Vivian Arend - Rocky Mountain Desire

She just wished it wasn’t so dark, so cold, and that the secondary roads were plowed a little better. The locals with four-by-four trucks would have no troubles, but her wheel clearance wasn’t nearly as high. She hit another rut and her car shimmied from side to side.

Ignoring her rising sense of foreboding, she turned on the side road leading toward the Baileys’ and a half dozen other homes. The plows hadn’t touched the fresh snowfall from the morning yet—there must be no school buses on this route—which meant the remote country lane would be one of the last to get cleared.

She pulled to a stop in dismay. The only people moving that day had been driving four-by-fours, leaving two narrow wheel tracks the length of the gravel highway. There was no way she could get Herbie down that road, not even for the two miles it would take. The lights of her farmhouse destination twinkled in the distance, and for one crazy second she debated walking. Reason beat away that idea quick. It was cold enough she’d have frostbite if she was lucky and made the trip without any problems. If she did get into trouble? No way. She wasn’t stupid.

So much for her time-saving, money-saving plan. Hope sighed in frustration and turned her car toward the main highway. No use backtracking past the Coleman’s. She was now far enough out that taking the secondary route into town would be quicker than looping back.

The vehicle was still cold, but as she drove, the memory of bumping into Matt warmed her from the inside out. Good Lord, he must believe her to be a total klutz, along with being a fool.

Her embarrassing blunder last summer had faded enough she now found the situation amusing. His shocked response to her mistaken impression that he was coming on to her had made one thing crystal clear. He was not on the menu. Not now, not ever.

It didn’t stop her from getting tingles in inappropriate places, daydreaming about his hands moving from her arms to other locations. He was hard, solid and muscular everywhere, and she’d wanted so much to just wrap herself around him and satisfy her curiosity.

Wrong word. Totally wrong word for what she felt. Fascination? Obsession?

She snorted and gave herself a mental kick. He was the last person in Rocky who would ever consider dating her, not after the shitty way her sister had treated him. Not after Helen and him had been together for years. Dating someone in the same family wasn’t unusual, not in a town as small as theirs where there just weren’t enough people in the dating pool, but he was off-limits for more than one reason. She had to get that through her head.

But the daydreaming remained kinda fun.

The curve of the road slipped under her tires, and Hope tightened her grip in panic as she fought to control the car. There was no warning, no indication she’d done anything wrong, but instead of being in the proper lane on the road she was on the side, headed for the ditch.

She turned the wheel. No response. Her front bumper hit the leading edge of the snowbank and the car bucked. Her seatbelt tightened around her chest, yanking hard as the incline increased. She slid down the embankment and everything went dark as her car was buried under a pile of collapsing snow.

Matt cursed solidly. He was no more than half a kilometre behind, still wondering what the hell Hope was doing driving the long way home, when her car disappeared. He hit his brakes cautiously, skittering on the icy road and slowing to a stop as close to the shoulder as possible. His headlights shone over the embankment, casting a faint illumination over a broken path through the deep snow. It was a shitty place to pull over, but there was so little traffic he wasn’t going to take the time to get farther around the corner, plus they needed all the light they could get. He flicked his fog lights on high and hit the hazard signal, turning the entire truck into a blinking lighthouse. He scrambled out the door, grabbed his shovel from the truck bed, and headed down the tracks left by her wheels, the faint red of her taillights shining like ghostly eyes.

There was no smell of exhaust—either she’d turned off the car or it had stalled, so at least he didn’t have to worry about carbon monoxide. Layers of crust broke underfoot, sending shocks through him. Snow crept over the top of his boots, his jeans coated with the heavier, wetter underlayers. He reached her back bumper and slammed a hand on the metal.

“Hope, you hear me?”

“Matt? How did you…never mind. I can’t get the door open.” The answer was muffled but there.

Relief she wasn’t unconscious loosened the knot of panic in his gut. He dragged the shovel forward and attacked the snow blocking her way. “I’ll get you out as quick as I can. You okay otherwise?”

“I’m fine. Shook up a little. I don’t know why that happened. Damn car. Damn snow.”

Then he couldn’t hear her as he struggled to clear a path toward the front of the vehicle. Friction had frozen the closest layers, even in the short time she’d been stuck. He eyeballed the opening he’d made. Good thing she wasn’t that big. He yanked on the nearest door and it opened all of an inch.

“Hang on, I need more clearance. You’re gonna have to climb out through the back.”

He peered in the crack he’d achieved. She stared in dismay over fabric and boxes piled to the ceiling, the faint interior light a halo around her toque. “You don’t ask much, do you?”

The filled-to-the-brim backseat was her only route out, and in spite of her protests, she was already pulling items into the front beside her. Matt worked for another couple minutes before stepping away and opening the door a grand total of ten inches. Bags and boxes toppled into the snow, blocking her escape.

Hope crawled over the seat, and he reached in and tugged her free from the mess.

“Come on, we’ll have to get your car in the morning. I don’t have a winch on this truck, and it’s dangerous to be messing around in these temperatures.”

“Wait.” She started tucking items into the car, attempting to close the door.

“Forget it, it’s too cold. We’ll come back in the morning.”

“I can’t leave my supplies like this,” Hope growled at him. “There’s stuff here that’s worth a lot of money.”

“Worth shit if you die of exposure. Leave it.”

Hope ignored him as she attempted to fit some of the jigsaw together.

Wanted to be stubborn? She picked the wrong guy to try it on. He nabbed her around the waist and slung her over his shoulder.

She screamed and clutched his jacket. “Matt Coleman. You put me down right now.”

He struggled toward the truck, knee-deep in the snow and floundering with her squirming body weighing him down. “You keep that up and I’ll spank your ass, young lady. They’re only things. We’ll get them in the morning.”

Hope went still before relaxing on him. He managed a couple more steps before she spoke. “Fine. Just…let me walk. This is ridiculous.”

He lowered her but kept her close, checking her carefully. “Where’s your other glove?”

“Lost it when I was moving supplies.”

He pulled off his right glove and held it out.

“You need to wear it,” she protested.

His patience snapped. “Hope Meridan, you put that damn glove on. Then you march your ass up to my truck and you fucking sit where I tell you and do what I tell you until we get somewhere safe. You understand?”

She sniffed and took the glove from his fingers, slipping it on before twirling her back on him.

He grinned. It was bloody cold out, they were buried to their knees in snow, some of which had already melted into his boots and soaked his socks. The wind whistled past hard enough to snap branches in two, and he was the happiest he’d been in the past six months.

A pissed-off Hope was a pleasure to see.

They both struggled their way up the embankment, slipping and falling as they snagged dead grasses under the frozen layers. Hope got stuck making it over the final lip. Matt braced a hand on her ass and shoved, and she slid onto the road. He scrambled next to her and hauled her to her feet.

“This is right where we don’t want to be if another vehicle comes along.”

She nodded and they raced for the truck. He kept hold of her—the passenger door was too far to the side and surrounded by more deep snow. He opened his own door and pressed her in ahead of him.

The howl of the wind cut off as he slammed the door shut, leaving a ringing in his ears. He cranked up the heat.

Hope let out a groan of satisfaction. “That’s what a heater is supposed to work like.” She pulled off her mismatched gloves and held her hands to the air vents.

Matt shivered involuntarily. It was damn cold, and every inch of him felt as if it had been soaked in ice water. He buckled himself in. “Come here. Sit beside me.”

Hope snapped her head up. “I’m okay over here.”

“Don’t be stupid. You remember my do-what-I-tell-you lecture? That seatbelt doesn’t work. Get your ass over here, I want to get you home as quick as possible.”

Hope lowered her gaze and slid into the center of the bench seat. She settled against him and buckled up before holding her red hands toward the heater again. “Wait—take your glove back. You’ll need it on the steering wheel.”

He accepted it gratefully before putting the truck in drive and heading to Rocky.

Neither of them said a word for a minute. She was probably worried about her shop shit getting wet and frozen, half-buried in the ditch, not to mention her car door left ajar. “Sorry for yelling at you.”

“No, you were right, it’s just things. I hope…” She sighed. “No. It’s just things.”

Music filled the cab. The wind now carried loose snow, reducing visibility, and Matt had to concentrate on the highway. Only his focus got increasingly scattered as the scent of her perfume mingled with the hot air attempting to force its way past the icy fingers clinging to everything around them.

“I think we hit that cold snap they warned about.” Hope wiggled closer, and a small batch of the wetness at his hip was no longer freezing but warm.

“I’m not looking forward to checking the animals, I can tell you that.”

“You need to go out tonight?”

He shook his head before he realized she couldn’t see the motion in the dark. “Nah. Dad and Travis are on, and we had the main herd back where there’re enough shelters and trees the animals will be fine. But Blake and I are on tomorrow working the far fields. In these conditions we’ll use the snowmobiles, and the cold is gonna suck.”

She shivered. He felt it to his bones. “Not my idea of a good time.”

The memory of his ex-girlfriend using that exact phrase cut into his belly like a knife. Helen had wanted him to give it all up. Wanted him to move into the city with her and become something other than a rancher. The pain made his response come out sharper than he’d intended. “It’s part of the job, and you take the good with the bad. That’s life.”

Hope fell silent again. He drove as fast as he safely could. That’s all they needed, for him to hit the ditch as well.

By the time they’d reached the outskirts of Rocky Mountain House, it was borderline warm in the cab, which meant he was borderline freezing his balls off in his wet things. Hope had to be just as cold, but she hadn’t uttered a word of complaint.

“You still live above the quilt shop?”

No answer.

He stopped for a red light and looked down. Her eyes were closed, and she swayed slightly from side to side.

Shit. Hopefully she was just plain tired, and not going into shock. He dropped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Wake up. I need to know where to take you.”

She shook her head, looking up with glazed eyes. “What?”

“You still live above the shop?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay awake, okay?”

“Sure.” She shivered, and he held on tight as he drove one-handed through the side streets to reach the back-alley entrance behind Main Street.

He parked in what he hoped was her stall. There weren’t a lot of people moving, or lights on anywhere. Seemed most people knew enough to stay home when it was this damn cold.

He got out and pulled her after him. Hope draped her arms around his neck without him saying a word. The outside staircase up to her apartment was buried under an unmanageable amount of snow, so he carried her to her shop back door.

“Keys?”