Chapter One
Brooke
I knew I had made a mistake when the first snowflake hit the windshield. My stomach clenched up. I hated driving in the snow. Especially at night and on a back road. And on Christmas Eve in the middle of nowhere made it even worse.
How had I gotten myself in this situation, I asked myself. That new job in Seattle wasn’t that important. If it didn’t work out I could get something else. It wasn’t worth ending up in a ditch. No job was.
And on Christmas eve. How could I be so stupid? But the truth couldn’t be ignored. I was driving three hundred miles on Christmas Eve because I didn’t want to think about being all alone and Christmas had a way of emphasizing the point.
It had always been that way. In the orphanage, the staff tried to make it festive. We’d each get a little toy. The local charities made sure of that. But they couldn’t hide the fact that our lives weren’t normal. Each of us was alone in our own little world.
Christmas just drove the point home like a spike to the heart.
So, I avoided the whole issue by pretending it wasn’t there. It was just another day in a long line of days without meaning. That was how a twenty-two-year-old woman found herself on a back road in a snowstorm.
My fingers gripped the steering wheel as I leaned a little forward to peer through the night. The wipers swooshed back and forth trying to keep up with the growing storm outside. The darkness had crept in closer until it was just a black tunnel with my headlights leading the way.
I swallowed hard and tried to concentrate. The lines in the road were disappearing. The edge of the road blended with the darkness. Tall trees hugged the path like soldiers on parade.
Next town. I told myself. Just make it to the next town and I would stop for the night. Please, just make it to the next town.
Of course, my life being my life. That didn’t happen.
As I came around a bend, a sudden flash of tawny brown jumped to the road. A deer. A big buck stood there frozen in time, pinned by my lights.
I reacted. Okay, I overreacted. Slamming the brakes and twisting the wheel. No way was I killing Bambi’s father.
The car twisted, the rear end slid to the right and then just as fast to the left. For the briefest moment, I thought I might make it. A fleeting flash of hope was quickly crushed when a wheel caught the edge and over I went into the ditch.
An agonizing sound of the scrunching of metal erupted around me. I slammed forward, my head hitting the back of the hand that gripped the wheel. My shoulder hurt from the seat belt. My stomach dropped when I realized I wasn’t getting out of this easily. Cars were not meant to hang at this angle.
My first thought was to be surprised that the airbag hadn’t gone off. Then I remembered that I was driving an ancient piece of shit. The car was almost older than me. Of course, it didn’t work.
My second thought was to wonder why stuff like this always happened to me. Why was my life cursed? I lost my parents when I was six. A dozen different foster homes and orphanages. None of them horrid, but none of them welcoming. None of them where I belonged. I get into a small, cheap college only to have the place shut down eight months before I graduate.
One day I’m a college student. The next, there are padlocks on the doors and professors and students standing there like shell-shocked zombies.
And now I was hanging face first in a ditch in the middle of nowhere.
I slowly brought my mind back to some semblance of normal and took a deep breath. Okay, I thought. Time to fix this. Reaching for my purse I grabbed my phone and gave a small prayer of thanks when I saw the full bars.
Triple-A said they’d have a tow truck out within a few minutes. It seemed the next town was just a few miles away. It was just far enough away to be too far for me to make it safely. Sighing, I hung up and leaned back. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend the world didn’t hate me.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m usually a positive person. I know how lucky I was. Throughout history. A person like me would have been used and tossed aside. I knew things could be worse. They could always be worse. But, I also knew that there was something out there. Something more.
It was the flashing yellow lights that brought me back to the present. I sighed heavily when I saw them slowly approaching through the snow. Shoving my shoulder against the door I pushed it open and got out.
The cold air and wet snow reminded me of just how screwed up things were. What would I have done if my phone hadn’t worked? Or I had been knocked out. I could have died there on the side of the road and no one would have known. What is more? No one would have cared. Not really.
I shivered, and it wasn’t just because of the cold. I could have died.
The truck crossed over the center line and pulled to a stop. It’s bright lights forcing me to raise a hand to shield my eyes. The door opened, and a very large man climbed down. For the first time, a sudden fear shot through me. I was in the middle of nowhere.
I could still die, I realized with a shudder.
“You okay?” A deep voice asked as he walked towards me. Because he was backlit by his headlights, I couldn’t see his face. He might have been an ax murderer for all I knew. But then how I could have known that just by seeing his face I would never have known.
He was dressed in a suede work jacket, jeans, and boots. Man clothes. Wide shoulders. Deep, velvety voice. Everything screamed ‘Competent Man.’ A can-do kind of guy who worked with his hands and fixed things. The kind of man that made me go all soft inside. Either that or he was a serial killer on the prowl.
I blanked for a second. Then made myself nod and say, “Yes.”
He grunted as he tugged on some gloves and jumped down into the ditch. He pulled a flashlight from his jacket pocket and shined it on the front of my car.
I flinched when I saw my front tire twisted at an angle. It looked more like a fish’s fin than a tire. Sticking out at a ninety degree angle. Mr. Competent man shook his head back and forth. That was never a good sign. When a guy who knew what he was doing did that it meant things were bad.
He climbed back up to the road and I got my first look at his face and froze. Handsome in that rugged, serious, grown-up kind of way. Late twenties. Black hair. A close-cropped black beard without looking hipster. Dark eyes that saw everything and could make a woman want to melt. The kind of eyes that you just knew understood your soul better than you did yourself.
Something inside of me shifted. A new, strange feeling.
Our eyes locked for just a moment. Time stopped, and I forgot to breathe until he shook his head and stepped back to his truck. I let out a long breath. I hadn’t expected that. The sudden connection. Not on a back road on Christmas Eve with a tow truck driver.
He maneuvered his tow truck behind my car. Jumped out and started hooking it up.
“You can get in the truck,” he said as he lay down in the snow to get the hooks under my car. “It’s warmer.”
It took me a moment to realize what he had said and then to realize he was right. I was freezing out here. I hurried up into the passenger seat and sat back. The truck smelled like motor oil, pine freshener, and something else that I couldn’t identify but that was pure male.
Within a minute he was up behind the wheel and pulling my car out of the ditch. Before I could say anything, he was back down and doing stuff until he had my little broken car all hooked up, so he could take it to town.
Once again, he climbed up in the cab and shot me a quick look.
“Thank you,” I said.
He frowned for a moment then nodded and put the truck in gear.
“I’m Eric. Eric Snow,” he said without taking his eyes off the road.
“Brooke Sanders,” I answered.
He shot me a quick smile. My insides lurched, he really was handsome and once again I was reminded of where I was and just how alone I was. This man could pull me into the forest and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
But my insides told me he wasn’t the type. I had learned long ago to trust my instincts. Besides. If he was going to murder me. Would he have wasted his time pulling my car out of the ditch?
No, he wasn’t the type. At least I didn’t think so.
As we approached the edge of town, he started to slow down then pulled into a repair shop. My heart sank when I realized they were closed.
“Isn’t there any other car places open?” I asked as my heart began to race.
He snorted and shook his head. “On Christmas Eve? Besides this is the only shop in town.”
My heart sank. “And let me guess, they are closed tomorrow also.”
He shrugged. “The owner is like that. He gives his guys the holidays off. I know that’s hard to understand. But he’s a bastard like that.”
My brow creased with confusion. Why was he being snotty?
As I watched him, he backed in and expertly maneuvered my car between a beat up Impala and an aging motorhome.
What now? My world was coming apart.
“Is there a hotel near here?” I asked.
“Sure, just down the road. But it’s full,” he said as he jumped down from the truck to unhook my car.
My insides tightened up into a small ball of pure worry as I hopped down and followed him.
“Full? Are you sure? How do you know?”
He stopped for a second. “Because besides owning this shop. I own the hotel. Along with my sister. And it is full. It’s been booked solid for weeks. It’s Christmas Eve, remember. People visiting relatives. Ski slopes thirty miles away.”
A dozen different thoughts jumped into my mind. He owned an auto shop and a hotel. But he was out on Christmas Eve driving a tow truck. Who was this guy? The next thought to push its way to the forefront of my brain was the realization that I was in trouble. Big trouble.
I looked up and down the road. Street lights. A diner a block down the road. A few more businesses then darkness. A small town in the middle of nowhere.
“How far to the next town?” I asked.
“Twenty miles,” he said as he unhooked my car. “but they’re even closer to the ski slopes and will be full up as well.”
He used the truck controls to pull the wire back onto its drum. Every movement efficient and well-practiced.
“What should I do?” I asked. I knew I was sounding like a petulant little girl, but I was at my end. I’d been pushed and pushed, and something was about to break.
Eric stopped for a moment and looked at me. At last, he sighed heavily. “If you want, you can stay with me. I’ve got a spare room.”
My insides froze as a burst of fear, mixed with excitement flashed through me. Was he serious?
“Actually,” he continued. “You don’t have much choice. But hey, don’t worry. If I was an ax murdered, I would have done it out there on the road. Not here in town.”
My stomach turned over. Had he read my mind? No, he had had just assumed the obvious. But the way he looked at me with a silly smirk made me doubt my analysis.
“Do you think about ax murders so much that you know where you would and would not do them?” I asked as my mind frantically considered what he had proposed.
He laughed, but I noticed that he didn’t answer.
“Come on,” he said as he nodded towards the cab of the truck. “I promise I won’t bite.”
I held my breath as I pondered that statement. Why did the idea of him ignoring me bother me so much? What should I do? I twisted and turned but all I saw was cold darkness.
He stopped for a moment and raised an eyebrow.
My stomach tightened but really, what choice did I have. Standing out there in the cold all night didn’t seem like a smart idea.
“Let me get my suitcase,” I said as I hurried to my car and pulled it out from the back. I put it in the truck and pulled myself up into the cab.
“Won’t your family mind?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I live alone. So not an issue.”
My mind twisted back and forth was that a good thing or a bad thing? For some reason knowing that he lived alone made me feel good. I know it shouldn’t have. But the idea of him having a wife bothered me at some core level.
I sat back and tried to think of it all as an adventure. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t attack me in my sleep. But I wasn’t positive. There was just enough doubt to make it interesting.
“So, you own an auto repair shop and a hotel?” I asked. “Anything else?”
He shook his head. “Some land up on the mountain. But that’s it here in town. Besides my house of course.”
He owned his own house. A small sense of shame shot through me. The only thing I owned was a twisted piece of junk sitting in a repair shop.
We drove through town and I was pleased to see that he was right. The only motel said, “No Vacancy” in big red neon.
He glanced over at me with a bit of a smug look. I tried not to smile back at him.
After we had made our way through the small town, he pulled into a long driveway that led up to a big ranch-style house on the hill. Nothing super fancy. I bet they didn’t go for McMansions around here. Just a solid house surrounded by pine and cedar trees.
The front hill was covered with white snow. He parked in front of the garage and jumped down before I could even process that we were there. Once again, my stomach tightened up. I was going to spend the night in some strange man’s house. A handsome, very big, very competent man at that.
Taking a deep breath, I got down and grabbed my case. As I joined him, he reached over and took my case from my hand.
“Be careful,” he said. “it gets slippery and I haven’t had time to shovel the snow.”
I nodded as I started towards the front door. I hadn’t taken two steps when I felt the ground go out from beneath me. I thought for sure I was going to end up on my butt, but Eric caught me and pulled me into a quick hug.
The world stopped spinning as I looked up into his eyes. His strong arm around my waist. I had never felt so safe, so secure.
Oh, I was in so much trouble.