Snowbound with a Stranger Read online

  Mentally he calculated the distance between them and the knife stand on the counter, to the cast-iron pans hanging above the stove. If he had to, he would shove Dannie into the back room and use them. He would take out the bear before it could get to her.

  For long moments there was silence.

  Then, heavy footsteps sounded against the porch stairs. To Lee’s ears it sounded like a freight train receding.

  He rose and cautiously crept to the door. What he saw there sent a shock of relief flooding through his body. “Come here.”

  Wiping her face, Dannie approached the window.

  “See?” A mass of black fur crashed through the snow, away from the house. “She’s leaving.”

  “Oh, God.” Dannie sat down on the floor, leaned against the door and covered her face with her hands. A sob rose from her throat, followed by semi-hysterical laughter.

  Lee sank down beside her and tried to take her hands.

  She pushed him away. “Don’t you start.”

  “What?” Lee pulled back, confused.

  “Don’t start taking care of me now, for God’s sake. Enough.”

  He held up his hands. “I’m just trying to—”

  “You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” Dannie got up from the floor and brushed herself off. The coffeepot stood waiting on the counter. She went to the kitchen and grabbed two mugs.

  “Dannie.” She was going to push him away now. He could see that. A moment ago she had been lying in his arms, clutching him. He had been protecting her, and she’d allowed it, and now she was going to push him away.

  Well, he wasn’t going to let her do that.

  “Listen to me—”

  “No. You can’t kid a kidder, Lee. We all do this. Nurses, teachers, social workers. We take care of other people so we don’t have to take care of ourselves. You must be in your glory up here, trapped in a cabin with a wounded bird like me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lee’s voice was a fraction too loud. He tried to check his anger, to remind himself that she was hurting. But it rubbed him the wrong way, what she accused him of. She was the one with the problem. She was the one who couldn’t accept help. Who didn’t have the faith, deep down, to let anyone in.

  “Am I hitting too close to home?” Dannie’s face was alive with fury. “What was last night about, anyway? I lie back with my arms practically tied while you perform your service? I’m surprised we didn’t do a therapy session afterward.”

  “You didn’t seem to mind.” He stared into her face.

  Dannie stared back. The color in her cheeks rose to a flaming red. “What woman—” she shrugged off her parka and let it fall to the floor, “—would mind a thing like that?”

  “So what are you complaining about?” He took a half step closer to her.

  “This shit is gonna stop now, Lee. Okay? I might be having a hard time up here on this stupid mountain. I might be…I don’t know…reexamining some things in my life. But I’m not a woman who needs to be taken care of. I take care of myself.”

  “You mean like you did with that bear out there? You practically peed your pants.” It was a cruel thing to say and he knew it, but at that moment he wanted to hurt her. He wanted to get back at her. For what, he couldn’t quite say.

  “So?” Dannie kicked off her boots and threw them at the door. “I’m not allowed to be scared with a six-foot animal breathing in my face? I was scared, okay? I still kept my head when it mattered. I might be…feeling things right now, but it doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself.”

  “That’s just what you need to see.” Lee crossed his arms over his chest and smiled, filled with a sudden and deep satisfaction.

  The bear was a test. A psychological test. And she’d passed it. She was going to learn something from it. She was going to have a breakthrough, a real one, and he was going to help her do it.

  She could handle herself. She was strong enough. She could let people in.

  Let him in.

  “Oh, my God.” Dannie looked ready to punch him in the face.

  Unconsciously, Lee backed up a step.

  “You’re doing it right now, aren’t you? You asshole!” She stepped toward him. “No way, dude. This is not happening. You are not taking me on some fucking walkabout out here in the woods. What, did you hire a man in a bear suit? To teach me about embracing my wild side?”

  Lee backed up against the kitchen counter.

  Dannie’s eyes were on fire, full of rage and energy, and then suddenly, the barest hint of humor.

  Despite himself, Lee laughed. It was ridiculous, all of this. But like the rest of this lost weekend, it was deadly serious too.

  Dannie closed the distance between them and dropped to her knees.

  She ran her hand up his bare thigh.

  Lee sucked in a breath.

  She looked up at him with those dark eyes, breathing hard, her hand on the inside of his leg.

  He felt himself shake inside and tried to force a stillness into his body. A rigidness. A resistance.

  But he was already hard. That fact zinged through his system like an electric charge.

  To resolve an argument like this with sex was the kind of thing other people did. Not steadfast, reliable Lee. Not the doggedly cheerful social worker he knew himself to be.

  Somehow the basic truth of that didn’t make him stop her from lowering the waistband of his pants and taking his dick in her hand.

  He gasped. Slowly, she took his hands and settled each of them against the counter, so he had something to lean on.

  “Dannie—”

  “Shut up, Lee.” She grasped him with one hand, while the other wandered. Down the length of his cock, to the base where it met his body. Her fingers trailed over him, up the inside of his thighs, over his taut sack, up again to the tip. She lowered her mouth over him and his breath rushed out over her hair.

  She unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall. Her breasts against his knees made every inch of his skin come alive. She did for him, to him, what he had done for her, to her. Her mouth was silky and wet. She held his hips and ass in her hands. She drove him in deep, and then pulled back. Drove deep, and pulled back.

  Lee’s legs nearly gave out under him.

  He felt her smile. She pulled away and trailed her tongue over him, and he shuddered. “You’re going to come for me, Lee. Okay? You’re gonna come on me. On my skin.”

  He struggled to breathe and she took him back into her mouth. She licked and sucked him, moved her mouth over him and then she withdrew, and stroked him fast until he came—hot and quick—on her chest, all over her. Like she’d said he would.

  Dannie looked down at herself, and then up into his eyes, triumphant. “Take care of that, buddy.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Do you think she’ll come back?”

  Lee’s belly pressed against the length of Dannie’s bare spine. He cradled her against him, his face in her neck. Before them, the fire burned through its last dry logs.

  “I don’t know. It was pretty weird that she was out at all, actually. Pregnant females usually hibernate early.” Lee shifted, nearly knocking her off the couch.

  Dannie caught herself and turned to face him. “Maybe she was on the way to her den?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping. They usually don’t need to eat much at this point in the year. Maybe that’s why she gave up and went on her way.”

  “We’re not going out on the porch again. I hope you know that.”

  “Dannie, we have to go get more—”

  “No, we don’t.” She placed her forefinger against his chin and pressed down hard. “I strongly prefer not to be devoured by a large mammal before my fortieth birthday. I’d rather be cold.”

  “Without a fire, we’ll be—”

  “Hush.” She wound her arms around Lee’s neck. “We’ll find a way to keep warm.”

  “Oh ho. Listen to you.”

  Dannie leaned back against his biceps and tucked a
strand of hair behind her ear. “Ugh.” For a fleeting second she imagined how jacked up she must look. Nothing much she could do about that here. It was wilderness couture or nothing. But still.

  “Is there a cloud of dirt swirling over my head? I feel like Pigpen.”

  Lee smiled. “I can heat some water, you know, in a teapot. You could wash your hair in the sink.”

  “Seriously?” Dannie sat right up.

  “Better yet—” Lee unfolded himself from the couch and stood. “I can do it for you. Come on.”

  Dannie stayed behind on the couch for less than a minute. “Only if I get to wash yours.”

  “What there is of it.” Lee ran a rueful hand over the top of his head. “I’ll grab the shampoo.”

  * * *

  Dannie poured bottled water into the battery-operated teapot and waited by the kitchen window for it to heat up. Outside, between the trees leading up to the side of the cabin, bear tracks were visible in the snow.

  She had been kneeling by the fireplace, gazing into the flames while the bear made her way to the house. There was no way Dannie could have known that. Like everything else, the danger had come upon her suddenly, quietly, and there was no way to prepare for it.

  When Dannie was little, her brothers had called her Mouse. She hid in corners at family parties, inside the oversize tires on the school playground, under tables at restaurants. When her mother went shopping she’d have to search for her inside the racks of clothes. Dannie had loved to worm her way into the rows and rows of silky dresses. It was warm in there, and dark, and safe.

  When she was older, she’d banned the word mouse from the family vocabulary. She forced herself to step forward and be loud. Brassiness was a personality trait she’d carefully crafted, in defiance of her natural state. If noise overwhelmed her, she’d make some. If crowds scared her, she’d bury herself in one. What, after all, could be louder and more hectic than a crowded city hospital?

  Besides, she felt for the people there, her patients. She felt for their fear, because she knew what fear was.

  Lee had seen the mouse earlier today. Dannie had no idea what to feel about that. He’d seen a considerable show of bravado, too, but that part he hadn’t seemed to mind.

  Briefly, she covered her face with her hands and shook her head.

  Lee came bounding down the stairs, grinning, and as Dannie looked up, a shaft of sunlight caught his face.

  He was beautiful. There was no turning away from that.

  On the counter the kettle began to whistle. Lee poured bathtub water from a clean bucket into a pitcher, and Dannie added the water from the kettle. She propped a tall kitchen chair against the sink and leaned back against the cold porcelain.

  He shielded her eyes with his palm and tipped the pitcher over her hair. “You look lost in thought. You okay?”

  The water was warm and Lee’s hand soothing. Dannie sighed. “Just thinking about my brothers.”

  Lee rubbed shampoo into his fingers and threaded them into Dannie’s hair. “You have brothers?”

  “Three.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  Dannie closed her eyes and smiled. “They’re jerks.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not really. Typical jocks, though. Ball games every Sunday while the womenfolk wash the dishes and cook the pot roast.”

  “Are they older?”

  “Yeah. I was an anniversary baby. As in, my parents celebrated a bit too enthusiastically on their fifteenth anniversary. The youngest brother was already in fourth grade.”

  “So it’s like you were an only child.”

  Dannie opened one eye and squinted up at him. “Yeah. But with five parents. Three of whom had pimples.”

  Lee smiled and massaged shampoo into her scalp.

  A strange, sweet pain seemed to drain through Dannie’s body. His fingers were so gentle, his eyes so soft, she had to force herself to sit there and not run.

  Many times over the years, she had perched with her girlfriends on bar stools or beach towels and ritualistically complained about the lack of good men in the world. It was a truism among them that few existed, that only the lucky few found them. Even her brothers, whom she loved dearly, behaved like Neanderthals around women.

  Dannie didn’t know which side of the fence her ex-husband fell on. Certainly he had tried his best to be a partner to her. Until they both began to drift away.

  But there was no doubt in Dannie’s mind that Lee was a good man. Given the short time they’d known each other, it shouldn’t be possible for her to know this, but she did know it.

  Lee poured warm water into hair and chased away the suds with his hands.

  She breathed deeply. “You should do this professionally. You’re good at it.”

  “Thanks, lady.” He squeezed water from her hair and began massaging her scalp. “What about your parents? Are they still alive?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Alive and squabbling. On a cruise right now, in the Caribbean.”

  “Fancy.”

  “Union workers, dude. Saved for retirement.”

  “Good for them.”

  Dannie sat up and wrapped a towel around her head. “Yeah. They deserve it.” She patted the chair. “Your turn.”

  Lee sat back against the sink and closed his eyes. The warm water in the pitcher steamed up into the chilled cabin air when Dannie lifted it. She poured it carefully over his short hair, flicking the excess drops away from his eyes. He smiled, his eyes still closed, and her hand stilled for just a moment against his face.

  When she was an old woman, alone in her bed in some empty room somewhere, she would remember this morning. Washing Lee’s hair in the sink of a remote cabin deep in the mountains, surrounded everywhere by snow. Her entire body thrummed and sang with the energy of this one place in time, this moment.

  “Lee.” She held her hand against the stubble on his cheek.

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “I like it here.”

  He opened his eyes. An errant soap bubble floated up from his hair and toward the sunlight streaming through the window.

  Already his face was becoming familiar to her. A soft pang echoed through her chest when she looked at him. His eyelashes were absurdly long for a man. In fact, he was hairy everywhere except for his head.

  He covered her hand with his. “So do I.”

  Softly, she kissed his bottom lip and rubbed shampoo into his hair.

  * * *

  When the cabin grew cold, they ate soup and canned fruit in bed, piled under every blanket in the house. The curtains were open to let in the strong morning sun.

  “Tell me about your family.” Dannie lay propped on one elbow, squinting at him in the bright light.

  He ran the back of his fingers along the line of her cheek and jaw. “What do you want to know?”

  “Who are your parents?” She leaned in to his touch.

  “Why, you think you might know them?”

  “You never know. Brooklyn’s a small town.”

  Lee played with a lock of her hair. “Okay. Cathy and Rick Russo. Saint Mary’s parish.”

  Dannie shook her head sadly. “Nope. Don’t know them. You went to Catholic school?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Can’t you tell?”

  “Altar boy?”

  “Of course.”

  “Siblings?”

  “Two older sisters.”

  “I see. Somebody should thank them for making you into a nice guy. Your parents are still married?”

  “Yep.”

  “Impressive. So what’s the matter with you? What’s your terrible secret?”

  Lee leaned back against the pillows. “I think you already know what my terrible secret is.”

  It was wrong to lie to her. He knew that. But he couldn’t tell her about Caroline. Not yet. Or about his life before that. It was just…too much. More than she should have to deal with. More than he wanted to ask her to deal with.

  She held his gaze.

  At least he coul
d give her part of the truth.

  “You were right about me. Taking care of people. Ignoring myself. It’s why I come up here. Have you read Moby Dick?”

  Dannie nodded. “A few times.”

  That made him smile. “You know that scene where Ishmael says he goes to sea when he starts feeling like he wants to knock people’s hats off in the street?”

  She grinned. “I love that part.”

  “Seriously? I like you, Miss Marino.”

  “Okay! He knows my last name. Stevens must have been very thorough.”

  “He was. Anyway, when I feel like knocking people’s hats off, I go to the woods. Lately it’s almost every weekend.”

  “Every weekend? Really?”

  The softness in her face as she listened—it got to him. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Uh-oh.” Dannie leaned back.

  “Stevens told me about you before I came up here. He gave me your name and I looked you up.” More of the truth. If not all of it.

  “What?” Dannie sat up, her hair falling into her face.

  Lee stared at her and shook his head against the pillow. “For the love of God, woman, you are so fucking beautiful it takes my breath away.”

  “Stop.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and gazed across the room, out the window.

  Lee would never get sick of watching her blush.

  “What did you find out, before you came on the hike?”

  “I saw your picture on Facebook, that’s all, and read an article about you in the hospital newsletter.” And pored over about six years’ worth of status updates. And asked everyone he knew at the hospital about her.

  He hadn’t known why at the time. He still didn’t know why.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I should have. I thought maybe you’d feel cornered, though.”

  Dannie let out a long breath. “I would have. It’s true.”

  “Not now?” Lee pulled her down next to him and drew the covers over her shoulders.

  “No.” She settled in against him. “I don’t know why.”

  Lee laid his palm against her cheek. “Let’s stay here. After the roads are cleared. We’ll quit our jobs. Stevens won’t mind. We’ll let him sleep on the couch when he visits.”

  Dannie turned in to his hand and smiled. “They can drop food off on our doorstep from helicopters.”