Snowbound with a Stranger (2 page)

So although she was tired and snow was beginning to fall, no warning signals flashed in her brain. Not then, at least.

Not until two hours later. When she found herself stranded in a whiteout on the side of the mountain.

Alone.

Chapter Two

Somehow the jokes about Dr. Stevens didn’t seem funny at that moment.
Where’s Waldo?
was a slightly less charming game when you were camped on a fallen log in a sea of white in the middle of nowhere.

She’d walked in circles for an hour, calling out to the other hikers, blowing the useless whistle around her neck until she’d practically popped an artery. The right trail was nowhere to be found.

They’d been on the verge of heading back early. The storm was closing in faster than predicted and for safety’s sake, they needed to get off the mountain. A few moments earlier, Lee had headed up to join Dr. Stevens. The two were conferring at the front of the line as they hiked, and it was obvious that they’d soon decide to turn around.

Unfortunately they were a two-hour hike away from their cars and Dannie had to pee. She tapped Zoe, who was walking beside her.

“Catch up with you guys in a minute, okay? I’m just gonna—” Dannie jerked her head toward the woods and smiled.

“You sure?” Zoe looked uncertainly at the group up ahead. Dr. Stevens and Lee paused on the trail, consulting the map. “What if you get separated?”

Dannie waved the thought away. “Don’t worry. I’ll only be a minute. You go on.” Then she’d struck out into the bushes with her shovel.

Why she couldn’t use the metaphorical john in the near presence of others she would never understand. She just couldn’t go unless under full cover, and to achieve that she’d had to cut through a few hundred yards of undergrowth.

By the time she found a likely spot and finished up, the snow was coming down harder. She adjusted her gear and headed back to the trail.

It was easy enough to find. Snow had covered the tracks of the hikers ahead of her, but she knew the direction of the parking lot and trudged toward it. There was no sound anywhere but the hush of falling white and the occasional crunch of a twig under her boot. It was lovely actually. She looked up at the sky and smiled.

And that’s when she came to the fork in the trail. She didn’t remember a fork. She remembered a straight shot from point A to point B that supposedly, farther up the mountain, led to point C: the doctor’s cabin. Very simple. A nice hike to a rustic lunch in a secluded house in the woods, and then everyone goes home.

Back to their hectic, ridiculous city lives. To their work. To the endless sickness and the stressed-out families and the people dying alone every day.

Dannie sighed. Simple? Nothing was simple.

She thought they’d come from the path on the right, but it wasn’t as though she could place a call on her cell phone or walkie-talkie to check. No footprints remained in the snow to guide the way. She had to just guess and hope she was correct.

That was the first time she’d blown her whistle. No answer but the echo. She turned right and began walking.

* * *

Thirty minutes later it was clear she’d made the wrong choice. At her quickened pace, she would have caught up to the group by now if she’d picked the true path. Along the way more trail divisions had forced her to make route decisions. She’d turned off one trail and on to another at least three times since then. Retracing her steps at this point would be difficult even under normal conditions, but the fact was, the snowstorm was now becoming an actual blizzard and she could barely see in front of her.

She took stock of the situation. Someone would have to come find her. But it would put the whole group in jeopardy to make everyone wait for her on the mountain. The most likely scenario would be that one person would stay behind—an experienced hiker. That meant either Dr. Stevens or Lee, who appeared to be a camping buddy from way back.

Lee, whose gaze she could barely meet. Lee, whose mere presence had sent her dashing to the opposite end of the line. She covered her face with her hands, blushing even though no one was there to see.

Where was the rest of the group now? Had they found their way to safety? And if someone had stayed behind to look for her, was he in danger too? How many lives, exactly, had she placed at risk today?

She cursed herself for putting any of them into this predicament. All because she was too modest to pee next to the damn trail or to ask the group to wait for her.

In any case, to support her own rescue, she’d need to stop acting like a moving target. A log by the side of the trail offered as good a seat as any. She brushed off the snow and sat down.

Her pack was well stocked. Enough food and water for one day. Weatherproof matches. Not that she’d know how to build a fire in this wet mess. Mylar blanket. Hand-crank flashlight. It was probably noon at this point, so she had plenty of hours of daylight, but the torch was nevertheless a comfort.

By two o’clock, if no one had come for her, she’d have to start thinking about shelter.

For now she simply sat and waited.

* * *

Dannie wasn’t the type to panic. Countless shifts at an urban hospital had made her reliable in a crisis. She’d learned how to remain calm and do her job no matter what happened around her.

Right now what was happening around Dannie was a severe winter storm. It was already three o’clock. She hadn’t strayed from the spot where she’d last stopped except to pace in an effort to keep her blood moving. Snowflakes covered her face but with wet gloves any effort to brush them off only made matters worse. And by now she was too frozen to care. The sky was dark enough with the storm clouds overhead, but in a matter of hours it would be night, and then she would really be screwed.

Despite her training, Dannie was scared. There was plenty of snow-covered brush in the woods but she didn’t have the first clue how to make a shelter. No doubt there were animals in these woods that would be all too happy to come upon a tasty snack like her in the middle of the night. Although she’d tried, she couldn’t seem to make a fire with the wet wood around her.

She tried not to think about how cold she was. Her many layers could only offer so much protection against the ocean of ice she was standing in. She’d practically dug a trench on the trail with her endless walking back and forth, but even so, her fingers and toes were numb. Her face stung from the frozen wind. The backs of her legs prickled with fiery cold.

The cabin couldn’t be far from where she now stood—maybe an hour’s hike—but she had no idea which direction it was in. Looking for it would at least give her a goal, though. A chance to do more than sit here and catalog the medical stages of hypothermia. She shook the snow off her back and reached for her pack.

In the distance a branch snapped.

Dannie froze.

On their last hike they’d seen a bear down the trail and had chosen to wait, silent, for it to pass before they continued.

Didn’t bears hibernate? So there wouldn’t be one tromping around the forest in the middle of a snowstorm, right?

It was an early storm, though. It was only November. Maybe it was getting ready to hibernate, and looking for some extra meat to bulk itself up before the long sleep. A nice big hunk of living flesh like her. She squatted down, hoping to make herself invisible.

Weren’t you supposed to make noise, though, to scare them? She thought she’d read that somewhere once. It would be able to smell her anyway; it wasn’t like she could hide. She stood back up and blew her whistle as loud as she could.

Silence.

A gust of frozen wind flew against her face.

And then out of the wall of white came an answering whistle.

Dannie’s knees buckled and she actually fell to the ground.
Oh, God. Oh, thank God.

“Dannie?”

A deep voice called out from the distance.

“I’m here.” Her voice was shaky. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Here. I’m right—”

A dark mass came down the trail toward her. She started toward it, walking quickly, and then running, slipping on the snow. She almost fell into his arms. “I’m here.”

“Okay.” A pair of strong hands gripped her shoulders. She could barely see him through the snow. He gathered her into a hard hug. “You’re okay.”

She was shaking. When had she started shaking? She’d felt so brave a minute ago, planning her fool’s errand to the cabin.

He pulled back to examine her face. It was Lee. Considerably more windburned than when she’d first seen him in the parking lot. He touched a gloved palm briefly to her cheek, and then to her shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

“N-no.” To her shame, Dannie’s chin began to tremble. Only it was too cold to really feel it. “I’m not hurt. I’m just…just—”

“All right.” He gave her a gentle shake. “You’re all right now. Come on.” He pulled something out of his pocket.

“Where are the others?”

“Hang on one sec.” He held a rectangular device in his hand and pressed the button. “Stevens.” He waited. “Stevens, it’s Lee. You read?”

A burst of static emerged from the device.

“You have a walkie-talkie?” Dannie almost fainted with relief.

“Lee?” Dr. Stevens’s muffled voice crackled out of the speaker. “Any sign?”

“I got her. Repeat. Found Dannie. Heading to the cabin.”

“You found her? Oh, thank God.”

“Affirmative. Hiking to the cabin before dark falls. You all okay?”

“Yes. Fine. At the hotel safe and sound. You take care, okay? Be careful.”

“Will do.”

“Thank you, Lee. Seriously, man. Thanks.”

“You bet. Over.”

Lee tucked the walkie-talkie back into the pocket of his pants.

“You know the way to the cabin?”

He nodded. “It’s about an hour’s hike in this weather. Can you handle that?”

“We can’t go to the hotel too?”

“The roads are impassable, Dannie. We’d never make it down the mountain. Cabin’s closer. Can you do it?”

“Yes. Of course I can.”

Lee smiled briefly. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” She grabbed his arm. “Thank you.”

Now that she’d had a moment to adjust to the reality that she wasn’t actually going to die alone out here in the woods, she was able to truly take him in.

And she could see why, from that first moment in the parking lot, she hadn’t wanted to.

He was gorgeous. Wrapped in about a hundred layers of clothing. A little fucked-up looking. And genuinely gorgeous.

Her heart seemed to literally stop beating. Every one of his features was just slightly off center. His nose was crooked and too big, and his lips…well, she had no business looking at those. She brought her gaze back to his dark green eyes and found them examining her in return. To her surprise he waggled his eyebrows at her and despite everything, she laughed.

He covered her hand with his and squeezed. “You’re welcome. Now let’s get the hell out of this storm.”

Chapter Three

The trail was long and fairly arduous for an amateur hiker. Lee noted with approval that Dannie trudged forward anyway, her shoulders braced against the wind. She had to be tired. By now the adrenaline of being lost and then rescued must have worn off; no doubt she was digging deep to find the strength to move forward.

He led the way up the increasingly invisible path. As long as Dannie’s footsteps behind him remained regular, they’d keep moving forward. He looked back frequently to make sure she was okay but otherwise spoke little.

Lee had been reasonably confident that their paths would cross eventually. He knew the terrain, and was well-equipped for the search. Even so, after three full hours of stomping up one trail and down another, he had started to worry for Dannie’s safety. Stevens had assured him that she was tough, but even smart-ass Brooklyn girls were susceptible to hypothermia.

Now that he’d found her and could see that she was healthy and in good spirits, Lee could relax enough to enjoy the scenery.

There was a reason he came up here so often, with or without Stevens. The deep woods were always quiet, but nothing compared to the stillness of an Appalachian snowfall. Even the roaring of the wind felt hushed. It drew the chaos right out of him.

Lee leaned for a moment into this peace, until Dannie quickened her pace and came up level beside him.

“How are you finding your way in this mess?”

“Muscle memory.” Lee slowed slightly, matching his pace to hers. “We come here a lot.”

She was covered in snow. White flakes crystallized along her eyelashes and made her brown eyes appear depthless. Out of nowhere Lee was seized with a sight-memory, a gut-memory, of another woman—ten years earlier, covered in gray-white dust and stumbling away from the towers at the World Trade Center. She’d gripped his arm momentarily as she passed, as he tried to run toward the building along with so many of his friends and colleagues.

He’d thought of that woman many times over the years. Had she made it home? Was she sick now with the respiratory illnesses so many of them got? Had she recovered? He couldn’t know.

Lee shook his head. He came up here to forget things like this. To put these memories out of his head, at least temporarily. To give his mind a little rest from the endless playing back and playing over. Of that day. Of the days that followed. Of Caroline.

“You seem like you know what you’re doing.” Abruptly Dannie brought him back to the present.

“Enough to get by, yeah. How about you?” He risked a sideways glance at her, careful to cover the tracks of his morbid thoughts. “You held your own out there until I met up with you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dannie scoffed. “I was just about to start freaking out when you got there.”

He grinned, which felt like ice cracking since his face was practically frozen. “What, you had a freak-out scheduled for three-fifteen?”

“Roughly, yeah.” Dannie smiled in return.

It made the laugh lines show around her eyes and struck a low chord in the pit of Lee’s stomach. And, truth be told, lower.

Stevens had said she was pretty. In a tell-anyone-I-said-so-and-I’ll-lose-my-job undertone, of course. But Lee hadn’t believed him. Stevens had strange taste in women. He’d once brought a lady with a parrot to Thanksgiving dinner, and the parrot had talked more than she did.