SOPHIE HAD GROWN up in the mountains of Oregon. Weather there, as here, could change in a hair and be unpredictable. Still, nothing in her life experience had prepared her for the ferocity and suddenness of the storm that caught them as they made their way out of the canyon.
It had been a gorgeous fall day, the weather crisp and bright.
Now, they were caught in the middle of a storm worthy of winter: rain quickly turned to sleet, and made the path they had come in on slick and dangerous. The creek that gurgled beside the path was beginning to roar with faint menace.
It occurred to Sophie that perhaps she should feel utterly and completely terrified. She could barely see, her feet kept sliding out from under her and the wind was hurling ice at her with howling satisfaction.
And perhaps if she had been with anyone else besides Connal Lancaster, she would have been terrified.
But his great confidence and his great strength never flagged. She watched him turn, in the blink of an eye, from the content man who had fished at the pool into a 100 percent battle-ready warrior. When she lost her footing on the treacherous path, he was always there, making sure she didn’t tumble off an embankment or hit the ground. In more open places, he put his body between her and the worst of the storm, sheltering her. He was urging her on, but his voice was calm and sure, like a beacon of light a sailor might follow through a storm.
Instead of feeling overwhelmed by how long it was taking them to make the trip back to the car, instead of feeling the discomfort of getting wetter and wetter, she seemed to be operating on some kind of adrenaline rush. Sophie found herself faintly exhilarated, as if it was an adventure she was sharing with him.
Finally, they stood on the bank of the creek they had crossed this morning. Sophie felt the first niggle of real fear pierce the adrenaline. Just hours ago, the creek had been a trickle, postcard perfect, gurgling pleasantly over rocks. Now, it raged, thundercloud gray, its waters churning up debris from the bottom.
Lancaster dropped the rods and other items he had been carrying. He got down on one knee, his one arm steadying him.
“Get on.”
“But I didn’t win the bet,” she said, pretending she was being defiant, and not what she really was, which was afraid. “You got the biggest fish.”
“Sophie,” he said, she suspected seeing right through her, something dangerous in his tone, “now is not the time. Get on.”
She looked at the raging water and realized she had no hope of crossing it on her own. It wasn’t particularly wide or deep—maybe six or eight feet to get across it, and maybe two feet deep—but it was moving horrendously fast. He was strong, she knew that, but even so something like panic tickled along her spine. Surely not even Lancaster could pit himself against an obstacle like this and come out the winner?
If he lost his footing, they could both be swept away.
On the other hand, what option did they have? They had no shelter here. The warmth of the car was seconds away.
“Get on!” he said to her, and it snapped her out of her hesitation. She clambered on his back, and he rose, his arms closing tightly around her legs, and she wrapped her own arms around his neck.
He plunged unhesitatingly into the water. With each step, he battled to find his footing. She could feel his weight shifting underneath her, his enormous strength being used entirely, his muscles bunching, relaxing, bunching again.
He crossed the creek in less than two minutes, then set her down. Shocked, she watched him whirl around and head back into the raging water.
“Stop it,” she screamed at him, over the roar of the water. They were safe! The car was right here! What was he doing?
He glanced back at her, but kept going. She shrieked at him again, pure panic rising in her. He made it safely to the other bank and filled up his arms with their gear. He was risking his life to retrieve stuff?
When she saw him come back across, saw how close he was to losing his footing and being swept away, her fear for him was replaced with fury, particularly once he was safely back on shore.
“How could you?” she yelled at him.
“I wasn’t leaving my fishing gear,” he said with not a trace of apology.
He was not hearing her! He could have been killed. Her helpless fury poured out of her, and she pummeled him with her fists.
He grabbed her wrists and held them tight, and even her fury was no match for the pure power of him.
“Tell me when you’re ready to stop, and I’ll let you go,” he said, his voice aggravatingly calm, as if she was a child having a tantrum.
“You stupid ass! I can’t believe you risked your life for worthless stuff.” She tried to yank her hands free of him so that she could hit him again!
“That fishing rod was given into my keeping by my grandfather.”
“And that makes it worth risking your life for?”
“Yes,” he said firmly.
The fight went out of her and he let her go.
“You scared me,” she whispered.
“I can’t be something I’m not so that you won’t be scared,” he told her with soft firmness. “I promised my grandfather I would look after that rod. It was the only thing he ever had of value.”
She wanted, desperately, to tell him how dumb that was, but she could see honor was everything to him. When he made a vow, he would keep it.
I do, whispered along her spine, but she shook it off. She turned and walked toward the car. She admired what he had just done. And hated it. She loved him. And despised how weak that love had made her feel when he had crossed back over the creek to retrieve his precious fishing gear.
She loved him?
Sophie, she told herself, you are supposed to be getting over that.
Or, a small voice whispered, seeing if there is any hope.
There was no hope for loving a man who would put the well-being of his fishing rod above her feelings.
As she sat in the car, shivering, he packed their stuff into the trunk. He seemed to take his time about it, too. At least she was out of the driving wind and sleet. When he finally got in, she could see he was soaked to the skin. He left his door open, started the car and turned the heater on high. He sat sideways on the seat, and took off his boots.
He emptied what seemed to be a quart of water out of each one.
He had carried her across that creek, she reminded herself.
But, just in case it caused weakness, she also told herself it only meant she was at least as valuable to him as his stupid fishing rod. As she watched him wrestle his wet socks back onto his feet, she realized her own feet were so wet and cold they were losing feeling.
For the first time since she had known him, Sophie could not wait to get away from him. Maybe she would leave Havenhurst altogether. She loved Maddie. And Ryan. And Edward. But she wasn’t really needed here. And staying was just proving too hard. A roller-coaster ride of emotion. It had been so much fun spending time with him this afternoon. Hopes up. He had not listened to her when she most needed him to listen. Hopes dashed.
Hopes up. Hopes dashed. The pattern of her entire history with this aggravating man.
She needed to be getting her life back on track. She needed to be applying for a new job, not hiding from her failures here with a fake job. She needed to be thinking of how she went for the protector type, over and over again, and then was disappointed by them. She could learn to protect herself! She could take self-defense!
She needed to get away from Connal Lancaster. He didn’t help her think straight. The opposite. How could any woman ever make a rational decision within a hundred-mile radius of the man?
A woman who had just experienced the disappointment of a fishing rod chosen over her sense of well-being could make a rational decision.
When they got back to the palace, she was leaving. As soon as it was humanly possible, she was leaving Havenhurst.
Except by now if there was one thing Sophie should have known it was this: every time she made a plan, whether it was to get married, or get her life back on track, the universe was determined to have the last laugh.
The weather outside was so bad that Lancaster was leaning forward, a grim look on his face as he tried to see beyond the swirling sleet. It kept jamming up the windshield wipers and icing the windshield. He had to stop and get out of the vehicle several times to clear the ice. She was not sure how he found it in himself to reenter the storm.
Now that she had made her decision, and now that the car was pumping out warmth, Sophie felt suddenly exhausted. Beyond exhausted.
She closed her eyes.
And was nearly thrown into the windshield when Lancaster slammed on the brakes.
“Sorry,” he said, and then got out of the car.
Now he said sorry! She watched him fight his way through the wind and sleet. In the faint illumination of the headlights, she saw him staring at something.
Good grief, had he hit something? Someone?
Despite how she wanted to stay in its warmth, Sophie scrambled out of the car, too. She went and stood beside him. Her mouth fell open.
Where there had been a quaint little bridge over a sweet little brook this morning, now there was a pile of debris shoved up on the bank like so many toothpicks, the raging water sweeping by them.
She didn’t know how he had seen it in time to stop. They could have been killed. Again. His saving her life, for at least the second time today, made her attitude toward him soften slightly.
Slightly.
“Now what?” she asked him. “Do you have a phone?”
He nodded.
She waited for him to pull it out and use it. When he didn’t, she wondered if it was because he knew the service would be spotty in such a remote part of Havenhurst.
But, of course, that wasn’t the reason, at all.
“I don’t want to make our rescue a priority,” he said. “There will be people in far more need than us after a storm like this.”
I need to get away from you would not count as a priority in his book Sophie knew, as he had shown her feelings barely rated on his radar.
He took his phone out and looked at it, before shoving it back in his pocket, away from the weather.
“No signal, here, anyway. I’ll check in later. I’ll have to watch the battery life.”
“You can charge it in the car,” she suggested, quite pleased with her contribution to their survival strategy.
“Normally, I’d say we should stay with the car, but all of Havenhurst will be digging out from under this storm. It could be days before they get to us.” He looked at a sky darkening as night approached and made a decision. “Luckily, there’s a little cabin not far from here.”
Sophie felt something in herself go very still.
Just when she had decided there was absolutely no hope for her and Lancaster—not ever—she was going to have to spend days in a cabin with him?
It really was a cruel, cruel world.
He gathered anything he thought would be useful from the trunk, including the basket of freshly caught fish, and gave her that look when she offered to carry some of it.
Later, she realized how wise that look had been. Because the cabin was farther away than he had let on. She was starving, exhausted, soaked and thoroughly frozen. She could not have managed to carry gear as well as her weary self.
And then, just when she wanted to sit down beside it and weep—never mind impressing Lancaster with her newfound determination to look after herself—the path opened into a clearing. Even in the state she was in, and even in the horrible, dismal weather, she could see the cabin was an enchantment: whitewashed, roughhewn logs, turquoise shutters, a thatched roof.
“How long did it take us to get here?” she asked. “It felt like an hour.”
“About eighteen minutes.” He didn’t check his phone for accuracy. If she wasn’t so completely done, she might argue the point with him.
He opened the door, stood back and let her pass him. Sophie stumbled through it, and stood there, exhausted and shivering and wanting to weep. The cabin was uninhabited. And primitive. It was obvious there was no power. Why had she hoped for warmth?
He moved by her, fell on his knees before a stone hearth and shoveled kindling in. She saw the loveliest stack of dry logs beside it and went to stand in the meager warmth.
“You need to get out of those clothes,” he said to her, without looking up when her shadow fell over him. It definitely was not a request. It was an order.
She stood there, dripping on the floor, her mind moving ever so slowly. Get out of those clothes and into what?
He got the fire going, moved through the cabin, familiar with its layout. He came and stood before her, a rough blanket in his hands.
“Get out of those clothes,” he said again.
Despite how utterly done she felt, she mustered a bit of pride. She folded her arms over herself and glared at him mutinously.
“Don’t make me ask you again, Sophie.” His voice was dark with warning that made her shiver more than her soaked clothes.
She grabbed the blanket out of his hand, planning on just pulling it around her soaking-wet clothes. He read her intent instantly, and stopped her with a look.
“I could only find one blanket, so don’t even think of getting it wet,” he warned her. “Naked. Now.”
The words made her shiver harder. It wasn’t as if he had designs, other than keeping her alive. She was going to have to concede. It was no different from being caught in her wet underwear at the hot springs. Only it felt so different. She had felt some semblance of control there.
“Somehow,” she said, with a toss of her wet hair, “I never pictured this particular moment going quite like this.”
“Neither did I,” he said, so softly she was not sure she had heard him correctly.