How long had I been walking anyway? It felt like forever.
My breath made the material around my face moist, and a chill settled into my bones like I couldn’t recall having ever felt. But I kept pulling, walking along that tiny path hoping to find something. A hut, maybe? A sauna would have been really great right that minute, or even just a fire. I might drop myself in it right that second for the moment of blazing warmth before I died.
“Dramatic much, Montana?” I lectured myself. “Seriously, you’ve been walking for less than a half an hour. Phone says it’s twenty degrees. That’s balmy compared to the negative temps we had over the weekend. Suck it up, buttercup.”
Jim said it was a little more than a mile. Hadn’t I walked that far already? I huffed out a tired breath and kept walking. Stupid snow, falling around me, blanketing my feet until my movement was little more than a shuffle to keep the cooler moving. My arms would ache tomorrow. Gym bunny I was not. Running around the kitchen had always been my choice of exercise.
Then the cooler stopped completely, jammed into the snow and a mix of half frozen ice.
“Fuck,” I cursed the stupid thing, turning to tug. The weight must have been too much because the handle popped off instead, sending me flying backwards, slipping on ice, arms flailing for a moment as I tried to keep my balance, and then falling, landing in a pile of snow. At least it was fresh snow so the only real pain came from having my feet slide out from under me, twisting one of my ankles in a way that it throbbed as I lay there.
The snow landed on me in little magical flakes of pretty lace. Beautiful, but quickly melting as they latched onto my eyelashes. I stared at them while they peppered my face with cold, contemplating the effort of getting up. Maybe calling for help. Though I was pretty sure my phone wasn’t going to work this far into the middle of nowhere.
Then a face loomed over me and I screamed. Couldn’t help that it was a high-pitched shriek of terror as I hadn’t heard anything but the wind and snow. And who expected anyone to appear over them like some sasquatch in the falling snow?
The face pulled back as I sat up, and I slapped a hand over my mouth. Facts taking a few seconds longer to register before I could stop screaming and suck in air. “Rio! I’m so fucking glad to see you. You scared the crap out of me. Sorry!”
Rio crouched a few feet away, no jacket, just jeans tucked into boots, with a thick sweater over the top. His hair hanging to his shoulders in thick dark waves, and his face scruffy with beard overgrowth. His eyes, that crystal clear pale blue I’d found eerily alluring, gazed at me with worry. He looked like he could have walked off the cover of an old-fashioned romance novel. Okay he was scruffier than that, and that was just fine. I liked my men a bit hairier than most.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said, his tone deep, but without accent. “Are you okay?”
When I didn’t move immediately, he came closer and offered a hand. “Montana?”
“Sorry, sorry. I’m fine, I promise.” I told him and took his hand and tried to get up. The second I put pressure on my ankle it screamed in pain and I had to take my weight off it, sending me sliding backward and pulling Rio with me.
He caught himself, landing only half on top of me and in the snow with an “Oof!” of surprise.
“Sorry! Crap,” I grumbled. “Must have twisted my ankle when I slipped.” His weight felt good on me, but he scrambled away and back to his feet, dusting off the snow. I dug out my phone, hoping to call Zach for a rescue. “No service. Crap.”
“What are you even doing out here in the middle of a blizzard?” Rio asked. He knelt carefully beside my feet and examined them. The right ankle screamed at the slightest touch. I couldn’t hide my flinch, or the heat that filled my face.
“Bringing you supplies. I thought I could make it before the storm hit.” But the snow around us was no longer tiny flakes, it was giant clumps of white. Even the trail was being swallowed by the piles of accumulating cold. Would I be able to find my way back to my car? “They said at the food bank that you don’t come down much in the winter, and I hadn’t seen you since Christmas, so I was worried…” I began to ramble, feeling stupid. “Packed as much as I could for you in the car, but didn’t realize it was so far, so there’s more. It’s in the car… but I have a lot in the cooler and the bags on top.”
Rio sighed and leaned down to scoop me up. Having never been picked up like a damsel in distress in my life, but always having dreamt of it, I had to say it was both a dream come true, and a total embarrassment. His warmth, the strength and ease in which he seemed to lift me and then hold me close, was great. But I felt like an idiot for getting myself into trouble. He glanced at the cooler and the stack on top.
“I’ll come back for it. You feel like a giant ice cube,” he remarked. He was deliciously warm. Thankfully he didn’t look sick either, which had been a big worry.
He turned and headed into the trees. I hoped his place wasn’t far. But what we came upon wasn’t really what I’d expected. It was a trailer, the old-school seventies kind with rusted yellow walls and a tin roof. The entire base of it was stacked with firewood and if it had seen better days, they’d been decades before. There was a chimney with smoke dancing around it. I hoped it was warm at least.
He opened the door and carried me inside, but the chill lingered. We got to the living room area, a narrow space with a large fireplace and nothing else other than a nest of blankets, and he set me down. He pulled the blankets up around me, then vanished outside for a minute only to return with more wood, adding it to the fire, and stoking it to a blaze. Why hadn’t he had that up higher before? The inside of the house was downright chilly. I could see doors in the distance closed, and the tiny kitchen looked clean but empty. Other than the nest of blankets, it was almost like no one lived here.
“I’ll be right back,” Rio said and headed out the door.
The heat from the fire began to warm me and the living room. At least it worked. When Rio returned it was with the cooler and bags of supplies. He set them inside the door, then came in and shut the two layers of doors before kicking off his shoes.
“You won’t get a signal on your phone until the storm passes. Even then they don’t always work. Does anyone know you’re here?” Rio asked. He padded my way in bare feet and I wondered how he wasn’t half frozen to death.
“My boss.”
“Mr. Frank? He’ll come looking as soon as the storm passes.”
He probably would. “Yes,” I agreed.
Rio headed down the hall, opened a door that appeared to be to a bathroom, and then returned with a first aid kit. “Let me look at that ankle of yours.” He eased my shoe off and pushed the bottom of my jeans up, the material soaking wet and cold. Even my sock was sopping. When had that happened?
He stripped off the sock. “It’s best to keep your feet dry in this sort of cold. Anything else is asking for frostbite.”
“You’re not even wearing socks,” I pointed out. “How are you not frozen?”
“I run warm,” he said, his hands gently running over my foot and ankle. “No broken bones, but you might have torn a ligament. Those are a bitch to heal. I can wrap it, immobilize it. You’ll probably have to stay off it for a while.” He began pulling things out of the first aid kit.