Page 3 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men

CAMRYN

Even now, the whole thing felt like a dream.

I could recall details, but nothing more; bits and pieces of what happened. I remembered being carried outside, through the wind and bitter cold. There was a huge vehicle. Bigger than anything I’d seen.

And then we were rolling, rumbling along. Climbing higher and higher into the mountains, where nothing but darkness and shadows lurked behind the swirling snow.

The arms that carried me were strong, like pillars of iron. But they were gentle, too. I could remember huddling groggily, against some warm, sculpted chest. I felt weightless. Helpless…

And then the cold was gone, and I was somewhere warm again. Someplace grand and fantastic, yet still serene and cozy. Someplace lit from within by a comforting, orange glow.

I finally stirred, swinging my legs off a plush leather couch and feeling my socks touch a smooth wooden floor. My boots were gone. In my haze of pain and confusion, someone had pulled them from my feet.

“Here. Drink this.”

A steaming mug was shoved into my hands. I looked up into the familiar face of one of my rescuers — the tall, dark-haired one, who’d cradled me in his arms.

“And take these.”

He held out two capsules that I recognized immediately as ibuprofen. For some crazy reason he pressed them against my lips, and for some even more insane reason I opened my mouth and accepted them.

That’s when I saw my other hand, all bandaged up.

“There you go.”

I took a sip from the mug, which was apparently hot chocolate, and swallowed. This was the man who’d held me after I’d fallen. He’d wiped the blood from my cheek, and asked me if I was okay. All while his friend, the violent one…

Oh my God!

It came back to me all at once. My landlord, storming in, demanding the rent… pushing me down, grabbing my arm. I remembered the intensity of the pain, flaring in my hand. My feelings of terror, followed by relief and confusion, as someone dragged my attacker off me and pummeled him into oblivion.

That hand was now bandaged, wrapped in a big mitten of gauze. And my face…

I reached up to feel my injured cheek. It felt hot, even greasy to the touch.

“I’d leave that alone for now,” the voice above me advised. “It’s not bleeding anymore, but it’s covered in Bacitracin.”

The man turned, and threw another pair of logs on the fire. Because oh yes, there was a fire. A big, blazing, beautiful fire, set in a double-sided fireplace. It was much larger and more blessedly heat-inducing than anything I’d built in my own little fireplace, over these past few months.

“W—Where am I?” I murmured.

“Montana.”

I frowned, and let out a sigh.

“Not funny?”

“No.”

My savior shrugged. “I could’ve said Earth.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“But to be more specific, you’re in our cabin. About a half mile up the same mountain as yours.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. The place I was in was tremendous; a modern, beautifully-constructed cabin of shiny yellow logs.

A lacquered pine staircase climbed to a sprawling upstairs balcony, and what looked to be a hallway beyond.

I couldn’t believe the scale of it all. Everything was just… big.

I opened my mouth to speak again, just as my other savior glided into the room holding a plate of sandwiches. He saw me, and his eyes lit up.

“Hey! She lives!”

He half-ran, half-glided over to where I was sitting.

“Are you alright?” he asked excitedly.

“I… I think I’m okay, but—”

“Does your hand hurt?”

I turned it over in my lap. “A little. I can’t really tell with—”

“Who was that guy?” he continued, rambling. “Why did he grab you? And why the hell—”

“Ryder!” the first man swore. He made a gentle, pressing down motion with one hand. “Easy, man. She just woke up.”

Scowling at his friend, the newcomer sat down next me and offered me a sandwich. I could smell what it was before I even looked.

“Peanut butter and jelly?” the first man sighed, shaking his head. “You really think that goes with hot chocolate?”

“PB and J goes with everything,” Ryder smiled, licking his thumb. “Everyone knows that.”

I drank him in as he slid the plate onto a nearby coffee table.

The guy was handsome, I’d give him that.

He had the chiseled, beardless jaw of a marble statue, and sandy blond hair swept back from a pair of gorgeous, cerulean blue eyes.

Right now, those eyes reflected a depth of gentleness and caring that made me feel at ease.

They weren’t at all like the eyes I’d seen back in my cabin, filled with wild, animalistic rage.

“Thank you for stopping him,” I murmured softly. “If you hadn’t come…”

“But we did come,” the first guy replied, “and that’s all that matters.” Kneeling in front of me, he extended one giant hand. “I’m Oakley.”

I reached out and took it. It was like shaking a small car.

“Camryn.”

His palm was covered in rough, bumpy callouses. But it was still warm, his touch welcoming.

“The asshat sitting next to you is Ryder,” he went on. “He’s the one who rearranged your boyfriend’s face.”

“Boyfriend?” I nearly choked. “That guy wasn’t my boyfriend. He’s my landlord.”

The two men looked at each other incredulously.

“Your landlord? ” they said in unison.

“Yeah.”

“What the hell was his problem, then?”

I paused for a moment, searching for an excuse. Eventually I let my face flush in embarrassment. “I uhh… I guess I’m a little late with the rent.”

Beneath his well-trimmed goatee, Oakley’s lip curled in disgust. “What a complete piece of shit,” he swore.

Beside me, Ryder nodded. He cracked his knuckles, menacingly.

“And I’ve been sleeping here?” I murmured. “On your couch?”

“Yup. You were out of it.”

“How long?”

“Couple hours.”

A helplessness swept over me, followed by a raging internal conflict.

How’d I let this happen? Why hadn’t I taken care of my own shit?

A long string of bad decisions had led to me being late with the rent.

But there were also extenuating factors.

Things I couldn’t possibly have foreseen when I’d driven twenty-three hundred miles to a remote mountain cabin I’d only seen on the internet, all on some stupid, romantic whim.

“What were you doing in that cabin?” Ryder asked. “I mean, by yourself?”

I sighed. “I… I don’t even know.”

“Well, where did you come from, then?” he asked. “And why are you so tan?”

“Ryder…” grumbled Oakley.

“Hey, these are simple questions,” Ryder said defensively. “I’m not asking her anything personal.” He nudged me with a gentle elbow and winked one blue eye. “Yet.”

I looked down into my hot chocolate for answers. Should I tell them my writing was suffering, and I needed a change? That I wanted fresh air? New surroundings? Silence and solitude?

It all seemed so stupid now. Uprooting everything I had, everything I’d ever known, on a single, reckless coin flip. I was here purely because the quarter in my pocket had landed on tails. That, and sheer stupidity.

A thought suddenly occurred to me. I began patting my pockets.

“Your phone’s plugged in on over there,” Ryder pointed. “Reception’s going to be spotty, but it’ll get worse soon, if you needed to call your parents or something.”

I laughed softly and shook my head. “We’re going to need a lot more than good reception to call my parents,” I said bitterly. “We’ll need a dimly lit room, and a Ouija board, and we’re all gonna need to hold hands.”

Silence ensued. Guilt trickled in.

“Sorry. I know that’s a little dark.”

“It’s a lot dark,” chuckled Ryder. He smirked at me and shrugged. “But I don’t hate it.”

Great, I thought to myself. He’s super fucking hot and he has the same dry sense of humor that I do. And now I owe him one for pulling my ass out of the fire. Literally.

The fire!

“I—I need to go,” I stammered abruptly. “Thank you both so much! I really mean it. But if one of you could please give me a ride home, that would be amazing.”

Home . The word sounded strange, even now. Did I really have a home? I did, once. But not for a long, long time.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t.”

An icy sliver of fear crept upward, along my spine. I set down the mug of hot chocolate and whirled on Ryder.

“And why not?”

“Well for one, because of the storm,” he said simply. “It’s been coming down all night, and it’s not supposed to stop until morning.”

I glanced to a long series of windows looking outside. Everything was white. Everything was swirling.

“And number two?” I asked trepidatiously.

"And two, right now you have nowhere to go.”

I swung my gaze to Oakley, standing sentinel in a white thermal shirt that stretched tightly over his broad shoulders. He shrugged helplessly, and I couldn’t help but notice it was tight around his arms, too.

“Of course I have a place to go,” I reasoned. “I’m renting that cabin.”

“That cabin is probably twenty degrees right now,” said Oakley, folding his arms. “The front door’s broken right off the hinges. We tried propping it shut when we left, but the wind is crazy, and who the hell knows?”

“But… but—”

“You didn’t have any firewood either,” said Ryder. “None that we could see, anyway.”

“I do so have firewood,” I protested. “There’s a woodpile out back.”

“That’s not a woodpile, it’s a small stack,” Oakley lamented. “More of a tiny bump, really.”

“Looked more like a beaver threw up,” quipped Ryder.

My eyesbrows came together in a furious scowl. “So what? I was rationing.”

“You were freezing, is what you were doing,” Oakley corrected me. “Slowly.”

I couldn’t tell if I was angry because they were making fun of me, or because they were right. Probably a little of both.

“Winter has barely even hit yet,” Ryder added, a little more gently. “What’d you plan to do when it did?”

The truth was, I had no plan. I had no money.

Everything I’d brought with me from Florida had been next to useless in this climate, as I soon found out.

As romantic as it sounded, writing my novel in a cozy, snowy cabin, had been nothing more than a big fat learning curve.

One that had depleted my savings in the process.

“Look, the weather can’t be that bad,” I declared, looking around for my boots. “And even if it is, my cabin’s only a half mile down the road. You said it yourself. I’ll walk if I have to.”

“A half mile in elevation ,” Oakley corrected me. “It’s much more than a half mile walk.”

I bit my lip and frowned. Did they really expect me to stay here, wherever here was? I didn’t even know these men.

“We’ll take you back in the morning,” said Ryder, backing him up. “Once the snow stops, and they clear the roads a little, we’ll just—”

“How bad could it be out there?” I challenged, heading for the door. “Last I looked, it was barely even—”

Halfway through my sentence the front door flew open, and a giant of a man stepped in. Without looking up he began brushing the snow from his boulder-like shoulders, and stomping it from his boots. Once satisfied, he shook the flakes from his thick, black beard.

He didn’t look up until he was finished. When he saw me, he frowned.

“Who the hell is this?”