Page 38 of That Stranded Feeling

Her breath catches in her throat as the sobs start to slow.

“Go back inside and get warm,” I tell the top of her head. “I’ll stay out here until I find her.”

She shakes her head “no” against my chest, making the bobble on her hat swing from side to side. It’s so adorable that, despite the desperate nature of the situation, I can’t help but smile.

She slowly lifts her face. The sadness in her eyes squeezes my heart.

“I’ll look with you,” she says softly.

A new calm has come over her. I hope that’s me. Please let it be me easing her pain.

“Okay.” I kiss her forehead.

She looks back down at my chest and wipes it with her glove. “I got snot on your jacket.”

I shrug and laugh. “So what?”

It’s the first time I’ve ever said anything like that about a gift from a world-renowned designer.

I pull a napkin from the airport coffee shop out of a pocket.

“Here, blow.”

I step back and take in the snowy wilderness. If I’m honest with myself, it doesn’t look good for Elsa. But I can’t let that show. “Okay, where have you looked? Where haven’t you looked?”

“I’ve looked everywhere nearby.” She’s limp with defeat. “She must have wandered off pretty far.”

“Let’s try going back to the house first, in case she found her way home while we were out here.”

Summer nods and wipes her eyes with the napkin.

“There aren’t even any paw prints anywhere,” she says as we tromp our way back toward the cabin. “And it stopped snowing when I came out to look. So she can’t have been anywhere around here for at least the last fifteen minutes.”

That is a very good point.

We stop at the entrance to her front yard and I point at the woodshed. “You checked in there, right?”

Her mouth drops open, eyes wide. She freezes for a second, then shakes her head and sprints through knee deep snow. Sprints.

I follow. Less efficiently.

She gets there well ahead of me, fumbles with the catch on the door, then yanks off her gloves and drops them at her feet to tackle the stubborn catch with bare fingers.

“Oh, thank God,” she cries.

I go a little lightheaded as relief washes over me. Thank fuck for that. I stop in my tracks and bend double with my hands on my knees to try to stop my head from swirling. I’m suddenly colder than I’ve ever been in my life. My socks have soaked up their own weight in melted snow.

But the laughter coming from the shed warms me and brings a relieved smile.I take a deep breath and straighten.

How would I have ever lived with myself if I’d caused Summer to lose the thing she loves most?

In the space of forty-eight hours, this woman has carved a place deep in my soul that no one else has even found.

I drag my freezing, sodden feet to the shed door.

Summer is on her knees, face buried in Elsa, who is wriggling and wagging against her, licking Summer’s face.

I step inside and crouch down beside them, one hand on each of their backs. “She must have followed me in here this morning, without me realizing, when I came to get the logs. And I shut the door on her.”