Crossed Hearts (Matchmaker Trilogy) (3 page)

And driving demanded it. She eased up on the gas, but even then had to struggle to see the road through the torrent. Lane markers were sadly blurred. The back spray from passing cars made the already poor visibility worse. She breathed a sigh of relief when she found her turnoff, then tensed up again when the sudden sparcity of other cars meant the absence of taillights as guides.

But she drove on. She passed a restaurant and briefly considered taking shelter until the storm was spent, but decided that it would be far worse to have to negotiate strange roads—and a lonesome cabin—in the dark later. She passed a dingy motel and toyed with the idea of taking a room for the night, but decided that she really did want to be in the cabin. Having left behind the life she’d always known, she was feeling unsettled; spending the night in a fleabag motel wouldn’t help.

What would help, she decided grimly, would be an end to the rain. And a little sun peaking through the clouds. And several extra hours of daylight.

None of those happened. The rain did lessen to a steady downpour, but the sky grew darker and darker as daylight began to wane. The fiddling she’d done earlier in search of the wipers paid off; she knew just what to press to turn on the headlights.

When she passed through the small town Victoria had mentioned, she was elated. Elation faded in an instant, though, when she took the prescribed turn past the post office and saw what lay ahead.

A narrow, twisting road, barely wide enough for two cars. No streetlamps. No center line. No directional signs.

Leah sat ramrod straight at the wheel. Her knuckles were white, her eyes straining to delineate the rain-spattered landscape ahead. Too late she realized that she hadn’t checked the odometer when she’d passed the post office. One-point-nine miles to the turnoff, her instructions said. How far had she gone? All but creeping along the uphill grade, she searched for the triangular boulder backed by a stand of twisted birch that would mark the start of Victoria’s road.

It was just another puzzle, Leah told herself. She loved puzzles.

She hated this one. If she missed the road … But she didn’t want to miss the road. One-point-nine miles at fifteen miles an hour … eight minutes … How long had she been driving since she’d left the town?

Just when she was about to stop and return to the post office to take an odometer reading, she saw a triangular boulder backed by a stand of twisted birch. And a road. Vaguely.

It was with mixed feelings that she made the turn, for not only was she suddenly on rutted dirt, but forested growth closed in on her, slapping the sides of the car. In her anxious state it sounded clearly hostile.

She began to speak to herself, albeit silently.
This is God’s land, Leah. The wild and woolly outdoors. Picture it in the bright sunshine. You’ll love it.

The car bumped and jerked along, jolting her up and down and from side to side. One of the tires began to spin and she caught her breath, barely releasing it when the car surged onward and upward. The words she spoke to herself grew more beseechful.
Just a little farther, Leah. You’re almost there. Come on, Golf, don’t fade on me now.

Her progress was agonizingly slow, made all the more so by the steepening pitch as the road climbed the hill. The Golf didn’t falter, but when it wasn’t jouncing, it slid pitifully from one side to the other, even back when she took her foot from the gas to better weather the ruts. She wished she’d had the foresight to rent a jeep, if not a Sherman tank. It was all she could do to hold the steering wheel steady. It was all she could do to see the road.

Leah was frightened. Darkness was closing in from every angle, leaving her high beams as a beacon to nowhere. When they picked up an expanse of water directly in her path, she slammed on the brakes. The car fishtailed in the mud, then came to a stop, its sudden stillness compensated for by the racing of her pulse.

A little voice inside her screamed,
turn back! Turn back!
But she couldn’t turn. She was hemmed in on both sides by the woods.

She stared at the water before her. Beneath the pelting rain, it undulated as a living thing. But it was only a puddle, she told herself. Victoria would have mentioned a stream, and there was no sign of a bridge, washed out or otherwise.

Cautiously she stepped on the gas. Yard by yard, the car stole forward. She tried not to think about how high the water might be on the hubcaps. She tried not to think about the prospect of brake damage or stalling. She tried not to think about what creatures of the wild might be lurking beneath the rain-swollen depths. She kept as steady a foot on the gas pedal as possible and released a short sigh of relief when she reached high ground once again.

There were other puddles and ruts and thick beds of mud, but then the road widened. Heart pounding, she squinted through the windshield as she pushed on the accelerator. The cabin had to be ahead.
Please, God, let it be ahead.

All at once, with terrifying abruptness, the road seemed to disappear. She’d barely had time to jerk her foot to the brake, when the car careened over a rise and began a downward slide. After a harrowing aeon, it came to rest in a deep pocket of sludge.

Shaking all over, Leah closed her eyes for a minute. She took one tremulous breath, then another, then opened her eyes and looked ahead. What she saw took her breath away completely.

For three weeks she’d been picturing a compact and charming log cabin. A chimney would rise from one side; windows would flank the front door. Nestled in the woods, the cabin would be the epitome of a snug country haven.

Instead it was the epitome of ruin. She blinked, convinced that she was hallucinating. Before her lay the charred remains of what might indeed have once been a snug and charming cabin. Now only the chimney was standing.

“Oh, Lord,” she wailed, her cry nearly drowned out by the thunder of rain on the roof of the car, “what
happened?
”

Unfortunately what had happened was obvious. There had been a fire. But when? And why hadn’t Victoria been notified?

The moan that followed bore equal parts disappointment, fatigue and anxiety. In the confines of the car it had such an eerie edge that Leah knew she had to get back to civilization and fast. At that moment even the thought of spending the night in a fleabag motel held appeal.

She stepped on the gas and the front wheels spun. She shifted into reverse and hit the gas again, but the car didn’t budge. Into drive … into reverse … she repeated the cycle a dozen times, uselessly. Not only was she not getting back to civilization she wasn’t getting
anywhere,
at least, not in the Golf.

Dropping her head to the steering wheel, she took several shuddering breaths. Leah Gates didn’t panic. She hadn’t done so when her parents had died. She hadn’t done so when her babies had died. She hadn’t done so when her husband had pronounced her unfit as a wife and left her.

What she had done in each of those situations was cry until her grief was spent, then pick herself up and restructure her dreams. In essence, that was what she had to do now. There wasn’t time to give vent to tears, but a definite restructuring of plans was in order.

She couldn’t spend the night in the car. She couldn’t get back to town. Help wasn’t about to come to her, so …

Fishing the paper with the typed directions from her purse, she turned on the overhead light and read at the bottom of the page the lines that she’d merely skimmed before. True, she’d promised Victoria that she’d deliver the letter to the trapper, Garrick Rodenhiser, but she’d assumed she’d do it at her leisure. Certainly not in the dark of night—or in the midst of a storm.

But seeking out the trapper seemed her only hope of rescue. It was pouring and very dark. She had neither flashlight, umbrella nor rain poncho handy. She’d just have to make a dash for it. Hadn’t she done the same often enough in New York when a sudden downpour soaked the streets?

Diligently she reread the directions to the trapper’s cabin. Peering through the windshield, she located the break in the woods behind and to the left of the chimney. Without dwelling on the darkness ahead, she tucked the paper back in her purse, dropped the purse to the floor, turned off the lights, then the engine. After pocketing the keys, she took a deep breath, swung open the door and stepped out into the rain.

Her feet promptly sank six inches into mud. Dumbly she stared down at where her ankles should have been. Equally as dumbly, she tugged at one foot, which emerged minus its shoe. She stuck her foot back into the muck, rooted around until she’d located the shoe and squished her foot inside, then drew the whole thing up toe first.

After tottering for a second, she lunged onto what she hoped was firmer ground. It was, though this time her other foot came up shoeless. Legs wide apart, she repeated the procedure of retrieving her shoe, then scrambled ahead.

She didn’t think about the fact that the comfortable leather flats she’d loved were no doubt ruined. She didn’t think about her stockings or her pants or, for that matter, the rest of her clothes, which were already drenched. And assuming that it would be a quick trip to the trapper’s cabin, then a quick one back with help, she didn’t think once about locking the car. As quickly as she could she ran around the ruins of Victoria’s cabin and plunged on into the woods.

An old logging trail, Victoria had called it. Leah could believe that. No car could have fit through, for subsequent years of woodland growth had narrowed it greatly. But it was visible, and for that she was grateful.

It was also wet, and in places nearly as muddy as what she’d so precipitously stepped into from her car. As hastily as she could, she slogged through, only to find her feet mired again a few steps later.

As the minutes passed, she found it harder to will away the discomfort she felt. It occurred to her on a slightly hysterical note that dashing across Manhattan in the rain had never been like this. She was cold and wet. Her clothes clung to her body, providing little if any protection. Her hair was soaked; her bangs dripped into her eyes behind glasses whose lenses were streaked. Tension and the effort of wading through mud made her entire body ache.

Worse, there was no sign of a cabin ahead, or of anything else remotely human. For the first time since her car had become stuck she realized exactly how alone and vulnerable she was. Garrick Rodenhiser was a trapper, which meant that there were animals about. The thought that they might hunt humans in the rain sent shivers through her limbs, over and above those caused by the cold night air. Then she slipped in the mud and lost her balance, falling to the ground with a sharp cry. Sheer terror had her on her feet in an instant, and she whimpered as she struggled on.

Several more times Leah lost a shoe and would have left it if the thought of walking in her sheer-stockinged feet hadn’t been far worse than the sliminess of the once fine leather. Twice more she fell, crying out in pain the second time when her thigh connected with something sharp. Not caring to consider what it might have been, she limped on. Hopping, sliding, scrambling for a foothold at times, she grew colder, wetter and muddier.

At one point pure exhaustion brought her to a standstill. Her arms and legs were stiff; her insides trembled; her breath came in short, sharp gasps. She had to go on, she told herself, but it was another minute before her limbs would listen. And then it was only because the pain of movement was preferable to the psychological agony of inaction.

When she heard sounds beyond the rain, her panic grew. Glancing blindly behind her, she ricocheted off a tree and spun around, barely saving herself from yet another fall. She was sure she was crying, because she’d never been so frightened in her life, but she couldn’t distinguish tears from raindrops.

A world of doubts crowded in on her. How much farther could she push her protesting limbs? How could she be sure that the trapper’s cabin still existed? What if Garrick Rodenhiser simply wasn’t there?
What would she do then?

Nearing the point of despair, Leah didn’t see the cabin until she was practically on top of it. She stumbled and fell, but on a path of flat stones this time. Shoving up her glasses with the back of one cold, stiff hand, she peered through the rain at the dark structure before her. After a frantic few seconds’ search, she spotted the sliver of light that escaped through the shutters. It was the sweetest sight she’d ever seen.

Pushing herself upright, she staggered the final distance and all but crawled up the few short steps to the cabin’s door. Beneath the overhang of the porch she was out of the rain, but her teeth were chattering, and her legs abruptly refused to hold her any longer. Sliding down on her bottom close by the door, she mustered the last of her strength to bang her elbow against the wood. Then she wrapped her arms around her middle and tried to hold herself together.

When a minute passed and nothing happened, her misery grew. The cold air of night gusted past her, chilling her wet clothing even more. She tapped more feebly on the wood, but it must have done the trick, for within seconds the door opened. Weakly she raised her eyes. Through wet glasses she could make out a huge form silhouetted in the doorway. Behind it was sanctuary.

“I…” she began, “I…”

The mighty figure didn’t move.

“I am … I need…” Her voice was thready, severely impeded by the chill that had reduced her to a shivering mass.

Slowly, cautiously, the giant lowered itself to its haunches. Leah knew it was human. It moved like a human. It had hands like a human. She could only pray that it had the heart of a human.

“Victoria sent me,” she whispered. “I’m so cold.”

2

G
ARRICK
R
ODENHISER
would have laughed had the huddled figure before him been less pathetic. Victoria wouldn’t have sent him a woman; she knew that he valued his privacy too much. And she respected that, which was one of the reasons they’d become friends.

But the figure on his doorstep was indeed pathetic. She was soaking wet, covered with mud and, from the way she was quaking, looked to be chilled to the bone. Of course, the quaking could be from fear, he mused, and if she was handing him a line, she had due cause for fear.