His Frozen Heart

She stared at me silently.

“You crashed your car. You … got a cut on your head.”

Her mouth parted slightly, but she didn’t say anything. Just kept looking at me with those big green eyes. The old feelings and emotions of my life as it was before the accident came flooding back to me. I was never good at showing tenderness. I felt it, but it got locked up somewhere in my chest and never came out. I went to the cupboard in the kitchen area for the first aid kit and knelt down by her side.

“You speak English?”

She looked at the kit then back up to my face and finally nodded.

“You do know who you are and all that? Where you came from?”

She nodded again.

I tore another strip off the old T-shirt. “You want me to boil this up so you can clean your wound?”

She shook her head and I handed the strip to her. She took it from me and put it straight to her head.

Fortunately, it was only a scratch, but she winced in pain. “Argh!”

I stepped to the window. Snow was falling hard. Heavy snow and strong winds meant we were not going anywhere tomorrow, and unless it stopped, the days after either. Which was very bad news.

The cabin was already full of my desire for her. I didn’t know what to say, how to talk to her. Yes, I was out of practice, but I was never good with women in the first place. I had very limited uses for them. All of them without exception ended up hating me with a passion matched only by their professed love earlier.

Even my wife.

I didn’t turn around to look at her, but I could feel her gaze, smell her body. I wrapped the make-shift bandage around my cut and tied it with the help of my teeth. I looked up and saw the reflection of her hair shining like spun gold in the glass pane. Our eyes met. She shouldn’t be in this cabin. I could feel my lust squeezing at my chest.

She bit her lip.

I averted my eyes and sat down opposite her on a wooden stool. I took my knife back up. “Where you headed? You got anybody who’s going to be looking out for you?”

She looked startled, like she was wondering if I was an axe murderer or something.

I frowned. “Look, I don’t mean you any harm. Your car is wedged between some aspens. You won’t be driving out of here tonight in it. I’m just saying, with the weather coming down like it is, there’s no way you can get anybody to come out and tow your car, especially on Dogwood. They’ve probably closed the road by now anyway. You’ll have to stay here at the very least until morning.”

She looked like she understood what I said, but still she said nothing. I went back to my sharpening stool.

“What’s your name?”

Her voice startled me. I expected when she finally spoke that she would have a quiet voice, sweet like the angel of my imagination, but it wasn’t. It was gravelly and rolled over her lips in a seductive tone. I was put off guard. “What?”

“I said, what’s your name?”

“Cade.”

“Oh.” She nudged at the corner of a blanket on the floor with her boot.

“There something wrong with the name Cade?”

“No, no it’s good. I like it. It’s just not the name I would expect a burly, bearded mountain man, living alone in a cabin to be called.” She smiled at me suddenly, and a deep laugh tumbled out of her. It was luscious, without an ounce of phoniness to it. It did things to me. I’d been too long on the mountain if a woman’s laugh could tie me up in knots like this. I turned away from her. “What sort of name are mountain men supposed to have?”

“I don’t know, Grizzly, Jedediah, Something like that?”

“I don’t. Just Cade.” I was struggling to be near her so I stood and went out on the front porch. I needed the biting, cold air. A few steps away I kicked at the stack of wood. An unwanted thought popped into my head. I should have left her there for someone else to find, and someone else to keep her overnight. There are other men living on this mountain. They would have heard the car crash too.

This was dangerous for me. I needed to be alone; to be far away so I couldn’t hurt anyone else. I didn’t need this complication. The weird thing was I liked her already, and I didn’t want to like anyone.

Everything was fine, or rather becoming closer to fine, but now she was here I was in danger of everything going wrong again. It’s just one night, I told myself. I would find a way to send her away tomorrow. Somehow.

“My name’s Katrina.”

I turned to see her standing behind me, wrapped in blankets, her hair draped around her. She was stunning. Fuck it. I couldn’t take this for much longer.

“I’ll drive you into town in the morning.”

Something flashed across her eyes. As if my rejection had hurt her. “Aren’t you going to make fun of my name too?”

“No.” I turned away from her. I couldn’t stand to look at her. I wanted to consume her, drink her in. I wanted to let my eyes fall all over her flesh and discover every inch of her with my hands, my lips, my cock. “I’ll find a way to get you into town tomorrow. You can get a signal there. Call somebody to come help you.”

“There’s no one expecting me. No one will miss me for a while.”

“I find that hard to believe,” I mumbled. I hoped she didn’t hear me. I sounded like a fool. “Look, if you’re hungry I’ve got some soup. Some jerky. Not much else. I don’t do a lot of cooking.”

“Soup sounds good. Can I help? I feel bad you’re having to go to all this trouble for me.”

“I didn’t intend to make it myself. If you want some soup you can heat it up yourself. It’s in the cupboard.”

She looked at the old wooden table where I normally prepared food, then at the cupboard. “Well, what about you? Aren’t you hungry?”

“No.” I know I’m an asshole.

Silence grew between us. It was like an impenetrable wall.

She looked at me with wide, hurt eyes. Then she blinked hard, as if fighting back tears. She must still be in shock. Hell, what a brute I was.

“What happened on the road?”

“My chains

snapped. I lost control and went off the road. If it had been on the other side my car could have plunged off the side of the mountain. It was terrifying.”

She shivered and the blanket slipped from her shoulder. My gaze fell on the curve of her neck. She pulled the blanket tighter against her.

That was precious. I was hot and she was cold. “I’ve got some whiskey. Want a swig?”

She laughed, that glorious, rocky laugh again. “Now you’re starting to sound like a real mountain man. Yeah, I think a swig is just what I need right now.”

Katrina

“This’ll warm you up.” Cade handed me a shot of whiskey and took a swig straight from the bottle. A few drops dribbled down into his beard. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his flannel, checked shirt. Come to think of it, he was wearing the full mountain man uniform from head to toe, and he was wearing it well. I guess I never expected to be sitting in a cabin in the middle of the woods tonight with such a virile bear of a man, a hermit who obviously did not want my company. A fact I found unexpectedly attractive.

Our eyes met and I dropped my gaze to his hands. They were rough and weathered, covered in little nicks and cuts. I liked how they pulled through his beard straightening it every now and again, or how his hands, strong but relaxed, fell to rest on his knee, or brush over his strong chest.

“You want some more?”

“No, thanks. I don’t want to get drunk and stupid. Just a little to make my head hurt less and warm my bones.”

Cade grunted, then put another log in the stove. I watched him move, sure and assured and felt a slight flutter in my stomach. This was crazy. It must have been the hit to my head. The last thing I remembered was being in the middle of nowhere and trying to outrun Chuck-pervert-Pearson, but here I was with this gorgeous, enormously sexy, mountain man, who didn’t seem to like the idea of sharing his space with me.