Snowbound with a Stranger (8 page)

When she was older, she’d banned the word
mouse
from the family vocabulary. She forced herself to step forward and be loud. Brassiness was a personality trait she’d carefully crafted, in defiance of her natural state. If noise overwhelmed her, she’d make some. If crowds scared her, she’d bury herself in one. What, after all, could be louder and more hectic than a crowded city hospital?

Besides, she felt for the people there, her patients. She felt for their fear, because she knew what fear was.

Lee had seen the mouse earlier today. Dannie had no idea what to feel about that. He’d seen a considerable show of bravado, too, but that part he hadn’t seemed to mind.

Briefly, she covered her face with her hands and shook her head.

Lee came bounding down the stairs, grinning, and as Dannie looked up, a shaft of sunlight caught his face.

He was beautiful. There was no turning away from that.

On the counter the kettle began to whistle. Lee poured bathtub water from a clean bucket into a pitcher, and Dannie added the water from the kettle. She propped a tall kitchen chair against the sink and leaned back against the cold porcelain.

He shielded her eyes with his palm and tipped the pitcher over her hair. “You look lost in thought. You okay?”

The water was warm and Lee’s hand soothing. Dannie sighed. “Just thinking about my brothers.”

Lee rubbed shampoo into his fingers and threaded them into Dannie’s hair. “You have brothers?”

“Three.”

“Tell me about them.”

Dannie closed her eyes and smiled. “They’re jerks.”

“Yeah?”

“Not really. Typical jocks, though. Ball games every Sunday while the womenfolk wash the dishes and cook the pot roast.”

“Are they older?”

“Yeah. I was an anniversary baby. As in, my parents celebrated a bit too enthusiastically on their fifteenth anniversary. The youngest brother was already in fourth grade.”

“So it’s like you were an only child.”

Dannie opened one eye and squinted up at him. “Yeah. But with five parents. Three of whom had pimples.”

Lee smiled and massaged shampoo into her scalp.

A strange, sweet pain seemed to drain through Dannie’s body. His fingers were so gentle, his eyes so soft, she had to force herself to sit there and not run.

Many times over the years, she had perched with her girlfriends on bar stools or beach towels and ritualistically complained about the lack of good men in the world. It was a truism among them that few existed, that only the lucky few found them. Even her brothers, whom she loved dearly, behaved like Neanderthals around women.

Dannie didn’t know which side of the fence her ex-husband fell on. Certainly he had tried his best to be a partner to her. Until they both began to drift away.

But there was no doubt in Dannie’s mind that Lee was a good man. Given the short time they’d known each other, it shouldn’t be possible for her to know this, but she did know it.

Lee poured warm water into hair and chased away the suds with his hands.

She breathed deeply. “You should do this professionally. You’re good at it.”

“Thanks, lady.” He squeezed water from her hair and began massaging her scalp. “What about your parents? Are they still alive?”

“Mmm-hmm. Alive and squabbling. On a cruise right now, in the Caribbean.”

“Fancy.”

“Union workers, dude. Saved for retirement.”

“Good for them.”

Dannie sat up and wrapped a towel around her head. “Yeah. They deserve it.” She patted the chair. “Your turn.”

Lee sat back against the sink and closed his eyes. The warm water in the pitcher steamed up into the chilled cabin air when Dannie lifted it. She poured it carefully over his short hair, flicking the excess drops away from his eyes. He smiled, his eyes still closed, and her hand stilled for just a moment against his face.

When she was an old woman, alone in her bed in some empty room somewhere, she would remember this morning. Washing Lee’s hair in the sink of a remote cabin deep in the mountains, surrounded everywhere by snow. Her entire body thrummed and sang with the energy of this one place in time, this moment.

“Lee.” She held her hand against the stubble on his cheek.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“I like it here.”

He opened his eyes. An errant soap bubble floated up from his hair and toward the sunlight streaming through the window.

Already his face was becoming familiar to her. A soft pang echoed through her chest when she looked at him. His eyelashes were absurdly long for a man. In fact, he was hairy everywhere except for his head.

He covered her hand with his. “So do I.”

Softly, she kissed his bottom lip and rubbed shampoo into his hair.

* * *

When the cabin grew cold, they ate soup and canned fruit in bed, piled under every blanket in the house. The curtains were open to let in the strong morning sun.

“Tell me about your family.” Dannie lay propped on one elbow, squinting at him in the bright light.

He ran the back of his fingers along the line of her cheek and jaw. “What do you want to know?”

“Who are your parents?” She leaned in to his touch.

“Why, you think you might know them?”

“You never know. Brooklyn’s a small town.”

Lee played with a lock of her hair. “Okay. Cathy and Rick Russo. Saint Mary’s parish.”

Dannie shook her head sadly. “Nope. Don’t know them. You went to Catholic school?”

“Yes, ma’am. Can’t you tell?”

“Altar boy?”

“Of course.”

“Siblings?”

“Two older sisters.”

“I see. Somebody should thank them for making you into a nice guy. Your parents are still married?”

“Yep.”

“Impressive. So what’s the matter with you? What’s your terrible secret?”

Lee leaned back against the pillows. “I think you already know what my terrible secret is.”

It was wrong to lie to her. He knew that. But he couldn’t tell her about Caroline. Not yet. Or about his life before that. It was just…too much. More than she should have to deal with. More than he wanted to ask her to deal with.

She held his gaze.

At least he could give her part of the truth.

“You were right about me. Taking care of people. Ignoring myself. It’s why I come up here. Have you read
Moby Dick
?”

Dannie nodded. “A few times.”

That made him smile. “You know that scene where Ishmael says he goes to sea when he starts feeling like he wants to knock people’s hats off in the street?”

She grinned. “I love that part.”

“Seriously? I like you, Miss Marino.”

“Okay! He knows my last name. Stevens must have been very thorough.”

“He was. Anyway, when I feel like knocking people’s hats off, I go to the woods. Lately it’s almost every weekend.”

“Every weekend? Really?”

The softness in her face as she listened—it got to him. “I have to tell you something.”

“Uh-oh.” Dannie leaned back.

“Stevens told me about you before I came up here. He gave me your name and I looked you up.” More of the truth. If not all of it.

“What?” Dannie sat up, her hair falling into her face.

Lee stared at her and shook his head against the pillow. “For the love of God, woman, you are so fucking beautiful it takes my breath away.”

“Stop.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and gazed across the room, out the window.

Lee would never get sick of watching her blush.

“What did you find out, before you came on the hike?”

“I saw your picture on Facebook, that’s all, and read an article about you in the hospital newsletter.” And pored over about six years’ worth of status updates. And asked everyone he knew at the hospital about her.

He hadn’t known why at the time. He still didn’t know why.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I should have. I thought maybe you’d feel cornered, though.”

Dannie let out a long breath. “I would have. It’s true.”

“Not now?” Lee pulled her down next to him and drew the covers over her shoulders.

“No.” She settled in against him. “I don’t know why.”

Lee laid his palm against her cheek. “Let’s stay here. After the roads are cleared. We’ll quit our jobs. Stevens won’t mind. We’ll let him sleep on the couch when he visits.”

Dannie turned in to his hand and smiled. “They can drop food off on our doorstep from helicopters.”

“We’ll make our own clothes.”

“Clothes?” Dannie shimmied closer and pressed her body against Lee’s. “Who needs clothes?”

She kissed him, and a sweet hot liquid seemed to pour down his belly and into his legs. He pulled her close and held her tightly against himself, and kissed her back.

It was a fantasy. He knew that. They were playing house here, like two children, pretending they had something it took normal people years to build. It was painfully unlikely their connection could survive the outside world.

But he kissed her back anyway. He took off her clothes and joined his body to hers. He wiped her tears away and kissed her, and entered her, and gave her everything he could give.

Chapter Nine

Dannie’s eyes opened the next morning to a thought so obvious she couldn’t believe it hadn’t yet occurred to her. Gently, she disentangled herself from Lee’s heavy limbs and ventured out to the kitchen.

Lee’s backpack lay propped against the doorjamb. Dannie was still too scared to go near the door—she wasn’t ashamed to admit it—but she found enough courage to creep up to the pack and drag it across the floor to the center of the room.

Mama bear had not come back in the night, thank God. Lee said they were more active after dark, that it had been strange to see her so early in the day. Dannie had been afraid to go to sleep and find herself awakened by the scratch of bear claws against the hardwood floor, but by the time night fell, she was so exhausted an injection of speed couldn’t have kept her awake.

If there was a corner of this cabin that hadn’t seen some action in the last forty-eight hours, Dannie didn’t know where it was. They’d made love like the world was ending and sometimes, wrapped in the heat of Lee’s body, she’d felt as though it were. The world she had known anyway.

She was sore all over, and smelled like Lee, and she’d never felt better in her whole damn life.

The backpack was covered in bulging zippers and pouches and weighed at least a hundred pounds. It was the sort of pack a soldier or survivalist would carry: broken-in, worn-down and full of just about anything a person would need in an emergency. She couldn’t have said why, but it was pretty much the sexiest physical object she’d ever seen.

Dannie began rummaging through it, trying to ignore any personal items she found there. Mostly it was gear—matches, ponchos, bungee cord, water bottle—except for a faded photo of a smiling family and a beaten-up journal with a waterproof pen attached. She would have liked nothing better than to sit by the window and examine that photo, to read every word of Lee’s private thoughts. But she restrained herself. One day, perhaps, he would share them with her, and if not, the information contained there wasn’t hers to know.

She found what she was looking for stashed in a side pocket. Although it was what she was after, the grimy orange rubber made her heart sink. A part of her had hoped that it was lost.

The walkie-talkie.

With the batteries taken out.

* * *

Lee lay asleep on the bed, an arm stretched over his face to block out the morning sunlight. She set two coffees on the table beside him and pressed her hand to his hip.

“Lee.”

He groaned.

She gave his hip a little shake. “Lee.”

His hand snaked around her wrist, and before she could react, dragged her down beside him. He threw a leg over her thigh and pulled her against his chest. “Mmph.”

“Dude. Wake up.” She tried to infuse her voice with authority, but it was difficult to do so with her mouth full of chest hair. One of them needed to be practical, though. One of them had to broach the subject of leaving.

If it wasn’t her, eventually it would be Lee.

“No. You come back to sleep.”

Dannie sat up. “Lee. I found the walkie-talkie.”

His eyes opened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He rubbed a hand over his face and squinted up at her. “I took the batteries out.”

“I noticed.”

“There’s a radio in the pack too. Did you find that?”

“A what?” Dannie climbed off the bed and stared at him, her hands on her hips. “Are you kidding me?”

He hoisted himself up and blearily reached for a cup of coffee. “’Fraid not.”

“Lee.”

“Yeah?”

“Were you going to tell me?”

A grunt of approval emerged from the side of his cup. “Good coffee.”

“Um. Thanks?” Dannie’s foot tapped against the wood planks of the floor. “Were you?”

“Eventually.” Lee rubbed his eyes. “I’m almost sure of it.”

He sipped the coffee she’d made for him—strong, as she knew he liked it, as
she
liked it—and despite his scratchy beard and bare shoulders and his almost unbearably sexy chest, she made a valiant effort to be angry. She really did. Honest to God.

It was just that, despite his cowboy looks and his sleepy attempt at playful banter, he looked vulnerable to her this morning. Like something was troubling him that he was determined to push aside.

She sat down beside him. “You okay?”

“Sure.” He stared into his cup. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

Lee was silent. Something crossed his face that Dannie couldn’t quite name.

“You should have told me about the walkie-talkie.”

“You never asked.” He swallowed the last of his coffee and with a clatter, set the mug on the table beside the bed.

“They’ve probably cleared the roads by now.”

“Probably.” She didn’t know why Lee refused to look at her, but she barreled on.

“Dr. Stevens might even be on his way already.”

“He might.”

“We could listen to the radio, check the state of the highway, head on down to our cars. It would take a while in the snow, but—”