my life and pretend like I didn’t just drive a man out to his death in the snow.

Chapter Eighteen

I TRY TO IGNORE THE idea and images my brain is conjuring up of Jeremy freezing out in the snow somewhere, but as the sun goes down and its last rays are blocked out by more falling snow, I finally give up.

“Come on, Jaws, I need your help.” I have every bit of clothing I brought with me layered on my body and mittens over my gloves. “I just need to make sure he’s not lying out in the snow somewhere.”

I almost change my mind when I open the front door and the cold air hits me in the face. When I breathe in, the hairs inside my nose freeze. “Holy shit, it’s cold out here.”

Jaws takes off down the stairs, leaps from the bottom one, and promptly disappears into a pile of snow. All I can see is the hole where he fell into it.

By the time I get the door shut and run down the icy stairs after him, his nose is sticking out, but his entire face is white. He sneezes and sends flakes everywhere.

“Come on, little man.” I pull him out of the hole and adjust him in my arms. “I’ll carry you. You’re too tiny for this weather.”

We struggle through the snow, making very little progress. My thigh muscles are burning with every step. Talk about a workout.

“Jeremy!” I yell, my voice muffled by the echo-dampening, snow-covered trees around us. “Are you out here?!”

I’m only ten feet from the porch, but my rate of respiration makes it seem as if I’ve already run a quarter-mile. The bend in the driveway keeps me from seeing either of our vehicles, so I have to keep going.

“Jeremy! If you’re out here, I’m going to kill you!” I’m scared by my next thought: if he
is
out here I won’t need to kill him; he’ll already be dead from the cold. It spurs me on. My shoulders churn awkwardly as I try to stay upright and hold onto the dog at the same time.

“Jeremy! Answer me, would you?!”

I don’t remember hearing a motor starting up after he left. I pray the sounds were just hidden by the snow and that he’s long gone from here, sleeping in a motel bed with a beer by his head.
Just let him be alive, God, and I won’t bitch at him about his drinking anymore
.

After what seems like way too long, I’m finally at the driveway and the corner of my car is the first thing I see. There’s a thick blanket of snow covering the rest of it. Four more steps forward, and I can see that behind my car is a pickup truck, and its windows have steam on the inside.

“Oh, crap.” He didn’t leave. He passed out in there. Is it be warm enough to stave off frostbite? I have no idea, but I have my doubts.

I drop Jaws into the snow next to me and he disappears again. “Come on, Jaws, you have to walk on your own.” I put all my effort into moving my body through the path that Jeremy made earlier. Jaws unburies himself and follows in my footsteps, hopping like a rabbit.

“Jeremy!” I shout as I make my way toward his truck. “Jeremy! What are you doing, you idiot?!”

When I finally reach the driver’s side door, I bang on the window. “Jeremy! Are you okay in there?!”

He doesn’t answer, and I can’t see anything through the fogged up windows. Thankfully the door is unlocked. When I pull it towards me, a rush of warm, humid air hits me. And then a body follows. A very heavy body.

“Ooph!” I fall ass over teakettle, the weight of Jeremy’s body throwing me into the snow onto my back. Jaws jumps to the side just in time to keep from getting squashed.

“Holy shit, you’re heavy.” I wait for Jeremy to say something, but he’s completely silent.

Several things run through my head at the same time.
Dead? Suicide? Frozen? Passed out again?
I have no idea what his problem is, but at this point, I’m more worried about myself than him. If I don’t get his two-hundred pound body off me soon, I’m going to die out here. I can already feel the cold from the snow seeping in through the back of my coat and jeans.

“Get off me, you stupid, drunk jerk!”

I have one arm free, that’s it. I wave it around and have just enough arm-length to bat Jeremy’s arm with my puffy gloves. It does me absolutely no good at all.

“Jaws, bite him.” I look to my right and see little brown doggie eyes right there next to me, just inches away. “Bite his hand or his foot or something. Wake his stupid ass up.”

Jaws steps gingerly over the snow in my direction. I can hear the tiny crunch of his footsteps compacting the snowflakes together.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
It’s like listening to the theme song from the
Jaws
movie. I’m worried about the look in his eyes. Is that deviousness I see? Ack! Why did I name this crazy mutt after that man-eating shark? Was it foresight on my part?
Please, God, don’t let him eat me! I don’t want to suffer a slow, painful death-by-terrier!

“Not me, Jaws.
Jeremy
. Bite
Jeremy
.”

Jaws stops and sniffs at my face. Then he licks my cheek.

“Oh, God, no, not my face! I saw you licking your balls earlier! Gross!”

Jeremy moves and I struggle to get away from Jaws’s enthusiastic tongue bath. The mutt’s expression has gone from devious to joyous. I can read his thoughts like they’re being projected in subtitles on the snow:
A captive human face! How wonderful! What? Is it Christmas and someone forgot to tell me? I must have been on Santa’s good-boy list!

“Ack! Go away! Horrible! That’s disgusting! Oh, no, the smell! God, what did you eat! Is that dog-ball smell?! Waaahh, hellllp meee somebodyyyy!”

“Huhhh?” Jeremy moves around a little more and then rolls off me, onto his side.

“Thank God,” I say, punching him on the back once before using his body as leverage to get up. I glare at Jaws as he scampers out of reach. “You little punk. I’ll get you later.”

“Who me?” Jeremy rolls onto his back and stares up at the sky. His breath comes out in a long stream of smoky air.

“No, I’m not talking to you, Idiot. Get up.”

He frowns, confused. “Did you just accuse me of licking my balls?”

Just then, Jaws sees another opportunity and grabs it. He dives in and tongue-kisses Jeremy for a full three seconds before Jeremy realizes what’s going on.

“Holy hell, what was that?” He jerks to the side and moves Jaws off him with a sweep of his arm. He looks around in confusion and then locks eyes on me.

I can’t help but grin in satisfaction. “
That
was the dog who was recently licking his balls scouring the inside of your teeth with his tongue.” I hold out my arm. “Would you like help getting up?”

He glares at me for a few seconds before answering. “Sure.” He reaches up and grabs my hand, but yanks too hard. I lose my footing and go down on top of him.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” I groan, trying to hold in my breath since my mouth is only an inch from Jeremy’s and we both just recently French-kissed a mutt.

“I wondered how long it was going to be before you made a move on me,” he says, his words slurred. He’s grinning like a fool.

I push on his face and chest to get away from him. “Oh, give me a break, would you please?”

As soon as I have my feet beneath me and can get upright, I start heading back to the cabin.

“Where’re you going?” he calls out, laughing. “Don’t you want to make out?”

“Make out? What… are you in junior high school now?” I’m so embarrassed, I have to get away. Let him freeze out there in the snow, see if I care. This will teach me to run rescue operations for idiots. I can’t believe he was actually thinking about kissing me. It makes my heart feel like it’s flipping around in my chest.

I’m only halfway back to the cabin by the time he catches up.

“I was only kidding,” he says, churning up fresh snow next to me as I continue to struggle through the path I made earlier.

“Shut up.”

“You came out to rescue me, didn’t you?”

“No, I came out to make sure you were gone.”

“I told you, I don’t drink and drive. You knew I wasn’t gone.”

“No, I didn’t know that. You were wasted. For all I knew you were passed out in the snow somewhere getting frostbit.”

“So you
were
out here to rescue me. You got all dressed up in eight layers of clothes, just for me.”

I refuse to talk to him anymore. He keeps trying to trip me up and I’m so cold it’s working. I stomp up the stairs to try and get as much of the snow off my boots and legs as possible. Jaws follows and shakes himself. It doesn’t do much good, but that’s okay. I plan to put his fuzzy, stinky, bad-breath-having self in the bathtub as soon as we get inside. That’ll teach him to kiss me on the lips.

“Thanks,” Jeremy says, stomping his boots behind me on the porch. “For the rescue.”

“You’re not welcome.” I go into the house ahead of him, fully intending to ignore him for the rest of the night, but he has other plans. He runs inside and grabs my upper arm, holding on until I turn around.

“What?” I glare at him, trying to discourage him from saying anything else that will embarrass me.

His voice is much softer, kinder. “I just wanted to apologize. For the way I acted earlier. There’s no excuse for it.”

I wasn’t expecting this. Some of my anger dissipates when his sincere expression comes through. “Don’t worry about it. No apology necessary.” I’ve been known to hold a grudge before, but I can’t with him. I just can’t. I don’t know why, either, because a grudge would probably be a good idea where he’s concerned; it would help keep him at arm’s length at a time when I’m finding it hard not to stare at his lips. I wonder what it would have been like to make out with him out in the snow…

He glances over at the kitchen. “Still have some of that chicken-fried steak?”

His question jerks me out of my crazy fantasy. “How’d you know I cooked chicken-fried steak?”

He smiles. “I’d recognize one of those anywhere. It’s my favorite.”

I pull myself from his grip and gesture to the kitchen island. “Go ahead, if you want it. I left it on the counter.”

“Where are you going?”

“To give the dog a bath.”

“Brush his teeth while you’re at it,” Jeremy says at my back.

“Sure, no problem,” I shout from inside the bathroom. “Where’s your toothbrush?”

He laughs but doesn’t respond. I find myself smiling at my image in the mirror. I guess we survived our first whole day together without anyone getting killed or maimed by frostbite. That has to be a good sign, right?

I roll my eyes. Who am I kidding? This is a complete mess. He’s a train wreck and I’m spending all my time worrying about him when what I should be doing is focusing on my work and myself. I’m just as much a mess as he is, but I don’t have a big fat bank account to pay my bills when I run out of money like he probably does.

Those snow plows better come tomorrow or who knows what’ll happen. At the rate we’re already going, one or both of us is going to come down with a serious case of cabin fever, and then I don’t want to know what kind of crazy stuff is going to happen.

Chapter Nineteen

JAWS IS ALLERGIC TO BATHS, or so he’d like me to think, the way he’s sneezing, coughing, and straining to get away the whole time. But when I’m done with him, using a comb I find in a drawer in the bathroom and my hair dryer to fluff his wiry brown and white fur up, he looks almost good enough for a dog show. Unfortunately, Jeremy doesn’t keep his toothbrush in here, otherwise, he’d have sparkling-white teeth too.

“Are you ready to make your grand entrance?”

Jaws glares up at me as I rest my hand on the inside handle of the bathroom door.

“Don’t look at me like that. You know you feel better without all that matted hair everywhere.”

The mutt shifts his gaze to the door, probably trying to cast the magic doggie spell he thinks will open it up. Apparently, he’s not speaking to me right now.

“Fine.” I open the door and let him leave. He runs over to the fireplace, sits down on the rug, and promptly starts licking his nether regions.

Jeremy’s on a stool at the island in the kitchen watching the dog. “Wow, he looks different. Better. What breed is he?”

“I have no idea. He’s not mine.”

Jeremy looks over at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I said. He’s a stray, I think. He didn’t have a collar and he followed me up here.”

“From Manhattan?”

“No, from the little grocery store down in the town a mile from here.”

“Huh. I thought I recognized him.” Jeremy points his fork at the dog. “That’s Stanky.”

“Stanky? Do you know his owner?”

Jeremy shakes his head and stands, taking his dish to the sink. “Nah. As far as I know, he’s the town stray. Everyone just calls him Stanky because he stanks.” Jeremy chuckles.

Little Stanky isn’t stanky anymore, and that name seems kind of disrespectful of the little lion heart he has beating in his chest.

“I’ve been calling him Jaws, but it doesn’t really fit. I need to come up with something else.”

“You planning on keeping him?”

I shrug, realizing I hadn’t thought about it that far. “I don’t know. Maybe. If he wants me to.”

“Thanks for dinner.” Jeremy rinses his dish and leaves it in the sink.

“You’re welcome.” I walk over to my painting alcove, moving things around on the top of my new table. I already organized everything, but I’m feeling a little awkward being alone with a now sober hot guy in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. He’s too attractive for comfort.

Jeremy walks over and stops just outside my little painting area. “Sooo, you paint, I guess.”

“Not walls.” I smile to myself, remembering our first conversation. It seems like it was so long ago, but it was only last night.

He laughs. “No, not walls. But what kind of painting? I mean, what style?”

“Depends.” I pick up a new brush I bought in Manhattan before I left and drag it gently over the canvas that’s propped up on the easel. Usually I can already imagine what will be there when I look at a vast expanse of whiteness, but not right now. Not when Jeremy is standing so close. His presence commands all of my attention, even when I’m acting like it doesn’t.