One Night in the Ice Storm

This book is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Noelle
Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or
transmit in any form or by any means.

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Rachel Cole’s day was
getting worse by the minute.

Her
boss had given the office the afternoon off, since no work was getting done on
the day before Christmas Eve anyway. The weather had been fine when she left
Richmond—overcast but dry—but then the sleet began and kept getting worse. By
the time she’d reached her mother’s house, the roads were barely passable.
She’d spun out once and was fortunate not to have ended up in a ditch.

The
trip took an hour longer than normal, and she’d arrived to discover her mother
wasn’t even home.

“Just
great,” she complained, frowning into the phone, although obviously her brother
couldn’t see her expression. “So I’m stranded out here alone in the middle of
an ice storm?”

 “Look,
I’m sorry,” Brad replied. “No one expected the storm to come up so quickly. But
mom and I are stuck in town. We’re at my place now, but we’ll try to get to the
house this evening when the ice slacks off.”

Rachel
tried not to grumble, since it wasn’t Brad’s fault. It had been nice of him to
take their mother to do last-minute Christmas shopping.

She’d
grown up in this house—ten miles outside of the nearest small town in a rural
mountain county of southwest Virginia—and they’d been trapped by winter weather
before.

It
just didn’t put her in the holiday spirit.

“Oh,
and I’m sorry to add to your annoyances, but…” Brad trailed off unexpectedly.

“But
what?”

“David’s
on his way to the house.”

Rachel’s
spine stiffened almost painfully. “
What
?”

“I
borrowed his circular saw to work on Mom’s deck and kept forgetting to return
it, so he’s stopping by to pick it up.”

“Why
is he coming to get a saw in the middle of a storm?”

“It
wasn’t so bad when he started out. He was working a job in Gilman, so the house
was on his way home. Anyway, he called a few minutes ago, and he’s not far
away.”

“Damn
it, Brad. I don’t want to see him.”

“I’m
sorry, but I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, unless you want to hide in your
room and pretend he’s not there.”

Brad
didn’t sound remotely apologetic. In fact, he sounded like he might be mocking
her.

“This
is serious to me,” she said, tightening one hand into a fist.

“I
know he’s not your favorite person, but it can’t be that big a deal. We didn’t
expect you until the evening, so he should have been gone by the time you
arrived.”

“Not
my favorite person?” she repeated. “I can’t stand him. I can’t stand to even be
around him.”

Brad
was silent for longer than she’d expected. Finally, he said, “I didn’t realize you
were still so hung up on this. You see him around almost every time you visit.”

“That’s
different. That’s not being stranded with him in a storm this way. You know
what he did to me.”

“But
you’ve always acted like it was no big deal, and that was years and years ago.
Normal teenage drama. I always thought you’d gotten over it.”

She
swallowed hard, a familiar ache tightening in her chest as she thought about
what she tried to never think about. “It wasn’t teenage drama. It just
wasn’t
.”

David
Harris had been her brother’s best friend since elementary school. Two years
younger than them, Rachel had had a foolish crush on David for as far back as
she could remember. Finally, the summer she was seventeen, he had started
showing her attention.

It
had been the best summer of her life—hanging out with David for hours every day,
sharing with him dreams and fears she’d never told anyone else. The summer had
climaxed—literally—on a blanket beneath the old willow tree on her family’s
property. She’d been a virgin, but she’d trusted him completely. He’d been so
sweet, gentle, and passionate, and it had been better than she could have
imagined.

Until
a couple of days later, when he’d dropped her completely.

He
hadn’t even broken up with her—just avoided her until she got the message. He
never called, never came by, and acted like she didn’t exist when they happened
to encounter each other around town.

Rachel
had been heartbroken, but she’d understood exactly what happened.

She’d
never meant anything to David, no matter how much her teenaged stupidity had
allowed her to believe he really cared for her. She’d been a way to pass the
time for him during a slow summer. Once he’d gotten what he wanted from her,
he’d moved on without hesitation.

The
memory of that summer—his laughter, the weight of his arm around her shoulders,
the feel of him moving inside her with so much care, the look in his eyes when
he’d come—still had the power to make her eyes ache, her chest ache.

Even
eight years later.

“I
know he hurt you,” Brad said, the laughter vanished from his voice. “And it
sounds like it hurt you more than I realized. But it’s been over for years. He’s
a really good guy.”

“A
really good guy wouldn’t have done that to me. I don’t understand how you
expect me to forgive him.”

“You
don’t understand, Rach. You don’t know—” He broke off abruptly, mid-sentence.

“Exactly
what don’t I know?”

“Nothing.
This isn’t the time to talk about it. The point is that David is on his way
there, so keep a lookout for him. Hopefully, the storm will break soon, and Mom
and I can get out there by this evening.”

“Fine.”

Rachel
said goodbye and hung up, glancing out through the wide bay window of her
mother’s living room.

The
sleet was coming down hard now, freezing on whatever surface it touched—the
trees, the grass, the beautifully landscaped stone patio, the long driveway.

David
was definitely going to be stuck here, she realized. He shouldn’t be on the
roads at all. Not in this kind of ice. It wouldn’t be safe for him to return to
town until the weather improved.

She
swallowed hard.

As
if she’d summoned him by her thoughts, she saw his familiar red pickup—the same
one he’d been driving since high school—approaching slowly on the county road
that ran along the far side of the large front yard.

She’d
sat in the passenger seat of that pickup more times then she could remember,
listening to David talk about his plans for beginning a carpentry business,
singing uninhibitedly to the radio, kissing him for way too long before he
dropped her off in the evenings.

David
was now one of the most successful contractors in the county, even as young as
he was, but he hadn’t yet given up his old truck.

As
she watched, the truck started to slip, threatening to spin before David
stabilized it.

That
road had been bad enough when Rachel arrived a half-hour ago. It must be a
sheet of ice now.

David
was going slowly, and he made it without further incident until he started to
turn into the long driveway leading up to the house.

With
virtually no traction, he couldn’t hold the turn, and the truck spun out of
control, ending up nose-first in the ditch.

Rachel’s
breath had caught in her throat as she watched, but she let it out in a whoosh
when she saw that the damage didn’t look too severe.

She
waited, expecting to see David try to back the truck out of the ditch, although
she couldn’t imagine he could do so effectively until the ice was gone.

The
truck didn’t move. The tires didn’t seem to be spinning, although she was too
far away to know for sure.

She
kept watching, assuming David would now climb out of the truck and walk up to
the house.

He
didn’t get out, though. For way too long.

Maybe
he was hurt.

Without
thinking, she grabbed her new red cashmere coat and threw it on as she hurried
out the side door.

The
wind was biting cold, and the sleet hit the bare skin of her face like bullets.
She ducked her head and tried to hurry, irrationally scared that David might be
hurt.

It
hadn’t seemed like a dangerous accident, but then why wasn’t he getting out of
the truck?

The
driveway was so slick she skated more than walked as she wobbled her way down
the drive.

She
was moving too fast as she finally approached, and she skidded toward the
passenger side of the truck.

She
stopped herself abruptly by slamming into it, jarring her body uncomfortably.

She
slid over to the passenger door and tried to open it, but her hands were almost
numb, since she’d been too distracted to put on gloves, and this door had
always had a tendency to stick anyway.

She
shivered and pulled and huffed in frustration, trying to pull the door open.
Ice had mostly covered the window, so she couldn’t even see inside very well to
ensure that David was okay.

Suddenly,
the door was opening, pushed out from inside. She almost toppled over from the
unexpected momentum of the door.

“What
the hell are you
doing
?” a male voice demanded from inside. David had
leaned over to open the passenger door, and he was now glaring at her. “You’re
going to break your ankle or freeze to death out here.”

Rachel
gasped in indignation as she tried to catch herself from falling by clinging to
the seat of the truck. She managed to pull herself back to a stable position. “I
thought you were hurt. You didn’t come in. What are you just sitting out here
for?”

The
sight of David’s familiar face—well-sculpted features, dark eyes, five-o’clock
shadow, short brown hair—made her stomach twist in pain. Every time she saw
him, he looked more mature and even more handsome. Her instinctive attraction
compounded her annoyance with his tone, when she’d gone way out of her way to
help him.

“I
was talking to your brother. I didn’t even know you were at the house until he
told me.” David showed her his smartphone, with which he’d obviously just hung
up with Brad. “Get in the truck before you catch pneumonia.”

“I’m
not going to get in the truck,” she snapped back. “You’re never going to get it
out of the ditch in this weather, and if you do, you’ll just end up back in the
ditch farther down the driveway. You’ll have to leave your precious truck and
walk back to the house like a sane person.” Her voice was loud by necessity, to
be heard over the wind whipping through her loose blond hair and damp clothes.

Her
voice might have been a little louder than it needed to be.

He
rolled his eyes, impatient either at her tone or at the situation, but he dug
into the pockets of his coat and pulled out wool-lined, leather gloves. “Here,”
he said, thrusting them at her. “Wear these. Why the hell did you leave the
house without gloves?”

Rachel’s
fingers were a scary red color now and so cold she could barely feel them. But
she wasn’t going to put up with that kind of treatment.

Especially
not from him.

David
had fucked her and dumped her when she was seventeen, and she hadn’t been smart
or mature enough to keep it from happening. But she was an adult now, and he wasn’t
going to lecture her like a foolish little girl.