driving around on a day like
today?”
“That’s a damn good question. One I plan on asking my brother when I get back into
town.”
“But Avery said…” She broke off and cocked her head to the side. “Did you leave your
SUV running?”
Then Ryan registered a second engine starting up. He patted his pocket. The keys were
still there, but there was no mistaking the sound of his SUV peeling away. “Goddamn
it!”
He ran through the cabin, pushing through the front door in time to see the two vehicles
flying backward down the rutted road, Avery in the driver’s seat of her Jeep, giving
him a little finger wave as she maneuvered around the corner in reverse like a pro.
It was official. As soon as he got back into town, he was going to kill his brother.
Chapter Six
“But this doesn’t make any sense.”
After a good ten minutes outside, Bri had been forced to retreat to the—marginally—warmer
cabin. It didn’t look any different than it had the first time she walked through,
a cozy setup that was used for hunters, based on the mossy oak pattern covering everything
paired with the heavy wooden features. It wasn’t somewhere she’d choose on her own,
in part because she wasn’t all that much for camping or hunting or anything that involved
crawling through the woods in less than ideal weather conditions.
She was mentally wandering, she realized. Or maybe just avoiding looking at the man
standing near the door, his arms crossed in front of his massive chest. The man she’d
practically thrown herself at every time they were within touching distance.
“They’re coming back,” she said. They had to be.
“No, they aren’t.”
She dug through her purse, cold fingers slipping over her phone twice before she managed
to snag it.
Damn. She had no cell reception.
Panic reared its ugly head. There had to be a way out of this. Her friends knew how
she felt about Ryan—or at least how she told them she felt. But hormones didn’t count
as feelings, so it didn’t matter if her body was perking up just from being in the
same room as him. Even though she wanted to go running into the snow and chase Avery
down, she also couldn’t help but remember how good he’d felt when she threw herself
into his arms back in the bedroom.
Granted, attacking him wasn’t her finest moment, but she’d been terrified when she
heard someone walking through the cabin and they didn’t call out. She was surprised
she’d had the courage to grab that chair—even if it hadn’t worked out like it had
for the heroine in the last book she read. Fiction rarely translated over into reality—a
fact she was all too aware of.
“Give me your cell phone.”
Ryan’s brows dropped. “I don’t think so.” He pulled out the phone and grimaced. “You
know what? Maybe if you see this for yourself, you’ll finally believe that my brother
and Avery have every intention of leaving us out here.”
She took the phone in shaking hands, skimming over the text message from Drew three
times before the words penetrated. Work your shit out. We’ll be back for you on Sunday. Watch out for mountain lions. To make matters worse, his phone showed the same “no service” emblem hers did.
“No. No, no, no, no, no ! They wouldn’t do this to me! They can’t!”
“We’ve already covered this. They can and they did. So just relax.”
“Relax? How can you say that at a time like this? We’re trapped! We’re going to starve
to death over the next three days.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He moved around her, keeping a careful distance between
them, and opened the nearest kitchen cabinet. It was stocked full of canned goods
and bags of chips. Then he opened the fridge, which was equally full. He pointed at
a fruit basket in the middle of the kitchen island and frowned as he reached into
it. “They put some planning into this.” He held up a packet of condoms that had