“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 been nestled in next to the oranges and apples. “If circumstances were different, I might be impressed.”
“Impressed? Of course you would! This is exactly what you want—me, trapped here where I can’t get away from you.”
He dropped the condoms. “You really think I had something to do with this?”
She wouldn’t put it past him. He’d certainly been angry enough when she’d climbed into Drew’s truck and left Ryan standing beside the toppled stoplight without a second look. But… Bri shook her head. As much as a part of her wanted to blame him, this had Avery and Drew written all over it. How many times had she seen their scheming in the year she’d known them? “Let’s leave and forget any of it ever happened.”
“Leave? I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see any conveniently stashed snowmobiles, or vehicles of any kind.”
Well, now that he pointed it out, she hadn’t either. There was only a tiny lean-to visible through the back window with an equally tiny stack of firewood next to it. Definitely no transportation hidden there. She ran her hands through her hair, nearly knocking off her glasses. This cabin was nowhere near big enough for the both of them, and she hadn’t missed the fact that there was only one bed.
It didn’t matter. If worst came to worst, he could curl up…on the massive rug in front of the fireplace. Bri cringed at the sight of the white fur. God, she hoped that wasn’t real, because having a bearskin rug in front of a fireplace was more at home in one of her romance novels than the real world. And that thing washuge. The animal would have had to be hundreds upon hundreds of pounds, the spread of fur more than enough space for even someone as large as Ryan to lie on.
As she rubbed her eyes, an image of his well-muscled shoulders against the white rug planted itself in her brain.
Absolutelynot. “Aren’t you a pararescuer? Getting people out of inhospitable conditions is part of your job description. So get me out of here.” Anything was better than spending three days closeted with him while her mind was offering up plenty of ways they could pass the time—none of which had to do with talking.