Page 4 of That Stranded Feeling

“Yeah, mine fits that.” Damn. It would be so much easier if I couldn’t help him at all. Or if I’d lied, but that’s never my first instinct.

I look past him at the snow falling in fat, heavy flakes. “But you can’t sit out here and wait.” I nod toward his car. “Look, it’s already starting to pile up around the wheels. You’d be snowed in by the time the phone was charged enough to get you wherever you’re going.” There’s also a thick layer forming on the roof. “And you’ll either freeze to death or run the heater too much and suffocate from the exhaust fumes.”

“You seem quite sure one of us is going to come out of this dead.”

Yeah, that slight smile is irritatingly attractive.

“Well, look around you. You’ve knocked on the door of a stranger’s cabin at the end of a long, unplowed lane on a snowy, windy night, in a vehicle wholly inappropriate for the conditions, and wearing clothes only suitable for a pleasant spring day. If this were the start of a movie, you wouldn’t think it would end well, would you?”

He shoves everything back in his pocket and looks down at his achingly cool fabric sneakers, which are now damp where the snow has melted. He closes his eyes and almost laughs. I made Hot Stranger almost laugh.

“I’d like to prove to you that I have absolutely no intention of causing you any harm.” He looks up under his eyebrows at me. “But I don’t know how.”

I think for a moment before breaking the silence. “Do you like dogs?”

His eyes widen. “Er, well…”

He pauses for longer than I’d like.

“That is definitely not the right answer.”

He holds up those gentle-yet-firm hands defensively. “It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s that my aunt’s big dog knocked me flying when I was a kid and broke my leg.” He shrugs. “It’s kind of stayed with me.”

“What was the last movie you saw?”

“What?”

“What was the last movie you saw?”

“Are these your go-to ‘Is He a Murderer?’ questions?”

“How badly do you want your phone charged?”

“Okay, okay.Frozen.”

I sigh. “Well, it’s no good if you don’t tell the truth.”

He clutches his hands to his heart. “Honest to God. My niece just discovered it. She’s obsessed. I watched it three times with her last week.”

So he spends a lot of time with his niece watching whatever she chooses? Interesting information.

“Last time you cried?”

“Oh, come on,” he groans, and rolls those big brown eyes as he breathes into his cupped hands.

“Okay. Well, nice to have met you.” I start to close the door. “Good luck with finding wherever it is you’re supposed to be.”

“Oh, no. Please.” He makes a desperate grab for the edge of the door.

I still, unable to slam it shut on such beautiful fingers.

“Last week.” There’s a hint of panic in his voice. “When the snowman almost melts.”

“When what?”

“The snowman inFrozen. You haven’t seen it?” That possibility seems to horrify him almost as much as his lack of battery power. “He tells the girl that some people are worth melting for. And my niece turned to me and said, ‘I’d melt for you, Uncle Owen,’ and that was it. I was gone.”

Hmm, that would be a tough thing to make up on the spot. And it’s adorable.