27
R ose had never been so cold in her life, not even when she’d had to sleep in her car on the streets of New York that first night when she’d run from Janek. She was the bowling pin, and the wind was the ball rolling down the lane to sweep her off her feet.
One more step .
She leaned to one side and lifted her foot out of the snow before putting it in front of her.
Another step.
Take another one.
Every step is one closer to shelter.
She was starting to think they should have stayed in the shed with the horses. Like a penguin, she slowly made progress, getting closer and closer to where safety beckoned. “Shit,” she screeched and jerked away, dropping the wood she carried when someone pulled on her coat from behind. She shot a look over her shoulder as she scrambled away from the touch. It took a couple of heartbeats for recognition to push past the panic.
Caleb. It’s Caleb.
His mouth moved as if he was talking. She couldn’t make out his words but followed his arm as he pointed.
Crap, was I going the wrong way?
She nodded; he wanted her to go that way. She’d go that way. But first she had to get the wood she’d dropped. She bent down and picked up one log, crawling on her knees to the next one. Before she reached it, she was hauled back to her feet and pushed forward. Too cold to argue, she did as he wanted and trudged toward the cabin.
His hand on her hip kept her from faceplanting on the stoop. Caleb reached around her for the latch on the door, opened it, and pushed her through it in front of him.
Rose’s teeth chattered. Darkness enclosed them when he slammed the door shut. The quietness now that the wind had been shut outside was loud.
“One sec.” Caleb’s mutter was followed swiftly by the flashlight on his phone. He reached around her, and a few seconds later a battery-powered lantern lit the room. “I’ll light the stove.”
She stood where she was, shellshocked at how they’d gone from a picnic at the hot spring to the midst of a snowstorm in the space of an hour. Caleb crouched in front of a potbellied stove in the corner of the small one-room cabin. Two sets of bunks lined the walls, and a small table and four chairs filled the center of the room.
Caleb opened the door of the stove, showing a fire laid in place, just waiting to be lit. “Thank God.” It took him three tries to light a match. He cupped one hand around it, and finally, the kindling caught. “Come over here and stand in front of the stove. I’ll check what supplies we have.”
She nodded, her teeth chattering with each movement as she did as he asked. “It’s cold.”
“Welcome to Montana.” He brushed the back of his knuckles down her cheek. “This place is small enough to warm up fast.” He took her hands in his and held them toward the fire. “Take all the heat you can get.”
“Thank you.”
He gave her a lopsided smile and turned toward the bunks. Confused, she watched him kneel on the floor and reach under the bottom bed. He tugged one plastic storage bin from under the bed, and then another.
Boxes make sense. They wouldn’t want to have mice get into everything.
She flexed her fingers, ignoring the ache as they thawed out. “Can I help?” He shouldn’t have to do everything for her. City girl or not, she had big girl panties, and she knew how to wear them if necessary.
“There’s some sweats and stuff.” Caleb gathered an armful of clothing from the boxes. “They’re probably too big, but they are dry.”
She didn’t care how big they were. Anything was better than being soaked to the bone. Her fingers fumbled as she worked the button on the collar of her coat free. “I can roll them up.” She moved back from the fire, unzipped her coat, and dropped it on the floor behind her. She made fast work of stripping, and pulled on the sweatshirt before reaching for the pants. Any other time, she’d have been tempted to watch Caleb as he stripped off his jeans and boxershorts. Instead, she focused on shaking out the sweats and stepping into them without falling and landing on her butt.
Because he had to dig through the tote to search for a sweatshirt which would fit his large shoulders, she was faster at getting dressed than Caleb was.
“Catch.”
She fumbled the socks he tossed her way, but managed to catch them before they landed on the stove. Burnt socks wouldn’t be helpful.
Wait, burnt means warm.
“Throw me your socks too.”
“What?”
“I’m going to warm them on top of the stove for a second.” She unfolded her pair and laid them on the blacktop. “Just for a few minutes, to take the cold off them.” If their feet were warm, maybe it would fool their bodies into thinking the rest of them were warm too. She snagged the second pair he tossed her way and laid them next to hers.
“Damn, Rosey-Posey. I’m sorr?—”
Rose whirled around and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare apologize. You didn’t know this would happen.”
He pulled out one of the chairs from under the table and draped his wet clothes over it. “I should have double-checked.”
“You did. You asked Jack.” She turned the socks over to warm the other side. “If this had been the forecast, would he have forgotten to tell you?”
“He would have.”
She pulled the socks off the stove top and handed a set to him. “Then it’s not your fault.” She sank onto the edge of a bunk and pulled the toasty socks over her cold feet and sighed as the warmth wrapped around her skin. “That’s so much better.” She looked down at her feet and wriggled her toes. “It doesn’t matter that we put hot socks on cold feet, right?”
“Nope, baby girl,” he reassured her. “We weren’t out in it long enough to get frostbite. I think we’re good.”
“Awesome, because not gonna lie, even if it meant my toes were gonna fall off, I wouldn’t want to take these socks off.” She got to her feet and gathered her clothes. “How did you know there would be spare clothes here? Did Jack tell you?”
“Nope.” He scooted his wet clothes laden chair next to hers in front of the fire. “This place is laid out like one of the CHUs we have in our FOB in the Middle East. I hoped there’d be spares here like we have there.”
She blinked at him as she tried to figure out what he meant. Most of it, she did, but what the heck was a CHU or a FOB? She hadn’t done a very good job of hiding her confusion as he chuckled, and she wrinkled her nose at him.
“A CHU is a containerized housing unit,” Caleb explained. “Most military bases use them as housing overseas in warzones. Dalton bought a bunch of them from the military when they decommissioned a base.”
“Like a shipping container?”
“Pretty much.” He pulled tins and boxes from the top bunks. “FOBs are forward operating bases. Usually, it’s where we stage out from for missions.”
“It’s all a foreign language to me.” She took the boxes he handed her and peered inside. “Coffee and tea.”
“Yup.” He shook another tub. “This one has MREs, ready to eat meals, military style.”
“Are they good?”
He barked a laugh. “Hell no, but they’ll fill a hole in your belly and warm you up.”
Together, they figured out the camping coffee pot and put it on the stove along with a pan of water to warm. Caleb’s phone pinged just as the water began to bubble.
He glanced at the screen. “It’s Dalton.” He put the phone to his ear. “Boss, can you hear me? Dalton? Damn, the signal must be in and out.”
“Probably from the storm.”
“Yeah, I’ll send a text; it might go through at some point.” Caleb’s face was filled with concentration as he tapped the phone’s screen. “I sent one from the shed while we were taking care of the horses. If he could call, that must have gotten through, so he knows where we are.”
Rose pulled the two chairs without clothes hanging on the backs closer to the stove. “As long as they don’t come out in that.” She jerked her chin toward the door. “I’d be worried someone would get hurt.”
“Me too. I mean, they know what they’re doing. We’ve been here in Montana for years. It’s not the first time we’ve dealt with snow.”
She didn’t think he’d meant to admit his worry. “I know.” Guilt rode her hard. “If I hadn’t wanted to dance in it, we’d have been home.”
“Nope, don’t go there, because we’d have been halfway down the trail with no shelter.” Caleb turned the free chair around and straddled it backward. “We’d have been in deep shit if we’d left when I wanted to.” Caleb straightened in the chair as if he was annoyed with himself. “Shit, I forgot Jack said there was a generator in the shed.”
Rose followed him to the door. She peered under his arm at the swirling whiteness. “Umm. As long as we have enough wood and the lanterns work, I don’t think you should go out there.”
“We’d have power if we start the generator.”
Rose scanned the cabin. “Other than the light, I don’t see anything that runs on electricity. Don’t go out there. There’s no need. Please, don’t risk yourself. We have the fire. It can’t get much worse than it already?—”
“Shh.” His hand covered her mouth, cutting off the rest of the sentence. “Don’t tempt fate.”
He’s superstitious.
Um, I didn’t see that coming.
It was wild to her that this man was in any way superstitious. He didn’t strike her as the type at all. “Do you avoid walking under ladders too?”
“Damn straight I do.” Caleb shrugged. “With the things we see and the jobs we do, the last thing any of us ever want to do is to tempt fate, just in case.”
She wasn’t sure if fate existed or not, but she figured him believing in it didn’t hurt anyone. She was, however, curious. As she lowered herself into one of the chairs, she asked, “Have you got a lucky coin or something, too?”
“I don’t have a coin.” He fished inside the neck of his sweater and pulled out a chain. “I do have this.” He moved and turned over his dog tags, showing her the medallion hidden behind them.
She reached for the medallion, turned it over, and peered at the inscription. “Easy Day.” She lifted her gaze and realized her hold on the chain had brought them almost nose to nose. Nervously, she licked at her lips when her gaze locked with his and she shuddered as awareness slid through her veins.
“You’re cold.” His hand wrapped around hers. “We should get under the covers and keep warm.”
Under the covers with Caleb was the last place she should be, but yet it was exactly where she wanted to be. She was supposed to be leaving tomorrow, not falling for a man of honor who made her pulse race and dreams she’d long buried rise from the grave. “I’m okay.” Her chattering teeth called her out as the liar she was.
Caleb gently tugged his chain free of her hands and urged her to her feet. “It’s been long, cold day.” His hand on her lower back guided her toward the bunks. “A nap will help pass the time.” She sank onto the bed. “I’ll see to the fire.”
She watched as he squatted in front of the stove, adding logs from the box next to it to the flames. If she was going to nap, then there was something she had to do first, or she’d need to get back up again in half an hour. Sometimes having a bladder the size of a pea was a pain in the butt. “Um…?”
Caleb stopped poking at the fire and glanced over his shoulder. “Tell me.”
“Is there a bathroom?”
“Crap.”
Embarrassment flooded through her, heating her cheeks. She ducked her head. “Um, no, the other.”
His eyes widened and he sucked in an audible breath before he laughed—a deep, rich sound which seemed to come from deep inside him. He shook his head. “I meant, crap, because there’s an outhouse, but it’s outside. Give me five minutes and I’ll figure something out, ‘kay?”
She nodded, and as soon as he turned back to the fire, she dropped her head into her hands.
How mortifying.
Jeez.
Rustling in the corner of the room drew her attention and she lowered her hands to see Caleb stringing a blanket on a rope.
What on earth is he doing?
Once the blanket was up, Caleb grabbed a bucket and put it behind the blanket. “Think it will work?”
“Umm.”
He shrugged at her confusion. “Unless you want to pee on the stoop with your butt bared to the blizzard, it’s the best I can do.”
It’s a toilet.
“I—um—thank you.”
He stood aside so she could get around him. “Want me to hum or something while you go?”
The jerk was having way too much fun at her expense because her city girl was showing. But if she didn’t get to pee soon, she’d have an accident on the floor like a new puppy. That so wasn’t what she wanted Caleb to remember of her. She nodded. “Sure.” She studied the bucket for a second before deciding there wasn’t really a choice here. “I don’t hear you.”
Caleb chuckled before he started singing. “Doo, doo, doo…”
“What the heck, Caleb? Why would you do that to me?” She balanced herself with one hand on the wall to hover over the bucket. “Now I’m going to have that stuck in my head for the rest of the day.”
“It’s the only one I could think of.”
“Jerk.”
“Doo, doo, doo…”
What an ass.
“Stop it.” She finished what she had to do and swished back the curtain. “You.” She pointed at him. “You are an asshole. That song drives me nuts.”
“Come on, Rosey-Posey. Don’t be mad.” He grabbed a pot from the stove and poured it into a bowl which was half-filled with snow. “I figured you’d want to wash your hands.”
“Doo, do—” She stopped herself mid-hum. How could she stay mad with him when he was thinking of everything? “Thank you.” She washed up in the lukewarm water, and by the time she was done, he was sitting on the bottom bunk.
“You climb in, and I’ll curl around you.” Caleb tugged back the blankets. “That way, I can tend to the fire throughout the night without waking you.”
She couldn’t allow him to do everything. She’d like to think she wasn’t entirely helpless. “I don’t mind taking turns.”
Caleb climbed into bed and curled his arm around her stomach, fitting himself against her back before covering them with the blankets. “You stay warm. I’ll have to check in with HQ a couple of times.”
It didn’t take long for the air beneath the blankets to warm up from their combined body heat. “I’ll take a turn,” she insisted.
His nose buried against the back of her neck. “Mmh, sure.”