Page 6 of Chance (Wild River Ranch #3)

J oy looked out the back window of the cabin she had found a week earlier.

It wasn’t in the best shape, but she had learned many things since being there.

Important lessons like wet wood makes more smoke.

Like, a lot more. And buying toilet paper was more important than buying candy…

even if the candy was on sale. And you can eat the rice you find in the kitchen cabinet and the meat in the freezer, but not all the berries you find in the woods.

That’s how she learned the toilet paper rule.

Overall, it had been a great week. Swallowing to ease her throat, she whispered, “See, Puggles. There is always a silver lining. You just have to look for it.” Puggles agreed. She could see it in his eyes. “Oh, let’s see if our friend is here.”

The best thing of all was she’d made a friend on her second day there. She had a dog! He was just a puppy, and he was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. She’d always wanted a dog, but her parents were older and didn’t want the hassle.

Asking her boyfriend, Eddie, would have been a complete waste of time. When he took the time to answer her questions, he always said no. It was for the best. He treated his yes’s as favors. Favors from Eddie came at far too high a price.

She tried to speak, even though it came out raspy. “Oh! There he is! See him? He’s right where he always is.”

She couldn’t have a flare-up. Not now. She hadn’t had one in over two years. Of course, she ran out of her medicine a week ago. She hadn’t paid any attention to her fatigue and sore joints. She’d chalked that up to not being used to trudging around in the deep snow.

But then her hand started twitching. And the rash probably wasn’t due to the cold and snow as she’d tried to make herself believe. And now her throat was sore. If she wasn’t better by tomorrow, she’d have to find a free clinic in Wilder. Rheumatic fever was nothing to play around with.

She spotted her new puppy staring at her from the tree line, and all thoughts of fevers and doctors disappeared.

How could they not? He was fluffy and dark gray, with the most brilliant light sky-blue eyes she’d ever seen.

She didn’t have any dog food, so she left meat on the back stoop twice every day.

She’d tried to get him to come inside, but so far he hadn’t wanted to do that.

Dropping back to a whisper, she turned to her stuffie. “What’s that, Puggles? You want to pet him and snuggle in his fur? Me, too. We have to be patient. But we can go out on the back stoop. He doesn’t run off when we do that anymore.”

As deep as the snow was, her new puppy was hard to catch. She’d decided to name him Dodger because of how quickly he moved. “It’s fun to just watch him play in the snow. What’s that? Yes, I hope he starts trusting us soon.”

Though he was small now, she could tell he would be large when he grew up. He had long legs and big paws. She wanted him to trust her before that.

Man, her throat hurt. Best to do something to take her mind off it until the soreness goes away. She should feel much better by tomorrow. Probably. Hopefully. Of course, that’s what she’d said yesterday and the day before. Third time's the charm, though.

“That’s okay. We have plenty to do.” She set her stuffie down on the small couch and tried to decide what to do first— what she should do or what she wanted to do.

It was the first Christmas she’d spent alone, well, except for Puggles and Dodger. She cut down a small spruce tree… okay, a sapling… and dragged it inside. Even though she had no decorations, it filled the cabin with the smell of Christmas and put her in the holiday spirit.

But she didn’t have a Christmas tree stand, so it had been leaning in the corner of the cabin near the fireplace. Not too close, but still probably not the best spot for it. Now that it was in place, she didn’t have the energy to move it.

Dragging it back into the trees would be a huge project.

She had thought the snow would make it easier, but it hadn’t.

Mainly because the snow kept getting into her boots somehow.

The only thing that hurt her throat worse than breathing in the cold air was breathing it in fast and deep.

She should probably start exercising once she felt better.

“I think we’ll take care of the roof first,” she whispered to Puggles. Doing something fun would distract her. “We really don’t know how sturdy this cabin is. What’s that? Well, sure, it was built out of logs a thousand years ago and is still standing, but there’s been a lot of snow.”

Snow had piled up on her roof. It had to be heavy. It wouldn’t be very nice of her to be a squatter in someone’s cabin and let the roof cave in. It was her duty as an illegal tenant to climb up there and scrape it off. She loved it when chores could also be fun.

Puggle reminded her she still hadn’t called Detective James to check in… all week. “I know. I know! You don’t have to remind me. And talking on the phone hurts my throat.” Not to mention, Detective James might notice her talking like a frog .

Her guilty conscience nagged at her enough since she’d ignored his attempts to call her.

It was probably for the best. If everyone assumed she was dead, then no one would look for her.

She avoided making the call because he had every right to be upset. “What if he’s mad at me?”

Experience had taught her to avoid making people angry at all costs. Eddie hadn’t been very nice most of the time, but when he was angry… well, she tried really, really hard not to provoke him.

But Detective James wasn’t like Eddie. He’d always been nice to her. She took the burner phone from her purse. Even holding the phone made her anxious. Soon she trembled so badly she had to put it on the table. Tomorrow. She’d check in with him tomorrow.

Now she needed to clear the roof. Dealing with the snow would be much easier if she had a shovel, but her plans were much more fun. Nature had grown the perfect ladder for her to use right beside the cabin.

Even the lowest branch was out of her reach, but she had a solution for that. Turning the large, oval washtub she had found by the woodpile upside down, she dragged out a wooden kitchen chair and stood it on top of the tub.

After three false starts, she figured out how to climb onto the chair without knocking it off the tub. Slipping only once or twice on icy branches, she successfully made it to the roof without dropping the tarp she’d found.

Thank goodness her mother had insisted she take gymnastics as a child. Who would have thought learning to walk on a balance beam would be useful later in life? She decided to start at the edge of the roof closer to her. That way, she’d have an easier path as she crossed to the other side.

She brushed the snow off the roof with her feet then sat on the tarp, spreading her legs as far as they would go. Leaning forward, she slid down the roof and plunged to the ground, leaving a strip of snow-free roof in her wake. Why use a shovel when you could be a human snowplow?

Yes, the roof was slightly higher than she had realized. And sure, landing on the snow below wasn’t quite as soft as she had thought. Scrambling up, she trudged through the snow and climbed the tree again.

Her heart raced. The wind stung her cheeks, but she didn’t care. Even though her feet grew numb from the cold, it was the most fun she’d ever had in her entire life.

She made it all the way to the far side of the roof. Following the same process, she prepared for her final slide down the roof. Just as she sat down, a voice bellowed at her from nowhere. “What the hell are you doing?”

She screamed, then grabbed her throat, blinking tears from her eyes. Mental note: Do not scream with a sore throat.

Her survival instincts finally kicked in. She had been found!

She tried to stand but stumbled, falling backward down the wrong side of the roof. As she fought to regain her balance, she struggled to remember exactly where the woodpile was. She hadn’t even checked the back of the cabin, so she had no idea what lay down there.

Thankfully, she missed the woodpile. Everything was fine.

Without opening her eyes, she threw her hands up and croaked out, “Ta da! That didn’t hurt at all!

” She gasped. The fall didn’t hurt, but yelling like that sure did.

It was like the inside of her throat had been sliced with razors.

She put her hand up to her throat, as if holding the outside could soothe the inside.

Suddenly, a man’s deep, angry voice growled down at her. “Are you all right? Is anything broken?” When she shook her head, he added, “Are you sure nothing hurts? Yet.”

Her eyes flew open. How had he found her? And what the heck did he mean by “Yet”?

She didn’t need to see the man to recognize who he was.

He seemed to be exercising every ounce of control he had.

It was as if he could picture her over his knee.

Yeah, she’d overheard enough at the Friendsgiving last week to understand that was a very real possibility.

No matter how far she traveled, she couldn’t escape towns like Nameless.

Not that she wanted to, but what were the odds?

“Yet?” Her voice still sounded like she had swallowed gravel, and she stifled a wince. She had hoped her throat would be better by now. Of course, screaming when she fell from the roof hadn’t helped.

Her mind felt fuzzy, but she needed to concentrate. He had asked her questions, and all she could do was stare up at him. He was just as gorgeous as she remembered. What was he doing here?

His face grew even harder as he stared down at her. “Yes, yet.”

Why had she said anything?

Without waiting for her to offer any explanations, he said, “I’m going to make sure you didn’t break anything, then we’re going inside to talk.”