Snow Jam Read online

  This time he looked at me like I was crazy. "Kind of out in the middle of nowhere for a cab, pri—"

  "Don't call me princess," I said angrily. "I didn't ask for any of this, including you." I tried to stare straight ahead through the windshield at the blizzarding white we were driving into but I couldn't help taking a sidelong look at him.

  He was grinning again. It seemed to be his default setting. But he looked – impressed. Fine, if that's what it took, I'd be happy to go on snarling at him.

  We drove on into the storm up what turned out to be a driveway.

  The driveway to Rick's cabin was long. Some would call it a private road. It made me feel like screaming. Claustrophobia takes more than one form. Definitely it can take traditional forms – fear of small, closed in spaces. But it can also be the fear of being held too long or too tightly by over zealous huggers. It can be the fear of being in a meeting in a professional situation and finding yourself hemmed in by latecomers who surround the conference table and you, so that you can't just pick up and move out if the need arises, but must come up with an excuse or tell the truth – there's just too many of you, and you're all freaking me out. Claustrophobia can be getting stuck in the snow and having to stay in your car because there's nowhere else to go.

  Or driving up a tree-lined dirt road from the feel of it, while walls of white stuff seal you off from everywhere else in the world.

  And I was leaving Vegas because?

  Oh, right, because I didn't have a job there anymore and I liked to eat and have a place to live.

  Rick pulled up in front of the cabin and all I could think was This would be the perfect setting for a serial killer. Can you say remote?

  Which it wasn't, really. He'd told the truth. It was like a weird rural cul de sac and there were seven other cabins around, smoke coming out of three chimneys and lights on behind curtains. We weren't going to be alone out here.

  And actually the thought about the serial killer wasn't the only thing I could think. The other thing was unfortunate, but during the ride I'd started glancing at Rick more and more and –

  OK, wow. And it had been a while. Before I made the decision to leave Vegas I was seeing Tony. Big, beautiful, lifeguard buff, big smile, honest and sweet, and at 28, just three years older than me. We were crazy about each other. During the eight months we were together, we made Vegas ours. We did the Sky Jump and the Big Shot adventure rides and took in the Fremont Street Experience and hung out at City Center and we tested new clubs, we danced new dances, we ate in trendy restaurants.

  It was great. And it could have lasted. Except when I said I was going to Georgia and since Tony didn't have a job either at that point, because he worked in the hospitality industry and the last economic downturn was really hard on hospitality, it turned out that there were really two of us Tony was seeing – me, and the city. And the city won.

  It took me two weeks to realize I didn't care. I was busy applying for work with the idea I was going to live out some kind of dream. I just wasn't sure what that dream was. A chance encounter with a friend, Jenna, over disgruntled sushi and beer brought the idea to light.

  "If you could do anything you wanted," Jenna had said, sloshing her beer dangerously and using it to illustrate all her points, of which there seemed to be plenty, "what would it be?"

  I started shaking my head before I even managed to swallow my mouthful of beer. "I hate these things," I said, and Jenna stared at me. I waved my own beer. "The 'if you had a week to live' questions. If I had a week to live, I'd spend it panicking and trying really hard to figure out what was going to kill me so I could avoid it."

  That made Jenna choke on her beer. When she could breathe again, she said, "I'd spend it in bed." She was smiling.

  "Alone?" I hazarded.

  "Not hardly."

  "OK." I saw the lascivious grin on her face and redirected. "So what was the question?"

  "If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?" My apartment that day had been snug and summer in the Nevada desert style of hot. I was just entertaining the idea of leaving Las Vegas, several months and so very many job applications before it really started to happen.

  Might happen. If I could get to Hanlin by tomorrow afternoon in time for my interview.

  What I'd answered her that day was a fantasy I'd had since junior high school when I'd believed I could still do miraculous things and before I'd let other people (or me) tell me otherwise. I told her I wanted to spend a year in maybe ten different cities, though it wouldn't have to be a whole year.

  Jenna had blinked. She was Asian, gorgeous, fighting an eating disorder and always trying to lose the last thirty pounds of some weight again. Now she rested her chin on her hands and said, "Explain."

  It took a minute to remember the exact dream. I'd been twelve or thirteen at the time, so a year felt like forever and at the same time a year wouldn't have made me as uncomfortably aware of how much older I was going to be at the end of it as it did now. But.

  "I wanted to take whatever kind of jobs. Unimportant. Not career stuff. Just whatever I could get. Because I wanted a lot of time off, not having to go to work on weekends and week overtime and stuff. Then I wanted to get a studio apartment or something. Travel light. Laptop, camera, phone, clothes, books, a tea kettle. You know."

  The look on her face said she had no clue but was willing to humor me.

  "And during that year I'd explore every inch of the city that interested me. I wouldn't have to take work home or stay late. I'd have whatever time I wasn't working to do whatever I wanted with." I spread my hands. It had been a nice dream. But reality was I was an out of work economic development specialist and I enjoyed my work and was probably going to move away from Las Vegas if I found work somewhere else doing what I loved.

  "What cities?" Jenna asked. She hadn't moved on.

  We started a list then, starting on my coast. Vegas didn't count because I already lived here. If I hadn't, I'd have included it. I'd grown up in a tiny Northern California town and gone to college in Los Angeles which meant I'd already conquered some of my cities. After Los Angeles, there was San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Las Vegas, because I hadn't lived there yet when I was making the lists. Boise, Idaho and just about anywhere in Hawaii. Phoenix and somewhere in Texas. Maine, if I could pack enough sweaters. Florida. Jenna pointed out those were states, not cities. I shrugged. I didn't know the cities. Connecticut. New York City. Rhode Island. Atlanta. Nashville. Denver, maybe, but I didn't like snow, even then.

  "You've gone past ten," Jenna said dreamily.

  "So I don't math well." I lay back on the sofa with my beer resting on my belly, cupped in one hand. "What about you?"

  She'd thought briefly and complied. I didn't remember all her cities. A lot of them were in other countries, and I was nowhere near brave enough to try that.

  We sat in silence for a little while, until Jenna, who had a boyfriend, said thoughtfully, "What about Tony? You'd take him with you, wouldn't you?"

  And I'd realized I wouldn't.

  That had been a surprise. It had been years since I hadn't hung onto whatever boyfriend I was currently with no matter how wrong he was for me. I kept dating completely inappropriate men and then when time came for me to leave them – or more likely when the time came for them to dump me – I hung on for dear life.

  I knew this. I just didn't think Jenna knew this, though her phrasing indicated she did.

  It also came as a surprise to realize that for once I'd choose to be alone, on my own, than in a nowhere relationship.

  Huh.

  I came out of my memory because Rick had stopped the car and opened the door and the cold was flooding in. He stood beside the Jeep, holding his hand out. Assuming he meant to help me down, I took it. Rick just rolled his eyes.

  "I was going to take your bag." The one I'd been clutching like an idiot.

  I stuck my chin up. "And here I thought you didn't want me to slip in the snow."


  "You're a big girl. You can take care of yourself." He turned around and started for the cabin, leaving me fuming.

  It didn't stop me from admiring the view, though, and by that I didn't mean the trees all covered in snow and the silly log cabin I had no desire to set foot in. I meant the guy marching up to the log cabin, the one wearing jeans that fit very nicely from the back. His sheepskin jacket came to his trim waist. It looked rugged and western, though I got the idea he'd be as comfortable in a leather jacket hanging around a city somewhere.

  Having him stalk off like that left me not only admiring the view, but carrying my own bags, one of which I kept hanging onto like a lifeline.

  Getting out of the Jeep, I slid in the snow and caught myself on the fender. I cursed inventively and tried again. And slid again. The back of the vehicle where he'd stashed my bags – the carry-on and my purse, I hadn't let go of my messenger bag – was still shut and locked under one of the hard shell Jeep tops. I'd have to go around to the driver's side and release the latch. If he hadn't locked it.

  He hadn't, but if there was a latch, I didn't find it, and I ended up crawling between the seats on my hands and knees, dragging the bags back a little at a time as I tried to support my upper body while kneeling and reaching. The inside light was on, illuminating my struggles. I hoped if he was watching, that he was enjoying the show.

  Growling, I got my bags free and followed his footsteps through the dwindling snowfall. I slipped again on the porch, the slick stamped down snow icy. I caught myself against the door, grabbed for the knob with one gloved hand.

  And discovered it was locked.

  I could sense him standing just on the other side of the door. If it had been daylight, I might have tried to make it back to the highway. The snow was slowing, a lot. It was still overcast, so while the sun wouldn't melt anything even if it was still up, it would have been warm enough not to freeze.

  But it was night. And my options were rotten.

  I knocked.

  Chapter 2

  Before I lost my job as an economic development specialist, I was a lot more fearless. Maybe not ten cities in ten years fearless, or even eight cities in eight months each, which would take half the time, kind of fearless. But I handled things better. I traveled on my own if I needed or wanted to. I knew what I could do in my job, and I did it well. I had friends, boyfriends, lovers, a mother I liked but didn't have to depend on. I could get my car serviced and feel fairly certain I wasn't getting ripped off. Those sorts of things. And I was fully capable of making a move on a man I found interesting and attractive.

  Since losing my job six months earlier, I'd lost most of that. It was probably best that Sunny had been halfway across the country from me or I might have crawled into her lap and stayed here, too scared to do anything else. Jenna wasn't the kind of friend I automatically went to when I needed to be put back together. A good friend, but the kind you're not ready to "burden" with your problems, not yet, anyway. My sister Jill and I are so different I can't even imagine her reaction if I suddenly called her with such a request.

  So even with the distance between us it was Sunny I turned to. Sunny I talked to in my head and sent mental and real texts with the most inane problems and pretenses. Should I buy a cheesecake for book club? Should I go on the singles hiking trip I was only kind of interested in? Should I apply for this job? Wear this suit (photo attached) to the interview?

  I didn't lose my job for malfeasance or because I wasn't good at it. It was purely an economic decision. But it left me demoralized.

  So I followed Rick into the cabin with a curious blend of feelings – anger building at myself, and at the stranger who claimed to want to rescue me and who just left me standing in the snow.

  I'm not used to being ignored. I may be shy, but at five-six, one hundred twenty pounds, with nearly blue black hair and olive skin, I'm used to drawing attention, even when traveling in sweatpants (they were the warmest thing I had with me) and sitting in my car, petrified of the snow.

  Rick didn't seem to see it that way. That made him kind of fascinating in a scary way.

  What bothered me was under the challenges he'd issued – you're a big girl, you can take care of yourself – I thought I saw a spark of something in his eyes.

  I mean, past the amusement he seemed to derive from my predicament. For just a second I wondered if he was a plant, someone sent by Sunny to pick me up. It wouldn't be impossible for her to do something like that.

  And if Rick was just some Jeep rescue volunteer stranger? Then he had a nerve talking to me that way. He hadn't saved my life or anything like that. He'd just gotten me out of what, for anyone else, would have been nothing more than an inconvenient waste of time.

  I can take care of myself. Growing up the way I did, you learn. Fast.

  Rick's voice trailed out of the cabin where the front door was open. "You coming, princess?"

  "Don't. Call. Me. That."

  Gonna be a long night.

  The snow was still falling. I didn't think Georgia got this much snow. It was one of the reasons I was going after the job in Hanlin. It wasn't like I wanted to leave Vegas for, say, Iowa.

  But Georgia had Sunny in it, and it had a potential job I was sure enough of to have flown out for the final interview. If I got it, Sunny and I would be living about an hour apart. Yes! I had missed my best friend. We grew up together in California only she went away to college and I went to Los Angeles and she got married. And yep, I was a bridesmaid.

  I stood on the porch where the snow wasn't falling on me anymore and brought out my phone. To my surprise, I had a perfectly good signal. I texted Sunny.

  "Do you know this guy you sent in the Jeep?"

  "Devious silence," she sent back so quickly she'd clearly been waiting for something. My suspicion of having been set up deepened.

  "Yes or no, Sun. He's bought me to a remote cabin. Do I drink cider by the fire or run into the storm?" And hurry up and tell me, because my fingers are freezing off and I have to pee, I mentally finished the text.

  "Really wouldn't send serial killer to rescue you," she sent back. "Defeats purpose."

  I bit my lip. I could hear Rick inside doing something that required banging metal. Using rapidly numbing fingers, I sent, "Have you seen this guy?"

  "Hot, huh?"

  "Smoldering," I typed.

  Rick shut the cabin door. I jumped and turned around, expecting him to be standing behind me. Nope. No one there. He'd just shut the door. With me on the outside.

  "But short on charm," I sent, and was about to put my phone away when Sunny replied.

  "Maybe he'll grow on you."

  Like fungus, I thought, and grabbed the doorknob.

  It was locked.

  * * *

  When Rick opened the door, I was torn between actual gratitude, because spending the night on the porch wasn't possible and the Jeep wouldn't be much warmer, and irritation for that stunt.

  So I didn't say anything, just stepped past him into the cabin. Where I stopped, appalled.

  It was a total fishing cabin. By which I mean pictures of fish, dead and mounted and stuffed fish. Tiny galley kitchen, living room with leather armchairs, rag rugs. The walls weren't just logs on the outside, they were logs on the inside. My skin started crawling instantly with the idea of bugs. Bugs in the wood. Bugs freely leaving the wood.

  When Rick stepped behind me to take my coat, I nearly screamed. No way he'd missed the expression on my face as I surveyed my home for the night. As I turned back to face him I expected a look of derision, of disgust or pity or anger.

  But when I met his eye, he looked sheepish. "I know it's not much. It's a fishing cabin. My friends and I, we've been coming here since we were kids. My father." His voice broke. Not much but I heard it. "Left it to me."

  "You lost your father?" I asked. He couldn't be much older than my twenty-five. And then, since my question was out of line, "I'm sorry. That must be hard."

  That deserved sn
ark too – it was totally lame. But when I glanced at him, he just looked withdrawn, like he was thinking about something. His father, probably. While he was distracted I took the opportunity to get a good look at him.

  He wasn't really tall, not like a lot of the men I've dated. He was probably five-ten or so. But all of it worked. And it wasn't a hunting-fishing-wilderness-adventure kind of vibe I was getting from him. There was something about him I couldn't nail down.

  Next instant he answered my lame remark with, "Yeah, whatever."

  That's what I had been expecting. I was still covertly watching as he hung my coat on a hook by the door while I instantly grabbed my messenger bag again, then looked around for somewhere I could put it. Not likely the resumes and sample presentation were going to slip out on their own and run away, but the bag represented my new life I wanted so very much to be starting about an hour away from Sunny. Good girlfriend times. New job. Money again. I could buy new bags so when I traveled again it wouldn't be with a messenger bag with a hole in it.

  "Going outside. Smoke," he said. He'd taken off the jacket and rolled up his sleeves and I could just see the edge of a tattoo on his right forearm. Now he shrugged back into the jacket and went to stand on the porch. It occurred to me to lock the door behind him. I resisted.

  I watched him through the window for a couple minutes. He stood still, only his right hand rising and lowering as he took hits off his cigarette which smelled suspiciously like cloves. Broad shoulders, trim waist. The golden hair was sleek to the collar and then where it was cut it frothed into curls. Made me kind of want to run my fingers through them.

  Damn! No, I did not. That wasn't what I needed. I needed to get out of this tree house and get myself to Hanlin.

  I'd planned the trip so carefully. The flight into Atlanta, rental car, an extra day to make sure neither the flight nor I was late. Drive from Atlanta to Hanlin, hotel reservations in place. Damn! I needed to call and cancel those.