Page 10

S omething about the words “You know how to reach me” being the last phrase Iron cast in Anna’s direction set her insides to vibrating. Whether or not he actually meant the agitation was less of a concern than the final result.

Her cells, and her senses, weren’t quite ready for him to leave just yet.

Padding over to the window, Anna drew back the curtain and watched as his broad back, hunched forward against the wind, traveled down her driveway. He navigated the mounting snow like a snow leopard, all grace and careful footing as his large boots seemed to distribute his weight evenly with each trudging strep. The figure he cut through the snow was an enthralling one, captivating her despite her weariness. Man, she still couldn’t believe he’d shown up. And maybe that was what made it so hard to watch him walk away.

His hand had already gripped the driver’s side door handle when he froze, and she followed his hooded head as it swiveled farther down the road leading to her house. A slew of not-so-insignificant tree branches had fallen, barricading the only way down the mountain in unorganized crosshatches. Nothing she’d entertain moving on her own even before her pregnancy, but she was not Iron. Iron was not her. And Iron, she instinctively knew, was not most men. No, he possessed the stature of a Roman gladiator who fought lions for warmups and obviously had a hang-up over obstacles in his way, be they literal or figurative.

He could move the branches. They weren’t that unmanageable, at least from what she could see of them through the wind-whipped snow.

Anna bit her lip and snorted into the balled-up comforter still curled up around her hands. It was just too perfect.

She wouldn’t . . .

She shouldn’t . . .

The window was thrown open a second later. She encircled her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Caber toss!”

But when he looked back at her, he didn’t offer a smile acknowledging a joke out of politeness. Instead, he adopted a downtrodden grimness that set his features into stone. That was when she realized something was wrong. He began walking back to her cabin, and she met him at the door. His boots had barely hit her porch welcome mat before the truth of their circumstances revealed themselves.

Those branches were far bigger than she’d thought.

“You’re blocked in, aren’t you? Like, for real?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

On overly thick fuzzy socks—one of the few pairs that hadn’t gotten snagged in the dryer—she shuffled in a circle, trying to take in her modest living space through the eyes of a perfect stranger. The worn leather couch with the rip in the armrest. The unfinished wooden coffee table mottled with heat rings from her mugs after too many near-misses with coasters. A kitchen sink weighed with cereal bowls and spoons that had yet to make their way into the dishwasher.

Not to mention the mess that was her linen closet/food pantry/place where old makeup went to die.

One didn’t need to look too closely to see the cracks her living situation had carved out since Travis’s departure. The runnels of grief had, over the past several months, eroded any semblance of order she may have enjoyed into gullies of chaos that were now the hallmarks of her life. That was all fine for Anna. She’d figure it out. Always did. But in no way was it fine for anyone else, especially a would-be rescuer who she’d already felt beholden to in some immeasurable way.

Anna’s worries were shrugged off before she’d even had time to voice them as Iron turned from the porch and started to walk back to his truck.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Truck.”

“But I thought you said you were blocked in.”

“ You said I was blocked in.”

“And you confirmed it.”

“Yes,” he breathed, rubbing a gloved hand over his beard, which had already accumulated a fair amount of snow. “I did. But not because it should be your problem.” He tossed his thumb at the vehicle. “I’ll be in the truck tonight.”

The absurdity of his words quickly swapped out her worry of hospitality for good old-fashioned humanity. “You are not sleeping in the truck.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Iron, no!” Anna stepped farther onto the porch, abandoning what little warmth remained in the cabin, and brought her socked foot down with mean old-school marm gravitas. “I have a spare bedroom.”

“Anna, you don’t know me.”

“I know you’re human and stuck on this mountain just like me until the storm stops and the roads are cleared. C’mon. I don’t want to have this conversation out here. I’m beat, and chances are you are, too.”

She let the storm door swing closed behind her but kept the main door open for him to follow. Footsteps didn’t chase hers immediately, which she was okay with. It gave her time to run to the spare bedroom, shove everything she didn’t want seen into the closet, and do a quick sniff check of the sheets. Due to an earlier quilting interest several years prior when her nutrition practice was still growing and time between tele-clients had been longer than she’d liked, she’d worked up a nice accumulation of sort-of-symmetrical quilts. They’d do for tonight. She was just grabbing two out of the closet when she heard the front door close, and a pair of heavy boots hit the floor next to her snow boots where she kept them by the door.

When she returned to her living room, Iron still hadn’t moved from the mat, though his socked feet were a welcome sight, as was the knit hat he’d removed and now twisted in his hands.

“Here.” She set the extra quilts on the armchair next to her. “The cabin’s not too big, so you shouldn’t have a huge problem finding things. The spare room is down the hall, across from mine. You’ll pass the bathroom on your way there. You need anything, you can just knock.”

Iron nodded but still stayed rooted to the spot. What little candlelight remained in the small living room seemed disinclined to illuminate much of anything, especially the shadows that had fallen over Iron like a shroud, lending their concealment for his intentions. With him standing within her cabin, she finally got the sense of just how large he was, and not just physically but his presence as a creature of the earth. Every movement of his body was a considered activity, as if he took no step without first weighing its cost on the floor beneath him.

He was just so . . . much . Far too much for her tiny home to accommodate.

Anna adjusted her glasses to try and conceal just how heavy her thoughts had become.

“I’ll take the couch,” he said.

“Why? I have a bed. It’s a double bed, sure, but it’s still a bed.”

“I know,” he said, smiling slightly and pulling his gloves off before shoving them into his pockets. “Get some sleep. We’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow.” Then he walked toward her and took the quilts from where she’d placed them on the chair next to her.

“Okay,” she said, not understanding but not having the energy to fight either. “You need anything else?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that?”

He stood silently for a minute, his eyes obscured by shadows she was coming to associate with him, being pulled around him like obedient servants. They brought their own sort of chill, one that spoke of possibilities more than precautions.

But when Iron’s bare hands brushed the edges of the quilt and lingered where her fingers had been just a moment ago, her heartbeat struck a riot against her ribs.

“Never mind.”

An aggressive yet familiar hum didn’t so much tease Anna from sleep as slingshot her from it.

Her arm flew out blindly and quickly captured the glasses on her nightstand before they could clatter to the floor. Able to see, if not so willing to, Anna blinked to bring the numbers on her phone into focus.

Nine thirty a.m.

By the time cognition bestowed its awareness to her sleep-fogged brain, her bladder was already hammering out its SOS and likely had been for a good hour or two before then.

With a speed befitting quadruped hunters, Anna leaped from bed and bolted to the bathroom. Once her business was attended to, she simply stood in her hallway and let the sounds of her generator knit together the facts she couldn’t help but accept.

Her generator was on. It was nine thirty in the morning, and her generator had already been turned on. Not only that but the breaker switches had been flipped correctly so that the septic and water pumps were usable, a fact she regretted not realizing earlier when she’d thoughtlessly flushed the toilet.

And if the generator was on, that meant the person who’d fired it up was also still in her house.

Then she remembered why it was on. Because someone must have gone back out in the middle of the night to shut everything down before they both fell asleep.

In her house.

Anna quickly grabbed a sweatshirt and walked out into the living room. Beyond the window, in the light of day, the storm was in full gear, landing punches against her cabin and conifers alike. The ghostly howls pulling their bellows through the trees sank their teeth into her skin, hauling up goose bumps and reminders of her current circumstances—and who she was sharing them with.

As if summoned from the mist of her mind, Iron walked into her cabin from the front door. “Morning,” he said as he beat the snow off his boots.

“Um. Good morning. You were outside already?”

He shrugged out of his coat. “Had to see to a few things.”

“A few things being the generator?”

“Yeah.”

“And you figured out how to work the breakers?”

A smile curved his lips. “I’m good with electrical stuff.”

“Clearly,” she said, impressed. “Did you sleep okay last night?”

He nodded while keeping his eyes noticeably anywhere but on her face, a move she would have to unpack later. She didn’t miss the way her quilts were folded exactly the way she’d left them but now rested on the couch instead of the armchair.

“So, what’s the damage? Storm sounds like it’s finally worked itself up to full bore.”

“I checked the weather. Reports say it’ll move out around Sunday evening.”

Her heart sank. Damn. Sunday evening. That was decidedly not the it’ll be out of here in a couple of hours answer she’d been hoping for. “Have the snow predictions changed much?”

“Well, there’s about a foot out there now, so I’d say totals are moot at this point. The amount of exact tonnage is irrelevant when it’s all a shit ton. The cleanup will be brutal regardless.”

“Wonderful.” The way Present Anna would have kicked Past Anna’s ass up and down this mountain for not preparing better would have been some avalanche-worthy devastation in and of itself, for sure.

“Are you hungry? I brought some groceries in from my truck. I unpacked what I could in the kitchen. The rest are in a cooler on the porch under the overhang.”

“I’m sorry. Groceries?”

“Here.” Iron walked past her toward her piddling little kitchen, and damn if her quivering stomach didn’t have nine kinds of thoughts to express on the subject. What she saw was an answer to her pregnancy prayers.

An assortment of fresh fruit was the focal point of the display, her wooden mixing bowl laden with apples, bananas, and oranges. Beyond that was a sea of cans, jars, bread, and dried goods: tuna, mayonnaise, beans, pasta, peanut butter, and the good strawberry jam, just to name a few. Stacked around it were individual servings of instant oatmeal in—her teeth sank into her lower lip—maple brown sugar and apple cinnamon varieties, along with assorted boxes of all her favorite and ruthlessly high-in-sugar breakfast cereals.

“Good thing about losing power in a snowstorm is you don’t need to worry about refrigeration. Anything we open that’s perishable, we can keep in my cooler out front. I’ve already got some milk and eggs in there. Besides, all the nonhibernating animals that would be interested in a snack are dealing with the same weather conditions as we are, so they’re stuck, too.”

“When and how did you go grocery shopping?”

“Didn’t. Grabbed it from home before I left to come here. Also brought with me a few more gas cans and some fresh motor oil. Checked the pilot light on your stove, too. All good there.”

A strained emotion worked its way into her throat that she had to swallow several times to dislodge. “I, um. This is all?—”

Iron lifted the tea kettle from the stove and filled it with water, then pulled out a box of matches he’d also included with the goods and, while cranking the dial, lit the burner. Then he grabbed an apple, shined it on his flannel, and handed it to her before selecting an instant oatmeal variety from the tower he’d stacked.

“Apple cinnamon,” she said, smiling. “How appropriate.”

He returned her smile, winked at her, and then got to work pulling out two pieces of bread.

A cold chill whipped through Anna as she clutched the apple tighter to her chest. Woodenly, she walked back to the living room and sank into the first soft surface she could find.

Her tongue had gone as dry as desert sand, and new waves of tension froze her limbs.

In the light of the snowy morning, Anna had finally gotten a good look at Iron’s face.

A face that stunned her with bicolored eyes, with its stark hazel one winking at her beside its brown fraternal twin.