One Bride for Five Mountain Men

“Feel better yet?”

I don’t answer. I don’t know what to say. But strangely, I do have a little more energy like he said I would. I flex my leg muscles, cautiously working different parts of my body to see that they’re all still attached. Everything seems more or less normal, until I get to my left ankle. Trying to flex my toes sends shooting pain up my leg.

“You sprained your ankle pretty badly. You’re lucky that’s all you did.”

I don’t acknowledge his answer. After running through all my body parts again, I’m fairly certain he’s right, though. I’m sore everywhere, but that might be from skiing and falling down a hill. Only the left ankle seems to actually be injured.

Which makes escape temporarily impossible.

Finally I open my eyes, daring to stare back at him. His nostrils flare with every breath, and his eyes are steely, determined. Is this the kind of man who would assault me? You never know. You can’t just tell by looking. I don’t feel assaulted, but then again, I don’t know what happened exactly, now do I?

“So, you are feeling better,” he growls, mostly to himself. “I told you that you would. All I did was give you a mild sedative and some Tylenol so I could wrap your ankle. You’ve got a fever. You probably just have a cold.”

“I don’t have a cold,” I retort before I think about it too long. It just seems so dismissive, so insulting. I practically fell off a cliff!

“Well, you definitely have a fever,” he shoots back as he stands up and walks away, his footsteps heavy on the wooden floorboards. “Could be from the sprain, I guess. Or maybe you have internal bleeding and you’re about to die. Maybe you have shock. Do you think you have shock?”

“How would I know what I have? You seem to be the expert,” I snarl, surprising myself. Why am I even talking to this crazy person?

“Well, you found me, so you must know something,” he challenges me, turning back around. He really is almost as wide as a door. Truly huge. He could probably break me in half, and yet I suddenly have the urge to do battle with this guy. Who does he think he is, insulting me like this?

While I’m practically naked?

“Found you… I didn’t find you,” I object. “You just said that you found me, didn’t you? Want to try to get your story straight?”

“Oh, are you going to act like this is all some kind of a big mistake? Like you just happened to fall off a cliff and land in the middle of my property? Is that what you’re telling me?” he barks out, his voice quaking.

Shifting, I manage to sit up a little bit. The room threatens to tilt sideways but then settles down and lets me look at it. It really is a cabin, but well lit and clean. Along one wall there are an array of monitors, like security screens. They’re all dark, for now.

“Actually, that’s exactly what happened. We were just skiing. I just sort of… wandered off the trail. If you could just get me back to—”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

I feel my eyebrows go up despite the fact that my head is pulsing like a cartoon character.

“What is that supposed to mean? I’m not going anywhere?”

“Your left ankle is sprained. We just got five feet of snow, with three more coming. If you head out the door, you will make it about twenty feet in any direction before getting buried alive.”

“Oh,” I sigh, wiggling my ankle again and feeling that he is, in fact, totally correct. About that part at least.

“Which is the only thing that makes your story halfway believable,” he adds, running his hand over his beard thoughtfully. “Because if you had actually been looking for me, I can’t believe you’d be so stupid as to sashay out in a blizzard wearing this stupid thing.”

He picks my pink nylon jacket up off the clothesline with his fingertips, shaking it gently. Compared to the howling of the wind outside, it does seem comically lightweight.

“So… my ski jacket makes you believe that I’m really… a skier?” I croak out, trying to sound sarcastic but sounding sort of pathetic instead.

“Not exactly,” he smirks, his voice softening slightly. “Your ski jacket makes me think you are legitimately stupid.”

I want to object, but the way he’s talking, being stupid is his best-case scenario. He’s actually rooting for that outcome, and so I guess I should let him think that’s exactly what I am.

Something about all of this sets off my journalistic instincts. Obviously, he is surprised I’m here. He’s cautious and suspicious, but apparently not one hundred percent maniac. He could have done anything to me while I was sleeping, but instead he wrapped my sprained ankle and gave me Tylenol. It certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve been beaten or taken advantage of, or anything like that.

Moving in front of the window, he stretches his arms over his head, arching his back. I can’t help but notice the massive size of his frame, the way those work pants hang off his narrow hips, the bulk of his thighs. This is someone who’s accustomed to hard work, and a lot of it. A real mountain man? Wood-chopping and hunting and everything?

Apparently scooping damsels out of distress, at the very least.

But the comparison to that of Grizzly Adams’s physique with this array of security technology on one of the walls is striking to me. I guess he really did want to be alone. That doesn’t seem to be an act.