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KENT HAD BEEN HAVING a perfectly decent day until his phone rang.
His phone almost never rang.
He ran his business as a graphic artist entirely online, and all communication was done through email or messaging. He never gave his clients a phone number so they wouldn’t call and pester him. His brothers would occasionally call him but usually in the evenings. And his Uncle Russ called once a week like clockwork on Sunday afternoons.
Today wasn’t a Sunday, however. And his brothers never called on a random Thursday afternoon. No one else should be calling him for any reason.
So he literally jumped when the phone rang in his one-room cabin.
He’d woken up early that morning like usual and gone down to the road to run in the dark for an hour as he always did. After he’d showered and dressed, he’d started working on his current project, and the only breaks he’d taken were to bring in some extra firewood when it started to snow and to make a sandwich for lunch.
He’d made good progress and had been enjoying himself as much as he ever did anymore when the phone rang and ruined it.
He almost ignored it, but it was so strange for him to get a call at all that he finally got up and walked over to look at the screen.
Penny Holiday.
What the hell?
He hadn’t talked to her since that day four years ago when she’d come to visit and he hadn’t opened the door to her.
He hadn’t been in fit state to talk to anyone that day. He’d been at the end of his rope emotionally—the place where he was likely to lose it completely. Say something unforgiveable. Or do something. He wouldn’t have been able to control himself. He’d already started to withdraw from the world back then, but he hadn’t wanted to lose control with Penny.
And if he’d opened the door to her that day, he would have done so. Hurt her. Lost her forever.
She’d been a friend to him since they were in elementary school, and they’d discovered they both loved to draw. She’d been a year younger than him, but it hadn’t mattered. They’d hung out for hours that year and all the years that followed, drawing and painting and molding in clay. Sometimes they’d talked, and sometimes they hadn’t said a word, and either way it had been comfortable, companionable.
Four years ago, he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, so he hadn’t opened the door.
She’d been crying when she left, and that memory still left a knot in his gut, but that was better than his saying something that could never be taken back.
Or doing something. Something that might be even worse.
She hadn’t made any attempt to contact him since that day. Like everyone else, she must have resigned herself to the fact that Kent wasn’t looking for friends or companions.
Even old ones.
Even someone who had meant as much to him as Penny had.
So there was absolutely no reason for her to be calling him on a winter afternoon. It was so strange to see her name on his phone that he ended up answering the call.
No one was there.
“Hello?” When no one answered, he said, “Hello, Penny?”
Her voice didn’t sound on the other end of the line. No noise at all came through.
“Penny?”
Maybe it was a pocket dial. Maybe she’d left him in her contacts the way he’d left her, and she’d just accidently hit his number and then immediately hung up when she’d realized it.
What else could it be?
Penny wasn’t going to want to talk to him after all this time, and he really shouldn’t have gotten so excited about seeing her name on his phone.
The call was still connected, however. She hadn’t hung up. She just wasn’t there.
It was snowing hard now. Several inches had accumulated on the ground, and it was still coming down fast. Holiday Acres was only a few miles away from his cabin, and Penny still lived and worked there.
He knew that much since he occasionally steered conversations with his brothers or with Russ to find out what she was up to.
The last time he’d done so, Russ had snidely commented that if he wanted to know how Penny was doing he should get his ass out the door and come over to see her.
That had effectively ended the conversation because Kent had hung up on his uncle, but Russ had called back the following Sunday and acted like nothing had happened.
If Penny had been driving out in this snow, it was possible that she’d gotten into trouble and had called him for help. Other than a pocket dial, that was the only explanation Kent could come up with for the call.
He opened his front door and stepped out into the snow, looking down his driveway as far as he could see. The wind was blowing so hard right now that there were blizzard conditions, and Kent couldn’t see beyond the first curve anyway.
“Penny?” he called out. It was stupid. She wasn’t likely to be out there anywhere. But he raised his voice and shouted again, “Penny?”
Nothing but wind and a lot of snow.
Giving it one more try, he shouted, “Penny, are you out there somewhere?”
To his shock, he heard a female voice on the wind replying, “Yes! I’m here!”
Kent was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, and he only took the time to put his boots on. She couldn’t be very far, and he didn’t want to waste time digging out his coat and gloves.
What the hell was she doing out there in snow like this? No one should be out there in this kind of weather.
He was so worried about her that he heard himself demanding as he clomped his way through the snow, “Damn it, woman, what the hell are you doing out here in the snow?”
Penny sometimes got absorbed in what she was doing and forgot about practicalities. Someone at Holiday Acres should know that about her and have stopped her from coming out in this weather. What the hell was everyone thinking over there?
He heard her calling out again, and she sounded closer now. When he turned the next curve, he saw her, a bundled form carrying a ridiculously large bag and limping forward through a veil of white flakes.
“What the hell, Penny?” he roared. She was covered with snow. How long had she been out here, and why hadn’t she called him sooner?
Penny didn’t say anything in response. She just fell forward into the snow.
He’d reached her by then, and he bent over to grab her by the shoulders and haul her up.
“Hey!” She was blinking quickly and spitting out snow. “Be careful! I’m not a sack of potatoes, you know.”
He couldn’t see any of her body beneath the long, heavy coat she wore, but her wool cap was askew, her reddish-brown hair was soaked and caked with snow, and her cheeks were as red as her lips normally were. She was scowling at him dramatically.
“I was trying to get you out of the snow. You’re complaining about that?”
“I’m complaining because you jerked me around. I’ve already fallen four times, and I don’t feel very good at the moment.”
“Then you’ll want to get inside, I assume. Or would you rather stand there and yell at me?”
“I can yell at you as we get inside. You really think I’m not capable of doing both at the same time.”
“I’m sure you’re capable of it.” His hair and beard were covered with snow now, and the wind was making his eyes sting. He wanted to get out of the snow almost as much as he wanted to get Penny out of it. “So start walking.”
She scowled at him again, but she did put one foot out in front of the other in the right direction. He walked beside her, putting an arm around her to support her and keep her moving. She was limping, he realized after a few steps.
She was limping a lot.
“What hurts?” he demanded.
She stopped and looked up at him, blinking as if she were confused. Her face was all lush dips and curves, rounded cheeks, big blue-gray eyes, a dimple in her right cheek. He didn’t remember her ever being this pretty in the past, but maybe his vision was affected by the urgency of the situation.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, what hurts? You’re limping.”
“Oh. I turned my ankle, and it’s a little sore. And I pulled a muscle in my leg. But I’m fine. I can make it.” She started to walk again, and because he was watching, he saw her wince as she took a step. He believed her when she said she could make it, but it was going to be slow and it was going to hurt her.
He stood and processed his options for about thirty seconds, but there was really only one reasonable course of action to get her into the house quickly.
He’d lived alone too long to second-guess his first instincts. He took one long step and moved directly in front of her. Then he leaned forward, grabbed her by the waist, and hauled her up so she was draped over one of his shoulders. Then he walked quickly toward the cabin.
As expected, Penny squealed at the sudden move. “What the heck are you doing, Kent!”
He almost chuckled at the words, at the memories. She’d never cursed back in school either, always replacing the real words with “heck” and “darn” and “shoot” and “freak.” Evidently that much hadn’t changed.
“I’m getting you inside.”
“But I can walk!”
“I know, but this will be quicker.”
“And you think I want to be carried like this? I already told you I’m not a sack of potatoes. Do you have to carry me like this?”
He was walking quickly and was already out of breath. Penny wasn’t that big, but she also wasn’t skin and bones. Her body was all soft curves and firm flesh. He could feel it even beneath the wet, heavy clothes she wore. “We’re not on our honeymoon. I’m not your new husband carrying you over the threshold. If I try to carry you another way, we’ll both end up on the ground.”
“Well, I don’t like it.” She was holding on to the back of the flannel shirt he wore to stabilize herself, and it felt strangely intimate.
“You think I do?”
“I don’t know if you do or not. You sound like you’re having a good time.”
He was surprised by her words but, when he thought them through, he realized she was right. He’d always liked Penny, and it had been a long time since he’d interacted with anyone like this.
A long time since he’d felt a woman’s body in any way. Particularly one that felt as good as Penny’s did.
He could hardly tell her that though. “You really think I’m enjoying this?”
“I don’t know. But if you’re about to complain about me being heavy, don’t forget that you’re the one who insisted on picking me up like you’re a caveman who just found himself a woman.”
Leave it to Penny to discourse with him in that unpredictably clever way when she was being hauled around in the middle of a blizzard. “You’re not that heavy.”
“Well, I’m not exactly skinny.”
“What does skinny have to do with anything?” he grumbled. The front door was in sight now, and he headed for it as quickly as he dared. The last thing he wanted was to slip. “I’m not a weakling. You’re not too heavy. I can carry you without any trouble at all.”
“Okay. Fine. Well, hurry up because this is hurting my stomach and my hat is about to fall off.”
He almost laughed, which would have been a mistake. In two minutes he was opening his front door and lifting Penny off his shoulder to set her on the hardwood floor in front of him.
She bent over a little and hugged her arms to her stomach. “Wow. That was weird, and now I’m dizzy.”
“You’re welcome.”
She sneered as she pulled off her cap and gloves and dropped them onto the floor. “Thank you for helping me, but I could have made it on my own, and carrying me like that wasn’t entirely necessary.”
He rubbed the snow out of his beard and shook himself off like a dog. “You’re welcome.”
She was unbuttoning her coat with trembling fingers, and then she dropped the coat onto the floor with the rest of her belongings. The long sweater she wore beneath it was almost as soaked as the coat, and she added that to the pile of clothes at her feet.
Kent’s eyes ran up and down her body before he could stop himself. She wore some sort of long, thin shirt that was clinging to her full breasts and rounded hips. She didn’t have pants on. Just leggings that were also wet and left nothing to the imagination. The sight of all those curves was not good for a man as isolated and physically deprived as he’d been for the past few years.
He wanted to pull the rest of her clothes off. He wanted to slide his hands all over her skin, feeling the shape of her beneath his palms.
He wanted to—
“Kent?” she said sharply. “Are you going to just stand there like a statue, or are you going to get me a towel—and maybe a blanket?”
He blinked. Shook himself off again. “Oh. Yeah. Right. Sure.”
“Thanks.” She limped over to the woodstove he used to heat the small cabin. She warmed herself up while he finished pulling himself together and then went to the bathroom to find a clean towel.
Everything he owned was old and worn except for his computer, so the towel he found was rough and thin.
But she didn’t complain when he handed it to her, and she used it to dry her face, then blot some of the snow out of her hair.
She looked cold and bedraggled and curvy and far prettier than she was supposed to be. She’d already left a mess in his home, which no other woman had set foot in for years. She’d always been like that when she was younger too, spilling over into every space she entered, littering it with art supplies, jewelry and pieces of clothing, snacks she’d brought with her. She filled up rooms with her presence, and it was so strange that she was filling up his space right now.
When he didn’t say anything for a few minutes, she turned to look at him. “It’s okay if I stay here for a few hours until I’m able to leave, isn’t it?”
He swallowed hard. A few hours. With the way it was still snowing and showing no signs of stopping, it was likely to be a lot longer than a few hours.
Penny. In his house. All around him. Turning him on. Driving him crazy. Filling up his world.
“Kent?” she prompted when he didn’t answer. “You’re not going to send me out in this snow, are you?”
“Of course not,” he said, his voice gruff to hide how rattled he was feeling. “You can stay as long as you need to. Hopefully it won’t be too long and you’ll be out of here soon.”
“Nice. I see you’re just as polite and welcoming as always.”
She thought he was being rude, and maybe he was. But it was just because he was suddenly terrified.
He had no idea how he was going to make it through the rest of the day and keep his hands off Penny.
He’d cut himself off from the world a few years ago because he just wasn’t capable of forming healthy relationships, because he was afraid of what or who he might become. Nothing about that had changed.
Which meant touching Penny would be a big mistake.