Page 89 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

He started for the door, but Maggie’s hand was a soft weight on his arm. “Do you hear that?” She went quiet, pausing until there was no sound but the roar of the wind. “It’s blowing like crazy.”

“So?”

“So it’s a whiteout out there. And even if you could see the road, it’s buried under a foot of snow. It’s pitch-black and we’re in the middle of twenty thousand acres we know nothing about.” Her voice was starting to shiver, to crack. “You could stumble off a cliff, fall down a ravine. You could die.”

“I’m getting you out of here,” Ethan snapped, but she was looking up at him and biting her lip. Nervous. Leery. Almost afraid, but the question was: Of what? The killer or the cold or the man she hadn’t trusted at all until very, very recently? It didn’t matter. Ethan didn’t care, so he bent down to look in her eyes. “I’m going to walk until I find a cell signal and then I’m going to call for a helicopter and I’m going to get you out of here.”

“You don’t even have a hat. Or gloves. Or—”

“They’re trying to kill you!” he shouted because that was the only part that mattered. “And I’m not going to let that happen, so you have two options. Buckle down in here and don’t make a peep or walk through hell knows what out there and...” He shook his head. “Screw that. You have one option.”

He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “It might be warmer in the tunnel. Wait there. I’ll be back soon.”

Maggie darted out in front of him before he could reach the door. “Where are you even going to get a helicopter?”

Should he pick her up and move her?He could pick her up and move her.

“Ethan? Where—”

“My father.” He didn’t want to say it, but he didn’t have a choice. About anything. “My father has contacts in theUK. I can ask him for a favor.”

“The book burner does favors?” No one had ever sounded more aghast and that just made him love her more. “Ethan. No!”

He ran a hand through her hair. “He’ll send it. I’ll owe him, but he’ll send it.”

She shuddered and backed up until she was braced against the door. Her voice shook. “Owe him what?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Owe him what?” she demanded, and Ethan had to look away.

“He’s been asking me to join the family business for a while now, and—”

“No.”

It was the sharpness of that word that did it, cut his last thread of self-control and let him loose. He wasn’t joking, wasn’t teasing, wasn’t charming anybody anymore. This was who he was—deep down. The man he’d never wanted to be: single-focused and determined and dangerous.

“If it means saving you, then yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“You don’t have to do that.” She might as well have told him to stop breathing.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why—”

“Because it’s you!” The words were already out there, turning to ice in the frosty air, and Ethan couldn’t bring them back. And worse, he didn’t want to. “It’s always been you, Maggie. Losing my job? It was nothing. I was glad to be rid of it. Losing my mom? It sucked but it was a long time ago and I’ve made my peace. But losing you? It would break me.” He felt his pulse change rhythms, like his heart had found a gear he didn’t even know it had. “It would break me in ways that would never, ever mend.”

Her lip trembled. Her eyes were too big, and he didn’t know what it meant that she’d never looked more terrified.

“We barely know each other.”

“Yes.” He took a small step forward. “We do.”

“But... But... We hate each other.”

“No.” Another step. “We don’t.”

She was shaking her head butsearching his eyes. It was like being at a drive-in movie, the way the last five years flashed across her features, a highlight reel of the best and worst moments of his life.